The Need for Speed Part 3

In part 2 of this series of developing speed I ran through my 1st training day of the week so now it's time for Tuesday.

Primary Goal - Heavy Ass Sled Drags (HASD)

Secondary Goal - Speed, Vertical Leap Enhancement

If you haven't read about the benefits of sled/prowler training then you're way behind.

In the past it has been more of a conditioning tool (and still is) but there has been a shift in using more for more quality of work, rather then quantity.

My prowler is on order but you can easily make do with other stuff. For the last month I have used milk crates loaded with weights and some trx straps as a sled and yesterday I used a bench turned upside down with weights placed on it which worked a lot better as the crates get "stuck' in the carpet.

The idea of sled/prowler dragging for speed development is the position that it puts you in. As stated in part 2, my goal is to increase my speed over 10m so improvements needs to come in how I start, strength and technique wise.

The picture above shows a sprinters start, now look at the position the HASD puts me in:

So the beauty of the HASD is that is strengthens that use for sprinting, in an actual sprinting position due to the forward lean and triple extension required to actually drag the load. If you try and stay upright you simply won't get anywhere.

Now that we've strengthened our sprinting position then I actually put it into practice and about 1min after each sled drag, I do a 10m sprint. This method is called contrast training and is used a lot over at Joe Defranco's gym in the US with gridiron players.

So yesterday looked like this:

Depth Jump from a High Box 4 x 5

HASD + 10m Sprint x 6 (I ramped the sled drag each to a max set with each set just being a length of the studio which is about 20m - I didn't count steps).