The Need For Speed
We all know that in order to maintain a healthy, active lifestyle, and to keep doing all the things we love to do—be it golf or tennis, travel, or playing with the grandkids, we need to build strength, stability, balance, and mobility.
But did you know that there is one more piece of the puzzle that can create an even bigger impact on healthy aging?
It’s speed and power!
The chart above is based on a study that compared the functional measures of older adults who did resistance training to those who did power training. (Power training combines speed and strength, whereas resistance training focuses solely on building strength.) You can see that with power training there were vast improvements in balance, as well as chair rise time and gait speed. The only place where strength training was rated just a bit higher was in the strength category alone. But it's not by that much!
According to Coach Tony Holler, one of the most influential leaders in sprint training, "Speed is the power that lifts all boats.” In other words, when it comes to improving physical function for athletes, speed training checks off more of boxes than resistance training alone.
And even for older adults, this study supports the idea that improving speed and power can give you a bigger bang for your buck!
Why is this?
There are two types of fiber in our muscles: slow-twitch and fast-twitch. The slow-twitch fibers are primarily needed for endurance activities like long-distance running or cycling. The fast-twitch muscle fibers are used for rapid movements like jumping, or sprinting for a bus. They provide the pop and bounciness in our muscles, and we need them in order to do more explosive movements, like recovering from a stumble.
As we age, we lose fast-twitch fibers at twice the rate we lose the slow-twitch muscle fibers!
And if we don’t use these fast-twitch fibers, they become dormant. It’s as if they are asleep. They don’t activate easily, and so our reaction time becomes slower. What’s more, if we do a lot of long-distance or endurance training, (like training for a marathon) the motor neurons of the slow-twitch fibers start attaching to the fast-twitch muscle fibers, and then the fast-twitch muscles start acting like the slow-twitch muscles. This causes movement to become jerky and uncoordinated, not smooth, fluid, bouncy, and explosive.
We need bounce, speed, and spring in our steps for our balance as well.
If we trip, we need to move our feet quickly to recover our balance, and we need the power in our legs to catch ourselves if we do go off balance. Whats even more interesting though, is that speed training stimulates the labyrinth in the inner ear, and we need this stimulus to keep our vestibular system active and healthy. The vestibular system is a crucial sensory system responsible for providing the brain with information about head position, movement, and spatial orientation. It plays a vital role in maintaining balance, coordinating posture, and stabilizing gaze. The numbers in this study back up the fact that speed training plays a major role in improving balance.
What can we do to improve speed?
Athletes will typically do sprinting drills, but this could be too aggressive for non-athletes to start with. Marching, skipping, and striding are better alternatives, and HIIT classes are also good. All you really need to do is short, intentional, quick movements to keep your central nervous system engaged, without fatigue.
Paul Holbrook, the founder of Age Performance, a speed-training studio in Salt Lake City suggests doing speed snacks. These can be a few sets of 5 -10 second activities, like bug stomps, butt kicks, or running arm swings, done in the morning, midday, and afternoon. "It keep the pumps primed and your body ready to react to life's surprises", says Holbrook. "Speed and power are the better way to counteract all the issues that come along with aging."
If you'd like to learn more, let's talk. I am adding these "snacks" to all of my classes and personal training sessions.