Speed. Every athlete wants to possess it. Every coach wants their players to have it. Every fan wants to witness it. “Speed kills.” “Speed is king.” “There's no such thing as too fast.”

With speed being such an important component of athletics, it makes sense that there are so many athletes trying to improve it. However, most athletes will never reach their full speed potential due to improper training means. With so many opinions and methods on the topic of speed development, it's easy for an athlete to be misinformed.

When dealing with speed improvement, there are two reoccurring methods of training that many athletes get stuck in:

  1. Just sprint all the time and you'll get faster:

    Let’s say that you just purchased a brand new car, and you decide that you’re going to make it faster. You’re going to increase its speed. So every morning, you take your new car out on a straight away, put the pedal to the floor, and top out its speed. Day after day, you keep taking that car to max speed, but after several weeks, the car hasn’t gotten any faster, and you wonder what’s wrong. What you need to do is park it in your garage, open up the hood, and increase the engine's strength. Turn that six-cylinder engine into an eight-cylinder and increase its horsepower. Driving that car at max speed isn’t going to make it any faster. You need to increase its horsepower. The same is true for athletes. You need to open up the hood and increase that athlete’s strength using the correct means.

  2. All athletes need to do is get stronger to become faster:

    This type of broad statement is common in coaching circles and it drives me mad. There are many types of strength, so what specific type of strength needs to be developed for an athlete to get faster? Maximal strength? Isometric strength? High speed strength? Explosive strength? Endurance strength? The list goes on and on. With different types of resistance exercise working different forms of strength, it's easy for an athlete to accidently be training the wrong type of strength!

How do you develop the correct type of strength?

There are two forms of strength that are crucial in speed development. Training these forms of strength can assure you progress.

  1. High speed strength:

    High speed strength can be classified as high speed movements with little or no resistance. This type of strength converts well to most sports, such as basketball and soccer where there isn't any resistance, as well as to sports such as American football and hockey where the pads provide little resistance during high speed movements.

  2. Explosive strength:

    Explosive strength is characterized by the athlete’s ability to display powerful efforts in the shortest amount of time. Basically, it's the amount of power an athlete can exert in a given instant. The more power an athlete can produce in less time, the faster, quicker, and more explosive the athlete will be.

Enter the tear regime

The tear regime, also known as the “regime of sudden release,” is a terrific way to increase high speed strength as well as explosive strength. The key to the tear regime is its ability to excite the central nervous system and intensify the muscle contraction function. In the first phase of the exercise, the athlete creates a maximal isometric contraction against an immovable object. This maximal contraction creates an increased excitability of the central nervous system (CNS). Then the external opposition is eliminated and an instantaneous explosive movement against a weak external opposition takes place.

How do you utilize this technique? Have the athlete approach a Prowler® sled with a split stance and put his hands on the high poles as if ready to perform a Prowler® push. At the other end of the Prowler®, have someone (another athlete or staff member) hold the Prowler® in place so that it can't move. The athlete will then push (in a split running stance) as hard as possible against the stationed sled (exciting the CNS through maximal isometric tension). After four to six seconds of isometric tension, have your staff member move out of the way, releasing the isometric opposition. Once the opposition is released, the athlete's built-up force will slingshot him forward into a Prowler® sprint. Allow the athlete to sprint anywhere from 10–30 yards and then repeat three to four times.

The tear regime is effective because:

  1. It's running under more difficult conditions:

    When external resistance is increased (sprinting with a weighted sled), the athlete's CNS is stimulated to generate a powerful flow of impulses activating the working muscles. As a result, there are increased motor units involved. The more motor units involved, the more force the athlete can produce. If the athlete increases his force output, speed will increase.

  2. It trains the correct energy supply system:

    Depending on the speed and duration of a cyclic action (running, jogging), there is a specific energy system that supports that specific running distance or intensity. Forty-yard sprints utilize a different energy system than 200-meter sprints, and long distance running utilizes a different energy supply system than both of these distances. Therefore, the athlete must train the correct energy system for his sprint distance. By increasing the external resistance of a sprint, it's possible to increase the influence on the specific energy supply system by increasing the mobilization and work of the muscles involved.

  3. It's specific:

    When choosing a means to improve speed, there must be an observation of the key movements, key muscle groups, and range of motion in running. The training aimed at these observations must be specific so that the improvements correspond to the athlete's speed. The tear regime does a great job of training the specific movements and muscles during a sprint because the athlete is actually sprinting! What could be more specific? The athlete is working the specific movements of his sprint, all the primary muscles are involved, and the specific range of motion allows the athlete to train for speed development in a specific and effective way.

Using the tear regime is a phenomenal way to increase an athlete’s speed. It's a method that not many athletes or coaches are familiar with. Add this method to other correctly programmed resistance and sprint protocols and speed won't only be admired and pursued but attained.