Sometimes I admit, maybe I’m a little too sensitive.  No not the sensitive type that will comfort you when your cat dies.  Sensitive when it comes to people assuming they can go to just anyone and get speed training.  It gets my blood boiling.

“Yes, my athlete is doing speed training with Johnny down at the big box jump we belong to

[or insert foo-foo country club you belong to].”

The speed coaches I’ve come to respect have not resided at your local LA Fitness.  No offense to LA Fitness, but paying your dues isn’t helping Mrs. Walsh lose 10 pounds by doing a running routine on the treadmill.

Speed training is a science.  No, there is no speed training school that you go to like Med School or Law School, but there is an education behind it that goes beyond reading from a book one day and saying, “I can apply this and now I’m a speed coach.”

“My child just doesn’t look right when he/she runs.  You know what I mean.”

Yes, I know exactly what you mean, but will Johnny the personal trainer?  If your speed coach doesn’t take an analysis of your athlete’s running mechanics then he/she is just a personal trainer pretending to be a speed coach.

I’m constantly trying to improve on my ability to analyze the running mechanics of an athlete.  Just recently, I spent time with a chiropractor trying to learn more potential issues to identify with one’s running form.  Does your personal trainer know how to tell just by the foot landing whether the glutes are not firing or whether you have lack of flexion in your ankle?

That could be the difference between your athlete getting faster or not.

I used to watch the football team I strength coached do plyometrics to improve speed.  I love those coaches, but they never once asked me my thoughts on their speed program.  It essentially was a conditioning program.

They had different height boxes, we’ll say 24 inches, 30 inches, 36 inches, and 42 inches.  They’d line them up and have an athlete jump up on one box, jump down, then jump up to the next one.  Some athletes could handle it, others were scraping their shins and really struggling.

This was not developing the speed of all the athletes just some.

You can’t just have the athlete push on through this.  If he/she can’t jump the height, they can’t jump the height.  You need to have a progressive program, that will develop the athlete’s abilities over time.  You also need to know the athlete’s limits and realistic potential gains.

I might have an athlete I think can get to 42 inch boxes so I would create my program so that we would hit that over time.  I might have another athlete that will never come close to 42 inches, but 30 might be possible based on age, maturity, and ability.

Does your trainer know how to create that program where your athlete won’t get hurt?

Loren Seagrave is one of the top speed coaches in the world.  If your trainer/speed coach has never heard of him, stop paying him/her money.  He once said, “Working or trying harder doesn’t make you faster.”  Yes, you want intensity in your speed training program, but how and when you apply it is the key to it.

That is what a good speed coach can do.  They can put together the program appropriately taking all those things into consideration.  Are we doing this drill too soon before running mechanics are addressed?  Is this plyometric jump too early for the level of this athlete?

There might be a trainer at LA Fitness that does know about speed training.  Wonderful.  But, do your due diligence and find out who he has worked with, what his background was, and if you’re really just looking at him to save a few bucks, then understand you get what you pay for.