Speed Training Tips

Article by Anthony Sanza

4 Speed Training Tips for Running Faster, Harder and Longer

Whether you’re in track, football, baseball, basketball or you just want to beat your neighbor down the street once and for all at a foot-race, you’re in luck. The following are four proven speed training tips that will have you running faster, longer and harder than any competitor, guaranteed.

Watch Your Arms

What do you do with your arms when you run? If you want to learn one of the top speed running tips, it’s to make sure you are swinging your arms forward when you run. Some people tend to swing their arms across their body. When you do this, you are throwing your body off balance and you’re creating drag, two things you definitely don’t need if more speed is your goal. So make sure you swing your arms in the direction you’re heading if you want to get faster.

Tuck Your Chin

It’s a natural inclination to want to lift your head up when you run. It’s the same reaction people have when they strain to pick up a heavy object. But, again, you’re creating drag and you’re also putting your body into straighter position, which isn’t conducive to running at all. Instead, tuck your chin and keep your body forward and you’ll achieve much greater momentum.

Alternate Your Warm-Ups

The human body is amazing in its ability to adapt to stress. When a bodybuilder lifts heavy weights, for examples, that same bodybuilder will eventually have to increase his load if he wants to keep challenging his muscles. It’s the same with running. If you keep doing the same warm-ups everyday prior to your speed training, your body will eventually get used to it and those warm-up exercises will no longer stimulate your body effectively. And no matter how many of these top speed running tips you use, you’ll never get faster if you don’t warm up your body effectively before training for more speed. Plus, when you don’t warm up and then you try to push your body to the maximum, you leave yourself open to side-line causing injuries, and you definitely don’t want that.

Speed Training

If you are only relying on your normal practice sessions to make you faster, you might be running a slower next season compared to those teammates that spend a little extra time working on their speed training goals. By engaging in various drills a few times per week, you can increase your speed by a tenth of a second or even more. Just imagine blowing your teammates and coaches away because you’re suddenly drastically faster than you were just a few weeks ago. If you have never trained for speed before and you suddenly incorporate these top speed training tips into your normal training routine, you’ll experience that very situation.