In virtually every sport imaginable...

There are two common skillsets you perform well.  

One is hand-eye coordination.  

And the other of course, is SPEED.  

But as many athletes have come to believe over their years in youth sports...

Reason being: 

The vast majority of coaches in all sports...

Simply don't understand the mechanics of sprinting well enough....

To give any real useful advice to their players on how they can learn to run faster.  

So in this post, we're going to address this problem, by covering the top 10 "speed hacks"...

So here we go...

If you’ve ever watched Olympic level sprinting on tv before…

You’ve probably noticed the odd fact that sprinters have surprisingly large and defined arms...

For people who apparently spend all their time running. 

But the truth is, you really only see these types of arms on the highest level sprinters...

While most middle school and high school sprinters have arms that look a lot more like what you’d expect.  

Reason being: 

And if they aren’t doing the work, the muscles don’t get stressed, and they simply won't grow.

And simply by mastering the technique of the arm swing...

You’ll get instantly faster...

Because you’ll be recruiting muscles that have gone mostly unused, in all your years of sports. 

And as a welcome side effect, those arms will eventually start looking pretty impressive as well.

With novice sprinters...the big toe is by far, the most underutilized, and underestimated tool for running.  

Which honestly, isn't that surprising.  

I mean, how important could one toe possibly be...

Compared to the infinitely larger leg muscles like the quads, glutes, and hamstrings? 

But let’s think about this for a moment…

In a 100m dash, a decent sprinter might take an average of around 50 strides.  

Now…imagine 50 strides where all the push comes from the forefoot, while the big toe lifts passively off the ground…

Compared to 50 strides where each time, the big toe continues pushing for that one extra inch. 

At a minimum, that extra inch times 50 results in a gap of close to 5 feet by the end of the race. 

Almost an entire body length gained, just from the big toe!

The common advice you hear from most athletic coaches is:  

The longer your strides, the faster you run. Correct? 

Which in theory, seems to make sense. 

So the natural takeaway for young athletes is: 

If I can just extend each stride a little bit longer, I’ll run faster.  

And in a sense this is true. 

But ONLY if you do so by pushing harder off the ground, and traveling further through the air.

The problem is, what young athletes will instead try to do...

Is extend their stride by landing further in front of their body.  

Which in this case, has the exact OPPOSITE effect of slowing you down...

Because it generates a breaking force each time you strike the ground from this angle.  

So to correct this common misconception...

When you are accelerating from a standstill...

Rather than trying to take longer steps, instead, try to focus on taking smaller steps faster.

And up to a certain point at least, more speed. Correct?  

However the part that almost no one understands is...

The amount of force a muscle can generate is not only determined by its physical size…

But also by your brain’s ability to control that muscle through your nervous system.  

For example, if one pound of muscle in your legs can currently generate one unit of force per second…

One way to improve that to 2 units of force would be to build an extra pound of muscle.  

Which is fine, except that adding an extra pound of muscle takes time, and also adds more weight for you to carry.

The second strategy however...

Is build your mind-to-muscle connection so that one pound of muscle can create 2 units of force...

Without even having to grow beyond its current size.  

And while this will at some point cause you to grow more muscle anyway…

Each new pound of muscle will now be able to generate 2 units of force as well.  

Which as you might imagine, is a huge advantage to anyone who can do this.

Much like how your brain's control of your muscle determines how much power you ultimately generate…

The same is true when several muscles must work together to generate a single force.  

With novice sprinters, this is a common problem between the glutes and calves.  

And here’s why:

First off, glute engagement by itself, is an extremely common problem in almost all sports, with almost all movements.  

Most athletes won’t learn to consciously contract their glutes until they’ve spent some time working on it in the gym...

With standard leg exercises like squats, deadlifts, and leg presses.  

The big flaw with these movements though...

Is that they all load weight on the heels, meaning the calf and glutes never learn to fire at the same time.  

Which creates a problem with sprinting, since here, they ALWAYS fire at the time. 

Therefore, simply by training these two muscles to work better together...

You instantly see a jump in performance.  

In sports, strength and flexibility are commonly thought of as being inversely proportional to each other.  

As one goes up, the other goes down. Which seems to make sense.

Bodybuilders certainly aren't known for their flexibility. 

And ballerinas certainly aren't known for their bench press. 

But there are also many exceptions to this rule. 

The most obvious one that needs no explanation, is gymnastics...

Where both strength and flexibility are taken to almost superhuman levels.  

A far less obvious example that also applies though, is sprinting.  

While you wouldn't think of big muscular sprinters to be unusually flexible athletes...

When you look at slow motion freeze frames of elite sprinters vs amateur sprinters…

You can clearly see how at “full extension”...

Elite sprinters are able to achieve a much wider spread between their front and back legs.  

And this one detail alone clearly explains much of how they are able to cover more distance with each stride...

And run faster as a result.  

Which is why, when you watch sprinters train...

Improving and maintaining flexibility takes up a surprisingly large portion of their efforts.

Yet with athletes of almost all other sports...

This connection between speed and flexibility, for some reason, just hasn't been widely established yet.  

Which is why, just like every other hack in this series...

Fixing this one thing alone is enough to give you a huge edge over the competition.  

When accelerating from a standstill...there’s a little known trick that pretty much no one outside of high level sprinters will ever use…

To gain maximum acceleration in the first 3-4 steps.  

You see, the biggest challenge of generating power in these few steps...

Is being able to drive a strong enough force INTO the ground to get a strong rebounding force OFF the ground.  

Because as we all learned in science class: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  

So what many high level sprinters do...is widen their strike in these steps so they are essentially pushing side to side…

And directing a portion of each push, back into the next step.  

Mastering this one technique alone is enough to generate enormous gains in acceleration.

If the principles in this article made sense to you...and you think sprint training might be the answer you've been searching for....

Click the button below to find out the details of our exclusive premium training course.