4 Components For Peak Performance

Track season is upon us so let the PB (personal best) chasing begin. But first let me give you some free game learned from my decades competing at the highest level in this sport AND architecting the same for my own athletes as a coach at @sanjosestatetrackandfield there’s MORE to getting a personal best than what you’re able to do on the day of the meet. Here are four things you’ll want to optimize to make a personal best more likely than not (in no particular order):

1️⃣ STRENGTH: athletes ask more of their bodies than other humans. So their strength levels need to be extraordinary. This means you CANNOT sleep on the weight room. I’ll spare you the science lesson (this time) but top sprinters apply more force into the ground-but not just more force- they have to apply more force in an insane amount of time. In milliseconds! An athlete needs to train their muscles to not only apply more force but have the strength to absorb it and keep it moving-literally.  Play around in the weight room if you want to- but trying to run fast without the strength to support it leads to inury.

2️⃣ SPEED: this one is a bit easier to explain and a little more complicated to do but all this training is for increasing an Athletes ability to rapidly absorb force and reapply it in the fastest manner possible. With sprinting and horizontal jumps the higher your velocity the higher the ceiling is for that specific result. But speed needs strength see number 1.

3️⃣ CONDITIONING: mental and physical. This is an athletes ability to do the work required at a high level to meet the demands of the workout, the meet, etc at a high level. An example: an athlete runs a personal best in the prelim, but is cooked for the semi-final and doesn’t make the final, and the time they ran in the prelim would have won the final. That’s a lack of conditioning. Mentally- an athlete needs to keep their head in the game the ENTIRE time. No matter the pressure, the nerves, and the fear. Execution is a choice and an athlete needs the mental conditioning that will allow them to make that choice EVERY TIME.

4️⃣ MECHANICS: efficiency in your movements is key. Especially for a sprinter. An inefficient sprinter is GIVING TIME away on every single stride the entire duration of the run. Clean up even one sloppy or lazy element of their mechanics and they can start subtracting that time from their seasons best and work their way to a top performance.