Strength is speed!

A lot of people have heard me say that I can tell who is the fastest athlete based on the amount of pull ups that they can do.  This works because pull ups are a test of relative strength to body weight.  When we run that is what we are doing, expressing our strength to bodyweight.  The stronger your legs and hips, the further you can move your body with each step, thus the faster you can run.  When an athlete is first learning to run they get faster by improving their sprint mechanics and nervous system activity but this adaptation only takes you so far.  Once you have a little bit of experience running the only way to get faster is to get stronger.  People who say they are "speed coaches" and only address the mechanics and nervous system activity drills are only tapping the surface of your athlete's potential speed.  A true "speed coach" understands that unless an athlete gets stronger they will never get faster.  Yes an untrained athlete will get faster by just working on running skill, but that improvement is very limited and ends very quickly.  Unless the athlete is working on improving their strength then they will never realize their full potential.  At The Spot Athletics we are not concerned with just making minimal improvements.  We focus on developing the total athlete through speed mechanics drills, injury prevention, explosive training, strength training, and conditioning.  This total athlete development allows our athletes to see long term major improvements in athleticism.  Don't get sucked into only working on sprint mechanics, make sure you are working on developing the whole athlete.   It always boggles my mind how people say they are doing "speed" work but their whole workout is what we do in our warm up.