Sean used to be a big basketball player in his early years where I assume he wore a lot high top basketball sneakers which are great at killing ankle mobility and shifting that movement stress to someone where else like the hips and knees.
Either way poor ankle mobility will also result in poor speed.
Sean has been training with me for the last 2 months or so and in that time we have worked solely on developing a strength base where he managed to do 2 reps at 125kgs on the Trapbar Deadlift before Xmas, which is around about 1.5 x his bodyweight, which is a "good enough" strength base for now.
Our post-Xmas phase is to work on his speed which we tested the other day. For his first few reps over 10m, I gave him zero instructions as I like to see how people work things out for themselves initially with almost every exercise I prescribe.
Here is set 1 that timed in at 2.40secs and 8.5 steps:
I'm not gonna lie, 2.40secs over 10m isn't great!
He did another 2 more sets with the only instruction from me being to "push into the ground as hard as possible", with those sets clocking in at 2.25secs in 9 steps and 2.27secs in 8 steps respectively.
The simple cue for those 2 sets did something positive as his steps decreased from 9 to 8 which means he was covering more distance per step, so I could see we were on the right track.
For set 4 I got him to set up in a better acceleration starting stance - one that has his shin angle pointing in the direction of where he wants to go.
If you look closely in the first video, his lead leg shin angle is pointing more towards the roof than forwards which means when he goes to take off, he goes up instead of forwards. Timing starts as soon as I see a hand move so if he moves straight up, he's being timed but he isn't moving forwards, so that's a huge energy waste right there.
It also means that his entire first step goes pretty much nowhere.
On set 4 with a far better set up for acceleration and horizontal displacement, he clocked in at 2.16secs in 7.5 steps:
OK so some decent improvement there already but I knew his lack of ankle mobility was still causing an issue with his set up, especially in how low he could get into dorsi flexion in his starting stance.
Prior to set 5 we did some band traction ankle mobilisations for 2 sets of 10 to try and open up the ankle joint a little bit to allow for a greater range of motion.
Set 5 clocked in at 2.12secs in just 7 steps:
Even compared to the previous video his start is a lot "cleaner."
So here are Sean's before and after stats:
10m Set 1 - 2.40secs or 4.16 meters per second
10m Set 5 - 2.12secs or 4.71 meters per second
As you can see Sean improved his acceleration speed by .55 meters per second or just over 1m in a 10m sprint - a 10% improvement in about 30mins.
Micro improvements in speed can have huge implications:
- Sean can now get to the ball or contest 1 meter earlier then he previously could
- Sean will now be cleaner when attempting to possess the ball because his opposition isn't right on his tail
- Sean's decision making will be far greater now as he has more time to dispose of the ball
- Sean's disposal efficiency will also increase because of his increase in time to dispose of the ball
Be like Sean.
Want speed? Hit this.
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