📖 Part 16 of 18
🧠 Introduction
Over the last few articles, something important has happened.
At first, speed seemed simple.
Most athletes focused almost entirely on:
👉 glutes
👉 hamstrings
👉 quads
👉 calves
Then the picture started getting bigger.
You discovered:
👉 both legs participate during every stride
👉 the arms participate
👉 the torso participates
Then another realization emerged.
💥 These individual contributors are actually grouped into two different sides to sprinting.
👉 a pushing side
👉 a swing side
And both participate during the same stride.
And now we arrive at another important question.
💥 If both sides participate during every stride…
do both sides need to improve together?
Most athletes never stop to ask that question.
Not because it’s unimportant.
But because most athletes never think about sprinting in terms of sides.
Instead, they usually think about:
👉 muscles
👉 exercises
👉 strength
👉 power
Fair enough.
But now that we’ve identified:
💥 a pushing side
and
💥 a swing side
the question becomes much harder to ignore.
If both sides participate during every stride…
could both sides need to continue improving if speed is going to continue improving too?
🤔 What If Only One Side Keeps Improving?
Let’s make this simple.
🤣
Imagine an athlete continues improving:
💥 the pushing side
The pushing leg becomes stronger.
The arms become more aggressive.
The torso becomes more capable of supporting movement.
But the swing side doesn’t improve very much.
Would that matter?
Most athletes immediately answer:
👉 probably
Now let’s reverse it.
Imagine the swing side continues improving…
while the pushing side barely changes.
Would that matter?
Again, most athletes immediately answer:
👉 probably
Interesting.
Because without realizing it, most athletes have already admitted something important.
💥 Both sides matter.
The question is not whether they matter.
The question is whether one side can continue improving while the other side stays behind.
And if both sides participate during every stride…
does it really make sense to expect one side to keep carrying all of the progress by itself?
That possibility becomes even more interesting when we start looking at athletes who have been stuck for a long time.
Because many athletes continue training hard.
Many athletes continue getting stronger.
Many athletes continue doing everything they’ve been told to do.
Yet somehow…
the stopwatch doesn’t seem nearly as impressed.
👀 Most Athletes Already Train This Way
Think about how most athletes approach speed training.
When progress slows down, the response is usually straightforward.
Train harder.
Get stronger.
Become more explosive.
Produce more force.
Fair enough.
Those things can absolutely help.
But notice what often happens.
The athlete keeps trying to improve the same contributors.
The same exercises.
The same training methods.
The same side of sprinting they have already spent years developing.
And eventually another question begins to emerge.
What if continuing to improve one side becomes harder when the other side stops keeping pace?
Not because one side suddenly becomes useless.
Not because one side stops contributing.
But because sprinting still requires both sides during every stride.
Every push.
Every swing.
Every step.
And that creates a possibility many athletes never consider.
💥 Perhaps speed depends on more than improving individual contributors.
Perhaps speed also depends on how the sides continue improving together.
🤯 Maybe We’ve Been Asking The Wrong Question
Most athletes eventually reach a point where they become obsessed with one question.
💥 How do I get more?
More strength.
More power.
More explosiveness.
More force.
Understandable.
🤣
After all, if speed has improved before…
it seems logical that more of the same should continue working.
But what if the problem isn’t always:
👉 not enough
What if the problem sometimes becomes:
👉 not together
That’s a very different question.
Now we’re no longer asking:
💥 How do I make one side better?
We’re asking:
💥 Can both sides continue improving together?
And if the answer is no…
could that help explain why some athletes continue working harder and harder…
while seeing smaller and smaller improvements in speed?
At the very least, it’s a possibility worth considering.
Because the moment sprinting becomes a relationship between sides…
the conversation changes.
And that may be one more reason you’re not getting faster.
💥 Maybe This Is Another Reason
Let’s go back to the question that started this entire series.
Why aren’t you getting faster?
For many athletes, the answer always seems obvious.
👉 not enough strength
👉 not enough power
👉 not enough force
👉 not enough explosiveness
So they continue chasing more.
More weight.
More reps.
More intensity.
More effort.
And sometimes that works.
At least for a while.
But eventually many athletes reach a point where something starts to feel different.
The effort keeps increasing.
Yet the results don’t seem to increase at the same rate.
The athlete is still training.
Still working.
Still improving somewhere.
But speed isn’t responding the way it once did.
And that raises an interesting possibility.
What if the problem isn’t that one side stopped improving?
What if the problem is that one side continued improving…
while the other side didn’t improve enough to keep pace?
If sprinting requires:
👉 a pushing side
👉 a swing side
and both participate during every stride…
then it becomes harder to assume one side can continue carrying the entire sprint forever.
At the very least, that should make us pause and ask a new question.
💥 Could speed depend on both sides continuing to improve together?
Because if the answer is yes…
then some athletes may not be stuck because they stopped improving.
They may be stuck because the relationship between the sides stopped improving.
And that may be one more reason you’re not getting faster.
🧭 Continue The Journey
At first, speed seemed like a simple problem.
Build stronger:
👉 glutes
👉 hamstrings
👉 quads
👉 calves
And eventually speed should improve.
Simple.
But one realization after another started expanding the picture.
You discovered:
👉 sprinting uses both legs
👉 the arms participate
👉 the torso participates
👉 a pushing side
👉 a swing side
And now another realization has begun to emerge.
💥 Both sides may need to continue improving together.
That’s a very different way of thinking about speed.
Because now we’re no longer asking:
👉 what muscle matters?
👉 what contributor matters?
👉 what side matters?
We’re asking something much bigger.
💥 What happens when one side continues improving while the other side gets left behind?
Because if both sides participate during every stride…
understanding what happens when that relationship starts to change may be one of the most important questions in sprinting.
And it may be one more reason you’re not getting faster.
