If you want to develop game day speed and power, your training protocols need to focus on developing the strength and power producing capabilities of the Fast Twitch Type Two muscle fiber (FT-II).

Our bodies have three muscle fiber types:
     1. Slow Twitch (ST),
     2. Fast Twitch Type I (FT-I) and
     3. Fast Twitch Type II (FT-II).

As you progress from type (ST) to type (FT-II), the muscle fibers have decreasing endurance capability but increasing power production capability. The Fast Twitch Type II (FT-II) being the muscle type most responsible for producing explosive power and speed. It is therefore critical that we spend significant time focusing on the (FT-II) muscle fiber or motor unit when training for power and speed production.

It is important to note that when the brain commands the body to move, the (ST), (FT-I) and (FT-II) muscle fibers are fired in the order listed above. Low effort levels such as standing erect will fire mainly (ST) fibers. As effort level increases however the brain will begin to activate or fire (FT-I) fibers. As effort levels surpass 75% of maximum and increase to 100% of maximum, increasingly larger percentages of the faster contracting, more explosive (FT-II) muscle fibers are recruited and trained with the maximum number of (FT-II) fibers being recruited when effort level reaches 100%.

This is an important fact to understand.
It indicates that to maximally recruit, train and develop the major power producing muscle fibers in our body which are responsible for speed, we need to implement training methodologies that allow athletes to exert near 100% effort from the beginning to the end of the repetition, just as we do when making a competitive move.

Consider an athlete is running straight down field at full speed and they decide to quickly change direction and sprint to the right. They accomplish this change in direction by planting their left foot to decelerate and then drive off it to change direction and veer right.

We have all done this before and we know that when making such a competitive move, as soon as our left foot plants to decelerate us we are applying 100 percent effort towards the deceleration process. Once we decelerate, we then apply 100 percent effort towards accelerating - driving to the right off of the left leg.

This is a common example of where we are at 100 percent effort, maximally recruiting the (FT-II) muscle fibers throughout a complete competitive move. With that in mind, it becomes clear that weight training with weight plates does not allow us to accurately simulate the high competition effort levels during the full cycle of a resisted repetition.  Very simply, weight training does not recruit and train (FT-II) muscle fiber the way we do during competition.

When we perform curls, military presses or squats, we never start a repetition with 100 percent effort and rarely do we finish a repetition with 100 percent effort as in competition. Weights have mass and inertia which in most cases makes it impossible to accelerate and decelerate at sports specific speeds.

If you tried to finish a weight resisted curl with 100 percent effort you would drive the weight right into your head. We all know that when you start a curl you ease into the repetition and gradually back off the effort level as the weight approaches your head. The effort level over time and the subsequent recruitment of (FT-II) muscle fibers for most weight resisted exercises does not mirror the recruitment and demands placed on the (FT-II) fiber during competition.

This is why the term “Sports Specific Training” (training at sports specific speeds with similar motions) and the use of elastic training bands has become so popular over the past few years. Elastic bands have relatively no mass or inertia to deal with. That means when elastic bands are applying resistance to a body part during an athletic exercise, you can accelerate at full speed with maximal effort against the resistance created by the elastic band from the beginning to the end of the repetition.

An elastic band’s mass is insignificant and it will not try to resist acceleration at the beginning of an exercise movement nor will try to keep moving as a weight will at the end of a high speed exercise movement. For this reason, light load, high speed training with elastic band training technologies are often more efficient at developing the power producing capabilities of the (FT-II) muscle fiber type (thus improving athletic speed).

The increase benefits are due to the fact that
     1. athletes are actually activating and training higher percentages of Type II Fast Twitch
          Fibers AND
     2. neurologically, they are activating and training the muscle fibers and muscle groups in a
          much more relevant way as it relates to actual game usage.

In other words, the training gains from elastic band technologies often translate more effectively to actual competition as opposed to strength gains from traditional weight training. Remember the saying “You want to train like you play”!