You Are Not Slow, Your Conditioning Sucks

Many of the athletes that I begin working with will have similar, if not, the same goal. They want to be faster. I can understand this goal. Who wouldn’t want to be faster? With a goal so simple and straight-forward, you would think the answer would be the same, simple and straight forward. Sadly, it is not. 

When taking an athlete through their initial assessment, knowing that they are looking to improve their speed, we must assess what limiting factor(s) that may be preventing them from being “fast”. (“Fast” is relative. Everyone wants to be “fast”er) 

We have discussed our evaluation process in the past (Here and Here). We always begin by assessing flexibility, mobility, and movement quality through a series of full body, body weight movements. Then the athletes will be put through a dynamic warm up which, again, is used to assess the athlete’s predisposed movement patterns and highlight any compensation patterns. We will then assess power output or force application through a series of jumping exercises before asking the athlete to go through a series of sprinting and agility drills. 

At this point in the evaluation we have gone through 30 minutes of work. Most athletes should be able to withstand these demands with little to no fatigue. However, this now is my opportunity to assess their work capacity or conditioning. Again, we have only been through 30 minutes of bodyweight movements, jumps, and sprints, so any half way in-shape individual should still be breezing through this. However, if I begin to notice the sprint times consistently getting slower as we perform 2-3 repetitions of a 10 yard sprint, followed by a 20 yard sprint then I can highlight one of the other major areas of need. 

This brings me to the greatest area of need: SPEED ENDURANCE

All too often, what is thought to be a lack of speed is actually a lack of REPETITIVE speed.  Many of these athletes have the ability to be fast and explosive, but they are unable to do it for 60, 90, or 120 minutes. 

Speed Endurance refers to our ability to prolong the amount of time that a near maximal speed is maintained. This can refer to our ability to hold near maximal speed for 60 yards instead of 30 yards. Or, this can refer to our ability to achieve near maximal speed in the second half and/or fourth quarter. Both of these demands are going to require an abundance of speed endurance. 

Now, I know what you are asking yourself, how do I train my speed endurance?

Think about what you would typically do to improve your endurance… Then do the exact opposite. 

Improving speed endurance tends to be one of the biggest misconceptions that I run into when working with athletes and their parents. Most athletes will tell me they want to get in “better shape” (Again, relative), so they have begun running miles for their conditioning. 

WRONG.

Unless you are a cross country athlete, please stop running miles. 

(Even you cross country athletes, there’s a better way) 

When it comes to improving your Speed Endurance, training is going to look a lot like your desired goal. It is going to require repeated sprint efforts. Where many people are misled is the rest between these sprints. 

In order to maintain continued bouts of high quality repeated sprint efforts you must be well rested in between. This does not mean 10, 20, or even 30 seconds rest. Instead we are measuring rest in minutes. I have heard many rules of thumb, however, typically I stick with 1 minute of rest for every 20 yards sprinted. This helps to ensure that each effort is complete and the sprints do not turn into jogging pace. General rule of thumb is a sprint will be 85-95% effort or maximum velocity. Your rest should be indicative of this. 

In order to improve speed endurance now you must repeat this sprint for multiple repetitions. The number of reps will be dictated by the experience level of the athlete. Many of our younger, middle school athletes will complete 4-6 sprints in their first two weeks of training. After many weeks of training they will work up to the point where they are completing 12-16 sprints in any given session. 

One way to maintain accountability in these repetitions is to incorporate timing. We will use a Freelap system in order to track Fly 10 times. However, you can easily do it with hand timing as well. We will time each repetition and let the athlete know exactly what they have run. This helps us to monitor their readiness, recovery, and progress from week to week. 

Knowing that each of our athletes has different sporting demands we vary the distances, starting positions and rest times accordingly. For example, a wide receiver in football is going to have more rest than a point guard in basketball. However, the wide receiver is going to sprint further in each repetition throughout their sprint training. 

The specificity noted above is incorporated after an athlete has been through the first 10-15 weeks of training and has a firm understanding of acceleration demands, posture and position. 

The goal is to create a situation where the athlete can be successful (i.e. short sprint efforts with extended rest) then progress them with small doses of discomfort (i.e. longer distance or shorter rest) to the point where they can be comfortable in a more demanding scenario (i.e. long sprints, short rest, specific starting/ stopping positions). 

The means to achieving your goal may be simpler than you think. In your training, do not stray too far from your desired outcome.