AQSpeed Blog

If you want to improve your running speed it will be helpful to know the 3 phases of the running process and the muscles used in each phase. By understanding this you can train all the muscles used when running for faster running speed. This post will focus on the drive or push phase of running and identify the muscles used in the push phase. Speed training exercises that focus on these muscles can be found in the links below. The drive phase of sprinting begins when the knee is perpendicular to the ground as seen in Figure 1 below: Figure 1.  Drive phase starts when the knee is perpendicular to the ground. The drive phase ends when the entire leg is extended behind you.  See image below. Both the starting and ending positions of the drive phase can be seen side by side in the image below: The drive phase is powered by three basic muscle groups; the hip extensors, which involve your glutes and hamstrings, your knee extensors, or quadriceps

Types of Resistance band exercises for sports training When it comes to athletic speed training workouts with resistance bands in any sports training program there are basically two ways that people like to use them. One of them is by putting their muscles through repetitive concentric and eccentric contractions.  This would be similar to the motion you would do during a biceps curl exercise with weights, except that the dumbbell is replaced with a resistance band. Concentric Muscle Contraction: The concentric part of the exercise is when the muscle contracts, or shortens while undergoing resistance.  Eccentric Muscle Contraction:  The eccentric part of the exercise is when the muscle lengths while undergoing resistance. This occurs when the arm is returned back to the side of the athlete. As you can imagine using the band with this strategy, the end of the motion is harder than the beginning. This is due to what is known as the variable elastic resistance within the

Increase your Running Stride Length and Turnover Rate One of the best ways to increase your running stride length and turnover rate is to develop strong hip flexor muscles.  These are powerful and long muscles located in the front side of each of your hips. Your hip flexors are some of the longest and strongest muscles in your body, but they are essentially dormant in most athletes, meaning, they have never been activated for speed or exercised properly for any athletic function other than walking. Some of them, begin high up in your lumbar spine while others start out low on the pelvis; and, they all cross the hip joint.  Most of them attach to your thigh while one of them, the Sartorius, is so long that it attaches just below the knee. . They get called into action every time one of your legs gets fully extended behind you.  Above we can see the athlete’s left leg is now fully extended behind him.  This stretches the hip flexor muscles in front of his left hip and no