Speed Training-How Do I Get My Kids Started In Speed Training?

The need for speed. How do i run faster or sprint faster? How do i get stronger? These questions often arise among parents or even kids themselves whom have strong ambition to get faster than their peers or simply to win in their sport event.

In this topic i would like to address most common question regarding getting started with speed training. Often times youth athletes jump straight into complex drills from what they had seen in social media post without first addressing their needs and the actual demand for their sports and also on their current physical abilities and capabilities to carry out the exercises safely. This could lead to potential injury and requires tremendous amount of time and effort for rehab process.

For kids who just started out in playing sports, i would normally start out by getting them to master simple movement patterns and motor skills. At the early stage, it is important to reinforce the basic fundamental patterns and take the opportunity to rehearse the movement as frequent as possible. Also incorporating strength & conditioning training for youth athletes can be beneficial at this point for them to get faster, stronger and build resiliency. Below is the sample highlight of typical speed training session,

General Warm Up Session (5 min)

Dynamic Warm Up Session (5 min)

Fundamental Movements & Muscle Activation (10-15 min)

Basic Plyometrics Session (5 to 10 min)

Speed Drills Session (20 min)

Cool Down Session (10 min)

For season youth athletes whom would like to improve sprint speed by having your coach to monitor your sprint mechanics is a great place. By using tools such as slow motion video recording camera from your smart phone can give you tons of information about your sprint techniques. The information allows coaches to address and identify if there are any sort of potential imbalances of strength, muscle tightness, or it could be just the coaching point required to improve the sprint techniques.

The point is keep it simple. Rehearse, monitor, assess and improve. Hope it helps. Cheers!