This excerpt explains the role that lactate plays in exercise metabolism and how that information is useful for athletes to predict things like pacing, fitness, and efficacy of training programs.

This article presents two football-specific speed drills in detail—the single-leg box explosion and the mountain climber.

This article explains the quadrathlon and how it can help strength coaches measure linear speed, speed-strength (power), and elastic or reactive qualities efficiently.

This excerpt from NSCA’s Essentials of Sport Science highlights the importance of quantifying training load for both programming and monitoring an athlete’s progression or regression over time.

This book excerpt is from Developing Agility and Quickness, Second Edition and goes over change of direction drills to help with speed and power development as well as an athletes cognitive and decision making skills.

The 3-minute all-out exercise test (3MT) was developed over a decade ago and enables the estimation of time for onset of momentary fatigue for a given speed or power output exceeding critical speed (CS) or critical power (CP), respectively. The 3MT has been validated for conducting high-intensity interval training, used with load carriage prediction and prescription, and validated for shuttle running. These prescriptions are novel because they allow for standardizing exercise intensities relative to metabolic parameters as opposed to a percentage of a given maximum or reserve. Research was identified using leading search engines (e.g., PubMed, Google Scholar, and Research Gate) and citations to similar articles. The objective of this review article was to summarize research that emerged on the CS/CP concept with emphasis on applications since the advent of the 3MT. The review concludes with application of the CS/CP concept to the frequency, intensity, time, and type of exercise for exercise prescription.

Plyometric training is a series of explosive bodyweight resistance exercises using the stretch-shortening cycle of the muscle fiber to enhance physical capacities, such as speed, strength, and power. These physiological measures translate to improved performance in many sports, including court-based sports, field sports, and water sports.

Considering that the term "power" typically evokes the perception of high-speed movement, many people are inclined to take the tenets of specificity to literally mean “train fast, be fast.” However, to create the most strategic methods of training and adaptation, it is vital to compartmentalize power into the primary testable and trainable elements.

This article discusses the influence of lower-body power on soccer performance in collegiate female soccer players. It also covers testing for muscular power qualities, different training modalities to use, and sample training programs as examples.

Learn how to perform a light sled pull, which can help increase speed strength, power, and stride length.