Fred Duncan (@Fred__Duncan)

We hear talk about “lengthening” muscles, But you really just change what happens inside it. Every muscle is made up of fascicles…bundles of fibers lined with contractile units called sarcomeres. When you train at high velocity or under eccentric load, the muscle adapts by ...

Even at 75% of max speed, hamstring activation can exceed max isometric levels. That’s how intense sprinting is. Submaximal runs…like 70–80% effort still provide massive hamstring stimulus while keeping fatigue lower. If you want to understand why sprinting builds what the ...

This is the foundation of how I structure most sessions. We start with warm-up and extensive work to build rhythm, posture, and coordination. Then we move into acceleration or speed work, the ultimate plyometric and one of the best tools for athletic development. From there, ...

We know that all movement originates in the brain. Our goal is to ignite that system. To train not just force output, but the rate at which that force is produced. The faster the signal, the faster the movement. This is where rate of force development (RFD) becomes everything ...

This study (Wild et al., 2018) compared elite sprinters and rugby players during their first three steps. Across every group, faster acceleration was linked to one thing…the foot being further behind the center of mass at toe-off. That position gives you a stronger horizontal ...

Most people talk about “transfer” without really understanding what it means. Not everything you do in training is supposed to have a direct transfer to top end sprinting or sport performance and that’s fine. A lot of what we do is develop general outputs/capacities with hopes ...

3 Sprint Myths That Won’t Die 1️⃣ “You run on your toes.” You don’t. Sprinters strike through the ball of the foot with a dorsiflexed, pre activated ankle that’s ready to handle force. The heel drops slightly to load the Achilles for elastic recoil… it’s a reflexive, ...

The anatomy of speed. Researchers used MRI to look deeper at Asafa Powell, one of the fastest men in history. They found His psoas major was nearly twice the size of another elite sprinter’s. That muscle drives hip flexion and leg recovery, helping reposition the thigh quickly ...

A new study mapped how power shifts as speed increases. At slower velocities, the plantar flexors drive most of the work, but as speed rises, their role drops while the hip extensors and hamstrings take over. Once you move past roughly 22 km/h, sprinting becomes a hip dominant ...