The MOST Important Part of Speed Training - Acceleration Work

Hey, this is Latif Thomas.  Complete speed training.com and I'm here in my car just getting ready to go to practice and as preparing for practice today, I thought of a couple things I wanted to share with you in terms of acceleration since that's what I'm going to be focusing on and working on at practice today.  Now, my own personal perspective or standpoint as an athlete, acceleration had a big role in my career but the role played was one that held me back.  My acceleration was hardball.  I'm just gonna be honest with you.  It was bad when I was in high school.  Considering I went to college on a scholarship as a sprinter, I was in fact in high school and not even good enough to crack the top four.  To crack varsity in the fifth.  I just never ran it once in high school because my acceleration was so bad.  In fact, my freshman year of high school when we tested and ran the 40 as a 14 year old, we ran the 40‑yard dash, I ran a five:  Four.  That's not exaggeration.  I ran a five:  Four forty.  If you know anything about about 40 times you know that that is atrocious.  It is a horrible 40 times.  Particularly for someone who went onto get a track scholarship. 

You can see just how bad my acceleration is and how much I must have made up for it when I got up to full speed but my point really what I want to talk about today is in terms of acceleration and before I get to the video that I want to show you today is I want to talk about running and acceleration being a skill.  When you're coaching your athletes, you have to impress upon them before getting to the mechanics and the technique that it's a skill and they need to develop this skill of running fast every step they take they need to learn how to what I call consistency of execution that they need to establish a baseline of movement pattern where they do the same thing over and over again so that they can build upon that and improve.  If they're all over the place ever time they run a 30 or do acceleration work, if they're all over the place and doing something different every time, there's no way to establish a baseline or foundation and therefore you can't make good improvements and especially develop the thing I'm gonna show you on the video clip from complete speed training in a minute.  It reminded me kind of speed being a skill a conversation I had one time a while back with a coach.  I was running a workout with some track athletes and we were doing some work on the turn and as I do and I strongly recommend you do is ask for feed back from the athletes.  

Give them feed back but of course make them give you feed back so they know they can identify what's going on in order for them to make those assessments, develop that consistency of execution and understand the skill of running as an experience and not just a concept, they have to be able to provide that feed back to you so I was running this workout with athletes and they were asking for feed back and I was giving feed back and we're going back and forth and after the workout was over the kids had gone away.  The coach kind of came up and jokingly was like coach, can I have the ‑‑ can you tell me what I was doing wrong in the fifth step of the third rep and where my ankle was and recovering my heel?  He kind of made a joke about it because that's what the kids were doing.  They were asking a lot of questions and I was giving answers and they were giving answers and we had a good workout and kids had some breakthroughs. 

What the coach is saying is he meant it I believe and again, this is not a bad coach, not a bad person.  He was just making an observation but he was like just have them run.  Saying to me kind of the kids.  I said no coach, you're wrong.  That's not the attitude to have.  Running is a skill.  What I want them to be able to make those corrections and ask those questions because otherwise they're just mindlessly running.  If they're mindlessly running they can't get better because they're not focused on what they're doing or make any particular improvements.  It's really important that you understand first and foremost if you teach the kids that it's a skill and they learn how to learn to be consistent in executing that skill and that's where they're gonna be able to put that foundation onto make the big game.  There are certain elements of acceleration and everything starts back from the first moment of movement through the point to which they reach top speed and so I want your athletes and you as the coach but your athletes to understand these and be able to build on them. 

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Let's take a quick look at the video and some of the things you need to be focusing on with your athletes every time you do your speed work because we know now you guys are going to be doing it two, three days a week to get to acceleration working.  Let's take a look at that video where I break down the mechanics of a good athlete accelerating.  Okay, so let's take a look at some of the things we talked about a few minutes ago.  Athletes is driving the lead arm up which helps her to get triple extension off that drive leg off that left leg.  You can see at the ankle, knee, and hip there's extension before the free leg hits the ground.  Good positive shin angle.  Just good acceleration mechanics.  Big arm swing.  Here we show her again as she drives out.  This is just great take off and power. 
You'll see with your athletes if they don't get this type of extension when the free leg, the right leg hits the ground before the athlete reaches triple extension, that's not conducive to good sprint mechanics.  As you can see here, the athlete has good mechanics.  The foot strike is taking place underneath the hips.  It's just good overall running.  The this is a high level athlete sprinter.  As you can see she really focuses on getting good extension and good power.  She's patient off the ground.  Her ground contact time.  She takes her time.  She drives through.  She leaves her foot on the ground behind her.  Toe off so that her hips travel far past and splitting her hips between her foot and her front leg.  It's just great mechanics.  This is the kind of acceleration that we want to see from athletes in an ideal situation.  Of course I slowed this down and kept it in slow motion to make sure that you were going to be able to see everything and there wasn't gonna be any choppiness. 

Of course I break this down in much greater detail with more examples and more technique ‑‑ technical analysis as well as problems that athletes have.  Common causes.  Common problems and common fixes in the complete speed training program.  This is what we want to see from our athletes as they sprint and as they learn how to accelerate and develop that skill.  Okay so I showed you that video you took a look at that video and now you kind of understand what some acceleration work should look like so now what you need to do is go to practice, take this information to practice.  Go to practice and work with your athletes and just look at them.  Just watch them and think about the things that I showed you in that clip and what the athlete was doing and look at your athletes and see if they're doing it. 
Take a look and see if they're doing it the way I showed you in the video.  You're gonna find that they are certainly not doing it the way it was done in the video and you're gonna want to make those corrections so you can just start adding and correcting and cueing the way I showed you in that video and of course if you want to take it to the next level when or if you're ready to take that to the next level and get more specific and learn more drills and techniques and cues and put the whole thing together all the way from soup to nuts of course I strongly recommend you get your hands on a copy of complete speed training and the complete speed training program. 

Tomorrow I'm gonna talk about the next step once we get up through acceleration we got the top speed and talk about how to maintain the top speed so that we can run faster times and run under stated the T and learn all those things so again, I'm Latif Thomas with complete speed training.com and hope you got some good information today and I'll see you tomorrow with my next video.