I’ve been to a ton of seminars in the past year, and every single time I came away confused on the most effective way to design a strength and conditioning program for high school athletes. One of the most conflicting methods used when talking about speed training is overspeed.
What is overspeed?
In the past, I’ve learned that overspeed is a tremendous theory that forces your brain to fire in overtime, which ultimately makes your hands and feet react quicker to neuromuscular commands. I learned this from the Russian approach that if you trained your body to go beyond its normal maximal speed, you could delay the onset of muscular fatigue. The theory continues to say that the firing of muscle fibers will create muscle memory and cause your body to expect faster motions, thus making it possible to increase maximal speed by 20 percent more than your natural running speed.
We all know what this method looks like. It usually involves a treadmill with a rock climbing like harness around the athlete or a long bungee cord around the athlete’s waist and a coach 15–20 yards away standing in front of the runner pulling the cord toward the finish line.
If there is one thing I’ve learned from Dave Tate and many other contributors to EliteFTS, it’s to listen to someone who has been under the bar or on the field. So that is exactly what I did. I contacted the resources I’ve been lucky to befriend in the past year to get their thoughts on overspeed.
After viewing my copy of the lecture given by world famous speed coach, Charlie Francis, at the 2004 SWIS symposium, this question arose during the Q&A portion of his presentation. An attendee asked him if he uses overspeed in his training programs. Francis responded simply, “Never”. This sparked my interest, and I had to find out more. If the world’s greatest speed coach doesn’t use it, who does?
First off, I contacted the head strength and conditioning coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Matt Nichol. It would be impossible to find someone who has had more experiences and exposures to training theories than Nichol. From using the Westside method to being close friends with Paul Chek, Nichol knows high performance.
He said, “Overspeed is a scam…and nobody will convince me otherwise. I have never used it and never will. It’s a really nice idea, but it just doesn’t happen. In fact…in most cases, the opposite is true! When people are pulled (tubing assist or belt assist) faster than they can run naturally or are forced to keep up with an overspeed treadmill, they actually initiate the sprint with a breaking mechanism as a self-defense measure in order to keep from falling down and breaking their neck. Just watch these kids the next chance you get. The first 3–4 steps are clearly decelerative, not accelerative. I actually got to be involved in some cool biomechanics research on this exact subject when I did my masters degree under Dr. Tudor Bompa back in 2000. And if all that science doesn’t convince you, then ask yourself this. If it really worked so well, then how come none of the world’s fastest men/women use this shit??? Not Usain Bolt, Montgomery, Bailey, Johnson, nobody…”
My next interview was with head strength and conditioning coach, Tom Myslinski, of the Cleveland Browns. Not only is Myslinski viewed as one of the foremost authorities on strength and conditioning, but he was also an All-American Football and Track & Field athlete at the University of Tennessee and spent 10 years in the NFL. I asked him the same exact question and I got the same answer.
“Mark,
Nope…never. I tore my hamstring partially from the insertion performing overspeed when I was a player with the Chicago Bears. I was performing timed 40s while being towed by a defensive back. Insane! Overspeed training is nothing more than a gimmick. Needless to say, it’s biomechanically wrong. ‘Training centers’ promote this nonsense (whether through treadmills or tubing) for marketing, and parents buy into it to give their kids the so called edge. Too bad the only edge is a great teacher, hard work, proper programming, recovery, and consistency.
—Tom Myslinski, MS, CSCS”
I had to make this an international discussion, so I involved a mentor of mine—world renowned strength and conditioning coach, Phil Richards, who has spent many years training champions of boxing, track and field, rugby, powerlifting, and many more sports in the United Kingdom. I got this result:
“Mark,
I can tell you with 100 percent clarity that overspeed is for clowns. It simply doesn’t work, and I agree with Charlie. More importantly, I’ve seen it first hand in team sports before I met Charlie and was doing all that SAQ bullcrap. I nearly ripped the groin out of a player while doing overspeed.
—Phil”
I conducted numerous other interviews and still received the same responses.
Around the time of the NFL combine, we “hear” of football players transforming themselves and preparing for the “all important” 40-yard dash. At these million dollar facilities, we see this theory being attempted with no reward. While it sounds like a great method from an exercise physiology perspective, we have to ask ourselves this—if people whose sport depends upon absolute top end speed don’t do it, why would team sport athletes who don’t even need absolute top end speed do it?
A former college athlete, Mark Harmon is currently studying exercise physiology and nutrition and has recently released his first ebook. It’s hard to find a person at his age who has had more experience with internships or influences. Yet the path continues to be to find the right and wrongs of exercise science and strength and conditioning. Mark’s internships and influences include almost every speaker at the SWIS conference, athletes and coaches in the NFL, various NCAA sports, and professional coaches in boxing, powerlifting, bodybuilding, and rugby.
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