Increasing My Son's Overall Speed In Sports

What type of drills will increase speed in a 10 year old boy for baseball, football, and basketball?


Answer by Dominique:


Hi,
Thanks for your running training question. One policy I have is that I try to refrain from answering questions regarding children. Kids should just have fun doing their sports.


If your 10-year-old is playing baseball, football and basketball all in one week, then I am not sure if he should be burdened with additional training, especially when on the verge of entering his teenage years.

In general with these sports, the training should be specific to the sport. Johan Cruijff, you might not know him, but a very famous Dutch soccer player in the seventies, hated the pre-season with a passion. The pre-season contained many long-distance runs.

He refused to do them and argued with his coaches about the reason for long-distance running. He said "It does not make me any faster when I have to do a 20 metre sprint for the ball."

Nowadays the research backs him up. For these types of sports speed training should focus on the types of actions you do in a game. So short sprints, for basketball quite a bit of sideways and backwards sprinting as well.

You know, there is another thing Johan said:"It doesn't matter when somebody is faster than I am. That just means I need to start a little earlier than him."

Being able to read the play and know where the ball is going before it is going there (Johan was a master at that) will make sure you will be there before your opponent and beats tough, rigorous speed sessions!

Sorry I did not provide a specific answer. I do not want your kid to get injured and then have you sueing me for the bad advice I provided!


Best of luck.
Cheers,
Dominique