The season is in full swing, and the end is near. Off season training begins soon and if all you plan to do is kick the ball around and focus on skills training then you are missing a prime opportunity to improve yourself as an athlete. I am not saying don't do skills training. I would not ever say that, because touches on the ball are key to being successful on the field. However, if you do not include work in the gym and time under tension, then you are missing a key component of what will make you better athletically when the time comes.
I want to quickly address the elephant in the room: genetics. Yes, it is true that each althete is born with a certain number of specific muscle fiber types and the number of specific fiber types can determine how fast, overall, an athlete will be. Neither I nor anyone else can change this. God designed you and we can only work with what He gave you. That doesn't mean you can't get faster. It means you are going to have to take advantage of the gifts you were given and enhance and improve upon them to improve your overall speed. You train the fiber types to do their job more efficiently and effectively.
Speed Kills. Everyone wants to be faster and there a lot of people who claim to know what it takes to be fast, but few who really understand the process and even fewer who know how to teach and train for it. I see "coaches" who. claim to include speed training in their camps and training sessions, but at closer look it is a train wreck in the making. Poor mechanics, poor verbal cues and poor overall understanding of what it takes to be fast. The athletes that undergo such train never and I mean never while achieve faster sprint times.
Becoming faster is not a one or two time fix and magically you will be faster. It is a process. It requires coaches and trainers that understand the biomechanics of running, the phases of sprinting, and the understanding that strength and speed go together and the ability to see inefficiencies within the sprinting mechanics to correct it appropriately.
There are three types of muscle strength needed to be fast or sprint: eccentric, concentric and isometric. Eccentric strength is the secret to being able to absorb forces and harness force. As you sprint, your foot strikes the ground with numerous forces interacting all at once and your ability to control these forces efficiently and prevent energy loss. Concentric strength is the key to being able to produce force into the ground. The more concentric strength an athlete can produce, theoretically, the faster they can be. Finally, isometric strength is the ability to stabilize. Stability is key to be able create platforms for which we can generate forces around and can help an athlete prevent energy losses during sprinting.
Being fast/sprinting, is also about proper mechanics. Front-end and back-end mechanics are how an athlete runs and can be areas to capitalize upon if they are good or can be areas that an athlete is leaking energy and is therefore indirectly slowing themselves down. This is also an area where athletes can see their ability to properly produce force improve if corrected and see positive improvements in their ability sustain higher speeds for a greater amount of time. However, if improper mechanics are allowed to continue or are not corrected, bad habits form and lead to slower speeds and could cause tissue breakdown or lead to injury.
The combination of strength training and sprint training need to go hand in hand. Speed is dependent upon how an athlete generates force, how much force one can produce, how long an athlete can produce force and on the athlete's ability to produce repeated bouts of speed/power over time. This takes training, expertise and time. It requires a focused effort to assess, train, assess and train again. Speed is not how fast can I be fast, but rather how much work and dedication are you, the athlete, willing to put into the process.
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