Desperate to Improve Basic Speed: Please Help

You need explosive squats, deadlifts, and lots of crossfit. Actually, forget the squats and deadlifts. All you need is crossfit and you'll find yourself dunking over those kids you've lost to in 1-on-1 basketball your entire life. Make sure the dunks are the "balls-in-the-face" type.

Or, you could do sprints more often and see what happens. I'm sure people will suggest some hills and stuff too. That's all a gimmick though. Just do crossfit.

There is no way you were doing a max effort hang clean with just the bar. There is also no way you did a max effort hang clean of only 95lb with a 255lb squat...unless you are confusing squat with leg press or are doing squats on a smith machine. There is also no way you squat 255 @ 120...over 2x bw..without also having more speed. Your strength relative to bodyweight says you should be faster.

You HAVE gotten faster. ..1s in the 40 and over 1s in the 100 is a big improvement for a post hs hobby athlete.

Alan

I am so suprised that you were running 10:50 in the 3200m and a 4:50 in the mile with only 10 miles a week and just as a recreational jogger after high school you ran a 28:10 in the 8k and sub 17 minute 5k.

and are those measurements improvements upon your times/ weights since your started your strength and speed training 8 to 9 months ago. If so a 12" to 26" vertical in less than a year is outstanding! It took longer than 5 years for Paula Radcliff to increase her vertical just 5 inches.

If your concern is to get back into distance running and get faster at that, you need to stop just focusing on one or the other. You need to focus on getting out there and running miles again.

It sounds like you can handle getting out there and doing 30 to 40 miles a week to start. Then just work on getting you long run up to 12 to 15 miles a week.

back off on the lifting and do more running specific strength work and then slowly move into a plyometric program to work on speed.

if you have any further questions just shoot me an e-mail!

It's just that I don't see how I can get faster doing lots of aerobic work again. It just seems counterintuitive.

I know everybody here thinks I am making these numbers up, but I am not. I am honestly that slow, I can squat more than twice my weight below parallel with a free weight barbell, and my vertical has more than doubled. As a matter of fact, the vertical is about what it was when I played basketball in HS. My speed is just abysmally worse.

As far as the Clean discrepancy, I am not that adept at the exercise, and do more of what I have heard as a "pocket clean", which is a hang clean from the upper thigh. In all honesty, I look a bit odd in my underwear, because my quadriceps have grown so much and the rest of me is tiny.

Whens the last time you had a few weeks off from training altogether?What does a typical training week look like?What does your sprint form look like?If you could record a video of you sprinting and share it that would help a lot as well.

I don't know why only one person has commented on your low weight, because that's an obvious sign of something wrong.

You're at least 10 lbs less than even the lightest of the elite east African runners, and could gain 25-30 lbs and still be at, say Alan Webb's weight when he was at his best. Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele are 4 inches shorter than you and about 6 lbs and 15 lbs, respectively, heavier than you. Do a forum search for "BMIS" and you'll see your BMI is lower than any of the elites by a substantial margin. You might be anorexic, and that will certainly affect your performance. You have little muscle.

It's possible to be quick at 119 lbs, but you may want some size. Uphill sprints come to mind to build leg muscle.

Turnover I agree with. After some of your runs, do strides or semi-quick sprints. Other sports help too