Strength Report: Practical Movement and Strength Training – The Key to Speed

I have been fortunate, in my 16 years of performance coaching, to have been mentored by the best in the business. Furthermore, I have been privileged to work both at the collegiate level and in the private sector. This allowed me to see things from a different perspective, exposing me to areas such as speed training and leadership/management skills that I wouldn’t have been exposed to had I just stayed at the collegiate level. Although it was a huge risk to leave college athletics, the road less traveled made me twice the strength coach I was before taking the plunge. The combination of experience and maturity has opened my eyes to new ways of training and allowed me to better prepare my athletes for competition.

If I were writing this article ten years ago, it would be all about the weight room and what we should be doing to get our guys big and strong. Now that I am more experienced, I understand that performance training is about making a better athlete, not just a stronger one. If it were all about strength, coaches could go down to the local gym and recruit some big strong guys to play on their team and win championships. We all know this isn’t the case; you have to be strong and athletic to survive at this level. At the end of the day, if our players don’t know how to transfer their new-found strength and power out of the weight room and onto the playing field, we are wasting our time. This can be accomplished by finding the right mixture of position-specific speed training along with strength and power work in the weight room.

One of the first things I quickly figured out when I came back to college football is that what worked with small groups of athletes in the private sector was not going to work with larger groups of football players at the collegiate level. We had to find a way to teach 100+ players the fine, detailed points of speed training, and a one to 100 coach-to-athlete ratio was not going to work. Our solution was to break the team down into groups as well as dividing the workout into multiple stations so that each coach has approximately 20-30 players at one time. Not only is the coach-to-athlete ratio important, but maybe even more important is the coach’s knowledge about what they are teaching and the passion in which they deliver it. Each coach has to have a deep understanding of acceleration, maximum velocity and agility training in order to give detailed explanations and demonstrations to our athletes. Coaches need to understand what they are teaching, how to communicate it to their athletes, and what to look for to correct mistakes. Just because another coach or program does it is not enough. Great coaches are great teachers.

Speed training can be broken down into three different areas. In any given football game you can see athletes using acceleration, top-end speed, and agility to play the game. Depending on the time of the training year, all three of these areas should also be broken down again into skill, drill, and free application situations. During the post and off-season, the majority of time is spent working with skills and drills, focused on the details.

During the pre-season, emphasis shifts to drills and free application, putting all the details together into real-game applications. Acceleration training is exactly what it sounds like – explosive. What I like to call 0-60, and I am trying to develop a bunch of Ferraris. Acceleration running mechanics can be described as a piston-like motion, where the athlete is taught to drive back into the ground to propel his body forward at a high rate of speed. When players aren’t accelerating, they are usually decelerating and changing directions on the field, so it is equally important that we spend a great deal of time working with our players on agility or multi-direction drills.

Depending on the time of the year, agility training should be divided into position-specific drills. Not only does it help to get a better buy-in from the kids, it is important that a defensive back work different skill patterns than an offensive lineman when it comes to agility training. Although the majority of time will be spent with players in acceleration and agility situations, it is important that if a player does hit top end speed, they know how to control it. Now we’re talking about maximum velocity. Maximum velocity speed training is a totally different running mechanic from the piston-like action of acceleration. Maximum velocity speed is a cyclical running motion that gives skill players breakaway speed. Linemen are slightly different in that they will rarely, if ever, see top end speed during a game. Their time is better spent working on hip explosion drills or sled work during this time of practice. Although speed is important for all players on the field, it is easy to see that emphasis must be shifted depending on the position and the time of year.

Another key to making sure our athletes are ready to run is actually having them train, running at max effort or 100% during the training process. This should be done during speed training rather than conditioning to ensure full effort. Too often players run at 75-85% during training and then get excited and tight on testing day. As a result, the athletes over-exert themselves to run a good time, ending in a pulled or a strained hamstring. It always amazes me that you can go all off-season with no pulls and then get three on testing day. Now that we have speed broken down, let’s take a look at the weight room and how it complements speed training.

When I break down running mechanics, the major muscle contributors for both acceleration and maximum velocity are the gluteus and hamstrings. A big part of speed training is to make sure the athletes are strong enough to be explosive and run fast without getting hurt. This begins in the weight room with proper form on squatting and lunge movements, along with a good balance of muscle activation and posterior chain exercises. I am a big believer in doing full range of motion squatting and single leg movements. When I watch athletes use partial reps in these movements, I see them utilizing their quads and sending large amounts of sheering forces through their knees.

Rather, I like to see players sit back on their heels and work through a full range of motion (at least top of the thigh parallel) to ensure that the weight is placed on the hips, gluteus, and hamstrings of the athlete. Squatting movements should consist of bilateral movements such as the back squat, front squat and overhead squat. Since running and cutting involve so much unilateral movement, it is important to train using unilateral exercises. A variety of lunges, step ups, Bulgarian squats, and single leg squats can be used to ensure good stability and strength in single leg situations.

Probably more important is the posterior chain. This consists of the lower back, glutes and hamstrings. With the hamstring, it is essential to work the muscle in both a concentric and eccentric fashion to help reduce the likelihood of pulls and strains. Since running mechanics are so dependent on the glutes and hamstrings, it only makes sense to develop these areas in your players.

I was told growing up that you can’t teach speed. You are either born with it or you’re not. This is a misconception; speed or movement mechanics are a skill and can be taught like any other skill such as kicking or hitting. To teach speed and get results, you have to have a strong understanding of both speed mechanics and proper strength work. Yes, part of speed is genetics, but I can make anyone faster within their given abilities. Speed is a skill and it can be taught. We do it every day here at UCLA.

About the Author: Craig Sowers is in his third year as Assistant Head Athletic Performance Coach at UCLA. He previously was the Director of Athletic Performance at Akron (OH) General Health and Wellness. From 2003-2007, Sowers was the Director of Performance at Velocity Speed Performance. He also was the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of Texas at El Paso. From 1993-1996, Sowers served as a student strength and conditioning coach at his alma mater, the University of Akron.