Drills to Boost Your Top Speed with an Overland Park Personal Trainer

Improving your top speed is a goal shared by athletes across various sports, from sprinters and football players to soccer stars and rugby players. The quest for speed is not just about raw talent but also about smart, targeted training. Three highly effective drills, recommended by Overland Park personal trainers, to achieve this are resisted sprints, drills to enhance leg drive and wall drills. Here's how these techniques can help you accelerate your speed gains.

Resisted Sprints

Resisted sprints involve running against some form of resistance, such as a sled, parachute, or a partner holding a strap. This method challenges your muscles in unique ways, enhancing strength and power which directly translate into faster sprints. Many personal trainers in Overland Park utilize resisted sprints with athletes of all ages to see the following improvements. 

Increased Strength and Power: By adding resistance, your muscles work harder than they would during regular sprints. This builds explosive strength and power in your glutes, hamstrings, and calves—key muscles involved in sprinting.

Improved Acceleration: Resisted sprints focus on the acceleration phase of your sprint. The added resistance forces you to push harder at the start, improving your initial burst of speed. This is particularly beneficial for sports that require quick, short-distance bursts of speed.

Enhanced Muscle Coordination: Running with resistance enhances neuromuscular coordination, teaching your body to recruit muscle fibers more efficiently. This improved coordination translates to better performance during unresisted sprints.

Better Running Mechanics: Training with resistance often highlights flaws in your sprinting technique. Over time, as you adapt, your running mechanics improve, leading to more efficient and faster sprints. If you have any questions on what your flaws may be, working with a personal trainer in Overland Park is a great way to detect them and safely adapt them. 

How to Implement Resisted Sprints:

• Sled Pulls: Attach a weighted sled to a harness around your waist and sprint over short distances (10-20 meters).
• Partner resisted sprints: Have a partner hold a strap that is anchored around your waist and have your partner provide resistance as you sprint; you want your partner to make you work but do not have them provide so much resistance that you are just running in place.

Leg Drive

Leg drive refers to the force and power your legs generate to propel you forward. A powerful leg drive is crucial for achieving top speed according to many top Overland Park personal trainers.

Strength Training: Incorporate exercises like squats, deadlifts, and lunges into your routine. These compound movements build strength in your quads, hamstrings, and glutes, which are essential for a powerful leg drive.

Plyometrics: Exercises such as box jumps, bounding, and depth jumps enhance explosive power and improve the elasticity of your muscles and tendons, contributing to a stronger leg drive.

Sprint Drills: High knees, butt kicks, and A-skips help improve your leg drive mechanics by emphasizing knee lift and foot placement.

How to Implement a Leg Drive Drill:

• Seated hip flexion: Sit on the floor with torso upright and legs straight. Keeping your leg straight, raise your leg up and over a cone and place back on ground, switch to other leg and repeat.

Wall Drills for Posture and Acceleration

Many athletes also utilize stationary drills to improve posture. Incorporate this wall drill into your next warm up before completing sprint training. 

• Begin facing a wall or solid object, standing about one meter away 
• Lean forward at a 45 degree angle while keeping the body and spine straight and reach out hands to the wall 
• Raise the right knee and freeze momentarily at the top of the motion - use this time to ensure the glute is activated, toes are pulled up towards your shin and that you are on the toes in the stance leg 
• After your pause, drive the right leg down stomping violently onto the ground then driving your left leg up. This should not be a jump so do not do these two motions simultaneously.
• Keep awareness on the posture of the body 

By consistently integrating these exercises into your training routine, you can significantly improve your top speed. Resisted sprints build the power and strength necessary for acceleration, leg drive exercises enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your sprinting mechanics, and wall drills ensure correct posture. This combination is a proven strategy by many personal trainers in Overland park for breaking through your speed barriers and achieving new personal bests.

If you’re looking for a team to help take your top speeds to the next level before next season, contact Elevate today! Our personal trainers are ready to create a customized plan for you to ensure success on and off the field. We look forward to working with you!