Your 40 Dash Is Slow Because...

You went to the Nike SPARQ combine.  Or you went to the NUC Combine.  Or you just went to your team camp.  Either way, you weren't happy with your 40 time, or you noticed the disparity between your laser time and the hand time and want to improve (only trust hand times from people who know how to time them!).

Maybe you've busted your butt at endless reps of strides down the field or resisted running and you can't figure out what you are doing wrong.  I already told you guys a good amount of why you aren't improving your speed, but I want to go a little further in depth.  Let's look at some of the reasons why your training isn't making your faster.

1) You are running too slow.  As usual, I try not to get too sciency (I try to keep the ideas simple for the blog, but ALL my training methodology is based on science), but you need to understand a bit. To maximize recruitment of fast twitch muscle fibers as well as develop neuromuscular coordination, you need to train in a fashion that challenges you specifically.  Doing intervals of 110s at 75-80% isn't optimal training, but you will have a good base to come and run the 800 for me during track.  If you are trying to get better at sprinting, sprint!  You don't play soccer to get better at basektball, nor do you cycle to get better at swimming.  You need to sprint to get better at sprinting.  Can you get residual benefits from doing strides in a speed program?  Yes, but those are for recovery and/or general conditioning workouts, not speed workouts.

2) You are doing too much.  This is one that parents have a harder time understanding than the kids. A few parents think that the only way to get better is to constantly do more.  Parents and coaches, do your kids a favor and train them smarter, not harder!  And to the athlete who wants to do two or three a days every day, you will most likely break down before you meet your potentiality.  You can only do so much with your  body before it starts to shut off.  You shouldn't even get close to that in training.  Remember our friend supercompensation!  Without the recovery period, you don't get compensated.

3)  Your training is not specific.  Agility drills are great.  For agility.  Ladder drills are great.  For footwork (if you have bad motor skills it's going to help you though).  Stretching is great.  Okay, no it isn't (to be fair, I'm only talking about static stretching because dynamic stretching works better, plus it's way cooler).  And for the love of everything good, please stop wearing weight vests when you run.  Basically, what are you training for?  Knock out these two types of workouts in your training to get where you want to be in your 40: Workouts for your drive phase and sprint form (proper sprint foot striking and turnover), and workouts for top speed.  The rest is mostly fluff.

And because I want you to succeed, here is an idea for each to get your speed up to par:

Drive Phase/Footstriking:  4-5 short hill sprints at maximum effort with 4 minutes of recovery between reps.  You cannot run fast up a hill with bad form.  Yes, you can run up a hill with bad form, but once again you cannot run fast up a hill with bad form.  You will find yourself driving your arms and amplifying your leg swing as you would in a true sprint.  You will be landing on the balls of your foot, not the heel, what you will also be doing in a maximal sprint.  If the hill takes more than 6-8 seconds to run, it's too long.

Top Speed:  4-5 flying 30s.  These are short sprints where you are already moving (jogging or striding) when you sprint for a short, all out sprint.  If you can find a very slight decline (not down a hill or levee, but rather a gradual slope like what you find on the crown on a football field) this is the best place to do this workout.  Continue to work on form.

As always, do a proper warm-up.  If you want to start competing like an elite athlete, you need to start to consider training like one.

The Secret To Being Fast

The sports world is abuzz about speed, speed, speed.  In almost no major sport is a prospect looked at without the factor of speed for consideration.  40 yard dash times are the standard in football.  The 100 meter dash is the premier event in track and field.  Soccer is defined by speed as well.  It is an inevitability that as a sports prowess grows, the demands of training and potential grow as well.

As coaches, talent identification and training modalities are the crux of athletic improvement.  We have to maximize the potential of an athlete while minimizing injuries and working on the strengths and weaknesses of the individual.  Speed is going to be a big cross section of many sports and properly training it will pay larger dividends than almost anything else worth training.

So what is the secret to training speed?  Well, obviously if you came here to find a quick solution or a special product I have news for you.  It doesn't work that way.  The good news is that there are some training protocols that, if followed properly, will yield results quicker than in many "old school" coaching methods.  Here is a quick guide to obtaining speed in less time.

Tenths of second make the difference in millions of dollars

1) Without recovery, training is pointless.  If you are doing 40 yard dashes, or any speed work designed to target adaptations for short bursts of speed and you are giving your body full recovery you will not improve your speed.  The body takes up to 4 minutes to recover from a true sprint depending on the distance.  You will never see Usain Bolt doing suicides if he is training his speed work.  You also won't see him doing tons of strides and calling it a "workout."

2) Form is crucial.  I've heard coaches say not to try and change a kids form if he is fast because it may slow him down.  That is insane.  Form is about power production.  Without proper form your power production will be limited.  Your body takes advantage of stretch reflexes during running which can only be achieved with proper foot falls and proper leg cycling.

3) If you can't properly execute a drive phase, your 100 dash will suffer and you might as well not even show up to do a 40.  Top end speed is not really calculated in an effort as short as a 40 so if you aren't pushing out properly, you are limiting your time.

4) Being over or under flexible is going to limit you as well.  While not usually as big of an issue, athletes that are overly flexible will lose some ability to use the stretch reflex during sprinting.  Usually the issue is an athlete not being flexible enough to move through the full range of motion needed to get the most power out of a stride.  Not being flexible enough to get height in knee lift will hamper a sprinter.

There are other factors as well, but the majority come down to these points.  If an athlete wants to improve, start here first.

Nike SPARQ, Combines, and the New Track and Field

Something important has started to happen over the past decade in a sport that doesn't even share the same season as track, yet has had a profound impact on it.  In recent years, football, king of sports in America and especially the south, has expanded to cover the spring time and summer as well.  No, the season hasn't really gotten much longer, although it has expanded a little, it is all the off season fanfare that is starting to eat away a little at the base of track and field.

You certainly have a distance element that has it's own culture, but outside of the mile and two mile, and possibly the 800 depending on where you are from, track and field is almost exclusively speed and power events.  Jumps, throws, sprints, hurdles, etc.  These are all events that are traditionally filled with the kids who are running for touchdowns and making tackles on the gridiron in the fall.  The emergence of the high school football combine, recruiting shows and websites, the festivities related to signing day, and the long wind-up to the NFL draft has distracted many athletes from being competitive in the second half of the school year.

Make no mistake, baseball and basketball also lose athletes to this phenomenon as well, but both those sports have a wealth of specialist athletes who don't play football, so the level of play is still high in many leagues around the country.  Also, year round sporting events for baseball and basketball presents a way for those athletes to stay active in the "off-season" months.  But now football combines, clinics, elite training sessions, seven on seven football, and weekend after weekend of recruiting trips takes a toll on an athletes ability to participate effectively in other sports.

Well, I didn't want to present all doom and gloom, but rather identify the issue and help create a solution.  Events such as Nike SPARQ are basically track and field events in other forms.  The 40 yard dash is just a couple seconds longer than the 55 and 60 meter dashes indoors.  The vertical jump has a lot of relation to the high and broad jumps (obviously the broad jump is no longer an event).  The ball throw shares similar elements to the javelin or discus based on using the majority of the body to launch a projectile.  And the shuttle event is the least like any track events, but is totally based on explosiveness like a sprinter leaving the blocks.

Now how does this information help a coach keep a kid on the track team who would rather do combine training?  It may not help, but if you can find the similarities you may be able to convince the athlete that track and field training will not only help him in his combine, but he will also have an outlet to help a team achieve competition goals as well.  A coach can see the symbiotic relationship of being able to help that athlete do well in their "off-season" football training, but actually contribute to a team and, who knows, maybe they will even end up liking the sport!

Football players are the core of the high school track and field community!