Bodyfat and Speed

[SupaFlyGT]

Last year, I played cornerback for JV on my school's football team, but now that I'm a rising Junior, my coaches expect me to be able to compete at the Varsity level. While I'm not a slow runner, speed isn't my greatest attribute either. I know with my current speed now, it'll be tough for me to keep up with these receivers, and that showed at football camp a few days ago. I figured if I leaned down to 10%-below in the next month or 2, It'll help me with my speed since there's less fat slowing me down. I figured that the best place to ask if this is true was here. I'm currently around about 16%bf

[bachovas]

You cannot be worrying about BF% when you are 16 y/o and weigh 155lbs.

Get on the weight room, work the heck out of your posterior chain (glutes, hamstrings, etc) and by putting on muscle on the right place + puberty, you'll get faster.

[SupaFlyGT]

Thanks man, My team's summer weight lifting begins this coming week, so hopefully that'll solve things

[LionChick]

speed isn't so much about body fat as it is about having more fast-twitch muscle fibers than slow-twitch and/or being able to activate a great number of fast/twitch muscle fibers... look at some of the top sprinters, especially in the 100... they are all very ripped, but not all of them are super "lean"-- I mean, they are thin, but they do retain some BF on the belly, etc.

what you may be thinking of is the old runner's paradigm of "lose 1 lb and loose X seconds of time per mile"... what they don't tell you is that any of the time you lose per mile you will probably also lose in the energy that you are not taking in because you are in a hypocaloric state, so it all evens out.

don't focus so much on weight loss. focus on good training. wind sprints, tire sprints, hurdle drills, 400's, etc. they'll get your muscles working correctly to train for speed, and i guarentee the workload will be hard enough to strip any excess fat off you!

[thaphoenix]

indeed i lost 30 pounds, but i iam still slow as fudgsicles. I dropped 6-7% of bf too.

[Getting_Cut22]

Sprinting has very little to do with strength or weight. Running is technique, after taking 2 full years off because of an ACL injury, with no training i ran a 11.2s 100m. I can only squat 135x10, yeah. To increase your speed find a professional to teach you how. Seriously.

[DavidJr74]

Losing fat helped increase my vertical, shuttle, and 40 yard dash. But only cut if the fat is really hindering you...I can't see you being that big.

[Jhawk Fitness]

If you are carrying more fat than is useful it's just extra weight you have to move, drop it and you should see improvement. Keep in mind though that at your current state the improvements will more than likely be very fractional.

Check out my Q&A section at www.TopSpeedTraining.com, I've got a good posting there about speed development for younger athletes.

[roid_monkey]

its estimated that air upp there puts 1500 pounds of force into the ground when he jumps. i cant imagine the forde asafa powell or tyson gay are putting in with each stripe. the point is that , although not having a few pounds of fat will undoubtedly make you faster, it is not worth changing your routiine and wasting a lot of time on (although cerrtain levels of health/cardio are obviously necassary), why risk turning your middle (type IIa (aka the ones you can change)) into slow twitch fibers by doing lots of cardio? Eat clean and as someone said and hit dead on get working on your posterior.

[BulgariaFitness]

To much fat can decrease your speed because fat weights more than muscle
But as long as you stay below 15% and you have strong muscles,it's not a problem

[FortifiedIron]

Sprinting has very little to do with strength or weight. Running is technique, after taking 2 full years off because of an ACL injury, with no training i ran a 11.2s 100m. I can only squat 135x10, yeah. To increase your speed find a professional to teach you how. Seriously.

The speed and technique running a 100m sprint is different than sprinting and running on a football field. Doing a 100m is all about starting position and transition all done in a linear fashion.

Kyle

[Radok]

Not to mention that there is a huge genetic factor with sprint speed. One of my friends was a miler who ran close to 4 flat, and I could always outsprint him even out of shape. Likewise, even when I was in shape, one of my other friends could always outsprint me. Focus on sprinting drills and gaining strength and flexibility in the right places, but some people are just never going to really fly.