Speed Training Secrets

An athletic trainer from a well respected Big 12 school wrote to me stating that fast twitch fibers do not get trained until after about 20 minutes of hard exercise. Is this true?

 If so, what about the body’s “fight or flight” response? Does this mean that when faced with danger, before we are able to sprint/run for safety, we are going to have to first stick around for 20 minutes or so and build up enough speed before we get out of harms way? This could be disatrous to your health!

Or, are your fast twitch fibers the “default” fiber types that get exercised early on in an exercise routine and the slow twitch fibers are the ones that come in to play after 20 minutes or so? Any body care to respond???

This is the question I hear more than any other. Since strength training can interfere with the results of pure speed training, many athletes are asking how they should structure their workouts so they can take advantage of both strength training and speed training.

Here are 8 tips on how I recommend athletes schedule their workouts when they need to be both strong and fast – based on whether you are in mid-season or off-season.

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Most athletes train for both speed and strength because both are needed in order to excel in their athletic skills. What few have understood is that speed and strength need to trained for separately and differently.

And You Must Understand the Difference – Because Your Muscles Will Know The Difference.

If you think you are training for speed and your muscles think you are training for strength, you will be disappointed in your speed results.

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Why do leading sprinters use pylometric training if it doesn’t condition fast twitch fibers the way your program does?

That’s a question I received recently and it’s probably something many have wondered about. Here is my short answer.

Running is a plyometric exercise; however, if all you had to do to run faster was to go out and run, then each time you ran, you should be faster then the previous time out.  But, we all know this is not true.  This is because running more does not make you faster; but, rather, it improves your strength and endurance to run longer.
 
Most of these sprinters do plyometric training, not because it helps increase their speed, but because it helps them maintain their speed.  If you have ever watched a 100 meter or 200 meter sprint, it always “appears” that the guy out front is “pulling away from the field”.  This is rarely the case however.  What is really happening is that the other sprinters are falling back, unable to maintain their top end speed, whereas the winner is usually the one who can maintain his speed the longest.  This is why some athletes are built fast in the 40 yard dash but cannot compete in the 100.  And likewise the guy who wins the 100m rarely wins the 200m and so on up to longer races.

All the best!
Dr. Larry Van Such