Developing Athlete Speed

Everyone, especially athletes, yearn for developing athletic speed to help improve their odds against their competition. Athletic development for speed offers a lot of perks, regardless of your training objective. For weight loss clients, it will help them burn more energy (calories) and lose weight faster. Additionally, it improves their odds of remaining healthy through dexterity and coordination favorable changes. It also helps athletes set themselves apart from their competitors. This is the case for both recreational, competitive, and young athletes. With all the benefits of speed training, it’s important for every fitness professional to know what goes into speed development. It isn’t just speed training alone.

The best way to illustrate how speed works is to view the skill as an end result of the collection of a number of skills or abilities. Speed is also dependent on other factors, which is why you can’t view speed training in a silo. A strength and conditioning coach should know this upfront. From there, you can develop a specific training program to improve maximum speed development and coordinate your efforts with other team sport professionals. Here is a breakdown of all the elements to consider or add to your training session. Collectively, they’ll help build speed and sports performance:

• Power Training: The definition of power is the rate of force production. So power training includes resistance training combined with speed.
• Strength Training: Strength training, or resistance training, is standard in any fitness program and includes overcoming an external resistance to produce muscular force.
• Sprint Speed: This is the maximum speed which a client athlete can run. Ideally, a client’s sprint speed will go up as training continues.
• Coordination and Balance: An athlete needs to recruit the right muscles at the right time (coordination) while maintaining their center of gravity as they change body positions and unexpected encounters.
• Muscle Size: The cross sectional area of a muscle constitutes muscle size. The greater the muscle size, the more challenging it can be to maintain speed. However, clients may see hypertrophic gains during this type of training, just make sure it doesn’t slow them down.
• Conditioning Levels: A client’s conditioning level will determine how intensely they can train. Therefore a recreational or young athlete may have to progress more slowly.
• Recovery: Without adequate sleep and training recovery, a client can’t perform their best. Therefore, it’s important to intentionally program recovery into speed training. 
• Nutrition: Although you likely will not oversee an athlete’s nutrition program, it’s important to be aware of the role nutrition plays in sports performance. Coordinate with the appropriate professionals to make sure your client is getting what they need.
• Agility: This is the ability of your client to rapidly change the position of their body with speed and accuracy. It’s especially important for sports like tennis, soccer, basketball, etc.
• Flexibility/Mobility: Without the ability to move a joint through its full range of motion, an athlete won’t be able to produce as much force. Therefore, speed can be affected.
• Injury History-Health: Just like any other client, an athlete will sometimes be limited by their health history, therefore conduct a thorough assessment in advance to know about these limitations.
• Motivational Levels: Even with all the physical and nutritional elements on point, if a client doesn’t have the drive to make change (motivation), improvements are unlikely.
• Coaching: Both a sport coach and strength and conditioning coach will influence the progress and success of a client.
• External factors: Factors like school, stress, or family can limit a client’s attention to their sports performance improvement. Stress can also have a negative impact on the ability to train at optimal levels.
• Technique: Arguably the most important factor in speed development, without the correct form and technique, an athlete will be limited.
• Genetics: Some people are predominantly type i muscle fibers and others type ii. This creates individual variances in the ability to develop top end speed.

Power

Power is the product of speed x strength of our muscular contractions. In other words, it is how much force we can generate and how fast we can generate that force that will dictate how fast we can run. Power is really that simple. Studies on the top 3 sprinters in the world at the time, which includes: Usain Bolt, Tyson Gay, and Asafa Powell, clearly indicated that these 3 sat at the highest point on the power curve for sprint performance with Bolt of course being the clear run-away winner in the sport back in Berlin when he set the world record! 

It’s simple physics. Therefore, power is a skill anyone can improve on a routine basis regardless of experience or genetics. In fact, if one were to just maximize power and remove all other elements one could still considerably increase running speed! That’s how much of an effect power and force development can have for athletes.

Knowing how the body responds to movement is what the study of exercise science covers. This field of study isn’t just limited to movement. It also covers nutrition, exercise psychology, and fitness business. And, an exercise science degree is in high demand for health and wellness-related positions.

People who have an interest in exercise, nutrition, and a healthy lifestyle often choose a degree in exercise science to pursue their own passion and help others do the same. And, the Lionel University’s reputation makes it one of the most sought-after fitness degree programs available. 

As if history and reputation aren’t enough, people choose Lionel because you also earn a personal training certification and other fitness specializations (like strength and conditioning) as you go through your program. Just months after enrolling in one of the exercise science degree programs, you’ll earn a Master Trainer Certificate. This means you can start working and earning a living in the fitness industry before you even finish your degree! And, with the help of financial aid, earning your exercise science degree is even more of a possibility. 

Regardless of whether you’re pursuing an associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree, or master’s degree, studying at Lionel is an easy choice.

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