Treadmill use has a wide variety of advantages for athletes. As an athlete and personal trainer I have been around some intense training routines. One of the most interesting training routines that I have studied and done myself is speed training. Manipulating how fast your body can run is something extremely interesting to me.
I have always been a huge fan of the 100 meter sprint event in the Olympics and am in awe of the incredible speed and physiques that these athletes possess. I began to train my speed regularly in high school and have come up with a variety of speed development routines.
The two main aspects of your speed are stride frequency and stride length. The treadmill gives you the advantage of working on both through different workout routines.
Stride Frequency is a huge aspect to your speed and the treadmill is the perfect training platform to enhance this. Doing sprint training at the highest speed you can run and at the highest incline will help to develop explosive leg drive. This enhanced leg drive will help you with your stride frequency which will help you develop a quicker and more explosive first step and also help you to sustain a faster top speed. The trick to sprinting on the highest incline is to never use the hand rails. It is fairly easy for most people to get up to top speed at a slight incline using the hand rails, but this is actually making it much easier. To get the full effect of the sprinting workout you must never use the hand rails. If you need the hand rails at the top speed it is obviously too fast for you.
Most treadmills will go up to a speed of 12 miles per hour and a top incline of 15. This should provide enough of a challenge for even the top level athlete. I can get up to 12 miles per hour for a 30 second sprint but can only manage this at a 7.5 percent incline. If you can do this at a 15 incline you are well on your way to having world class speed!
Weighted arm swings using perfect sprinting form can also be a great speed enhancing workout on a treadmill. You take 3 lb dumb bells in each hand and run a sprint with them keeping perfect sprinting form and arm swings. Once you get use to the weighted arm swings and go back to not holding the weight, you will feel much faster. This is one of my favorite tricks to manipulate my body into running faster. It is also great at improving stride length since your arm swings are a major component of this.
The more times your feet hit the surface per minute the faster you will become. This is why stride frequency is so vital in improving your speed as an athlete. I will count the number of times that my foot strikes per minute during a sprinting workout on the treadmill. If I am improving my foot strikes, I am thus improving my stride frequency and getting faster.
The treadmill is a powerful training tool for improving the 2 most important components of speed development- stride frequency and stride length. Through the use of incline sprints and weighted arm swing sprints you are able to improve upon both. I recommend doing at least 2 intense workouts per week on the treadmill for any athlete looking to improve speed.
