Speed training (start with strength)

Ok so let me talk about speed development for a while. A reason why I have such a focus on speed throughout this blog is because, well, what sports player couldn’t do with a little extra speed and quickness? As regards to the development of speed, I will always believe that the first step towards gaining speed in the long term, is through strength. Not technique not fancy feet exercises, STRENGTH.

One analogy to explain where I am coming from is this. A formula 1 driver, now I’m no formula 1 enthusiast or expert, but I’m sure they do A HELL of a lot of technical skills based training, to control the car, to know when to speed up and how to overtake etc. Now, if you take the guy with a shit load of skill & put him in a crappy, 3 wheeler car, and put him against guy with average skill and a top formula 1 car 0-60 in about 2 seconds and top speed of about 300 mph. I know who my money’s on.

Of course, if you take the f1 driver out of his shitty 3 wheeler, supe up the car to a real f1 car he’s guaranteed to be 10x faster. But the fact is, to begin with it’s better to have the physical side than the skills based side.

Anyway, back to training. If you cant do 1 chin up, if you can’t do 10 push ups, don’t waste time on technique and looking an the positioning of your ankles or your elbows, start with strength.

Think about it; we’re aiming to change your body for the better, get the good car and THEN learn to drive.

Good luck

Joe Crawford

Speed: Hip flexor and glute exercises for speed boost?

The first thing that I would tell a guy asking to increase his speed its that the muscles around the hips are KEY. As you probably already know, hip flexors (or psoas major& minor) are muscles which attach from the lumbar spine to the upper femur, making them barely visible and not exactly the sexiest muscle to work out. (Not many people will be strengthening these muscles). They lift the thigh up towards the abdomen and are the prime mover in taking strides when running. Oppositely, the gluteus maximus and medius are muscles which push the thigh downwards, against the floor when running.
Anyway, science lesson over, the point is, the stronger & more enduring these muscles are, the quicker you will be able to move your legs from the top and obviously the faster you will be able to run. Thankfully, you will not need any retail equipment to strengthen these muscles or weights.
Hip flexors
You will need: something or someone to hold your feet down
Exercise:
Hook your feet under something which can hold your body weight down and sit it a ‘sit up’ position. Your feet need to be about shoulder width apart.
The important thing at this point is the angle of your knees, you should be sitting so that your knees are at a 90 degree angle when lying down
The motion is rater like a sit up with a slight variation. you should raise your body up, making sure that you lift your whole back off the floor at the same time. This ensures that the strain is placed purely on the hip flexors.
Arms can be placed across chest for light, behind head for medium and straight & above the head for heavy.
Try to complete 2 sets of 25

Gluteus maximus

You will need: A bed, sofa or the arm of a chair. You will be able to apply this to any platform you want.
Exercise:
Place both of your hands and your left knee on the platform. Facing parallel to the side of the platform so that the whole right leg is over the edge and the right knee is resting.
Straighten the right leg and raise it at the hip. the range of motion should be from the foot touching the ground to the foot being higher that the hips (all the while keeping a straight let at the knee.
try to complete 2 sets of 25.

These two exercises will increase your speed, stride length and also your stability. Try to get these in weekly and you will see results fast, gaining an edge on your competition
Good luck and run fast

Strength: The truth about weight and resistance training (to the root)

A misconception that I have come across often in my time involved in sport is that if you want big muscles, if you want strength, if you want power, you NEED to use weights in the gym. One thing that you have to understand if you’re planning on building strength is that muscles are charged more by the nervous system than the strength of the fibres within a muscle. What i mean by this is that when we build strength it is not always the break down and repair of the muscle fibers themselves, but the exercise of charging as much energy, electricity if you will, through the nervous system into the muscle to make it contract.

That said, it seems ludicrous to me that some people will claim that “If you want strong legs you need weights”… interestingly the same guys can’t do ONE single leg squat; but that’s for another post. The point i’m trying to make is that the element of resistance training which develops strength isn’t at all exclusive to a gym, and you can carry out extremely high resistance exercises using very basic, if any, equipment.