Acceleration Drill for Sports Training

Acceleration is an important skill for any sport. This skill is mainly a natural skill, but it can certainly be enhanced with a few drills. A lot of the drills don't involve heavy weight lifting, but rather drills that involve improving technique and explosiveness.

Parachute Drill

This drill involves strapping a parachute or other heavy object to your back and sprinting in short distances. Speed parachutes can be found in a lot of sporting goods stores or online. Some athletes also strap themselves to a heavy weight and drag it along the ground. This drill works really well because you're running against resistance, developing muscles for running. When you take the resistance off, your body reacts in a positive way without the resistance holding it back.

Hill Running

Running up a hill with even a slight incline will help your acceleration and speed. You'll develop leg muscles while running even without lifting weights. When you start running on level ground your body will think it's a lot easier because it won't be fighting the uphill battle.

Ladder Drills

Footwork is also very important to increasing acceleration and speed. There are many types of speed ladders available or you could even draw one on the ground with chalk if you needed to. There are many types of footwork drills you could do to increase your acceleration. A very common drill is to run down the speed ladder but have each foot hit the inside of every little square. This will help develop quick feet, which in turn will help your acceleration.