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Speed Training - Speed Off The Mark

All players can train to get quicker & being quicker off the mark is a great asset to have when playing rugby. Tom Varndell one of the quickest players in the game goes through some acceleration drills

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Yeah. So today we're going to be doing obviously the beta Basics are warm up that I would do before a speed session a couple of drills to help you improve that acceleration improve that basic speed. Yeah warm-ups is so important because obviously speed training is is it's a huge stress on your muscles in your hamstrings quads. You have to make sure you warmed up you go through there's always steps of what we got. Do you got your muscles ready for explosive energy that's going through them. So one of his key it's but hopefully just get oversight of my basic speed training and stuff that can help you improve your speed and acceleration basically so start off with very simple. It's just toe touches and what you want is you want this foot to that that movement see what your foot to be actually bouncing it back up back up the ground. So you start nice and slow nice and Tall nice and upright good posture. Slight arm drive and it's just bring those toes up towards your Hill and forcing them back down nice and steady and this is just wake up the carts and getting you ready for that bouncing motion when you give me running, okay, nice and steady and just bouncing not very much Ford motor movement. Just nice and steady almost up and down the spot to slight movement forward. Okay. Do that for about 10 meters and then walk back shaking it off. And we repeat that three times. It works like the same way as weight training or power training. It has to be consistent it so you have to do I say on a weekly basis maybe a couple times a week. It's very important you do it because you won't see any Improvement unless you do do that consistently consistently and and changeup as well. You can't be the same exercise over and over again because your body gets used to that and then you get a plateau effect and and you want to be changing up but making sure you're doing the speed work every single week. It's expects exercise is an a skips. So all it is it's just there. So it's getting the knees nice and high again focus on that triple extension getting those heals almost coming up to the back side. This is all getting the lower than the lower body ready for running. Okay. This is all about firing up them and hamstrings find out then glutes fire at the calf muscles base of the main muscles are going to help you to with that speed acceleration. You have to get them ready for exercise. So go for that one more time, so it's just there. And it's almost almost like a cycling motion. Are you on a bike you want that get that Caitlin's ready for for the running and again about 10 meters work and repeat that three times. I speak speed train can take quite a lot out of you. So you want to be done early in the week, maybe Monday. Maybe it's even a Tuesday and you can do it. Anyway, you can do at your local park you can do it. I mean, we're lucky here at the training ground here. We've got a running track. But anywhere anywhere you want wears a flat piece of ground you can do you could do your training then we going to be skips. And this one very similar to the other one, except you're getting the extension out. The legs are coming out in front of you and you're pulling them back. So you're getting that pulling motion. It's there and almost scraping the floor as you going. So to show you in real time. Threw up here and it's there and this is a really good one for getting hamstrings to fire up. And again same as before repeat 3 times rest and then walk back. It's important that every single rep is quality. There's no point getting getting lazy and not bring the legs all the way up or or just flick it up the floor. You have to get that technique. You have to get the leg out Piney get the hamstrings to work extend out and then drag it back up and drag it back every single time because that Dragon Motif motion is what's going to allow you when you're running to refine and get the acceleration going forward. So in between sets just a nice little easy walk through the hamstrings is to get them really fired up again. Just walking nice and steady making sure you're nice and loose in the hammies because obviously we're sprinting hamstrings take a bit of a battering and they need to be ready to run to go that 5 meters for And just back it off nice and steady. All the way through I'm going to bit of a hip flexor stretch. So there's been more of a static stretch hip flexors a really important cause obviously they're the ones that control the leg Drive bring the legs up to you. So it's important they're nice and loose. So all you do nice and slow to start off with As you feel that he's off to your arms up above your head just brings bit more of a stretch in everything's got to be earrings got being line M is gonna be straight because that's the that's the that's how you let me sprinting. You don't miss printing allow the patient to get everything nice and straight. You want to waste any energy any power. You want to be going forward or down to put a projectory forward. There's important that you stay you keep everything in line posture is very important as well. A lot of people naturally think all because you're sprinting you got to be hunched up. So it's not it's not you don't want that at all. You only quite upright nice and straight. You know, you see what's going on front of you and you want everything to go forward. We're going to have a calf stretch. So literally just posting those cuffs about 10 inch size or 20 altogether. And then we've got that 20. Just want to hold on one side making sure it really stretched out for the calf muscles. Good. So once you've gone through that wall up and down that three times, but we obviously we're ready to run you you're warmed up and you're ready to go. Yeah, by the time you finish that warm-up you want to feel like you've worked already. You want to feel like you've got the bill. So you want your body to feel hot and ready to ready to run. There's no point going into sprinting if your copy of your cold and you've sort of a bit lethargic still feel a bit tight and you still feel like you haven't done any work you want when you're doing these exercises you want to feel like out of breath.