Stop Calling for "SPEED CLASSES"

Every week we get people calling the gym looking for "speed classes". We always say we have no "speed classes" only performance enhancement programs. Then they say... " Well he/she just needs to get faster." Then I say... "Why is he/she slow?" SILENCE...

 Truth is most people have no idea what encompasses speed, or what it takes to develop a faster more explosive athlete. I can't tell you how many totally BS misconceptions I hear every week about developing speed. Many from other sport coaches and trainers! Just recently a client of ours whose sons we have trained for years comes to me a says I spoke to a bunch of "speed guys" and they said sprinters should not squat or lift heavy, and that his younger son, the sprinter, was going to run CROSS COUNTRY as a way to improve his sprinting!!! ARE YOU F@#*ING CRAZY!!! Does Usain Bolt jog 10 miles per day to become the fastest man on the planet! Does Mariusz Pudzianowski do step aerobics to become a five time World's Strongest Man! NO FREAKING WAY! They sprint hard and lift heavy shit!

Let me break down the TRUTH about speed!

When I teach muscle physiology and motor control to my students at Montclair State University I always like to do a presentation on speed and strength development as many of them are athletes themselves and majoring in various forms of Exercise Science/Physical Education. I like to break speed down in two categories: General and Specific. Each Category has four components.

GENERAL

1. Genetics - I know most people in America don't want to hear this because we are an entitling society.   Nowadays any family with some money thinks they can create the perfect athlete. Well LOOK IN THE MIRROR THEN! Chances are if you and your spouse are short and stumpy and never played a sport in your life, that your kids will fall somewhere around that category.   However if you and your spouse were both high level athletes then it makes sense that your children will have a better predisposition to being fast.
2. Strength - The stronger you are compared to your body weight the faster you will be. PERIOD!   If you weigh 185lbs and can barely move your weight, you won't be fast.   However if that same athlete can squat 400lbs and bang out 20 pull ups having a 2:1 body weight to strength ratio he/she will be very fast and explosive. Adding strength is like adding horsepower to your car.
3. Flexibility - I've covered this topic in detail in another article I wrote a while back called Flexibility 101. So here's the nutshell version. Athletes who do not posses adequate flexibility especially in the hip flexors and hamstrings have a less efficient running gate and stretch shortening cycle making it difficult to run with ease. The more flexible you are the more elastic your muscles. The more elastic a muscle the further it can stretch and therefore the harder it will contract improving speed. Think of it like pulling a rubber band, the further you can pull it the further it shoots.
4. Body Composition - It should be clear as spring water that if you're carrying 20lbs of excess body fat that it's going to slow you down. When was the last time you saw an overweight Olympic sprinter! Lean and muscular athletes are almost always fast athletes.

SPECIFIC

1. Neuromuscular Efficiency - This is a complicated topic physiologically so I'll use an analogy to try to get my point across.   Think of it as this...Some people are wired better than others. Like having fiber optic HDMI cable verses coaxial (regular) cable. The fiber optic cable transmits the electrical signal at much higher speeds and with much greater volumes of information. The human body is very similar. Some athletes have a more highly tuned nervous system that acts and reacts at greater speeds than an average individual. Second, some athlete's motor ability and coordination is also much greater and more efficient than others.   Like having a more powerful processor in your computer. This has A LOT to do with genetics but also your upbringing. Your body develops the nervous system and adapts it to the type of stimulus placed upon it at a very young (0-5) age. Chances are if you sit in front of the TV all day your not going to have a highly tuned nervous system! Other than that the only way to improve NE is through proper periodized training over a long period of time.   Over time the brain, peripheral nervous system, and the muscles learn to communicate better and more efficiently with each other improving speed.
2. Muscle Composition - Everyone has muscle, but not everyone has the same type of muscle! There are several different types of muscle fibers found within the human body: 1 - Type II B or FAST twitch fibers, these create a ton of force but gas out real quick. 2 - Type II A or mid-range muscle fibers that produce good amounts of force but also can sustain contraction for longer periods of time. 3 - Type I or aerobic muscle fibers. These fibers do not produce a lot of force but can produce enough energy to contract for hours. Again your genetics play a HUGE role in determining your muscle composition. If dad was a Russian weightlifting champion and mom was a Bulgarian shot put champ then chances are you will have a lot of Type II B fibers and a higher propensity for strength and power... and you may be built like a TRASH CAN! Other than genetics the only way to improve your muscle fiber composition is through proper periodized training over a long period of time. Over time your body will adapt to the training conditions placed upon it and some of the muscle fiber subtypes will change to accommodate that stress improving speed.
3. Bone Structure and Leverage - Now that you have some understanding of the how the nervous system and muscular system play a role in speed, let's talk about the role of the bones! At first you may think what do the bones have to do with it? They are non-contractile and just sit there. Right? WRONG! The bones are the levers on which the muscles, the motors, enact their contractile force upon. The length and shape of your bones along with how and where your muscles are attached to them create various states of leverage. Just like some nervous systems are better for speed than others, so are certain types of bone structures. When was the last time you saw a 5'2'' tree stump competing in high level sprint events. NEVER! Their body structure does not have an efficient leverage system compared to athletes who have longer thinner bones with high muscle insertions. Think of leverage as a seesaw. When the base is centered the sides have equal weight and it's easy to seesaw back and forth with another person because there is good leverage. Now move one side of the seesaw over so that one is longer than the other. The person on the short side would have to be much heavier than the other in order to lift the other side because they do not have the leverage.  Bad leverage means the muscles have to work much harder to create movement.
4. Periodization of Training - The greatest variable in speed development is the athletes training. There are thousands of ways to develop speed and every great speed coach has their own system for emphasizing their athlete's best qualities. I am a firm believer that all athletes can get faster through proper training, but that same athlete still may never be fast! A consistent and progressive training routine that emphasizes proper technique, strength development, flexibility, and sport specific conditioning can make dramatic improvements to ones overall performance...but that's for the next article!

I hope this shines a more complete light on what speed actually is, and that there are many factors as to why a particular athlete is FAST or NOT. Remember that speed is also relative to your sport or event. A football lineman needs a different type of speed than a wide receiver. They require more explosive power and quickness than all-out top end speed. Whatever your sport, to improve your speed, you must train within the confines of that sport. Again, I can't stress it enough; there is no translation to running miles and miles if your goal is to be a sprinter, or even a football player for that matter. Your body adapts to stress, that is one of the many wonders of the human body. The nervous system, muscles, and even your bones will change over time to accommodate to the stresses placed upon it. Training is just another type of stress, that stress needs to be similar to the type of stress the sport you are training for requires. If the two stresses don't match up it will be difficult if not impossible to translate the training to the field of play...and you will have wasted a lot of time and hard work.

Dedicated to Your Success,
Joe Riggio MS CSCS

Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist

Sports Performance Expert

"There's always someone out there getting better than you by training harder than you." - NOT TODAY