get faster

By AL GRANING

Looking back 50 years, speed wasn’t the controlling athletic ability sought in a football player to the extent that it is now.

Sure, there were fast players and slow players, but nothing much was done to enhance what natural speed a player might have. Today’s sports, not only football, require speed and quickness from all players. Yet very few coaches work at all on improving a player’s speed. They all do agility and foot-speed drills, but little to really improve overall speed.

Saturday at the Jackson Prep practice facility the David Cook Speed Training Clinic sought to fill that training gap. Cook gave a number boys and girls ages 11 to 17 years drills and exercises that, if put into their regular practice routines, will improve each kid’s speed and running technique.

The clinic started with demonstrations of proper warm-up routines. Cook called these dynamic flexing. The exercises included walking lunges (while twisting the upper body), kicking both forward and backward (backward looks like a mule kicking), knee lifts both forward and backward, stretching to touch toes, holding for an eight-count and repeating with legs crossed.

The warm-ups were completed with hurdle stretches and neck stretches.

Each participant was then timed in a couple of 40-yard dashes. An example from various age groups had a 17-year old from Loyd Star running a 4.72 second best, a 13-year old boy, who is small and feels speed is his door to playing football, ran 6.25, and an 11-year old girl working on her speed for soccer was timed in 7.03.

All participants were critiqued on their starts and running technique. They were shown that by starting with their lead foot only six inches from the line and by raising the other arm behind their back they could get an extra boost at the start.

All of the kids were then run through the NFL’s 5-10-5 agility drill, and that was followed by measuring each kid’s stride length. It was shown to the Loyd Star kid that if he was able to increase his stride by 6 inches he could drop his 40 time to 4.4 seconds, which is NFL-class time.

Cook and his assistants led the group through a number of other drills, all designed to make the kids faster. The instructors emphasized the exercises should only be done every other day, and all were in addition to those required by their regular coach.

Dave Cook is a member of the National Endurance Training Association. Assisting him at the clinic were Nick Brewer, strength and conditioning coach at Jackson Prep; Rick Roberts, from Monroe, who represents a number of NFL and CFL players; and Cook’s son, Bryan, who plays football at Forest.

Roberts told of the process for a player to go from high school to college to professional football is to work harder than everybody else. The player should constantly record his workout statistics (running times, weights lifted, etc.) and send them to college coaches.

He emphasized that everybody can get faster. It just takes hard work.

And that’s official.

Al Graning is a former SEC official and former Natchez resident. Reach him at

AlanWard39157@aol.com

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