A boy, a dream, and a life’s quest.
It was 30° out at 10 am.
I convinced my dad to hop in the car with me and bring the stopwatch.
We get to the field. I pull out a shovel from the backseat and get to work. We had a few inches of snow the night before, so I needed to shovel out the hashes to have a lane to run in.
I put the shovel down, swapped my boots out for my cleats, and I went to work.
I was obsessed with getting faster and there was nothing that could stop me.
Speed was the biggest question mark college coaches had on me, so I knew I needed to blow them away when camp season came around.
I tried everything. I researched incessantly. If there was an article or video on the internet about how to sprint faster, I read it.
A lot of it was hog wash. Sometimes I got slower. Sometimes I got hurt. But, every now and then, I’d find methods that gave me an edge.
I never really stopped this journey. I’m still obsessed with learning everything I can about speed development. Except now it’s to help you get faster, not me.
After 13 years, 10+ D1 scholarship offers, 3 years starting at the D1 level, an exercise science degree, a CSCS, a doctorate in physical therapy, and 6 years of speed coaching, here are the 7 tried and true, no BS speed development methods that I know will help you get faster.
The 7 speed development tactics
There are two phases to a sprint; acceleration and max velocity.
In most sports, athletes spend 99% of their time accelerating and don’t reach max velocity. So, these methods are specifically geared to improve acceleration.
These are not in order of importance. In fact, there’s no reason you shouldn’t incorporate all of these tactics in some way. They’re complimentary to one another.
1. Get stronger in the weight room
Accelerating is all about how much force you can put in the ground and how quickly you can produce that force.
Getting stronger in the weight room increases the amount of force that you can produce.
The more force you produce → the more force you put in the ground → the faster you accelerate.
In order to make sure you maximize the strength you gain in the weight room actually transfers to the field, though, you want to choose lifts that represent the positions you get into on the field.
Importantly, there is a point where continuing to get stronger in the weight room no longer leads to improvements in speed. We call this the “strong enough” threshold.
If you’re a youth or high school athlete, I can almost guarantee that you’re not “strong enough” yet.
Solution: Split squats and trap bar deadlifts are two of my all-time favorites. Pick a couple squat, hinge, press, and row variations, then knock one of each out 2-3 days per week with elite consistency and intensity.
2. Manage body composition
Speed is a product of relative strength. This means that it is dependent on not just how much force you can produce (strength), but also the ratio of that force to your bodyweight.
Higher force combined with lower body weight = faster acceleration.
You want to make sure to prioritize developing lean body mass by adding muscle.
More muscle helps produce more strength, which improves your strength to bodyweight ratio.
Adding fat mass doesn’t add in your strength development, so it decreases your strength to bodyweight ratio.
Solution: Make sure your nutrition is locked in.
3. Develop horizontal power
If you’ve ever run track before, you’ve definitely had your coach tell you “don’t stand straight up out of the blocks!”
There’s a good reason for that. When you accelerate, you want to go out, not up.
In other words, you want to go horizontal, not vertical.
You need to get in positions that allow you to push backwards in the ground, so the ground pushes you forward.
You can use the shin angle to see if that’s happening. If the shin is straight up and down, then you’re going to pop straight up and accelerate slower.
Solution: Implement things like single leg broad jumps and sled sprints. Sled sprints are the ultimate acceleration cheat code.
4. Improve global coordination
Sprinting fast involves sniper-level precision and timing. You need to coordinate the sequence and timing of many muscles turning on and off repeatedly.
It’s hard to demonstrate that elite level coordination if your base coordination is subpar.
You need to train your nervous system to understand how your body moves through space, how to turn things on and off, and how to sequence your body segments.
Solution: Practice as many different types of skips as you can find and add in some gymnastic work (like somersaults, cartwheels, spins, etc.)
5. Learn appropriate positions and patterns
Contrary to popular opinion, there’s no one “right” way to sprint. But, there are general principles that you want to follow.
You want your foot to contact right underneath your center of mass (or even a little bit behind it).
As mentioned previously, you want your shin angle to be going forward (positive).
You don’t want your heel to collapse and hit the ground.
Surprisingly to many, you shouldn’t really care that much about what your arms do. If you have a weird arm-swing, it’s probably not playing that big of a role in slowing you down. We have bigger fish to fry.
Solution: Drill A-marches, A-skips, A-runs, and sled sprints on a regular basis. Video tape your sprints and analyze it regularly. Some things to look for include:
- When it hits the ground, where’s your foot in relation to your body?
- What is your body angle? Are you bent over at the waist and/or rounded at the back?
- What is your shin position at the start and over the first 7 steps?
- Does your heel contact the ground?
6. Improve ankle/foot strength and stiffness
Your feet serve as the connection between your body and the ground.
If you do a really good job of getting super strong and producing a ton of force with your hips and knees, it won’t matter if your feet and ankles can’t complete the link and transmit it into the ground.
Solution: Perform single leg and double leg pogos several times per week. Load up your ankles with toe walks and calf raises.
7. Compete with frequent, intense sprint exposures
Last, but certainly not least, you have to sprint.
You can’t get better at accelerating without actually accelerating on a regular basis.
Moreover, you have to sprint at 100% intensity. You can’t get fast training slow.
Solution: Line up and race against a friend, a laser timer, or a stop watch a couple of times per week.
A quick thought: just say “no”
Is it really more important than time with your kids?
Ryan Holiday had a great newsletter article that hit home with me. I struggle with saying “no.”
I want to help everyone, all the time. I love my job and I want to do everything I can to grow the business. I want to jump at every new opportunity that crosses my plate.
But, time is finite. I need to learn how to steward it more wisely.
“It’s a reminder: when I say no—to a request to get coffee, to the offer to go speak somewhere across the country, to appear on the podcast (it’s always podcasts)—I am saying yes to the two most important people in the world to me. I’m saying yes to a moment in their childhood that won’t exist ever again. And the opposite is also sadly true: when I say yes—especially to things in the evening or things that involve getting on airplanes, I am by definition saying no to them, to the people I claim to put first.” – Ryan Holiday
You can read the whole article here.
Be >,
Zach
Dr. Zach Guiser, PT, DPT, CSCS