Fred Duncan (@Fred__Duncan)

One of the main goals of physical preparation is to improve both the capacity and the output of the athlete. To do that, you first have to understand the biomotor abilities…what they are, how to develop them most efficiently and how they relate to the demands of sport. ...

Two drills I no longer use when training speed. This doesn’t mean these drills are inherently bad or that you can’t place them appropriately in your program, because you can. These are just my thoughts around them. Wickets What I often see is big groups of athletes running ...

This is a quote from my new ebook Speed Kills. I wanted to put this in writing because too many people try to complicate what speed really is. At its core, its physics and training should be built on principles that respect that reality. ...

Build Upper Body Power with Plyometrics & Explosive Training For some reason, upper body explosive work is often overlooked. But it's not just about how much force you can generate, it's about how quickly you can apply it. In this video, we're using advanced methods based on ...

What separates good from great athletes isn’t just vertical jumps, broad jumps, or any single measurable quality. It’s efficiency, coordination, fluidity, precision…the ability to make difficult movement look effortless. That comes from the unconscious. Great athletes ...

Verkhoshansky’s Dynamic Correspondence is one of the most important concepts in strength & conditioning and I dedicate a full section to transfer of training in my new eBook, Speed Kills. Transfer isn’t about random intensity or gimmicky drills with a football in your hand. ...

Elasticity, Stiffness, and Context When you watch this clip, you see an athlete hitting low hurdle hops with rapid, stiff ground contacts. Many would call this the ultimate display of “elasticity.” The ground looks like a springboard…minimal deformation, quick return ...

In this study (miller et al., 2021), researchers found that elite sprinters had larger hip extensors than sub-elite sprinters. Glute max size alone explained 43.8% of sprint performance differences, while total hip extensor volume explained 47.5%. It’s an interesting finding, ...

Fascicles & Speed A fascicle is simply a bundle of muscle fibers, but the length of those fascicles plays a big role in performance. Longer fascicles mean more sarcomeres in series -> faster shortening velocity -> better ability to produce force at high velocities. ...