Jet Speed Athletics

🟢Build a Better Spring

Muscles produce force.

But they aren’t the entire story.

Tendons help transmit that force and contribute to the elastic behavior that makes explosive movement possible.

That means developing an athlete isn’t simply about building bigger or stronger muscles.

The muscle-tendon system has to work together.

Strength at longer muscle lengths can expose tissues to force while they’re under substantial tension, helping build capacity in positions that matter during high-speed movement.

Think of the athlete as both an engine and a spring.

The engine creates force.

The spring helps manage, transmit, and return it.

Speed needs both.

✅ Don’t just build stronger muscles. Build a stronger system for transferring force.

🟢Stop Training One Speed of Strength

Heavy or light?

Strength or speed?

Max force or explosive force?

Those don’t always need to be either/or decisions.

Different loads expose athletes to different parts of force production.

Heavier resistance creates greater force demands.

Lighter resistance allows greater movement velocity.

Isometrics can emphasize force without movement.

Plyometrics expose athletes to extremely short force-production windows.

Good programming doesn’t have to live permanently at one point on that spectrum.

It can deliberately move across it.

Because sport doesn’t ask athletes to produce force under one perfect condition.

It asks them to solve force problems across different positions, velocities, and time constraints.

✅ Don’t build one type of strength. Build force that can adapt to different demands.

🟢Slow Weight. Fast Intent

A heavy barbell might move slowly.

That doesn’t mean the athlete should.

There’s an important difference between movement speed and intent.

When resistance is heavy, the bar simply may not be capable of moving quickly.

But the athlete can still attack it with the intention of producing force as rapidly as possible.

That changes the rep.

Instead of casually pushing against the resistance, the athlete is asking the nervous system to recruit force aggressively—even though the movement itself still looks slow.

So don’t judge every strength exercise by what you see from the outside.

Sometimes the bar is moving slowly while the athlete underneath it is trying to move incredibly fast.

✅ Heavy resistance can still have explosive intent.

🟢Strong Where It Matters

Being strong isn’t enough.

An athlete needs to be strong in the positions where force actually has to be produced.

That distinction matters.

Different joint positions create different demands, and an athlete who produces a lot of force in one position may not have the same capacity somewhere else.

This is where isometric training can become incredibly useful.

Instead of simply asking:

“How strong is this athlete?”

Start asking:

“Where is this athlete strong?”

Then identify the positions where force production needs to improve and deliberately build capacity there.

Because athletic strength isn’t just about producing more force.

✅ It’s about having force available where you need it.

🟢Strength Gives Speed Somewhere to Go

Getting faster isn’t just about moving faster.

Sometimes you need to increase the amount of force the athlete has available in the first place.

Think of strength as raising the ceiling.

The stronger an athlete becomes, the larger the reservoir of force they potentially have available for sprinting, jumping, and explosive movement.

But strength alone isn’t speed.

The athlete still has to learn how to access that force within the incredibly short time available during sprinting.

That’s why the weight room and the track shouldn’t compete with each other.

One builds the capacity.

The other teaches the athlete how to express it.

✅ Build a bigger force reserve—then teach the athlete to use it fast.

➡️Stop Falling in Love With Drills

There are no magic exercises.

Only useful adaptations.

A sled isn’t valuable because sleds are good.

A plyometric isn’t valuable because plyometrics are explosive.

A sprint drill isn’t valuable because elite athletes use it.

The question is always:

What is this doing for this athlete?

Does it improve projection?

Does it change force application?

Does it develop rhythm?

Does it improve elasticity?

Does it expose the athlete to a problem they need to learn how to solve?

If yes, it may belong in the program.

If not, replace it.

This also means the same exercise can be valuable for one athlete and unnecessary for another.

Coaches shouldn’t become loyal to exercises.

They should become loyal to outcomes.

✅Train adaptations—not exercises.