Improving Foot speed

I would like input from the board on what they think is the best training to improve 60 time.

 

Work on exploding out of the box, lots of short quick sprints. Do things to lengthen your stride like lunges and backwards running with a lot of reach. If you can lengthen your stride by a couple of inches you should be taking one to two less steps to go the same distance. If you takes less steps and travel at the same speed you'll reach the finish line faster. Hope this makes sense to you.

blademan

 

I think blademan hit the nail on the head. Proper training, both with weights and workouts, can do amazing things for speed. It's amazing that after only 1 year of college ball my son has gone from a 7.2 to 6.8.

 

For me short distance explosion exercises and quick change direction drills were real helpful. And I don't think this is stressed enough but having good flexibility makes you quicker. And as you get older, you should just get quicker because of lifting and finally growing into your body as I found out this year.

 

#1 Drill

There is a difference between "quick" feet and foot speed as far as time is considered... Dot drills are the best drill I am aware of and use practice religiously with my players in the off season and winter drills!

 

Dot drills? Please explain.

 

With out seeing you run, it's hard to comment on what specifically you need to do. But essencially there are 2 elements to getting faster, #1 Stride length (which several people have mentioned) and #2 stride frequency. Improving either one helps, but improving both is what makes a big difference. To increase your stride length you must work on your technique and flexibility, but you must also increase your strength so that you can maintain your frequency. You must get stronger to be able to reach out and pull your body forward (when the foot on the ground is in front of your center of gravity) and then finally push off (when your foot moves to behind your center of gravity).

Great running drills:

- All sorts of flexibility exercises (everyday in the shower make a point of stretching the back of your legs.

- Weight training leg curls, Calf exercises - these are not the popular exercises that everyone works on, but they make you faster.

- Downhill running - Find a slight decline 30 to 40 yards long and run down it. It will force you to take longer and more frequent strides. This creates muscle memory and developes the fast twitch muscle cells to contract even faster.

- Stadium Steps vs. running up hill because it forces you to take a predetermined stride length (just running up hill usually results in people taking shorter and shorter stride lengths as they workout.

There are alot of others, but it's my opinion that if you work on these you'll improve your time.

Keep in mind though you'll see improvement, but each and everyone of us is blessed with different attributes and the body you were given will determine to a large degree how fast you will ever be.

 

one of the things that works best for us is simply sprinting downhill at a slight decline. two things happen. by turning the legs over faster you are imprinting faster neuro-muscular patterns (aka muscle memory) and 2. you will increase stride length. of course lifting lunges etc. will help also. this is for speed not foot quickness.
foot quickness dot drills line jumps, jumping rope etc is good for that

 

I must say I am very impressed with the replies on this topic. You guys are great!!!!!

 

carmine

carolina acceleration in greensboro is an excellent place to improve foot speed or sixty times. i know and kid who did the running program over they and dropped over .8 tenths off his sixty time great place great guys, the head guy over there is a licensed sports trainer and former elon catcher