Sport has developed into games and events performed by incredible athletes, because of this more and more sports are developing their Strength and Conditioning and players are becoming bigger and stronger than ever. Speed is one of the key components that every player wishes to possess. Speed in every sport allows you to dominate individual competitions whether on the court, the field, in a team environment or in individual games, being faster than your opposite player is an intimidating fact. The ability to generate great speed and acceleration is a strong advantage in many team and individual sports. If training is made specific to the sport and its movement, athletes should be able to develop speed to new levels.

 

It was Charlie Francis (1992) who stated that improving speed alone would make the weights athletes lift increase, but that weight training alone will not increase maximal speed. This is an interesting concept as many would think that as Strength goes up, the ability to transfer more force into the ground will also increase and therefore distance travelled per foot strike gets longer, consequently the athlete runs faster. There are many studies that will argue both sides of the argument.

 

Studies by (Lockie, Murphy, Schultz, Knight, and Janse de Jonga, (2012) looked at a range of training protocols, such as Plyometric exercises, weight training, free sprint training and resisted sprint training, to see which would improve sprint speed the most. Within their study, which was tested on field sport athletes they found that there are numerous ways in which to improve sprint speed over 10m. However, what they found was contradictory to Charlie Francis statement. They found that the greatest development in maximal speed came in the weight-trained group; the next most improved within the study was the free sprint-training group. The findings did however correspond with the Charlie Francis’ second point, which was  that sprinting alone does indeed increase weights lifted. This was however a study on 35 male field sport athletes, Charlie Francis worked with Olympic level sprinters, thus there could be an argument that the field sport athletes were training with weights in a way which they had not previously and increased their performance because of this.

 

Within the study it was discovered that it was the increase in step length, which seemed to be the common denominator with the increase in velocity of all the participants, which indicates a sprint specific increase in horizontal power. These findings are in conjunction with findings with a separate study by Lockie, Murphy, Callaghan, and Jeffries (2014), 2 years after his previous study,  which found that when testing between sprint training and plyometric training the athlete’s who decreased their time the most were the ones who improved their stride kinematics. In this study however, Lockie et al., (2014) found that sprint training was the greater training method for increasing sprint speed. This study was different as this was a comparison of plyometric training against sprint training, and like his previous study, sprint training did show far higher benefits then plyometric exercises alone. Plyometric training has been shown to increase sprint speed and acceleration for field athletes over 10m in other studies (Rimner & Sleivert, 2000) and shows that it can increase stride length. Lockie et al. (2014) conjectured that it was most likely to be the specificity of sprint training which increased the stride length and running kinematics more than the plyometrics alone, as technique was coached at every session and every step.

 

Ronnestad, Kvamme, Sunde, and Raastad (2008) tried to identify whether strength or plyometrics played a part in increasing sprint performance compared to just sprint training alone. Their study actually showed there was no significant difference between strength training alone and the strength plus plyometric training, however when they combined the 2 groups together, there was a significant improvement across all tests compared to sprint training alone. The greatest difference found in the sprint-trained group was from 0-10m, which was the smallest distance they studied, where the control group showed no improvement whilst the combined group showed that their sprint time had decreased 0.03s. Although this might not be a significant change this could allude to the fact that the players had become stronger. As maximal strength is an important quality for power development, the performance over the initial 10m could be put down to an increase in strength following the training stimulus (Ronnestad et al., 2008).

 

Ronnesad et al., (2008) found that the final changes over the full 40m for which they tested were not much different, as the combined group only improving by 0.01s, meaning that over 40m the control group caught up 0.02s in the next 30m because of their overall improvement of 0.5s. This might be a suggestion back to the statement made by Charlie Francis, that maximal speed cannot be developed by weights alone. A study on youth football players (Saez de Villarreal, Suarez-Arrones, Requena, Haff, & Ferrete, 2015) discusses the fact that speed development should be based around technique, as with a greater technique the ability to strike the ground more efficiently and therefore create a longer stride length whilst increasing ground reaction force and decreasing ground reaction time will help the athlete to run faster. This is hence a skill that must be learned. Within Charlie Francis’ book this is stressed as a belief that specific sprint running training should be a basic factor in all-training sessions.

 

The techniques underpinning how weight training could assist in enhancing speed and acceleration are vague and further research is required in order to determine if lower body weight training only can ultimately improve sprint acceleration and speed. Studies by Fry, et al., (1991) as well as Wilson, Newton, Murphy and Humphries (1993) suggest that training vertically does not improve sprint speed. This could therefore argue as to why no significant increases were made within the weight training and plyometric training groups as most were tested through squats and vertical jumps.

 

The theory that weights won’t improve sprint speed may not be completely accurate, as there is evidence to justify the fact that, especially for initial acceleration, heavy weight training is needed in order to improve force output. Research has shown that weight training can improve power production and strength, which can then have a transfer into running, as long as the mechanics are efficient. If the technique isn’t efficient and the athlete can’t transfer their newfound strength then the work in the gym is null in void. A healthy combination (Saez de Villarreal et al., 2015) of heavy strength training plus speed specific technical and a minimum of 1 maximal running training or technique session per week (Mathisen & Arne, 2015), is all that needs to be done in order to speed to be developed properly.

 

Reference List:

 

•  Francis, C. (1992). The Charlie Francis Training System. TBLI Publications.

• Fry, A. C., Kraemer, W. J., Weseman, C. A., Conroy, B. P., Gordon, S. E., Hoffman, J. R., et al. (1991). The effects of an off-season strength and conditioning program on starters and non-starters in womens intercollegiate volleyball. Journal of Applied Sports Science , 5, 174-181.

• Lockie, R. G., Murphy, A. J., Callaghan, S. J., & Jeffries, M. D. (2014). Effects of sprint training on field sport acceleration technique. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research , 28 (7), 1790-1801.

• Lockie, R. G., Murphy, A. J., Schultz, A. B., Knight, T. J., & Janse de Jonga, X. A. (2012). The effects of different speed and training protocols on sprint acceleration kinematics and muscle strength and power in field sport athletes. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research , 26 (6), 1539-1550.

• Mathisen, G. E., & Arne, P. S. (2015). The effect of speed training on sprint and agility performance in femal youth soccer players. Journal of Physical Education and Sport , 15 (3), 395-399.

• Rimner, E., & Sleivert, G. (2000). Effects of a plyometrics intervention program on sprint performance. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research , 14, 295-301.

• Ronnestad, B. R., Kvamme, N. H., Sunde, A., & Raastad, T. (2008). Short-term effects of strength and plyometric training on sprint and jump performance in professional soccer players. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research , 22 (3), 773-780.

• Saez de Villarreal, E., Suarez-Arrones, L., Requena, B., Haff, G., & Ferrete, C. (2015). Effects of plyometric and sprint training on physical and technical skill performance in adolescent soccer players. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research , 29 (7), 1894-1903.

• Wilson, G. J., Newton, R. U., Murphy, A. J., & Humphries, B. J. (1993). The optimal training load for the development of dynamic athletic performance. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise , 25, 1279-1286.