Summer Workouts: Speed Work
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Loading ...I’ve pretty much gone through the different types of conditioning workouts I wanted to send out (again, if you want more conditioning, try to do old workouts faster/better or mix up the exercises. I can give you more ideas if you blitz me).
So, a different kind of workout. Speed Training. For example:
doing 4-6 repeats of:
-Sprint 40 meters
-Rest ~3 minutes
Would constitute a speed training workout. You can do longer distance with a bit more rest if you so desire. You can also do more reps as you get more used to doing speed work, depending on how you feel.
As you get more comfortable, you can throw in a second (or if you’re really ambitious, a third) set, too.
Stay Strong,
Mackey
Notes:
-The main point is to go as hard as you can over that short distance.
-Focus on really getting a good start
-Really focus on good running form. DRIVE with your arms, focusing on driving them forward in front of you as fast as you can (don’t swing them side-to-side). Really think about driving your legs down into the ground, too. But above all, go HARD!
-I find for ultimate it’s more realistic to start by taking a hard couple steps and planting as though you were cutting, but do a couple straight to get a feel for it first.
How it works:
When you’re conditioning you work on little to no rest–the point is to progressively overload your body’s systems and force it to adapt and be able to do more than it previously could.
With speed training, the point is not to overload your body, but to work more on your body’s “ideal” sprinting, so to speak–you push as hard as you can over a short distance and focus on keeping good form, and your body gets used to doing both. With conditioning, you get tired, you don’t run as fast as you’re capable of (I don’t mean at that instant when you’re tired, I mean overall), and form suffers. You don’t want your body to only learn to run at less than full speed and with poor form, so doing some speed work to remind (or teach, as the case may be) your body a) that you can run really fast and b) what it feels like to run with good form will help to make you faster.
Your body is a finely-tuned machine–the connections and associations that your nervous system makes are very specific to what you do. If you don’t practice running fast, you body won’t be used to the motion when you try to sprint. Any sprinter in track & field worth his salt does speed work routinely in order to run faster. Ultimate players should, too.
