Hard to Kill Programming Methodology: Part 4 - Speed

In the fourth installment of the Hard to Kill Programming Methodology, we tackle the final piece of the strength continuum—speed. This phase focuses on building pure velocity, optimizing performance and longevity to make you resilient today and for decades to come.

What Is Speed Training?

Speed training sits at the far end of the strength continuum, following strength, strength-speed, and speed-strength. It emphasizes maximal velocity with little to no external resistance, prioritizing speed over force production.

Key Characteristics of Speed Training:

• Minimal to No Load: Typically <50% of one-rep max, with most movements being bodyweight-based.
• Focus on Velocity: Speed takes precedence; the goal is to move as quickly as possible with perfect form.
• Ballistic Movements: Unloaded, high-velocity actions such as sprints, jumps, and throws.

This phase sheds resistance to prioritize agility, quickness, and explosive movement.

Why Train Speed?

Training speed isn’t just for athletes—it’s critical for anyone looking to maintain or enhance physical capability, athleticism, and daily functionality.

Benefits of Speed Training:

1. Enhances Agility: Sharpens reaction times and coordination for daily life and sports.
2. Boosts Athleticism: Maintains fast-twitch muscle fibers essential for quick movements.
3. Prevents Injury: Builds resilience to avoid injuries during rapid actions, such as falls.
4. Fun and Engaging: Adds variety to workouts, breaking up the monotony of endurance or heavy lifting.
5. Supports Longevity: Maintains mobility and quickness as you age, helping you stay active for years to come.

Practical Applications

Speed training improves performance in real-world scenarios and everyday activities:

• Daily Tasks: Reacting quickly to catch a falling object or move out of danger.
• Recreational Sports: Enhances quickness for basketball, tennis, soccer, and more.
• Playing with Kids or Grandkids: Keep up with their energy and pace.
• Aging Gracefully: Reduces fall risk by improving mobility and reflexes.

How to Know You’re Training Speed

An easy way to conceptualize speed training is to focus on “fast, no brakes.” Any external resistance—like weights or heavy implements—slows you down, reducing pure speed. In speed training, you want unrestrained, maximum velocity.

How to Train Speed

Speed training involves maximizing velocity with bodyweight movements or minimal resistance. Examples include:

• Sprints: Flat ground or slight inclines, 30–100 meters, focusing on 8–20 seconds of maximal effort.
• Plyometrics: Tuck jumps, broad jumps, or box jumps performed explosively.
• Ballistic Movements: Clapping push-ups or plate push-ups to maximize power.

Sprinting Tips for Beginners:

• Start with short sprints (10–20 meters) to reduce injury risk.
• Gradually increase distance as your conditioning improves.
• Focus on perfect form—injury prevention is critical in speed training.

Speed in Programming

Speed training doesn’t require percentages or rep ranges common in strength work. Instead, focus on:

• Short Durations: 8–20 seconds of maximum effort.
• Perfect Form: Avoid sloppy movements, which increase injury risk.
• Consistency: Integrate speed training into your routine at least once per month to maintain agility and explosiveness.

Why Speed Matters

Speed is the cornerstone of athleticism and mobility. It’s not just about running fast—it’s about reacting, moving, and living with agility. If you neglect speed training, you risk losing this vital ability over time.

Whether you’re chasing performance goals or looking to maintain independence as you age, speed training is an essential piece of the puzzle.

Get Started with Speed Training

Speed training is a fundamental part of the Hard to Kill programming methodology at Garage Gym Athlete. It’s designed to keep you fast, agile, and hard to kill—no matter your goals.

Sign up for a free trial at garagegymathlete.com to see how speed training is incorporated into a well-rounded program.

Remember: If you don’t kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: All right. Welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. I'm Jerred Moon. And today is part four in our hard to kill programming methodology. And this part is speed. So if you haven't been following along, this is part four and I've kicked off a series on programming specifically are hard to kill programming methodology, which is a balancing act that optimizes both performance and longevity.

Something I think we can all agree. That we want so hard to kill. Programming is going to keep you beyond prepared for any daily obstacle. Also making it tougher for father time to knock you off. All right. And that's what I want personally. I know that's what a lot of our athletes want. You want to be ready for today at the ultimate top end of the performance that you can muster each and every single day, that's what we're But you also want to live a long time.

You want to see your grandkids grow up. Maybe your great grandkids. You want to have both of those things. You're not just here for, you know, an, an inch added to your bicep or whatever the case is, you really want to blend it all. You want to grow muscle. You want to get faster. You want to have a bigger aerobic base.

And you want to live a long time. That's what the hard to kill programming methodology is all about today. Like I said, we are covering speed here in part four. Now, if you recall from parts one, two, and three, then you can go back and listen to them. If you haven't yet, that strength is a continuum in this strength continuum.

We have strength, strength, speed, speed, strength, and speed. We have covered all of them so far. Before we move away from strength in the next episode, but today we round out the strength continuum with speed. So speed represents the ability to produce maximal velocity with little to no external resistance.

So we're getting away from all that heavy resistance that's slowing us down. In the continuum, going from strength to strength, speed to speed, strength, now that we're in speed, we're starting to shed that resistance to really most of the time when we're talking about speed, there's no resistance at all or very minimal.

It sits at the far end of this strength continuum and it prioritizes pure speed over force production. So force production Typically coming from the use of a barbell or some sort of implement like a kettlebell. But now we just want speed. We want to move as fast as we possibly can. So what are the key characteristics of speed training?

Well, typically there's minimal to no load. Because it's really just not necessary. So if you did have a load, it would be less than 50%. We're talking about 20, 30%, maybe 40%. And even that's getting a little too heavy for speed. But it still would be within the speed category. You most of the time you can do just body weight, but what you're ultimately trying to do is prioritize velocity, velocity, velocity, velocity.

So maximal velocity is the primary goal and it's moving as quickly as possible with perfect form. I've said it across the entire. Strength continuum. Perfect form is what you're ultimately going to want when you are moving anything, doing anything with fitness, but especially once you start to add speed and velocity, you really want to make sure your form is dialed in.

So it is velocity dominant. Speed is the focus and then force output is secondary. So it doesn't help. You know, if I want to give you an example, if you're like, all right, I'm going to go do a hundred meters sprints to focus on my speed. And then you have this great idea. You're like, I'm going to wear a, you know, a 30 pound vest, a 40 pound vest to like really try and get better.

It's like, well, yes, there's a purpose in that and it'll help you. It will help you over time, build more strength, but you're really more in the speed strength category at that point. And sometimes you just need straight. Speed relative to your body weight without any additional load needed. So examples would be sprinting.

You could do these just a flat sprint, like, you know, in a field at a, at a track, you could go downhill or, you know, even slightly uphill, a slight grade, but not straight uphill. Cause again, we're starting to get away from that pure speed that we want, but sometimes for beginner athletes or athletes who haven't done this type of training, if you want to reduce injury, a slight grade, can help you add a little bit more resistance to where you're not going to get injured.

So other things, other examples of what this looks like, high velocity plyometrics. So bounding tuck jumps, broad jumps, those kinds of things. Any ballistic movements like unloaded jumps or throws you think about. Punching you know, punching a punching bag, things like that, anything that you're, you're moving your body through space, maximal force, I mean, maximal velocity not as focused with any additional external forces applied.

Ballistic movements. Ballistic is very rarely used when we're talking about training, but it is used when we're talking about speed training. So why is it beneficial? Because here's the deal there, there's speed is a loaded A loaded target here, right? Like it's like a loaded category because if you have a desk job and you don't ever sprint or move fast or train any of the domains that I'm talking about and you're like, you know what?

I heard Jared say, well, I should train some speed. I haven't been doing anything, but you know what? Today sounds like a good speed day. You're going to pull a hamstring. It happens so often people pull a hamstring cause it's a, hasn't been properly loaded, hasn't been used properly. So I will say that you need to ease into these things, train everything in the strength continuum, then add speed is ultimately what you want to do.

But it is still beneficial. You're not gonna, not everybody's going to pull a hamstring, but again, you need, you need to work up to being able to sprint and move at these ballistic speeds. You're going to have to earn it. So why it's beneficial. You enhance raw speed and quickness, which is critical for reacting and moving in daily life or sports.

It improves your fast twitch muscle fiber activation and coordination. And it keeps workouts just fun, you know, to challenge the nervous system and it's challenging. And it's not always the suck fest that can be endurance training or strength training. To be honest, those things are awesome, but sometimes running for 40 minutes straight, isn't that fun?

Or just lifting for an hour with a low speed you know, strength movements. Can, can get boring over time. It's fun to just add some pure speed jumping plyometrics, sprinting, those kinds of things that can just be fun to add into your training. That's, I mean, there's a ton of like physiological benefits, but psychologically, this is just fun training in my opinion.

So the big purpose of speed training, develop top end velocity, improve rapid force production. It enhances your agility and quickness, and it sharpens the nervous system and efficiency and coordination. So practical applications, if you have to run and catch a bus you know, if you want to run and chase your kids or your grandkids or whatever, quick movements in sports, everyday mobility, maintaining, maintaining the ability to move quickly as you age, falling down as you, as you age becomes a bigger problem.

Again, all of these areas help you reduce that, but being able to move your body fast, ballistically is huge. And it's something people lose. Not because you just got older. It's because you didn't train it. Don't use it. You lose it. That couldn't be more true of speed training. Once you stop sprinting, it's gone.

I mean, you can bring it back, but if you stop for decades, it's not coming back. Not coming back easily. So it's something I recommend everyone have some sort of speed element to their training at least once a month, if not more. So I like to, in every one of these episodes, give you an easy way to think about it.

Am I, am I doing it right? Am I in doing the speed? Like, how can I think about this? And the best way I can you, the best, you know, a little like tidbit I can give you is fast, no brakes. Okay. Fast, no brakes and brakes B R a K E S like brakes on a car. If you think of load as a braking system, like it, it breaks, it slows you down.

That's what load is doing. We talked about building strength is good for low speed conditions is good for building strength. Should I say low speed conditions? Good for building strength. Low speed conditions is not good for building speed. You want high speed conditions. So anything that's gonna put the brakes on you moving fast, you're not really going to want in speed training.

So fast, no brakes. Just think about moving fast. Don't think about any way that you could add resistance or slow yourself down, because you're just starting to get knocked down into the continuum further backwards towards the strength category. It's okay for sometimes just to be purely fast without having to add any resistance.

So speed is about being as quick as possible. Think lightning fast with no resistance, slowing you down. Now in programming it, I'm not going to necessarily give you any barbell recommendations like, Oh, do 30 percent of your wonder at Mac all, you know, any of that. Really, this would just be moving as fast as you possibly can.

So, plyometric push ups, clapping push ups, plate push ups is a big one that we like to do. So, like, you do a push up so fast that you throw yourself into the air and then you place, you're basically jumping from the push up position and putting your hands on plates and you can do that at different levels to exert more and more force.

Again, this is just body moving through space as explosively as possible. Sprinting is a great one. Maybe the best one. It's not only good for you to develop the speed and to maintain that speed, but also a great for a hormonal response. Training the central nervous system, just sprinting. It doesn't have to be long.

We were not talking about 400 meter sprints. We're talking about 50, 60. 80 meter, 100 meter sprints, maybe 200 meters at the top end. And that would really only be if you're super well conditioned because anything faster than that, we're not moving as fast as we can anymore. We're starting to slow down either because our lungs can't take it.

Our heart can't take it. Our conditioning can't take it. We want to be moving anaerobically just fast. We don't need oxy the oxygen. to kick in, we'll get all into energy systems throughout the rest of the series, but we don't need any of that. We just want to move fast. So if that's 50 meters for you, 30 meters for you do it.

If that's a hundred meters for you do it again, anywhere from that eight to 15 second range. Up to 20 seconds, maybe max, if you are pretty fast, you know, well conditioned athlete. And this is when we're talking about sprinting specifically. So I really think sprinting is the best way to, to implement this style of training.

Yes, there are a ton of things that you can do with plyometrics you know, box jumps, broad jumps, tuck jumps, the plyometric pushups, all of those things. Those are great ways to again, get more explosive training in, into your like routine, but ultimately you should be sprinting. You don't avoid the sprints because you're scared of the hamstring, whatever.

Just sprint further or less duration, less distance. So just start with a 20 meter sprint, 30 meter sprint, like start really, really small. If you have not been sprinting, honestly, 10, 15 meters, just moving as fast as you can. And think about the last time that you even did that. When's the last time you sprinted as fast as you can, just 20 meters.

I know it's not far, but when's the last time you did it? If it's been too long for you to remember, you definitely need to start implementing some of this. Even if it's just 10 me, 10 meters, quick starts to get used to it, build up very slowly in the speed part of the continuum. So you don't get injured, but ultimately very important for becoming that well rounded, well rounded.

Hard to kill athlete. So that rounds out the strength continuum here in our hard to kill programming methodology part four. But remember, remember we have 13 parts that we're covering. This is just the strength continuum that now gets concluded. We will be moving into more programming methods that are utilized in the hard to kill programming methodology.

But that'll be for the next episode for all of our athletes who are already implementing this training because they're following garage gym athlete programming. We really appreciate each and every single one of you. If you want us me specifically to program speed for you at least once a month in your training, you can go to garagegymathlete.

com sign up for a free trial and I'd love to have you. I really would. But that's it for this. And remember if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.