Athletes are always trying to figure out ways to make themselves, bigger, faster, and stronger.
Some of the best ways of exercising for a certain muscle group or bodily goal are not always what’s best for developing other muscle groups and other bodily goals.
One of those questions is whether the common squat will truly make you faster.
Let’s go through the process of what becoming faster actually looks like.
How do you become faster?
Analyze and Understand Your Genetic Makeup
For some people it’s going to be easier to add speed than for others. This is going to depend on both the persons genetic makeup and the muscle fiber types they were born with.
If you were born slow, it’s probably going to be very difficult to put on any significant amount of speed.
This might also mean you were born with the slow twitch type I muscle fibers.
Type 1 muscle fibers are made for long distance runners.
Type 2 muscle fibers are made for sprinters.
You should be able to tell which type you have by whether you like to sprint or run long distance.
If you have type 2 muscle fibers, it’s going to be much easier for you to put on speed.
Use proper body mechanics
One sprinter who runs faster than another sprinter often has better body mechanics.
If you are swaying side to side when you run, it’s going to be much less efficient than if you keep your body moving in a forward direction.
Your stride length, kick, and flexibility are also going to play a big role in how fast you can propel your body through the air.
Proper form is going to be crucial for you to put on extra speed.
Train Correctly
If you want to become faster, you need to be doing exercises that train your body correctly.
Squats are one of those exercises that can help develop explosive power from stride to stride.
It’s more about how you do your squats than just doing them with no end goal in mind.
You need to do your squats with explosive force on the concentric phase and a controlled decent on the eccentric phase.
This will ensure that when you are sprinting, you also use that same powerful force with each step.
You shouldn’t only do squats to make yourself a world class sprinter, you need to utilize other powerful exercises at the same time.
What are the best exercises to increase your speed?
If you want to increase your speed, you need to be doing exercises like the squat, deadlift, hamstring curl, calf raises, split squat, sled pull, seated squat, sprinting and many others.
Yes, the squat will help you with your speed but it’s the combination of all these exercises that will have the most benefit to your top speed.
You need to blend these exercises together over time for the best results.
Final Thoughts
Increasing speed might seem impossible if you are only doing 1 or 2 things to get faster. Doing only the squat might help a little bit, but in the long run, you need to be doing a combination of a bunch of different exercises. The squat is going to increase the power in your quads and glutes, but you are going to need exercises that work the entire body to get the most impact.
