Improving your technique through proper sprint training will have a huge positive impact on your acceleration training program. Plyometric training and power development exercises are another core aspect of any acceleration training program.
By training to be more powerful and explosive, you can improve your acceleration. At the core of all your athletic capabilities is the ability to produce force. By increasing your maximal strength capabilities, you can learn to be more forceful in your sprint training, plyometrics, and power training, ultimately making your acceleration training program more effective. The sprint training aspect of your acceleration training program can make or break your ability to sprint fast and ultimately improve to your maximal potential.
The best way to get better at something is to do it - so if you want to sprint faster, you need to sprint regularly and aim for optimal technique. There are a variety of adaptations which occur when you perform sprint training, and for the sake of this tutorial we will discuss those related to your acceleration training program.
When you sprint fast in your training, you a variety of changes:. Optimal sprint training in your acceleration training program will allow you to improve your acceleration and prevent injury, promoting better sports performance and allowing you to spend more time perfecting the skills specific to your sport. The structural changes which occur in through sprint training are similar to those of drop jumps and plyometric activities.
Neurologically, sprint training will enhance your ability to accelerate by improving the ability of your nervous system to coordinate movement and produce force. Rate coding increases occur with sprinting, which is essentially the frequency at which you can send individual nerve impulses. Additionally, neurological changes related to the coordination of movements at high speeds are very impactful, such as the ability for individual muscle fibers to coordinate contraction relative to one another.
Lastly, sprint training helps improve your motor unit recruitment, which a shift toward higher threshold motor units being activated with a higher rate of force development. Sled training is a particularly effective sprint training modality for increasing rate of force development. These tools can be serious training devices that improve the effects and excitement of normal speed training.
Gadgets can be medicine balls, cables or good old-fashioned hills. The mini hurdles are a great tool for first-step acceleration and can be scaled to fit your level of training. Medicine Ball As a Speed Training Tool Speed Training gadgets are training tools that help athletes practice techniques that strengthen speed development. Mini hurdles for speed training The mini hurdles are a great tool for first-step acceleration and can be scaled to fit your level of training.
Best age to start lifting weights How young is too young? Recommended Playbooks Speed Intro. Fix My I also try to introduce exercises that help to develop and improve the athlete's technique, stride length and stride frequency.
Circuit Training plays a big role during this phase, we do this not only to help increase that athletes fitness level, but also to help develop the proper sprint mechanics that are so vital at the end of the race. Training Phase Our emphasis here is again on developing speed and conditioning the body and the mind to hold that speed. We are all limited on time and energy, so we have to do some amount of critical thinking in order to decide what fits within the program, given the needs of the athlete being trained.
Running drills are one of those things that get a lot of hype and interest, especially from those who are relatively new to the training and performance world. For example, drills could be used for any of the following goals:.
Suffice to say, sprint drills have their place in any program that is designed to make athletes sprint faster, and as with anything the value of a given exercise will depend on how, when, and why it is implemented. In order for a sprint drill or running drill to be worth using in your program, it needs to achieve some outcome that would otherwise not be easily accomplished using some other means. It should be similar to the primary sport activity, whether that be in range of motion, muscle action, rhythm, postural demands, etc.
In my opinion, the running drills that have the most bang for their buck, the widest range of uses, and that are most relevant to sprinting are dribbles or dribble runs. Dribbles are a sprint drill in which the athlete moves their legs in either a circular or elliptical motion, mimicking sprinting but while going through a smaller range of motion.
Dribbles can help with a wide range of athletic performance needs, such as:. One thing that is great about dribbles is that there are many ways in which these drills can be progressed:. Being so versatile, dribbles offer athletes a great opportunity to benefit from achieving mastery of the movement. Because of the similarity of the movements, dribbles are the only running drill I can think of that have the potential to have some amount of transfer to sprinting performance, seeing as most other drills are far too different from the motions and rhythms of sprinting.
As with anything, how something is done can really make or break whether it is worthwhile to do in the first place. To perform a dribble, in this case an ankle dribble, we do the following:.
The athlete should not attempt to move very far each step, but rather emphasize the heel first, rolling foot contact, maintain an upright posture, and aim to be smooth in the circular or elliptical motion of the foot.
As time goes on, the athlete can progress to going over the calf and knee, moving at a faster pace, or blending the dribble into a sprint within the same repetition. Here are some key concepts that need to be emphasized in order for dribbles to be an effective running drill.
Whether performing a dribble or any other running drill, this method of contacting the ground achieves various ends. For one, the over-ground velocity of drills is slow, and the human body is most efficient at slow speeds if it rolls from heel to toe while on the ground. Most athletes make the mistake of being on their toes all the time, creating local stiffness in the ankle and inhibiting access to full ankle range of motion. When we roll through the foot, the hydraulic mechanisms of the foot are allowed to work properly, bones are able to glide against each other, the muscles and connective tissue gets worked in a more well rounded manner, and the force that the body is being exposed to can be dispersed over the whole surface area of the foot.
As time goes on and the athlete is exposed to jumps, plyometrics, faster sprints, and other intense activities, they will benefit greatly from having a foot and ankle complex which can move well, be pliable, and. Additionally, leading with the heel moving backward is a fantastic way to practice being active with your foot strike, which is something that sprinters need to master if they plan to improve their sprinting ability.
Many sprinters wait for the ground when in fact they need to proactively attack the ground like a hammer swinging into a nail. We can practice this by performing dribbles or most other sprint drills , as long as we are active with the direction of the foot strike.
Keeping your eyes on the horizon is very important for maintaining proper posture and executing movement with good quality ground contacts. It is my belief that the brain can sort out how high you are off of the ground because of our binocular vision, and that this can be calculated a lot quicker by our reptilian hindbrain rather than if we look at the ground and try to calculate movement more analytically.
Since we want to get the foot under us at ground contact, our timing of the leg swing relative to our projection through the air needs to be smooth.
I have found no better way than to simply look at the horizon and let your brain do the coordinating, and I think it is wise to always practice conscious unconsciousness when we train or compete. The more we can let our brains execute movement without our own analytical, human thought processes getting in the way, the faster and more effectively we will move.
Before we can hit the ground, we need to get the leg up and over some point on the opposite leg.
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