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Training Secret 17- "Speed Training"

What makes an athlete run faster is largely the neural adaptation.  What is meant by this is
muscle fiber recruitment patterns depend on 2 factors.  The first is the central nervous system
input.  The second factor is propriorceptive feedback from the muscles and joints that are involved
in the actual movement.  Proprioceptors are made up of muscle spindles; golgi tendon organs
and various pressure, touch and motion sensors in the joints.  Muscle spindles are modified
muscle fibers that have sensory and motor neurons.  Sensory neurons are located in the center
of the fiber and are awakened when the muscle is stretched.  The motor neurons are found
at each end of the fiber and are responsible for keeping the muscle spindle fiber length the
same as normal muscle fibers.  This allows the central nervous system to constantly check the
length of the muscle fiber and its rate of change.  The golgi tendon organs, are located in the
tendon of the muscle and are stimulated when the muscle contracts.  They help to protect the
tendon from overexertion.  Lastly, the pressure, touch and motion sensors of the joints give
the central nervous and indication of speed and direction.      
                 
The way to increase your speed is two fold.  First, you must increase your stride.  Secondly,
you must increase the frequency of each stride.  There are several exercises that professional
strength and conditioning coaches use to accomplish this.  Spindel Sports Academy has
tested many of those methods and proudly presents you with an opportunity to learn them.
As an example, high knee kicks are used to increase the frequency of each stride.  The  
repetitiveness of that exercise trains your central nervous system so it can respond faster.
By repeating the stimulus hundreds of times over the course of the season, the feedback supplied
to the central nervous system allows it to adjust the length of the muscle spindles through a
motor neuron activation, so that it is the same length as the rest of the muscle during contraction.
When this synchronizing takes place, the muscle spindle and the muscle fiber activates and the
central nervous system does not waste time.  This helps to speed the stimulation pattern.
The golgi tendon organ and the other proprioceptors give the central nervous system a sense
of overall muscle tension and a feeling of movement that can translate to increasing your speed.
                 
Below you will find several exercises that will increase your stride length and frequency of each
stride.                
                 
Warm-up Jog              
High Knee Run              
Skip High Knee Run              
Extension Kick Run              
Backward Extension Kick Run            
Straight Leg Run              
Standing Hamstring Stretch            
Tricep Stretch              
Quad Stretch              
Hurdlers Stretch              
Core                
Knee Ups                
Broadjump              
Rim Jumps              
Kareoke                
Sprints                

 

Special note.  When warming up, make sure the movements are done in an active stretching mode.  What we mean by this is to move your limbs at 60% of the velocity similar to your sport or activity.  If you move at a higher intensity level than 60% during the warm up, you will use up stores of muscle glycogen and increase the level of lactate in your blood.  The higher the blood level of lactate, the lower the use of free fatty acids for energy.  Also, doing speed work after endurance work will raise blood lactate levels and increases recovery time more than if you did speed work first.   This is the key to preventing muscle soreness in active, older athletes.  When you burn out the slow twitch muscles during endurance training, it negatively effects intramuscular coordination.  This puts greater stress on the weaker fast twitch fibers.  You become more sore after a workout if you end with sprints because you are stressing out and damaging the fibers.  This is the reason for muscle soreness.  So, warm up first, perform your speed work and either end the session or you can now do your endurance training.  Lastly, be careful about performing hundreds of jumping jacks.  Jumping jacks can neurologically disorganize you.  It will put you out of sync because of the homolateral pattern of locomotion.  It will also give you a feeling of confusion because the left arm swings with the left leg and right arm with right leg.  We suggest keeping jumping jacks to a minimum. 

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