Young high school athletes need two things in their workouts: an element of explosiveness and a component for speed and agility.

You want to hit the gym not only for the Bench Press, the Squat and Power Lifts, but also for agility ladders, explosive jumps over hurdles and power chutes. If you’re not adding elements of speed and agility, it will be really hard to increase your acceleration or achieve your speed potential.

You want to add two or three days of speed work to your off-season regimen. If you’re in-season, try about once per week. [In the off-season], you have enough time to go to the gym and work out five or six times per week; [therefore] you can add two or three days of speed and agility training.

After an active warm-up, do some explosiveness work, like jumping over hurdles with two legs. If you’re fortunate enough to have cool equipment, such as bungee cords and power chutes, then do some resistance training. If you can add something two times a week, great. Three times a week? Even better. As long as you’re getting a day or two of good rest, then you’re doing the right thing. Your legs, your upper body and your body in general really need to maximize the amount of rest, so you’re able to regenerate to where you’re more explosive than before.

Don’t ever let “good” be “good enough.” Although you think you might be doing [well], don’t ever let it be the top part of where you could be—go above and beyond.

Kory Angelin is the founder and president of Fast-Edge Sports Performance. Angelin trains NBA star Wally Szczerbiak. To see more explosive speed training videos with Angelin and Szczerbiak, click here. 

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