How to Run Faster

Speed Training Questions - How to Run Faster at Top Speed

If you remember a few weeks ago I sent a survey out of frustration to you guys and asked what questions you had about speed and strength and conditioning and all the different topics of training because I had seen so much crazy stuff and was getting crazy e‑mails from people about types of training that coaches and parents are doing with their athletes and so I got a huge amount of responses from that so what I've decided to do is do a video response instead of just doing a regular audio written response like you get from most other newsletters.

As I record this now, I've already put together all the clips from this question and answer session and it took me way longer than I expected so I'm gonna be brutally honest and tell you if I don't really get the response I'm looking for from this video, this is gonna be the first and last foray of presentation of information so hopefully you get something out of it, it's worthwhile to you and I'll keep doing it otherwise I will go back to the basic stuff and just give you that information there.

Let's get to the question that I got saying this is just the first question of the list of hundreds on this topic on our switch from speed to strength on the different topics on different days so keep that in mind but let's take a look at today's question and let's try to get you an answer. So today's question is how do you become faster at top speed? These are the type of typical questions I get all the time and that's a great question. How do you get faster at top speed?

I think this is an important topic to address even for those of you that are sitting there saying well, my son, daughter, team plays soccer or football. We don't need to worry about top speed. We just need to worry about acceleration. Well, nope. You're wrong. You do need to learn how to run at top speed. Your athletes are gonna hit top speed earlier when they're tired in the middle or end of the game so they need to know how to maintain the mechanics or techniques of running at top speed and if there's a break away both offensively or defensively, you're gonna probably want your athletes to break away and score or prevent the opponent from breaking away and scoring. Therefore top speed training should be a part of your program. Just not as heavy as it would be for track and field. Sprinters for example who really need to do a lot of top speed training, but when talking about getting to top speed, we're putting the cart before the horse.

So what I mean is we can't worry about running faster at top speed if we haven't put the other basics together like learning how to accelerate. So acceleration and the ability to accelerate is the most critical part of learning how to run at top speed. Just think about it obviously. If your athletes or the athletes you're working with can't run properly, efficiently, and effectively for ten yards, what benefit is there having them run for twenty yards. If you got an ugly ten, you're gonna have an even uglier twenty. That means you're gonna run an even uglier thirty and you're gonna be a hot mess when you get to top speed. So we need to learn how to accelerate properly and as a skill to that, it's not just something you just go modestly do. I think oftentimes people think you only need to worry about really the technique of running if you're a track athlete. That's nonsense. That's a dinosaur training philosophy that no longer applies.

So let's just look at the very beginning parking lot of acceleration and see what we need to be teaching our athletes because if we can't do it from the very beginning and get it right, then everything falls apart. Every single step that we take. Now, as the athlete begins to rock forward, there are three specific things we need to see our sprinters do before their back leg or their quick side leg ever touches the ground. The first thing we want to see the athlete do is swing or drive the lead arm up. In this case that's gonna be the left arm. It's gonna be the arm of the front leg.

The second thing we want to see athletes do is get triple extension on the drive leg or the front leg, the left leg in this case at the ankle, knee, and hip as the athlete toes off. As you can see here that athlete is fully extended so there's no bend in the knee. There's know little bend at the waist. The third thing is that the athlete comes out another a 45‑degree angle to the ground. If we were to draw a line from the back of her heel through her hip and the back of her head, that would be at a 45‑degree angle. As you can see here, she's got a pretty good straight line through that angle. Head's a little bit down but generally she's got a good 45‑degree angle as she comes through. It's critical that we have these three things in place for a number of reasons. Those reasons very simply my friends are that if we can't put those first three things into place, we've already screwed ourselves in terms of acceleration. So for those of you thinking that running is mindless or there's no real skill to running or that it can't be taught.

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When you think about the clip I just showed you, before the athletes foot ever hit the ground, there are already three specific skills they had to learn how to do. I'm telling you tomorrow or the next time you're at practice, I want you to put your athlete in a crouch or a three point stance or anything. It doesn't matter what support they play. Have them come up off the ground and tell them all I want you to do is drive your lead arm up before your back leg hits the ground. Drive your lead arm up, come out of the 45‑degree angle and get your triple extension.

Those things are pretty simple because it's just doing it before they get their foot on the ground. How much can it be. You'll see that your kids are gonna be all over the place because this is a skill. A skill that they have most likely never acquired. Especially when you're talking about football players, track athletes, and baseball players. People that have to run timed tests. If they can't do that, their acceleration and driving that lead arm up, it's not gonna go well. It's not gonna go nearly as well as it could so they have to focus on making sure that they do that.

If you want to know how to do that and how to put these things together, just go back to your complete speed training program and watch the speed DVD and I cover all the stuff in detail. These things that athletes are supposed to be doing in order to accelerate properly. Until they can do that, don't worry about top speed. Shoot, don't even worry about what happens mid way through acceleration. They just got to get the pure start, that drive, that exit of the ground coming off the ground or athletic position through the ply step or whatever.

Get their first couple steps right before they could ever have to worry about top speed and all that other stuff. Of course there's a lot more to it than just the mechanics of acceleration if you want to learn how to run faster at top speed. What are those things? Well, my friends that's what we'll be covering in upcoming e‑mails where I break down the questions that you guys specifically asked and wanted to know and sent in to be answered by me so I will do my very best to do that for you guys in upcoming e‑mails. So of course if you have questions, just follow the link at the bottom of this page.