The Afterburner program

Consists of 2 basic modifications that involve 2 different foot positions and can be applied to all 10 of the exercises contained in your Run Faster program.  These 2 Modifications are:

1. External (outward) rotation of the foot.

2. Internal (inward) rotation of the foot.

Performing each of the Run Faster exercises using any one of these modifications will direct the effort placed on your muscles and joints in unique planes of motion.

Training your muscles in different planes of motion than you would normally do will help you get past any sticking points in your training where your running speed may have prematurely plateaued and take you to new levels of speed and quickness.

It will also go a long way toward enabling you to maintain your running speed whenever you find yourself changing directions in an athletic event such as running a post route in football or performing a cross over dribble drive in basketball.

The original hip flexor exercise, Exercise #1 in your program, will be used to demonstrate how to apply these two modifications. So, let's take a look at the final holding position for the right leg for this exercise seen below:

This position is held for 10-15 seconds using between 70-80% of your maximum strength.  It is then repeated with the left leg.

Modification #1

Okay, now let’s take a look at the first modification to Exercise #1 which is external, or, outward rotation of the foot.  Note that this action is actually caused by externally rotating (not abducting) your hip, or, thigh outward away from your mid-line.

You will set up the exercise exactly as before, however,  at the very end of setup you will rotate your foot (including your thigh and hip), outward, as seen below:

This position is held for 10-15 seconds using between 70-80% of your maximum strength.  It is then repeated with the left leg.

Modification #2

Okay, now let’s take a look at the second modification to Exercise #1 which is internal, or, inward rotation of the foot.  Note that this action is actually caused by internally rotating (not adducting) your hip, or, thigh inward toward your mid-line.

You will set up the exercise exactly as before, however,  at the very end of setup you will rotate your foot (including your thigh and hip), inward, as seen below:

This position is held for 10-15 seconds using between 70-80% of your maximum strength.  It is then repeated with the left leg.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE

On any given day you will be performing 5 of the 10 exercises in this program.   Since each exercise is performed 3 times with each leg, it will take you approximately 3 minutes to complete before moving on to the next exercise.  Table 1, below, shows how this is done for Exercise #1:

Keep the total exercise time each day under 20 minutes.

Since each exercise takes 3 minutes to complete and you will be doing 5 exercises/day, your training will take you about 15 minutes/day to complete.  The general recommendation with regards to this type of training is to keep the total exercise time each day to under 20 minutes.  This means you could add a few extra reps into your routine and this is where these two Afterburner modifications come in.

For starters, we would recommend sticking to Exercise #1 and add in an extra 'rep' each day, applying Modification #1 and Modification #2 to both legs.  This will add an additional 1 minute for Modification #1 and an additional 1 minute for Modification #2 giving you 2 extra minutes/day of training for a grand total of about 17 minutes/day.

As you get more comfortable and stronger with Exercise #1 and these two modifications, you can then try them on the remainder of the exercises in the program while being mindful not to exceed more than 5 additional reps/day (for an additional 5 extra minutes).

The reason is you don't want to turn this speed training program into a 'strength and endurance' program or, in other words, you don't want to be doing these types of exercises longer than 20 minutes a day. All you are looking to do is make your muscles stronger and contract faster.  You are not necessarily looking to make your muscles larger.

The overall goal with all of the exercises in this program, including these 2 modifications, is to find areas of weakness in your muscles and then focus on getting them stronger. Our experience has shown that once athletes start training with the methods explained throughout this program, athletic speed and performance increase considerably.