A good friend and associate of mine is a diet coach, personal trainer and competitive natural heavyweight bodybuilder named Dennis Santos.  He has a vast resource of information regarding health and fitness and this includes strength training for sports.

Here is one of his exercises for the lower body, and in particular, side to side movements that many athletes will find themselves engaging in, whether its the infield in baseball, defense in basketball or football, and even hockey.  It’s called the side squat and this information was taking from a personal training video I did with him a little while back.  I will let Dennis take it from here:

“We are going to cover an exercise now that I like to call the side squat.  It’s kind of a variation of a side lunge but the difference is that we are not pointing the toes in the direction in which we are going.  You will see what that means here in a second but what this exercise is ideal for is having to maintain core stability and strength even when you are off balance which basically means having to maintain posture and strength in sports during most activities.

That’s exactly what athletes do during most sport activities so this is great for athletes but it’s also moving into the body building world.  It’s great for developing the outer part of the quadriceps or the lateralis quadriceps and also developing stability around the hips which calls into play the glutes and the abductors and adductors.  So let’s get started with this exercise.

You are going to notice that as my athlete here, named Eric,  takes his step to the side, his leg, the leg that’s trailing stays pretty straight and this is something that’s really hard to do especially when you are starting.  The other thing you want to look at here is that as you are going down into that position, your back stays straight.  The same rules apply in the regular squat, you are looking forward, you are keeping balance and you are getting deep into the movement.  See Figures 1a, 1b and 1c.

Figure 1a.

Figure 1b.

Figure 1c.

It’s basically a one legged squat from the side.  So this is the side squat and again it’s a great exercise for the abductors and the adductors as well as the lateral part of the quad as well as the muscles that stabilize the hip,  as well as the core.  So a great movement especially for athletes who have to be able to change positions really quickly, or react to the hit of a baseball in a moments notice.  I like to incorporate this into my workouts as it also helps to define my legs really well.  So again, this is a side squat.”

To learn more about athletic speed training, visit us at http://www.athleticquickness.com

My chosen career requires a quick, powerful physical movement done alternately with each hand. I need to create an explosion of speed through just a few inches. The movement starts with a resistance of about 10 lbs, and the resistance grows geometrically through the movement of just a few inches. I need an instantaneous explosion of speed through that resistance. Will the training help me to move quickly through a high resistance?

Yes, I would like to see a short video if you are able to provide one as it would enable me to gain a clearer understanding of what your are looking to improve. I would assume for the moment that you are looking to better develop your martial arts skills and especially your hand speed. As you probably know better than most, a lot of the upper body speed and power comes from a strong and quick core and primarily the rotation around your hips.

Developing faster hip rotation speed has been typically accomplished by simply engaging in the very same activity that you are looking to improve, with perhaps more effort than normal. With that however, comes a loss of control in the very technique you want to develop so, bad habits can quickly be learned.

Two muscle groups come to mind when I think of hip rotation: external hip rotators and internal hip rotators. I have yet to see any really good exercise one can engage in at the gym that specifically targets these two muscle groups. However, through working with the resistance band for the past 15+ years and paying close attention to inquiries like yours, I have been able to develop exercises that engages these two muscle groups directly. The good news is that we show one of them on our site for the external hip rotators here:

http://www.athleticquickness.com/baseballspeedexercise.asp

and here:

Hip rotation exercise

The not so good news is that at the time the MMA program was written, this exercise was not included, although you do have it available to you now. The other exercise is for the internal hip rotators and this can be done by simply referring to the exercise above and either place the band on the opposite leg and do the exercise, or, keep it on the same leg shown in the picture but face the opposite direction.

Developing quick and strong hip rotation is foundational for all the sports including tennis, baseball and golf where the arms are used extensively, so I would think the same should apply to your situation. Without speculating any further on what exactly you are looking for, I will leave my answer as is for now.

All the best.
Dr. Larry Van Such

“I have 2 boys one is 10 and likes football.Iwant to increase his speed when he runs.  The otherboy is 12 and likes baseball.  I would like to increase his bat speed.Can I do that with the purchase of 1 product.  Also does it explain how long and how many days a week you should train kids at this age.”

The baseball program SWING FASTER will assist both of your sons with their speed. The program contains 20 exercises to increase speed in running, swinging a bat and throwing a baseball. Each program has a detailed schedule located in the Appendix of the training manual.

The exercises are based on isometric resistance, and the amount of exertion involved is relative to a person’s own strength.  We know that many children effectively do the speed and quickness training exercises; although, we normally advise that children younger than 8 years old and adults that are 60 or more years old should consult with their personal physician before beginning any physical exercise or training programs. There are too many potential health problems (e.g., softening of the bones, high blood pressure, et al) that can only be diagnosed and addressed by direct physical examination.

What comes with the program(s)?

All of the training programs we provide INCLUDE an easy-to-understand and well illustrated training manual developed and written by Dr. Larry Van Such, a leading-edge authority about isometric training and how it can be applied to increase speed and quickness.  In addition, we provide the resistance bands that are needed to do the training exercises prescribed in the training manual.

How long do I need to continue doing the training exercises?

Step 4 in the Progress Chart located in the Appendix of the training manual provides instructions for continuing the training exercises to optimize your results:

After you have performed the exercises for at least two weeks it is recommended you continue on with this same schedule for as long as you continue to see improvement and for as long as you plan to stay competitive in in your sport.   After you have been performing these exercises for several months, you may be able to reduce your training down to once a week for each exercise however, you will need to pay close attention as to what effect this has on your athletic performance.

Do your training programs require any special equipment?

No, we provide the resistance bands that are needed to do the training exercises prescribed in the training manual, and no other equipment is needed.  The training exercises can be performed practically any place.

Dear Sirs,

We have made revisions to the RUN FASTER speed training programs back in 2010.  The latest edition is #5. The program now contains 10 exercises to improve running speed. FIVE of the exercises are brand new! The exercises isolate the muscle groups involved in the entire range of motion.

The program also breaks down the running process into three phases: the push phase, the swing phase and the pull phase.  The muscle involved in each phase are identified for you so that you will know exactly where in the body the power to run hard and fast comes from.

You may learn more about the program here:  http://www.athleticquickness.com/

So to answer that question if you can integrate our programs into these types of routines and the answer is yes. They actually integrate very seamlessly into these other routines for several reasons.

One of them being is simply the amount of time that it takes to complete one of our training programs and which is usually about 20 minutes or less. And this has a lot of value and convenience for the athlete because if you are engaged in a training program or perhaps are practicing on say, a football team, you will most likely be spending upwards of two hours or more developing your conditioning and practicing specific skill relevant to the sport. And finding any extra time to devote to your busy schedule presents a challenge.

And while you may not or even have the time to devote another hour or two to your sport, squeezing in an extra 20 minutes of training, especially knowing that you are going to gain immediate results from it, is a lot more appealing and enticing for an athlete to want to do it than say putting in another 20 minutes of cardio.

The other nice thing about integrating our programs into other training programs or routines is that you do not really need to have any gym equipment to use. We recommend using them only as a means of having a safe place to fasten the resistance bands to but it is not necessary.

In fact, this convenience of being able to do our exercises whenever and wherever you want to is a huge advantage to what I call the next generation of athletes who is always looking for that extra advantage or piece of information that sets him or her apart from their competition.

You know you may be at a friends house and have the urge to workout or perhaps you may be on vacation and have a hard time finding a place or location to workout and with resistance bands in general, not just with our programs, but any resistance band workout that you do, you can take the bands and setup a make shift gym in a hotel room or living room if you had to.

And the exercises are not going to be any less effective by doing them in these types of locations than perhaps in a gym setting because they are all based upon the resistance that you will be pulling and pushing on those bands along with the angles and positions of the exercises. Certainly it may not be in a familiar setting that you might be used to but other than that, the results of doing the exercises would be the same.

It is a huge advantage again to the next generation athlete to take your workouts with you and do them on the fly in these situations here.

The other nice thing about integrating our programs into other programs is that you have to realize that when you are doing weight training, plyometric training and cardio training, those are really strenuous exercises that more often than not you are putting on the whole body or at least the larger muscles of the legs and core and they have incredible value to getting your conditioning up and strength and even speed if you can find a good diet to complement these activities, but they are also very taxing on the body and they require some down time to recover. And you know this because you do not work out the same muscle groups each day with these routines because the muscles get sore and need their rest. You are not going to put in a good squat routine one day and then get back under the rack again the next because you already know in advance how you are going to feel.

Likewise you are probably not going to put yourself through the same plyometric routine every single day, you are going to want to vary which muscles you target.

And so these are very important exercises to do but they are also very taxing on the body.

Now the nice thing about our programs that yes, even though they are strenuous to the body, they are not designed to wipe you out of all of your energy reserves because speed training is a little different. Whenever your muscles are called upon to perform a movement fast, you can really only maintain that burst of speed as in running a 100 meter dash at your highest level for a few seconds before you start to tire.

Another good example of how short of a window an athlete has to execute a specific sports skill quickly would be swinging a golf club, baseball bat or tennis racket. Athletes can get their golf club speed over 100 mph but this occurs over the course of less than a second. Likewise even the best power hitters can only swing the bat 80-90 mph and this still occurs in a split second. So as a result, the training does not always have to focus on exercises that that leave you totally exhausted after having done them either for them to be effective for speed.

And with some of our programs taking a total of 20 minutes to complete, and the reality of this time frame is that half of that is spent resting in between sets. So you are only talking about a solid 10 minute focused and concentrated workout on specific muscles placed in strategic positions to maximize their contraction velocity.

So while the training routines we have will not tax your body to the level that a weight training or cardio program will. They are going to give you something completely different and necessary that you may be missing.

We are going to target a lot of muscles you never even k new existed with different angles and positions that really only the resistance band can do efficiently as you will see and we are going to challenge them at their weak spots and positions that you are going to find that when you improve in these areas, your athletic potential completes itself and there are no more gaps left in your training that makes you vulnerable during game time situations.

So because of the precision of the exercises and the ability to focus your efforts on a particular muscle group or athletic position for a concentrated period of time, as challenging as this is, it is not going to wipe you out and leave you exhausted when you’re finished with the program, so yeah, you have to put your time into it, if it’s a 20 minute routine, its only 10 minutes of actual exercise time, you’ve got to put your time into those exercises, however, it is not going to be to the point where it is like a cardio routine or weight lifting routine where you are physically exhausted afterward.

And again, those are real necessary for your overall conditioning, but the isometric training with the resistance band are specifically designed to increase your speed in running as well as in particular skill sets like swinging a baseball bat, golf club or tennis racket. The exercises also give athletes incredible benefits in improving their kicking such as in soccer as well as punting and placekicking in football as well as helping athletes increase their vertical jumps, long jumps and high jump distances as there is a lot of speed involved in getting their muscles quickly into the best and most dominant positions to push off for these areas to improve.

So the training is a lot different, in fact more often than not, athletes may not even break a sweat with these exercises and that is not to say because they are weak but rather you are not engaging in them long enough for your body to burn out all of your energy reserves and raise your heart rate and so that is a very big advantage and one that allows our programs to be easily introduced into whatever current training you are doing.

So getting back to the point, it does not matter what routine you are doing, our recommendation is to keep doing them if you feel they are benefitting you. Even if you are doing a simple running routine such as running steps at a local high school stadium or perhaps shuttle drills you can still do our programs alongside them.

So, between the amount of time and effort involved with completing our programs along with the convenience of finding a place to do them, feel free to incorporate our training programs right along with your favorite weight training, plyometric training cardio training and any other sport specific program you may currently be doing.

So getting back to the point about integrating our programs into other routines, it really does not matter what routine you are doing, our recommendation is to keep doing them if you feel they are benefitting you. Between the amount of time and effort involved with completing our programs along with the convenience of finding a place to do them, performing multiple training programs with different sport specific goals is what will help you become part of the next generation of athletes.

The Run Faster CD and the Wall Chart are companions to the RUN FASTER speed training program. It’s always easier to learn the exercises when you can watch them and listen to the instructions at the same time.

The CD contains 11 videos. 10 of the videos show exactly how to perform each of the 10 exercises along with precise step by step audio instructions as well as written instructions on the same page as the video.

This means you can feel confident you are performing each exercise properly to get the most speed out of your muscles.

The 11th video teaches you how to know when you need to add more resistance and how to use multiple bands together to increase the resistance.

The CD has other handy features as well:

·         Illustrations identify the muscles and muscle groups targeted for each exercise and show what movements the muscles are used for. Get familiar with the muscles and the names of the muscles you are training and how they are used.

·         Download and print the Training Schedule, Training Tips, and Progress Chart for handy reference. This will make it easier to check the schedule for each day’s exercises and to chart your progress.

·         Includes tips for including the speed training program into your strength training routine. This is our most requested document and so it is included in the CD for easy access.

·         Link directly to online resources for common questions, ordering information for additional bands or training manuals, and other resources.

·         Runs in all windows PC Computers. (Not currently available for apple computers).

NOTE: What you will purchase is a CD, not a DVD. The CD operates in all Windows PC’s. (Not currently available for Mac/Apple computers).

Learn about our training programs and/or place an order by going to:

http://www.athleticquickness.com/Order.asp

All of the exercises use the proven training method of using resistance bands with an isometric training strategy. This training technique will strengthen and quicken muscles in ways that other training methods, including weights and plyometrics are just capable of doing. The dynamic elastic properties of the resistance band are ideal for speed training purposes or for increasing the contraction speed of muscles.

Tennis players use diverse groups of muscles in both the upper body as well as the lower body. The Tennis Speed Training program covers all the muscles used in the various strokes and in court movement. In many instances the lower body muscles are used to add power to the serve, backhand and forehand. These lower body muscles are conditioned as well as the muscles of the arms, shoulders and back.

A unique and effective exercise has been developed and included in the training program that conditions the muscles of the core and hips. This exercise will provide the tennis player with additional speed and power in the swing by strenghtening and quickening the rotation of hips as used in the forehand and backhand strokes.

The difference is that during an isometric contraction with resistance bands, the muscles’ motor unit recruitment patterns are entirely new and different than what is expected by a muscle that has only been trained using a static weight. This again is because of the two variables leading up to the final moment of force calculation when resistance bands are used instead of just one variable when weights are used.

When using the resistance band with an isometric training strategy, each attempt by the muscle at balancing and stabilizing the force while in a weakened state helps to create and re-enforce new neuro-pathways that accelerate the development of strength and coordination within it. These changes become even more pronounced as the muscle continues to weaken while attempting to hold the isometric contraction.

Applying the strategy of isometric training with resistance bands that simulate conventional exercises like the bench press has great value to an athlete. However, athletes will experience significantly more benefit when this strategy is applied during an exercise to joints in different planes and angles from what they normally perform in the gym. Speed Training with Weights vs. Resistance Bands

This muscle confusion article I wrote talks about why the most common definitions of muscle confusion may not be helping as much as some would expect and uncovers some lesser known ways to confuse your muscles that will develop them and eliminate their weaknesses in ways they have not previously experienced.

Here is what he said about his track season as a senior:

“I was ranked #1 in the U.S. at 55m in 2010 in Indoor Track and Field with an incredible 6.30 time.

The following weeks after I really targeted my muscles with the isometric workout I went on to claim victory and first place in the Nike Indoor Nationals 60m dash with yet ANOTHER U.S. #1 at 6.73 for 60m.

In outdoor track after a junior year of running a wind aided 10.62 in the 100m (wind legal best of 10.80) I dropped my times phenomenally again with a lifetime best and runner up finish in the 100m Nationals with 10.42 seconds.

I wasn’t always that fast. People have asked me what I did to improve so dramatically from my Junior year.

Now that HS track is over, I can tell everyone the secret. My sprint training workouts did not change on the track and no, it was not a growth spurt.

I stayed away from weights and plyometrics. I did body weight exercises like pullups and pushups to ensure I would not get too bulky for my body. But most importantly, the resistance bands training sealed the deal.

I felt like Usain Bolt the whole season. I was untouchable. I was dominating the competition by half a second in the 100 meter dash at the State meet. And in the 200. Catching guys from WAY back in the 4×100 relay.

As soon as I did the exercises I felt light and springy, almost as if I had taken off a weight vest I had worn my whole life.”

Go here for more details about his sprint training program.