Many of our athletes (and their parents) initially come to BucksFit in order to get faster. Faster athletes = better athletes. However, many parents and athletes come in with misguided notions of what speed training is all about. The majority of youth athletes are weak. Which means their primary training is focused on building strength. But don’t worry, more strength = more speed, especially in the early stages of training.
They expect to jump ahead of the base strength building phase to fancier running drills in order to be faster. Weak athletes don’t produce the same amount of force as strong athletes and are slower. In order to make athletes faster we focus on a few different factors.

1. Strength Training – strong athletes are less injury prone and provide the proper base level of fitness for more intense training.
2. Power Training – If you boil speed down to one body movement, it would be powerful hip extension. At BucksFit we develop powerful hips through a combination of plyometrics and Olympic lifts and their variations.
3. Sprint Mechanics – Once the athlete is strong and powerful, we use some of their training time to teach them the proper way to run which prevents braking forces, increase muscle activation and prevents overuse injuries
4. Sprint Drills – used sparingly in the gym, sprint drills can be a valuable addition to your training. If you are an in-season or pre-season athlete currently practicing with your team and playing games – you are already getting a heavy dose of sprint drills, so more running isn’t the best way to utilize your training time.

To simplify the speed equation even more; you have two primary objective 1) get stronger and 2) practice your sport. Skipping important aspects of your training will only limit your performance in the long run.

Shawn