Last week, I wrote an article about a strength training program I use at my speed training facility in Columbus, Ohio, that will help wide receivers run faster. The program was designed to emphasize power and overall total body strength which can be transferred into explosive speed used on the football field.
I had a couple good responses to the newsletter. Today I am going to discuss a speed workout that you can do if you are a wide receiver that will complement the strength program I gave you and allow you to run faster on the field.
As a bonus, I'm also going to tell you about a great conditioning workout that will get you in awesome shape for football practice. I love this workout and more football teams should be using it for their players, but I'll get into that here in a minute.
I begin all my speed workouts with a dynamic warm-up. You need to do this to get your athletes physically prepared for the movements that they will do during the practice, workout, game, etc. You could talk with 50 different speed coaches and they probably would have different dynamic warm-ups, but my guess is they would consist of a few of these drills: high knees, butt kicks, walking lunges, power skips, back pedals, and side shuffles. Using these drills will put your body in a variety of different movements to get it loose and ready to go.
You would then start with some form drills. Mechanics are imperative when it comes to speed development. Sometimes, people's speed will improve just by running with proper mechanics and nothing else. But the rest of the workout will be meaningless if we don't correct their form. Some of those drills that I use are: seated arm swings, A skips, flutter kicks, B skips, and arm swing hops. All of these work on the proper arm position for swinging, power of the balls of your feet, and other subtle mechanical positions that you need.
The next part of the workout would be power development. You can use resistance and assistance running for this. One of the simplest drills you can do would be incline and decline running on hills. The key is to find a hill that will be at a 10 degree grade. You don't want it too steep because that might hurt the mechanics. Run for a 20 - 30 yard stretch and run as fast as you can up and down the hill.
You need to run mechanically sound, especially downhill. If you find that as you run downhill, your mechanics breakdown and you are running on your heels than the hill is too steep. Running uphill develops power and running downhill with its overspeed effect will improve your speed.
Finally, to help your game-speed and quickness, we would do some agility drills. Most routes run by wide receivers don't go past 15 yards and some are even shorter and quicker depending on if you are a slot receiver, a deep threat, etc. I like to do cone drills for this. I set up patterns with the cones and have the receiver go full blast through the cones.
One drill I have is to set 4 cones up in a square. You can have them 5 - 10 yards apart. Pretend like the cones are two triangles, a top part and bottom part. If you start on the right side of the square, you run up and go around the first cone (to your left), then when you go around the second cone, you will run diagonal back to the starting cone, then go around that cone to your right to the 3rd cone, up to the second cone, and then diagonal back down to the starting cone.
So, that's a speed workout you can do for your wide receivers. To put a pretty bow on this article, I'm going to talk about an awesome conditioning workout that maybe you are doing currently with your football players. It is called pattern running.
Pattern running is when you divide your players up by position. Each position has different cardio levels depending on the demands of the job. A lineman is rarely running 10 yard sprints, where a receiver might do that a lot during the game.
So, what you do is figure out 10 patterns for your receiver and put a cone on the ground. That cone is the line of scrimmage where he will start. You shout out the first pattern, he runs it full speed, then jogs back to the cone, as he is jogging back you shout out the next pattern. Once he goes through all ten, he can rest for a set duration before you do your next set of patterns. You can have him do 2-6 sets if you like, with rest anywhere from 0 - 2 minutes.
You can do all sorts of different patterns, short and quick, or deep sprints. It is your call . I'll do something like this: 10 yard sprint, 20 yard sprint, slant, curl, an out, then run them all to the other side (e.g. slant to left, then slant to right). That would be ten patterns and you're good to go. It really simulates game conditions and makes conditioning a little more tolerable for the athlete.
Normally, the first set seems to be a piece of cake for the receiver, but after that, the fatigue creeps on them quick unless they have been doing some serious conditioning prior to these workouts. This would be a great drill to finish your speed training with and this type of conditioning can take you anywhere from 6 to 12 minutes. Short and sweet.
Alright, now you have the other piece of your speed training component for your wide receiver. Once again, this probably would have come in handy back in June, but better late than never. I think you could use that conditioning piece right now though. There really isn't any bad time start that. Feel free to comment on my blog, http://howtorunfasternow.com after you have tried some of these drills and good luck.
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