Four Exercises to Improve Sprinting Speed

For any athlete looking to improve on athletic prowess, below are four exercises you must include in your training to help improve speed in your sport or a specific skill. Incorporate these into your speed training and you will see some fast gains in little time.

Squats: Front or back squats will not only strengthen the legs but also your upper back and help you gain some lean mass. Getting stronger in the squats can help with the production of force applied to the ground while sprinting.

Pull-ups:  An odd exercise to prescribe when addressing speed, but surely enough if you can appreciate how the body is a network and everything working together to generate force, you can see why the chin up is another great tool for improving speed. Pull-ups help strengthen the arms as well as the back, but very few think it also works on your abdominal muscles. Abdominal muscles will help transfer the force generated from the powerful arms to your legs which are in contact with the ground. A strong upper body will help counter act the torque of the lower body.

Power Cleans: This power exercise will definitely train that famous triple extension and elevate your game to the next level. Proper execution of the power clean will help you train the muscles to readily activate the higher-threshold motor units. In other words, it will make you explosive not to mention it can add some bulk to your traps. All athletes can benefit from this exercise.

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Glute-Ham Raise (GHR): An exercise that is not used enough. The GHR will humble even the most fit. Working the gluteal, hamstring, calves and even the erector spinae all which are part of the posterior chain. Stronger posterior chain = absolute beast in the gym. Strong posterior chain is essential to athleticism, it will also help in building a better looking derriere.

Train the Squats and pulls up together on the same day. Heck, you can even do them on the same superset. 

Do the power cleans at the beginning of the workout right after your warm-up and mobility drills. The glute and ham raise are very taxing, you can either do them on a separate day as the squats or power cleans, but if you are more experienced, you can do them on a different set on the same day as a power clean or even a squat day.

Example:

Day 1
1a) Squats - 8/6/4/2
1b) Pulls ups - AMRAP (As Many Reps As Possible)

Day 2
1a) Power Clean - 5/5/5/5
1b) 1Single arm dumbbell chest press - 8/8/8/8

2a) GHR - 6/6/6/6
2b) Scapular push-ups - 12/12/12/12

Again, incorporate these four main exercises to your training along with some speed training and watch your times decrease.

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A photo posted by Moses Vega (@mosesvega) on Dec 13, 2015 at 11:47am PST

Author
Moses is a Strength & Conditioning Coach at SPSC Strength & Conditioning, Athletic Trainer, Collegiate Athlete and Blogger.