Skip to content

Improving sport performance

If you’re currently heavily involved in sports training, one important thing that you must be thinking about is what you can do to help yourself get faster. Speed is a vital component of performance in many team related sports so if you do hope to excel at whatever sport it is you have chosen, this isn’t something that you can afford to overlook.

If you’re currently heavily involved in sports training, one important thing that you must be thinking about is what you can do to help yourself get faster.

Speed is a vital component of performance in many team related sports so if you do hope to excel at whatever sport it is you have chosen, this isn’t something that you can afford to overlook.

Fortunately speed is also something that is fairly easily developed so if you are willing to put in some work to developing this capability, you will without a doubt be able to see improvements.

Let’s take a quick look at the main things that you should remember as far as speed development goes.

Concentrate On Tempo

The very first element of speed development that must not be overlooked is the tempo in which you’re executing the exercise.

In order to boost speed the best, what you’ll want to do is focus hard on performing a fast concentric action, and then take a longer time to perform the eccentric portion of the exercise.

This is going to help you boost the amount of power you are able to generate, which then translates to you being quicker on the field or court.

Don’t Neglect Heavy Weights

Second, another important thing to remember about developing speed is that you must be making sure to continue to lift heavy weights.

Some people think that lifting lighter weights will help them speed up the rate at which they can move through the exercise and while this may be true, you can’t go too light or you won’t be working on your power abilities.

Ideally you need a combination of speed and power behind you so the best case scenario would be to spend half your time during your workouts working on moving quickly through exercises with a slightly lighter weight and then the other half of the time focus on lifting at a normal speed using as much weight as possible.

Keep Your Workouts Low Volume

Another important point to note if you’re hoping to boost your speed is that you should be keeping your workouts on the lower end of the volume scale.

Speed training does really tax the CNS and will take a lot out of you so if you’re doing set after set after set, the chances are high that you won’t be recovering between workout sessions.

Since recovery is really vital to seeing progress from your program, this isn’t something that you’re able to overlook.

You’ll be far better reducing back on the total number of sets you complete and focusing on giving 110 per cent on the actual sets that you do do.

Get Some Sports Specific Training In Mind

Finally, the last thing that you must be doing if you want to get faster and improve your sports performance is make sure that you also keep up with your sports specific training.

Since you’re trying to improve your performance on the court or the field, you must be training to do so.

Keep up those sports practices and make sure you balance them with your workout sessions.

So there’s what you must know about getting faster and boosting your sports performance.

If you want to see results, work hard at these elements and you’ll notice big improvements week to week.

Cabel McElderry is a local personal trainer and nutrition coach. For more information on fitness and nutrition, visit the Fitness F/X website at www.fitnessfx.com