SPECIFICITY TRAINING The Key Factor for Optimizing Football Speed

Football speed training is too often confused between what should be correctly conceived versus what is incorrectly believed. This is relevant to you if you have a desire to make changes that will benefit the quality of each player’s speed capability. Change that will maximize results drastically. The majority of football coaches use training applications that are not processing their athletes’ football speed by the rule of specificity. That is, specific applications that offer pure value and are not diluted with variations of different training methods that will counter maximal speed gain. The simple fact is that time doesn’t allow for you to cram things into speed development and process quality results. You must have the correct theory in place in order to optimize the training. Finding what’s specifically relevant and what’s wasteful for quality production is the secret.
 
Are you Getting Speed Specifics from the Weightroom?
 
Let’s begin with the weightroom as the best place to start for discussing speed improvement. It’s important to not lose sight of the fact that lifting has a vast pool of application choices. However, you must be on target where speed is involved when you train in the weightroom. Time in the weightroom and running fast can be an oxymoron in several ways. Training in the weightroom serves many objectives. Speed can be the lesser of gained value in the equation if the emphasis is primarily focused on fiber growth, weight gain, increasing pure strength and becoming more explosive.

Somewhere along the trail of multiple training programs available, speed training  garners the least focused attention. The terms explosion and explosive are the most overused words today in athletic performance training. It’s the closest term on the list of training in the weightroom that has some connotation toward being a value to speed. The problem, however, is that “explosion” as a term suggests a synergized one-time impact of concussion.
 
Speed and Explosion Training
 
The problem with the single-motion explosion theory with speed is that most speed-related movements require multiple steps from point A to point B, which requires a continuation of forces applied. One time explosion doesn’t lend transition to this activity. Running from A to B requires several limb rotation cycles to reach the destination rapidly.

Running fast is a series of cyclic rotations that must apply force each step taken. Many steps are required with force continuously being applied so the athlete can accelerate body mass to point B. This cannot be duplicated in the weightroom. The closest methods are speed resistance or ground speed plyometrics.

It’s difficult to apply the methods called “explosion” to each stride taken. Power and force application is the key, not explosion. When teaching players where impact is utilized, use the word “burst” when running is involved. It doesn’t infer that the forces for dynamic ballistic movement are a single explosion visualization.
 
Power and Force are the Backbone for Specific Speed
 
Weightlifting can be combined with speed training. The best way is  scheduling  heavy days in the weightroom and speed training on different days. Secondary focus is to train for speed two days a week and not 3 or 4. Recovery, not hard work, helps produce improvement.

In the weightroom, you want power and force, not slow strength. If you have a periodization phase for power training, it should be closer to in-season when you enter it into your practice plan. You want your players coming to camp fast and moving at their best.

The speed of muscle contraction can’t be duplicated in a weightroom, nor can mechanical running application, which is one of the most misunderstood applications in America. This is where strength coaches sometimes lose sight of the difference between strength and power when running fast is required.

Running is pure power, force, leverage and impulse application. Force moves objects and force applied to an object moves the object. The greater the force the faster and farther the object can travel. Body mass has a certain weight. When force is applied to the ground, it gives back to the body mass and moves it. The greater the force applied, the farther and faster the object (body mass) will move.

However, while applying force, we must realize in the end that power is the agent of force that is applied in a fast manner. Strength is applied that has no required measurement for time or how fast the object being forced upon must move to point B. Power is the ability to apply force to an object and creates fast movement of the object to point B. Power, speaking from a standpoint of speed and movement, is the most important aspect to speed. Remember, the weight of your mass is moved by fast strength (power) which is applied to the ground each step. Therefore, your training plan must include training forces faster with measured resistances. High recovery should be a 1-6 ratio with 3 reps per drill. That is, high intensity movement with zero resistance.

Coach Baskett began his career as a football speed coach in 1979. During the last 35 years he’s consulted and trained hundreds of coaches and thousands of athletes nationwide. In the last year he has worked directly with high schools in California, Texas, Minnesota, Kansas, and Pennsylvania. Over the last few years he has also consulted with Texas Tech, Ohio State, USC, University of Washington, and the University of Mount Union. You can reach him directly for more information or if you have specific questions on your training program. Coach Baskett is at dbspeedt@hotmail.com and 858-568-3751.