THE SECRET TO GETTING YOUTH ATHLETES FASTER

Confession: I always get frustrated (or in some cases completely pissed off 🤬) when I come across athletes and parents looking for quick fixes for speed development. When it comes to speed, we have to think long term development… especially when we’re looking at the youth athlete.

If we take a deeper look at some of the “speed” programs out today, we will see that most are in fact responsible for making the athletes slower, not faster, and often put them at an increased risk to injury, specifically soft tissue injuries like hamstring, quad, and hip flexor strains.

There’s so much that goes in to speed development. Technique, mechanics, strength, power, mobility, flexibility, nutrition, sleep… the list goes on and on. As athletes,parents and coaches, we have to look past the smoke and mirrors and understand that quick fixes are not sustainable and often come at the expense of another quality.

Now- you know what makes me happy? When athletes and parents ask questions about how to optimize performance and develop speed/agility long term. That lets me know that whether they train with ELITE or not, they are genuinely interested in doing things the right way and giving their young athletes a chance to have long term success.

Here’s what our research has shown: The biggest gains in speed are made by the athletes who consistently train speed between the ages of 14 and 18. What does that mean? Simply stated, in an annual calendar- the athletes who allocate 3 months to speed training and development had the bigger overall increase in speed compared to those who sporadically/inconsistently trained.

We looked at 16 of our athletes, ages 14 -18, who trained with us for a minimum of 6 months out of the year from 2015-2019. We found that the biggest increase in speed was at the beginning of their initial training program (ages 14/15). On average, these athletes took their 40yd dash times from 5.127 to 4.88 in a 13 week training block. That’s a .247 change which is pretty significant.  The remaining 13 weeks was allocated towards developing strength/power. You might ask why we didn’t just go for another 13 weeks of speed training and try to compound that result into a .5 decrease in 6 months? Short answer- it doesn’t work that way. That .247 increase was all that those young athletes could handle with the tools they had. The genetic potential of those 14 year olds had been reached. From there, the next steps would be to spend time increasing the genetic potential. We do that by getting them stronger and more powerful.

We repeated this process every year for 3 years, allocating mid December through mid March to speed training and the remaining time towards strength/power development in addition to speed. The results were an improvement of about .1 sec every year. By the time that group became high school seniors, 11 out of the 16 were running sub 4.65 in the 40 yd dash and 3 of the 11 were sub 4.6. The remaining 5 were all lineman (240lb and up) who ran sub 4.85. All 16 were also in the 95th percentile with regards to their change of direction abilities as well. By taking the long term athletic development approach, we were able to maximizes their genetic potential and give them sustainable results.

How do we achieve these kind of consistent results? Simple- we control as many variables as possible while implementing measures to consistently track progress along the way. By doing this we can make sure that we don't skip any steps necessary for attaining success. We also create the right competitive environment filled with the right people. These small details - likeminded people, knowledgable coaches, results driven process, and access to resources, allow each athlete the chance to reach their true potential. For more information on our speed program and our approach to speed training click here. To speak with a coach regarding any of our services, email info@sstarsnj.com.