The reason I’m successful is because I rebuild their acceleration mechanics, the 2nd pillar of speed development.

Whether you’re trying to blow by your defender on the basketball court,

Get the jump on a DB on the football field,

Or steal more bases,

Your acceleration mechanics are everything.

And there’s sprinting science to back this…

For one…

Researchers have shown that if two guys are equally matched in every aspect of a race, besides the start, the athlete with the better start will finish the race with a full one second advantage.

To put that in perspective, Usain Bolt beat the second place runner in the 100m by just .13 seconds.

So, if you’re botching your start, you’re at a serious disadvantage.

Two,

As I said above, the difference in velocity between an elite athlete and an average athlete after just their first step, is almost 2 MPH, and with each step, the gap between the two gets larger and larger.

So, if you’re looking to increase your first step explosiveness, acceleration mechanics are it.

Put simply…

A guy who’s versed in acceleration mechanics builds velocity faster than the competition.

So how do you sharpen your acceleration mechanics?

We break it down and focus on stance, start, and steps.

Stance is getting in the most efficient position to build speed this comes down to basic physics and setting the body up in the best mechanical advantage based off the angles of their limbs.

Start is generating as much force out of both legs as possible in the proper position of the body. Contrary to what most athletes believe they are rarely harnessing the force out of both legs when starting and if they are they aren’t doing it in the right direction.

Steps focus on the lower limb action the first few yards of a sprint. If we can get an athlete to produce efficient motion without cycling here we can drastically produce more force with each step and decrease unneeded motion.

Nail those three things down, and you’ll be on your way to elite speed.

If you look at your body laterally and put a line down the middle of your body, the frontside mechanics take place on the front side of your body, and the backside mechanics take place on the backside of your body

And if you properly shift contact with the ground more towards the front of your body, you’ll be able to produce more force and run faster.

An overwhelming amount of sprinting authorities agree on this.

In fact, researchers have found that the force created during the front side of ground contact is 2,000 Newtons (or about 450 lbs) while the force created during the backside is a measley 1,000 Newtons (or about 225 lbs).

That’s a 100% difference in force created in the frontside vs backside.

It doesn’t make sense…

Especially when athletes are capable of teaching their body to make ground contact in an efficient position.

What is needed is consistent, effective drills that isolate this component.

And again, athletes naturally run backside dominant. So without the proper drilling and without ingraining correct motor patterns, you’ll be stuck in the bad mechanics trap.