Increase speed (Read 1226 times)

I am searching for suggestions on how to make myself faster. help

I am searching for suggestions on how to make myself faster. help

Run faster.

I dont think that question can be answered without knowing what you are doing now and how long you have been running.

I was going to say lose some weight. Dropping 10 pounds should--I hope--help me. But I checked your profile. Never mind. I'll keep an eye on this thread, because I need help with speed, too. But intervals are supposed to help. I was doing 400s and 200s, but next week I'm going to try to do an 800, two 400s, and four 200s, with a light jog for half a lap in between each interval. Then maybe the week after that, add a second 800 at the beginning. Oh, and I do a mile warm up and a mile cool down. Does this sound sound?

Before you can run faster you need to run farther. Higher weekly mileage will increase your level of endurance which will allow you to run at a faster pace with the same amount of effort. A higher level of endurance will also support additional speed training to help even more. You don't say how much you are running now but if you are serious about getting faster and about training for a half you should be running at least 20-25 miles a week. Tom

I am searching for suggestions on how to make myself faster. help

Build your aerobic base and long runs to the utmost. You'll be surprised how much faster you'll be running your races. Fartlek is fun (speed play) and done once in awhile can help as well. If you don't know what it is, look it up. There's a calculator called the MCMILLAN Calculator, look it up on-line--you can get your correct paces for your runs there. Track work sessions are fine, but can be a bit stressful when you're running higher mileage.

I am searching for suggestions on how to make myself faster. help

To run faster, you'll need longer strides and faster strides. In order to obtain longer strides, you'll need to work on strength and flexibility, in other words, mechanics. Doing some of the hill exercises is probably one of the best ways to develop this. You can also go to the gym and work on some weights, etc., but by doing hill running, you are actually performing the same movement--running--with resistance (call it either your own weight and/or hill, in other words, gravity). By performing hill bounding, you can develop good knee lift and good extension of the back leg. Good knee lift also helps obtain faster strides because now you're bringing your legs folded under your buttocks and making the leg=lever shorter; hense being ablt to bring your leg faster forward. Another good way is doing some sprint drills. I recently saw a clip of coach John Smith demonstrating, with Jon Drummond, a premier spoiled sprinter, a Pizza Delivery Drill. You stick your arms straight forward, hold them up like that... Now, you are holding hot pizza with melting cheese and all the toppings on it; you don't want to swing it right and left to slip them off. So you keep it straight up in the front... The idea is to hold your torso straight forward. With the legs, they were doing a sort of skipping but, after you lift your knees up, you stick your foot forward; and then slapping your foot down hard. This is actually very similar to Lydiard's "stride-out". I saw Marion Jones, among other "activities", performing this during her warm-up. It pays to observe what sprinters are doing at the warm-up field. Japanese have been working on biomechanics since 1991, Tokyo World Championships, where Carl Lewis won 100m in then world record time. It took them 10 years but in 2003, Paris World Championships, they had a guy winning a bronze medal in 200m--the first Asian to ever win a medal in sprinting event. I was just watching a DVD curtailing some of his exercises (yes, from Japan). There are tons of drills and exercises, starting from posture, that you can do to run fast. In fact, I'm thinking about starting doing some of those with my girl (an 800m runner) using the indoor soccer facility here in MN (it gets pretty cold here during the winter...). By the way, we've been doing hill bounding exercise once every other week during the winter. I had to shovel snow off the hill in the park so we can do it! (I thought about wearing spike shoes but in the end, I went against it). Many people think doing interval training or repetitions of 800~1600 would improve "speed". It will in a sense that you will get used to running faster and your mechanics improve somewhat. But by doing those tough anaerobic type exercise (okay, I do know that this is not fully physiologically correct term...), invariably you'll tighten up and your form might "go". Developing "pure speed" is more of a nerve and technique thing. If you want to specifically improve "speed", you would need to work on those elements. Also what most people overlook is leg-speed. This is really a nerve thing but, if you perform correctly, it improves your stride frequency immensely. Fine a gentle downhill, anywhere from 30~100m in length; lean into the hill and concentrate on moving your legs as fast as you can. If you can locate a flat area (20~30m) at the bottom of the hill, continue running like this over that extra distance to get the "feel" of quick leg turn-over. This is really an excellent workout to improve your leg-speed. You can also emmulate this action on a treadmill by going faster than you usually go (not just MPH-wise, but quick leg-turn-over). Just be careful not go get flown off the machine! Asides from being born with certain muscle structures, getting fast is a learnt skill. The more you practice, the better you'll get...to a certain degree.

I can only run about 3-4 days a week and I don't have alot of time to run before it gets dark. I live on an island and I work a little over an hour a way. I have been doing some speedwork. I have dropped my mile time from 10:00 to 8:45-9:00 depending on the day. I have only been running for 1.5 years for those of you who were wondering.