Coordination and Balance Improves Sports Speed

It is difficult to train your body to move faster if you are uncoordinated. Your central nervous system can be trained to make your body move more efficiently and faster. But, in order for this to happen, you must train efficiently and faster during workouts and practices.

Just as you must train fast (with correct running mechanics) to get faster, you must also correctly do agility drills to improve your coordination.

Improving your coordination and balance will help improve your multi-directional speed and linear speed (straight-ahead speed). A player rarely reaches maximum speed during game competition.

Having great change-of-direction speed (agility with quickness) allows you to beat your opponent "to the spot" or recover from mistakes in positioning.

Agility ladder drills are a good way to improve your coordination, balance and hip action. "Sports Fitness Hut's Hips and Glutes Training Guide For Athletes" will show you what you should be doing to improve your agility and change-of-direction speed. Cone drills are used to teach movements that are more like game situations.

You can do agility ladder drills everyday during warmup to perfect your form. From there, you can progress to doing these drills full speed with great coordination, balance and speed. This will make you a better, faster athlete!

Train hard and smart!

"Other things being equal, a muscular, powerful athlete will outperform a fat, slower or skinny, weaker athlete. Sports Fitness Hut's Fat Blaster Athletic Power Training System will give you your "lean and mean" athletic machine!"

Check out my other great blogs:

Her Fitness Hut Blog Her Fitness Hut is featured on EmpowHER, a great health issues website for women! Her Fitness Hut has also been named in the Top 50 Personal Training Blogs by Physical Therapy Assistant Schools!

My Fitness Hut Blog has been recognized by Stanford University Wellsphere as a Top Health Blogger! Quite an honor coming from that institution!

Speed Strength Helps You Succeed

Speed strength is one of the best indicators of whether you will succeed in your sport. You have to do more than pass the eyeball test. Sooner or later, you must prove it on the field or court. The game is your ultimate evaluator, not your height and weight.

Speed strength is a combination of starting speed, explosive speed (maximum velocity in the shortest time) and reactive speed.

Speed strength is also known as power. Proper training methods will produce the strength, power and speed the athlete needs to succeed in his or her sport.

The three building blocks of integrated training for the athlete are:

STABILIZATION (2 Phases) – Primary goals are to correct muscle imbalances, joint dysfunctions, postural distortion patterns, improve kinetic chain (human movement system), integrity and recondition/rehabilitate.

STRENGTH (3 Phases) – Primary goals are to improve stabilization strength/endurance and increase muscle hypertrophy (growth) and strength.

POWER (2 Phases) – Primary goals are to enhance neuromuscular efficiency, increase power production, increase speed strength and create neuromuscular adaptations throughout the entire range of motion.

All seven phases of training may not be necessary for all athletes. For example, some sports do not require optimum levels of muscle hypertrophy.

The training program is Multi-Planar (sagittal, frontal, transverse), Multi-Joint (exercises such as bench press, squats, lunges), Multi-Dimensional (stabilization, strength, power) , Proprioceptively Enriched (high neural demand) and Sport-Specific.

You should follow a systematic approach with the following goals in mind: injury prevention, body fat reduction and increased lean muscle mass, strength, endurance, flexibility and performance.

Rate-of-Force Production (muscles producing force in the shortest period of time) is one of the best physical indicators of the level of an athlete’s performance and future success.

After an adequate strength foundation has been built, you can work on increasing speed strength. This is best done by using a combination of:

1) Plyometrics
2) High speed medicine ball exercises
3) High speed weight training exercises
4) Multidimensional speed training exercises

Go here now and get your Free Sports Power Workout Book and Speed Training Tips!

"Other things being equal, a muscular, powerful athlete will outperform a fat, slower or skinny, weaker athlete. Sports Fitness Hut's Fat Blaster Athletic Power Training System will give you your "lean and mean" athletic machine!"

Check out my other great blogs:

Her Fitness Hut Blog Her Fitness Hut is featured on EmpowHER, a great health issues website for women! Her Fitness Hut has also been named in the Top 50 Personal Training Blogs by Physical Therapy Assistant Schools!

My Fitness Hut Blog has been recognized by Stanford University Wellsphere as a Top Health Blogger! Quite an honor coming from that institution!

How to Use 7-on-7 Football to Improve Agility and Speed

As you play in your 7-on-7 football games to prepare for football season this fall, work on improving your agility and speed. Why else would you play? You can't tackle anyone in 7-on-7, so work to get better!

Improve your agility during 7-on-7 games by perfecting your technique as a defensive back, linebacker, receiver or quarterback. Do the repetitions the right way--everytime! Perfect practice makes perfect

You can also improve your speed during games. You get faster by running fast. Train your muscles to fire faster. Run routes at full speed and cover your man at full speed. You don't have to wait until your formal team practices to get faster. Let your coach see your speed improvement when fall practices start.

Improve your agility with these drills and then apply them during your 7-on-7 games:

1. jump rope (one foot, two feet, slalom, Ali shuffle, backpedal)

2. speed ladder drills

3. cariocas, tapiocas, back pedals, shuffles, toe taps

4. hip turn and hip flexibility drills

Use your 7-on-7 football games to improve your skills and help your team win this summer and fall.

Get "Sports Fitness Hut's Hips and Glutes Training Guide for Athletes" It is a must training guide for any serious athlete!

"Other things being equal, a muscular, powerful athlete will outperform a fat, slower or skinny, weaker athlete. Sports Fitness Hut's Fat Blaster Athletic Power Training System will give you your "lean and mean" athletic machine!"

Check out my other great blogs:

Her Fitness Hut Blog Her Fitness Hut is featured on EmpowHER, a great health issues website for women! Her Fitness Hut has also been named in the Top 50 Personal Training Blogs by Physical Therapy Assistant Schools!

My Fitness Hut Blog has been recognized by Stanford University Wellsphere as a Top Health Blogger! Quite an honor coming from that institution!

Hips and Glutes Training For Athletes

Hips and glutes injuries will put you out of the game. It is impossible to run, jump and cut with power if your hips or glutes are injured. Hips and glutes injuries can also cause hamstring and other injuries. You can lessen your risks of these injuries with proper training.



Great athletes dominate athletic movements with the hips, glutes, quadriceps and hamstrings. All of these muscle regions need to work properly or you will not compete on a high level.

The glutes don't fire properly when the hip flexors (psoas, iliacus, tensor fascia latae, etc.) are overactive or tight. This can happen due to poor flexibility or prolonged sitting. When the hip flexors don't work properly, its antagonist (mainly the gluteus maximus) becomes weak.

It is important to keep your hips and glutes conditioned all year.

Get "Sports Fitness Hut's Hips and Glutes Training Guide for Athletes" It is a must training guide for any serious athlete!

Other things being equal, a muscular, powerful athlete will outperform a fat, slower or skinny, weaker athlete. Sports Fitness Hut's Fat Blaster Athletic Power Training System will give you your "lean and mean" athletic machine!

Check out my other great blogs:

Her Fitness Hut Blog Her Fitness Hut is featured on EmpowHER, a great health issues website for women! Her Fitness Hut has also been named in the Top 50 Personal Training Blogs by Physical Therapy Assistant Schools!

My Fitness Hut Blog has been recognized by Stanford University Wellsphere as a Top Health Blogger! Quite an honor coming from that institution!

Improve Hip Flexibility with Leg Swings

Hip flexibility is crucial to your success in speed sports. Improve hip range of motion with daily leg swing exercises.

Side Leg Swings

Front Leg Swings

Leg swings are a great way to improve your dynamic flexibility, loosen your hips and make you a faster, more fluid athlete.

If your hip flexor muscles are not flexible, you will not even be a good athlete in your sport(s)! Tight hip flexors also lead to some painful injuries (like pulls and strains) that are hard to recover from.

You can improve your change-of-direction speed with strong, flexible hips. Body positioning is critical if you want to improve your change-of-direction speed. You will need dynamic balance.

In many sports, it is not that easy to change direction and accelerate because you are often off balance. Having great dynamic balance means that you are able to maintain your center of gravity over a constantly changing base of support.

How to do Leg Swings:

Just swing your legs back and forth at least as high as your waistline. As you become more flexible, your legs will swing higher and more fluid.

Front and side leg swings are perfect to do before your sprint workouts.

Get "Sports Fitness Hut's Hips and Glutes Training Guide for Athletes" It is a must training guide for any serious athlete!

"Other things being equal, a muscular, powerful athlete will outperform a fat, slower or skinny, weaker athlete. Sports Fitness Hut's Fat Blaster Athletic Power Training System will give you your "lean and mean" athletic machine!"

Check out my other great blogs:

Her Fitness Hut Blog Her Fitness Hut is featured on EmpowHER, a great health issues website for women! Her Fitness Hut has also been named in the Top 50 Personal Training Blogs by Physical Therapy Assistant Schools!

My Fitness Hut Blog has been recognized by Stanford University Wellsphere as a Top Health Blogger! Quite an honor coming from that institution!

Top 10 Tips to Improve Sports Speed

Sports speed is much more than running a fast 40 or 60 yard dash time. Sports speed will play a huge part in your success or failure as a player. Starting, stopping, cutting, reacting.....how do you stack up?

Improve your Sports Speed with these 10 Tips:

1. Your core strength is crucial for your success. Core strength is important to "power you up" when you are fatigued late in the game!

If your core is weak, you will start to "bend over" and lose power and explosiveness when you run. Next, your arms will start to "flail" instead of pumping powerfully to fuel your running.

2. Get more overall body strength and power. Your body produces more power when you improve speed strength (how fast your muscles can produce force).

3. Improve lower body strength and power.

4. Perfect your running mechanics. Running with proper form is one of the most ignored skills by athletes. You will not be at your best until you improve your mechanics. Work to improve them every day.

5. Improve your quickness and reaction. Reaction time is the ability to respond quickly with proper posture and control to a stimulus such as sound or sight. In many instances, quickness is more important than straight ahead speed.

In many sports, maximum speed is rarely reached or needed, but explosive reaction is often necessary. Athletes can improve reaction times by training to make the right choices (choice reaction).

6. Improve your acceleration speed. For instance, you can train to improve your acceleration speed by doing weighted squat jumps (bodyweight squat jumps should be mastered first).

While sport-specific plyometric training improves power, non-specific power training should not be ignored. Researchers from Canada found that athletes who performed better with weighted squat jumps were the best accelerators at 10 meters.

Concentric force development (jumping power) is critical to improve sprint acceleration. The first step from a stand-still (or near stand-still) position requires concentric muscle power.

7. Improve your change-of-direction speed.

Body positioning is critical if you want to improve your change-of-direction speed. You will need dynamic balance. In many sports, it is not that easy to change direction and accelerate because you are often off balance.

Having great dynamic balance means that you are able to maintain your center of gravity over a constantly changing base of support. So, quickness and agility drills help you to improve dynamic balance and change-of-direction acceleration while not wasting motion.

8. Improve your closing speed. Closing speed can be practiced during acceleration speed training.

Most of the time, you are not running full speed during the game. But sometimes, it is necessary for you to accelerate to full speed (or near full speed) as quickly as possible in order to “make the play.” That's closing speed.

9. Improve your speed endurance. Adequate core strength helps your speed endurance, which is the ability to maintain maximum velocity or a percentage of maximum velocity for a prolonged period of time or in a fatigued state. The best players and teams have excellent overall body strength, core strength and speed endurance (and they win the most games).

10. Improve your top end speed and backwards speed acceleration.

Do you have work to do? Get busy now this summer while you have time! Show up to practice this fall and blow 'em away with your speed and power!

Go here now and get your Free Sports Power Workout Book and Speed Training Tips!

"Other things being equal, a muscular, powerful athlete will outperform a fat, slower or skinny, weaker athlete. Sports Fitness Hut's Fat Blaster Athletic Power Training System will give you your "lean and mean" athletic machine!"

Check out my other great blogs:

Her Fitness Hut Blog Her Fitness Hut is featured on EmpowHER, a great health issues website for women! Her Fitness Hut has also been named in the Top 50 Personal Training Blogs by Physical Therapy Assistant Schools!

My Fitness Hut Blog has been recognized by Stanford University Wellsphere as a Top Health Blogger! Quite an honor coming from that institution!

Top 5 Tips to Help You Play Football Faster

Some players play football faster and some players are just fast. Sound confusing? Here's an example: Hall of Fame pro football wide receiver Jerry Rice was not considered to be blazing fast. Yet, I never saw anyone catch him from behind during a game.

Mr. Rice played the football game fast. Why? He practiced fast. During practice, he was legendary for running full speed after a catch all the way to the end zone (even if it was 80 yards). Some players play the game slow even if they are fast.

Besides having good practice habits, here are some other things you can do to play the game at a faster pace:

Because you will rarely reach maximum speed during the game, playing speed is critical. No matter what sport you play, there are only 5 ways to improve playing speed:

1.Starting ability is critical. You can improve starting ability by practicing starts from 3-point, 4-point, standing and moving positions. At this point, it is important to accelerate to maximum speed (or as close as possible).

2. Increase your stride length. One good way to improve stride length is to effectively pump your arms as fast as possible. Leg strength and power also improve stride length.

3. Improve your stride rate (the number of steps you take per second). Leg strength and power improve stride rate. There is one running technique that is often overlooked. One way to run faster is to apply more force to the ground with your feet. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

The more force you apply to the ground, the more the ground will "give you power." When you run, don't lift your knee past your "thigh being parallel" to the ground. This way, you will use your "power center" (glutes and hamstrings) to apply force to the ground instead of the less powerful hip flexors.

In other words, running "with high knees" is not the best way to run. Also, step over the opposite knee and drive the foot down into the ground to create maximum force.

4. Improve your speed endurance. Speed endurance will not make you faster but it will keep you from slowing down when you are fatigued after repeated sprints.

5. Improve your running mechanics. You should practice running mechanics every day.

It is also important to practice agility and ladder drills to improve other aspects of speed.

Your goal should be to play football as fast as you can with control!

Go here now and get your Free Sports Power Workout Book and Speed Training Tips!

"Other things being equal, a muscular, powerful athlete will outperform a fat, slower or skinny, weaker athlete. Sports Fitness Hut's Fat Blaster Athletic Power Training System will give you your "lean and mean" athletic machine!"

Check out my other great blogs:

Her Fitness Hut Blog Her Fitness Hut is featured on EmpowHER, a great health issues website for women! Her Fitness Hut has also been named in the Top 50 Personal Training Blogs by Physical Therapy Assistant Schools!

My Fitness Hut Blog has been recognized by Stanford University Wellsphere as a Top Health Blogger! Quite an honor coming from that institution!

Baseball Power Training Book

Improve your baseball power and speed to be a starter on your team! Every baseball player wants more power, speed and strength! Not every baseball player is training right for explosive power. Give yourself the best chance to succeed by consistently training your body the right way.

If you need more power hitting the baseball, more speed running the bases or more quickness at your position, you need my power workout manual. The manual's drills, techniques and workouts are designed for advanced baseball players.

Baseball requires a series of rotational and lateral movements. Therefore, the baseball player needs a strong core to generate rotational and lateral speed and power.

The physical demands of baseball are: starting ability, acceleration, stopping, cutting, stride rate, stride length, sprinting form and speed endurance.

Most explosive movements occur after some other movement (swinging, sliding, etc.). Maximum velocity is rarely reached except in the case of hitting a triple, inside-the-park homerun or running down a long fly ball. Therefore, starting ability and acceleration should be emphasized during training.

Major League Baseball scouts use these drills/exercises/sprints (among others) to test a player's speed, agility, acceleration and power:

30 and 60 Yard Sprints - The bases are 90 feet apart (30 yards). Scouts routinely time a player's speed from home to first base during an at bat or from home to second base on a double.

Running from home to first base in under 4.0 seconds is exceptional (especially for a right-handed batter). Times of 4.1 - 4.4 are more common. A major league average time for the 60 yard dash is 7.0 seconds, 6.5 - 6.8 seconds is good and 6.2 - 6.4 are great times.

Vertical Jump - The height of your vertical jump shows the amount of power in your lower body. A high vertical jump is also an indicator of great speed. A vertical jump of 35 is good and any jump 40 or above is exceptional.

Medicine Ball Rotational Throw - This exercise is a good indicator of core strength---especially the critical rotational power needed for baseball (swinging, throwing, etc.).

20 Yard Shuttle - This drill tests agility, explosion, postural control and quickness at high speed. The best players cover the 20 yard shuttle in about 4 seconds or less.

Sports Fitness Hut's All-Star Baseball Power Workout Manual will show you how to improve your performance in these drills and exercises. If you do this, it will improve your power game on the field.

Other things being equal, a muscular, powerful athlete will outperform a fat, slower or skinny, weaker athlete. Sports Fitness Hut's Fat Blaster Athletic Power Training System will give you your "lean and mean" athletic machine!

Check out my other great blogs:

Her Fitness Hut Blog Her Fitness Hut is featured on EmpowHER, a great health issues website for women! Her Fitness Hut has also been named in the Top 50 Personal Training Blogs by Physical Therapy Assistant Schools!

My Fitness Hut Blog has been recognized by Stanford University Wellsphere as a Top Health Blogger! Quite an honor coming from that institution!

Athletic Skill Development--Make Improvements This Summer

During the summer, you have more time to improve your athletic skills. You must continually improve your athletic skills or you will get passed by your teammates and opponents.

Everyone wants more strength, power and speed. Some of you are doing too much strength training and not enough power training. And, some of you are not training nearly hard enough to improve.

To continually get stronger without an increase in speed, power and athleticism will not help you reach your athletic potential.

Make yourself a better athlete by doing the following:

1. Train your body in all 3 planes of motion. Many athletic movements happen in the transverse plane (rotations, turning, twisting, etc.) and frontal plane (side-to-side, lateral).

Machine-based training concentrates on the sagittal plane (up- down, forward-backward movements). Do miminal athletic training on machines because they limit your natural movement patterns.

2. Train on your feet because most athletic movements in games are done standing and running. Here are some examples:

--Jump rope every day to improve your balance and coordination.

--Do one-legged and one-armed exercises like step ups, lunges and alternating one-armed rows and presses.

--Do agility and power drills like shuttles, hops, shuffles, squat jumps, pogo sticks, bounding, speed ladders, medicine ball exercises and depth jumps.

--Do sprints on grass or other natural surface. You must do sprint drills full speed in order to get faster. Also, practice correct running mechanics.

3. Stabilize and strengthen the core first and limbs (arms and legs) later. If your core is weak, you can't effectively transfer power from your lower body to your upper body.

This can be done using exercises like bridges, planks, bird dogs, cobras, supermans and back extensions. You would later progress to full speed core exercises on your feet like medicine ball chops, medicine ball slams, 2-arm and 1-arm medicine ball throws and medicine ball rotational throws.

Train harder, smarter and safely!

Go here now and get your Free Sports Power Workout Book and Speed Training Tips!

"Other things being equal, a muscular, powerful athlete will outperform a fat, slower or skinny, weaker athlete. Sports Fitness Hut's Fat Blaster Athletic Power Training System will give you your "lean and mean" athletic machine!"

Check out my other great blogs:

Her Fitness Hut Blog Her Fitness Hut is featured on EmpowHER, a great health issues website for women! Her Fitness Hut has also been named in the Top 50 Personal Training Blogs by Physical Therapy Assistant Schools!

My Fitness Hut Blog has been recognized by Stanford University Wellsphere as a Top Health Blogger! Quite an honor coming from that institution!