It has somehow been universally accepted that if you increase your strength and do running drills you increase your speed and quickness. However, I have not seen any results posted after athletes undergo these programs. In other words, how much improvement is there in the speed and quickness of the player?
To be objective each athlete should be tested at a specific distance, usually between 40 and 100 yards immediately before starting on the program and then again 6 to 9 months of participating in a strength and conditioning program. Results of recent studies show that there is little to no improvement!
Instead of seeing progress in speed and quickness we see a greater proliferation of strength, speed and quickness programs. In almost all of them we see progress made in the amount of weight that the athletes are capable of overcoming in different exercises. We do not however, see increases in speed! In many cases athletes show a decrease in their speed and quickness.
Most strength training programs are based on high-intensity and in some cases, high volume training. Because of the high-intensity athletes can only execute 5 to 6 exercises in a training session. This results in a lack of development of some of the smaller but very important muscles.
For example, there are very few training programs that emphasize strengthening of the calf muscles which play an extremely important role in the running stride or cutting pushoff. Nor do they include specific exercises to improve the knee drive and pawback, the two actions that generate up to 80% of all the force produced in running.
In other words, there is little specificity of the training in relation to improving running or cutting speed and quickness. Most of the exercises are general and as a result, do not transfer to performance on the field.
The use of many different drills to improve speed and quickness also leave much to be desired. For example, in doing hurdle drills in the athlete goes into a severely bent-over posture, when he drives the leg up and over the hurdle. At this time the knee almost touches the chest.
A drill such as this is different from what the athlete does in a game situation. It teaches the athlete movements that can interfere with his running and cutting. The same applies to many of the ladder and cone drills that teach more high knees rather than driving the thigh forward as needed in speed running.
This is one of the reasons why I developed the 1 x 20 RM strength training program. It has lower intensity and allows the coach to develop more fully all the muscles of the body that are involved and to do more specialized exercises that duplicate what occurs in specific joint actions that are the key to improving speed and quickness.
Coaches who have used this program have seen greater increases in speed and quickness than on the typical high-intensity programs. They have also seen greater increases in strength and muscle mass at the same time.
For more information see The Revolutionary 1 x 20 RM Strength Training Program, Build a Better Athlete, and Explosive Running.