STRENGTH FOR SPEED
Report #7268
If you want to improve in baseball, football, basketball and hockey, learn to run faster.
To run fast in competition, you have to run fast in practice /and lift heavy weights to become stronger. Run a series of short fast sprints with a short rest between each. Do resistance exercises because stronger muscles drive you forward with more force.
You can always tell when a coach knows what he is doing. This year, one professional basketball team has so many injuries that they had to bring new players to the team. No coach should ever require his players to run sprints at the end of every practice or lift heavy weights more often than twice a week. Every time you run fast or lift heavy, your muscles fibers are damaged and feel sore on the next morning and take at least 48 hours to heal. If you try to run fast or lift heavy when your muscles feel sore, you are at increased risk for tearing them and not being able to play at all. So, in the preseason, knowledgeable professional coaches on one day, have their players scrimmage hard and run sprints, and on the next, practice plays and take it easy. During the season, they play so often that can't do much hard training.
By Gabe Mirkin, M.D., for CBS Radio News
C Delecluse. Influence of strength training on sprint running performance - Current
findings and implications for training. Sports Medicine 24: 3 (SEP 1997):147-156.
Checked 8/9/05