Can you make a person faster?

Can you make a person faster?

Speed training has gained popularity over the years. It’s more obvious now than it was when we were running speed training camps 30 years ago.
The NBA only had a couple of performance coaches when I joined the Dallas Mavericks in 1989. Our weight room was about as impressive as on you’d find at a 3-star hotel.
But can you make a person faster? (Let’s focus on linear speed for the sake of this conversation.)
The short answer is yes, of course. We see small improvements in athletes all the time, yet some folks will say, “no” you can’t make a person faster.
Maybe we don’t ask if you can make someone faster then, but instead ask if you can make a person fast or if it is worth trying to make a person faster.
Athleticism is a lot like musical talent. There are some that it just comes to naturally, without much effort. Others may have a marginal natural gift but a deep desire to compete at their highest possible level.
This is why I coach. As coaches, we don’t know what players’ specific genetic potential and limit is, do we? No. So our job is to bring out the potential of each athlete as they mature.

“I have always liked to say that we all learn how to run naturally, but we do not naturally learn how to run correctly.”



The first place we point our focus to is earning the mechanics or technique of running. Mechanics produce efficiency, efficiency produces speed and speed exposes flaws. Mechanics help us shine a light on where we can improve. From there the real coaching begins.
Coaching is teaching new content and presenting problem-solving techniques. So, if speed exposes flaws in a player, and I can correct them, then the circle is complete: mechanics produce efficiency and efficiency produces speed. As coaches, we also understand that at some point, a player’s age affects their talent; we cannot coach according to this factor though because most times we don’t know when the player’s age will allow them to be a proficient athlete...

“Yes, you can make a person faster because athletes rarely reach their maximum on their own.”



I have been able to see this truth throughout my career. Many other examples lend credence to this idea, and we coaches are obligated to train an athlete to be the fastest they can since we have no idea when their talent cap is coming. Late bloomers are the most curious of the bunch because everybody’s body is different, you have to keep working. Yes, you can make a person faster.
Here are three things you can start coaching now that will improve your players’ speed.

1) More strength exercises– get in the weight room. As one strength and conditioning coach from Eastern Europe said (with an accent), “You cannot run fast unless you are strong.” It’s true… very true.


2) Be a technician– have great mechanical skills. These days it is much easier to coach because of the advent of camera phones. You can record someone running, then re-watch the video frame by frame with said person to coach them in form.


3) Training speed– searching which training runs and speeds are the best for the team can be incredibly simple.



In 2002, at the Winter Olympics, I coached three men and two women for the USA Skeleton Team. We won 2 gold medals and one silver medal in all, but even those athletes who did not win medals were only hundreds, even thousands of seconds away from being first or in a medaling position.
Football players know that improving from a 4.71 to a 4.69 may be the difference between a scholarship or not.
Improving speed does not always mean going from a mule to a racehorse overnight.


You can’t make everyone fast, but you can certainly improve an athlete's speed.

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