Improving speed and acceleration?

mr tommo

mr tommo

mr tommo

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Stoke-on-Trent
I play 11 a side football and I'm a winger. I used to be able to knock the ball past players and beat them and had a pretty decent turn or pace and agility.

This was about 2 years ago (Im 23), I had an injury that kept me out for 18 months - back problem which resulted in multiple injuries around hip, groin and a hernia.

So I'm back to playing again now and have been for 6 months. I'm back to the same weight I was before, 5' 9'' and 10 1/2 stone. I just don't have that explosive speed and more. My game has totally changed because of this and I don't hav the confidence to go past players anymore. I'm still one of the quickest in the team so not exactly slow but I want to be able to turn, accelerate and run faster.

I know there is some very knowledgable people on here so I'd like some advice, excercises, drills, links to help.

I've done a couple of google searches and the theory is all there but some of the site want you to buy programmes from them etc.

Thanks :)
 
Squats/deadlifts will help you built up explosive power which is what you need for sprinting.

Internal training etc will help but I would have thought you'd get most of that from your football training.
 
Plyometrics is what you'll be after :)

Lots of very dynamic movement,: jump squats, sprints and as mentioned HIIT will help to increase your anaerobic capcity and overall recovery.
 
plyometrics, improving anaerobic fitness and endurance - would be first things really.
 
Thanks guys I will look into plyometrics. Not something I've heard of before.

Haven't really got access to weights so this looks good to me.
 
The thing about plyometrics is that, from what I learnt when we briefly touched it on my Level 3 Gym, was that it's very taxing on the joints. Lots of jumping and impact etc. So to begin with a plyometrics session would invlove about 60 'contacts' working up toward 80, 120, 140 etc per session.

Thinks like jumping as far as possible from a stand still, again and again in a long line. Jumping as high as possible. A small jump foward and then a big jump imediatley up as soon as your feet make contact. A short jump over something and then a quick jump.shuffle foward. It's all about getting the CNS firing synapses quicker and quicker.

It's interesting to see that some people have a tallent for it and others don't. To take plyometrics seriously you have to be injury free and in pritty much perfect alignment. As any niggles or imbalances (tight muscles on either side) will cause major problems/injuries further on.

This is what I was told. I'm sure it'll be interesting to read up on :)
 
Thats an interesting read there. I am far from injury free and my poor hip/alignment mean I regularly have back pain and see an osteopath when it gets too much, which is usually after a month of football and training. If I leave it longer than that the allignment usually results in a muscle injury on the outside of my hip, groin or top of quads area.

I will be having a good read around and see if I can pick up a decent book or read some studies.

Is this the sort of thing we are talking about?

 
Can't really watch a half naked man jumping around while I'm at work but he's talking you through a few basic plyo moves.

I'm sure some plyometrics will be fine for you but just if you wanted to get into it seriously then any underlying problems would be an issue.

Clap press ups are an example of a plyometric move. Jump squats are another good one.
 
Most people mentioning fitness stuff which may improve you some amount but I think you could work on technique like biomechanics stuff. Always staying on toes, get your head over your knees, keep your arms and legs in and power through the first few yards. After that your original pace should be enough once you're up to pace.

You are better googling it than relying on my memory but learning the correct techniques of sprinting helped me.

Also my favourite thing from pre-season training for improving my reaction times was to get 6 items and a centre point and have someone shout out an item to you and another point to move it to and do it as fast as you can going via the centre point. Hope that makes sense? Means you have to think fast in short spaces on tired muscles and you can do it against the clock.
 
Another thing that has helped me massivly with speed work is tyre drags. We do a mini circut after the gym which includes tyre drags, flipping tyres, crawls, skipping, log squats and all other sorts.

But the tyre drags I have noticed such a massive difference with sprinting, which I have always been pretty crap at.
 
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