Speed is one of the most important physical abilities in sport. It is often the physical quality that coaches and athletes discuss most. Most old-school coaches believed that speed was something you were either born with or without. Experts have now firmly rejected this theory, and it is clear that speed can also be trained and developed.
Team sport athletes who sprint on a court or field can improve the following components to develop their speed (translator’s note: most of these points actually also apply to professional sprinters):
*Starting, accelerating, stopping and changing direction
*Stride length
*Stride frequency
*Speed endurance
*Sprinting technique
Before we get into the subject, it is worth explaining that the information in this article primarily concerns developing acceleration and top speed in team sport athletes (translator’s note: football, basketball, American football and other ball sports). We are not specifically discussing sprint training in athletics, although many of the principles presented apply directly to professional sprinters as well. The difference between sprinters in athletics and fast athletes in court and field sports stems from the fact that conventional sprinting is linear or unidirectional, whereas moving quickly in team sports requires frequent changes of direction as well as an initial burst of acceleration.
How does sports science explain speed?
From a sports science perspective, speed broadly depends on two simple things. The first is stride length: in other words, how much ground you cover with each stride when sprinting. The second important component is stride frequency, which describes how quickly your legs move when you sprint. If you have ever watched a Looney Tunes cartoon and seen how fast Road Runner’s legs move, you will have a clear picture of what stride frequency means and what an ideal stride frequency would look like.
Stride frequency and stride length depend, in turn, on three components:
*How often your feet make contact with the ground (the supporting surface) during a sprint
*How much force you can apply with each stride when you make contact with the ground (the supporting surface)
*How long each ground contact lasts
The decisive factor is the amount of force applied with each stride
The decisive factor in sprinting, for both young people and adults, is the limbs’ ability to produce force and apply it to the ground. If you watched the 2008 Olympics and saw Bolt dominate both the 100 m and 200 m in world-record times, you also witnessed just how powerfully and forcefully an athlete can propel their body forward. Bolt certainly did not have the highest stride frequency. What made him phenomenal was his ability to cover significantly more ground with each stride than his competitors. This means that the speed at which your legs move is less decisive than the force produced per stride. If you can cover more ground with each stride, your stride is longer overall, which gives you an advantage. However, stride length can only increase through greater lower-body strength and explosiveness. It is important not to lengthen your stride artificially at the expense of technique: the increase should come from the power of your limbs.
Translator’s note: another part of what makes Bolt phenomenal is that he is so tall yet can move so quickly at that height. Clearly, the power with which he “pushes himself forward” must still be tremendous.
If you want speed, give your “car” a more powerful engine
The greater your relative strength (your strength-to-body-weight ratio), the more force you can put into each stride and, through it, into the ground you are running on—and the faster you will be. There are numerous examples of Olympic weightlifters who can comfortably keep pace with elite sprinters over the first 30 – 40 meters. This is not because of their speed; it is purely a result of their strength. Strong legs mean power when moving forward and sprinting. Any exercises that strengthen your hip extensors, hip flexors, lower back, quadriceps and calves will ultimately help you become faster.
Will a 73 kg athlete who deadlifts 135 kg always run faster than an athlete of the same body weight who deadlifts only 90 kg? In most cases, yes, but not always. The force you produce and apply to the ground during a sprint also depends on several individual factors, including limb length, tendon length and attachment points, bone length and neurological characteristics. Athletes with long limbs, small joints, long tendons and faster reflexes have a clear advantage (Baggett, p. 15). Let us compare Deon Sanders and Emmitt Smith, for example (translator’s note: both are American football players). Deon deadlifts 160 kg, while Emmitt can deadlift 225 kg. Emmitt should be able to beat Deon easily, in his sleep and under any circumstances, right? Yet that is not necessarily always the case. Deon’s body structure is much better suited to sprinting, allowing him to transfer whatever force he can generate to the ground far more efficiently than Emmitt. Emmitt’s only way to compensate for his structural disadvantage is to produce more power through greater strength. Emmitt is strong, and stronger than Deon, but not by enough to overcome the advantages of Deon’s body structure.
Now let us look at another situation, in which structural advantages were present but were not enough. “Compare Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis, for example. This pairing clearly showed us all how the stocky, powerfully built, ‘bulldog-type’ Johnson could beat the ‘greyhound-type’ Lewis, whose genetics and body structure were perfectly suited to sprinting. And this was possible only thanks to Johnson’s 275 kg squat” (Baggett, p. 15).
A simple approach to developing speed
It must be emphasized that for any individual, at any body weight, an increase in strength always means an improvement in speed, provided sprinting technique remains at least as good. It is therefore certain that an athlete who weighs 77 kg and deadlifts 225 kg will always sprint faster than another athlete of the same body weight who deadlifts only 155 kg. This assumes that neither has an overwhelming structural advantage over the other and that sprinting technique does not suffer as strength increases. A simple approach to speed training, then, is to become as strong as possible at your body weight while maintaining your running technique or, ideally, improving it as well.
To be continued…
Author: Janar Rückenberg (translation)
Come and train! ArtGym
