With the NFL kicking off tonight, I thought I would discuss with you how you would get fast if you were an NFL player. I know I have talked about various workouts for wide receivers and speed development in previous posts, so I wanted to do something a little different. I went and researched two of the NFL’s fastest players in the league and will talk about some of the exercises and drills they do to maintain and even enhance their awesome speed.

Chris Johnson and DeSean Jackson are arguably two of the fastest men in the NFL. They are so fast, you could add me and “Slow Poke” Rodriguez (the mouse who was friends with Speedy Gonzalez) and we could beat most 4×100 relay teams. Johnson set an NFL combine record when he ran the 40 in 4.24 seconds. DJack is no slouch himself, running his in a 4.35 clip. Folks, let me tell you that is fast. So let’s see what they are doing to keep their speed at a high level.

I’m assuming that while Chris Johnson was holding out for bigger bucks (I don’t blame him one bit), he was doing all these drills to keep his body finely tuned for speed. At his level though, you really need to examine every inch of his mechanics and workout program to see what can be improved. You just can’t throw a cookie cutter speed program at him like you would do normal athletes. It wouldn’t improve or even maintain his speed at all. It must push his body beyond a limit to get every ounce of speed out of him.

Travelle Gaines was the performance coach assigned to the task. What he determined is that the best way to improve Chris Johnson’s speed was to work on his stride length and core strength by increasing the strength and flexibility through his hips and core. In case you didn’t get to read it, I have an interesting read on stride length vs. stride frequency and some of my debate could be applied here as well, but for now let’s stick to Mr. Johnson.

What they did was take some of the basic drills that you do for speed, emphasize perfect technique, and add resistance fit for the fastest man in the league to develop the strength and power needed to accomplish their goals.

For example, they did the following drills that I use with my athletes, but they added a band around CJ’s waist to develop more strength and power:

  • High Knee Carioca
  • A-Skips
  • Accelerated A-Skips
  • He does each movement 2-4 times for about 15-20 yards with a 30 second rest inbetween.

For added power development, he does work on a vertimax. Various jumps off two and one legs, with a medicine ball, and doing step ups on a box. Your average athlete doesn’t have a vertimax, since it is a pretty expensive piece of equipment, but they usually have access to dumbbells. Chris does a dumbbell reverse lunge and a dumbbell split squat, to develop the single leg power and strength he needs when he runs (which is a series of single leg explosions).

The twist that Johnson’s trainer uses is placing an Airex underneath his foot. So, the reverse lunge has his front foot standing on the Airex and the split squat his back foot is on the Airex. This is to provide instability to develop his balance, which is needed in football. To get a good look at Chris Johnson running, you can check him out on this Youtube video I created with my critique of his running form. In a few words, I love it.

DeSean Jackson, you will notice, has similar drills in his speed workout. He also adds a few receiver specific drills to get him prepped for his position. Djack was on my fantasy football team last year, so I was studying him a lot. I have a drill for you to do to try and prevent those concussions you seemed to be getting. You do me no good on your bench with an injury. But, I digress.

Jackson’s speed workout is very similar to the drills that you would see as part of my dynamic warm-up and form drill session:

  • A-Skips
  • Butt Kicks
  • High Knees
  • Carioca
  • Bounding – He does quick alternate bounding off of each leg to help with the power and stride length.
  • Five-Cone ZigZag Drill – This is a short quick drill he does to help with his sharp cuts that he makes as a receiver. He also might do this drill with a spin. Once again, it is about mimicking what he would do on the field and this helps condition his body to be prepared for those things.
  • Hardball Catching – This isn’t really for speed, but just to develop his hands. A partner stands about 10 yards away and throws it at him as hard as he can at different positions of the body. Djack just catches them with perfect technique.
  • Catching In Traffic – Djack runs a pattern with someone opposite him running at him then cuts in front. He has to make the catch.

Yes, these two athletes have a lot of God-given ability, but they don’t just rest on their laurels. They are doing appropriate drills and exercises to keep them in the best shape possible. If they can, they will try to improve their speed as well. They don’t want it to be a given that they will be able to outrun everybody. They have to assume that the opposition is doing what they can to stop them. For this newsletter, I researched this information on www.stack.com. It seems to be a great resource for athletic development.

If you do these drills, you too will improve your speed. You might not get to their type of speed, but you will definitely enhance what you already have. A .1 of a second improvement is an improvement by a little over 2 feet. I’m sure you can figure out how that 2 feet will help you out: scoring a touchdown, beating out a throw to first base, or getting to that loose ball faster. Enjoy the NFL weekend and watch these two guys as they give clinics in speed development.