Key # 1 – Increase Lower Body Strength
Getting faster starts from the ground up and begins with building your foundation. By strengthening your lower body, more specifically the muscles of the posterior chain, you will be able to produce more force and run faster. Strong legs are the key to running faster
Key # 2 – Increase Your Rate Of Force Development
Once you have a solid base of lower body strength, you’ll want to add in explosive lower body training like jumps and sprints to improve the rate at which you develop force. Jumping and sprinting will make you explosive, but you need to be smart about how you implement these exercises.
When it comes to how many jumps and sprints to do, more isn’t always better. In fact, more quantity will lead to decreased performance. Instead, focus on quality technique and being as explosive as possible.
Key # 3 – Increase Your Ability To Decelerate
The key to a fast car is great brakes. What good is it to drive a Ferrari if you don’t have the brakes to slow it down? You can only run as fast as you can slow your body down, so improving your ability to decelerate is a surefire way to run faster. Not only will improving deceleration help you run faster, it will also help prevent lower body injuries.
Key # 4 – Increase Relative Body Strength
How strong you are relative to your body weight is critical to running faster. Often times I can tell how fast an athlete is by just watching him move and perform simple bodyweight exercises. For example, pushups, pull-ups, lunges and squats are foundational movements that show how well you handle your own bodyweight.
Too often athletes will overlook the importance of mastering their own bodyweight. Instead they look for external tools like weighted vests, parachutes and agility ladders to get faster. This is a big mistake. If you want to get faster, don’t worry about using fancy tools. Instead, focus on becoming a master of your own bodyweight.
If you become great at doing perfect push-ups, pull-ups, squats and lunges, you will get faster!
Key # 5 – Improve Core Strength
Core strength is also critical to improving your speed because it transfers force from the lower body through the entire kinetic chain. In other words, when you sprint, your foot strikes the ground which produces force. This force is then transferred from your lower body across the hips and into the upper body. If you have a weak core, you won’t be able to effectively transfer this force and you’ll have energy leakage, which means you won’t maximize your speed. In a nutshell, a weak core will hold you back from reaching your full speed potential.
P.S. Would you like to discover exactly what your child needs to do to get faster? Send an email over to info@gamechangergym.com to schedule your FREE assessment!
