Every single day, we answer the question about how much time it takes an athlete to get faster, to improve their athleticism, and get stronger.
A question we never answer, and a question most parents and athletes don’t know they have, is how long does it take to get slower?
Let me explain. Speed, agility, and strength are often dependent on the athlete, how much time they train, their genetics, their work ethic, their nutrition, and even how they sleep. It requires dedication and a willingness to learn.
Getting slower, on the other hand, is simply a matter of time.
No matter how fast you become, or how genetically gifted you are, if you don’t train your speed, you get slower in about 5-7 days. “Slower” is hard to define besides the fact that you just simply will not be as fast unless you have practiced sprinting as hard as you can.
For that matter, getting weaker is also just a matter of time. Strength, however, does not detrain as quickly as speed. If you lift a maximum weight just about once every 3-4 weeks, you will retain your strength, provided you have some experience with strength training.
What does this all mean? How do you keep yourself faster?
This weekend, my staff and I had the pleasure of spending some time with Bobby Stroupe, trainer of 3x Super Bowl MVP and one of the greatest athletes of all time, Patrick Mahomes. In fact, Bobby trained Patrick when he was young, long before he was the face of the NFL. He discussed the minimum effective dose to keep an athlete performing their best.
While Patrick Mahomes trains 3 days per week during the NFL season, we learned that at a minimum, an athlete should be training speed once per week, and maximum strength at least once every 3-4 weeks. That is for in-season training. Bobby shared this: if an athlete stops training during the season, they have almost no chance of taking their game to the highest levels. They must continue to work on maximum effort athletic movements with high levels of intent all year round. You never see a phenomenal player who isn’t faster and stronger than the other athletes around him or her.
So if it takes only 5-7 days to get slower, how do you prevent that from happening?
You sprint as hard as you can, every 5-7 days, for 5-8 reps. Again, this is the minimum effective dose to try and maintain your speed. Sports practice almost never requires this: sports practice typically only works on sport skills and conditioning. If your athlete is the type that has all the skills, but lacks the athleticism, they need to figure out how to train in their schedule. If you know me at all, this won’t be a surprising statement: athletes should never, under any circumstances, play on multiple teams in the same season. This only hurts their long term athletic development and exposes them to a higher risk of injury.
Now, we also mentioned that you can get significantly weaker over the course of a season as well. But you lose your maximum strength much slower than speed. Ideally, an athlete would strength train at least once per week during their season, but the minimum effective dose to maintain their strength would be to join a strength class every 3-4 weeks. If they have their strength numbers tracked, they should be able to go back and lift the same amount of weight as their previous session. After a solid warmup, and assuming no injuries, of course. The strength you build, combined with the speed work you do, is what will make you fast.
The great news is this way of maintaining your athleticism during a season means you really only have to train once per week. 5-6 sessions a month would be more effective, but you should feel fast, strong, and fresh with just a little bit of training.
If you can only train once per week during the season, your true athletic gains are made during the off-season. I’ve written extensively about the importance of an off-season training program, but the off-season is meant to make you significantly faster and stronger over the course of 3 months. Developing an athlete year round is actually quite simple, you just have to make the time for it.
If you can train twice per week during the season, you will springboard into becoming an athletic monster. You will never get slower. You will only get faster.
And it’s tough to stop a strong, fast, and explosive athlete.
If you want to know how much faster your athlete is than the competition, and create a plan to make sure they never get slower, contact us here and learn more about our performance evaluation process!
