Are you in Canada? Click here to proceed to the HK Canada website.

For all other locations, click here to continue to the HK US website.

Human Kinetics Logo

Purchase Courses or Access Digital Products

If you are looking to purchase online videos, online courses or to access previously purchased digital products please press continue.

Mare Nostrum Logo

Purchase Print Products or eBooks

Human Kinetics print books and eBooks are now distributed by Mare Nostrum, throughout the UK, Europe, Africa and Middle East, delivered to you from their warehouse. Please visit our new UK website to purchase Human Kinetics printed or eBooks.

Feedback Icon Feedback Get $15 Off

Human Kinetics is moving to summer hours. Starting May 31 – August 2, our hours will be Mon – Thurs, 7am – 5pm CDT. Orders placed on Friday with digital products/online courses will be processed immediately. Orders with physical products will be processed on the next business day.

Speed and Strength

This is an excerpt from Developing Speed-2nd Edition by NSCA -National Strength & Conditioning Association & Ian Jeffreys.

Speed and strength share a unique relationship. We commonly think of speed training as a way to improve running speed or speed of movement. This is obviously true, but type of training results in other benefits as well:

  • Speed-based training improves the nervous system’s ability to activate muscle tissue through improvements in recruitment and rate coding. These neural adaptations develop speed but also result in increased power and strength levels (1).
  • Speed training produces very high levels of tension in muscles, tendons, and other tissues. The level of load applied to these tissues is high, often exceeding those that are achieved (or can be achieved) in a resistance training program. Many coaches and athletes engaged in regular resistance training have experienced the soreness that results from a sprint session. This is because the levels of tension and tissue load experienced in the sprint are sometimes greater than those experienced in the resistance training program. Speed training, in this way, drives strength improvements and may even result in levels of tissue load unreachable in a traditional resistance training program.

For these reasons, speed training should be viewed not only as a way to get faster but as a critical exercise that increases the effectiveness of other areas of the training program and reaches distant corners of strength development that cannot be reached otherwise. Coaching cultures have commonly viewed strength improvements as a route to speed acquisition, but the reverse is also true. These reasons also explain why speed development training could be very helpful to athletes in many sports, even those sports that do not contain a significant sprinting component.

More Excerpts From Developing Speed 2nd Edition