What are peoples thoughts on training speed for sports? Being concerned by what your form is like shouldn’t really be a priority of speed training, just like speed endurance. In most sports an explosive start and acceleration would surely be more valuable than worrying about angles knee height etc. Hills are an extremly valuable part of my training program. In sports speed mostly consists of 10-30 meter sprints, and most of the time you’re not in the correct position to start sprinting as you might be getting off the ground, avoiding a hit or swinging a bat. Not to mention all the equipment you have on. Agility is also a major priority in most sports. This also requires a lot of power and fast feet. Thoughts?
I would have done simple flat out sprinting and weights if you are a soccerplayer or footballer etc … just to not get too spesific… flat out sprinting and weights is a safe choice . It is when you start using that speed you have developed on the track, in trainings and games, you will learn how to most effectively apply it… not by training for “game-speed” outside the game itself. (my opinion) Sorry if I’m misunderstanding anything.
VG
The point I’m trying to make is that just as with weight training being specific with how you go about speed training. There are areas such as standing starts, quick feet and agility the should take priority. For example a baseball player never runs 60m in a straight line nor a tennis player.
You never run a hill when playing your sport either. The single most specific training for your sport is to actually PLAY THE SPORT! This should be the foundation. Everything else is supplementary. Once you get this, then you can start to try to understand why you would use other training methods. For example, why not just always play the sport? This is the most specific training you can get. Well, the reason is that after some amount of time, you will not improve or you will improve at a much slower rate. This is when you need to introduce supplementary training to provide the foundation for more sports specific improvement.
Depending on what your strengths and weaknesses are, you can then choose appropriate supplementary training methods. Is hill running good? It depends - in some cases, it will be exactly what an athlete needs, in other cases it may not be effective. Hill running may actually be quite similar to the acceleration in your sport and that may turn out to be a disadvantage if you are already plateaued in your sport…it may be too similar! You may need to focus on a more general methodlogy (like weight training) to increase the “horsepower of your engine” so that you then have a greater envelope of physical capacity to work with when you move back to more focused training.