Increasing Sprinting speed

unknown

Hi, I'm 41 years old and I have three sons 16, 18, 20 years of age. We play together in a semi competitive ultimate frisbee group. I do pretty well but I have lost a step or two. Any tips on how to increase my sprinting speed for 20-75 yard breaks? I'm not in bad cardio shape.

unknown

Two things that seem to work best for speed are specific muscular power and neuromuscular efficiency. To train them, you should consider two things:

1) To develop power, you’ll want to do explosive leg training (box jumps, squat jumps, bounding lunges). Warm up really well before you do these. Over time, you may be able to add weight with a vest (or doing the squat jumps in a smith machine). Again, be very careful with this training modality.
2) To develop neuromuscular efficiency, you’ll want to train your legs to turn faster during a sprint. Start with shorter sprints (10 or 20 yards). Video the run if you can so you can time your strides per second. Set this as a base and try to get the same strides per second for a 30 - 40 yard sprint. For the longer sprints, you may have to slow your strides per second so you can maintain a constant pace (it really just depends on your endurance thresholds).

Additionally, you can work on hip, knee, and ankle mobility to ensure you’re getting a good stride length (do focus on stride length, but instead let that be natural to your biomechanics).