Speed Training Techniques

While every sport has its own unique set of rules and skills you must possess to be successful, raw athletic ability is an important component of competing at a high level. In most popular athletic sports, such as football, basketball, baseball and hockey, speed and agility can give players an extra edge in the fast-moving game environment. Consequently, many athletes pursue various workout routines to increase speed and agility.

When an athlete refers to speed, it can mean one of several things. The most basic concept of speed is pure foot speed: the ability to sprint and outrun opponents. Training for sprinting speed is often achieved with a regimen repeatedly running short wind sprints of 20 to 50 meters. In most sports, a player rarely needs to run at top speed for further than 50 meters at a time, so the ability to run fast in short bursts is of utmost importance. The shuttle run, or "killers," are another popular drill, where an athlete runs back and forth at full speed down a field or court, turning back at ever widening intervals. This helps the athlete build acceleration, and the ability to change directions quickly. Jumping rope, bounding and broad jumping are other ways the legs can be strengthened to increase speed. A regimen of weight training for the legs, such as squats, lunges and leg curls, is also a common way to build up raw power to bursts of speed.

While being able to move quickly in a given direction is important, so is agility: the ability to change directions and move the body quickly in any way necessary to deal with the dynamic environment of sports. In sports like wrestling, boxing, fencing and other sports with limited space, agility is especially important to gain an edge over the opponent. Some common agility training drills are hopping on one foot in a set pattern as quickly as possible, running over tires or elevated ropes or running an obstacle course. Circuit training regimens, where an athlete constantly changes from one high intensity activity to another, are useful for increasing agility.

Training the body for overall speed and agility is a great way to improve athleticism and performance in a wide variety of activities, but often, the most important types of speed training are specific to a specific sport. For instance, in basketball, you must always dribble when handling the ball. Therefore, drills such as sprinting while dribbling or dribbling through a course of cones or defenders can be especially useful to combine speed, agility and an activity relevant to the sport. Most sports have certain common techniques that increase in effectiveness the faster the athlete is able to execute them. Some examples are running passing routes in football, tagging a base then throwing a ball in baseball and sprawling in wrestling. Such techniques should be drilled constantly to improve speed and form.