What is speed endurance training?
Speed endurance training is a special form of speed training. Speed endurance is the ability of an athlete to maintain a high speed for as long as possible. In addition, speed endurance training also strengthens general endurance because the body is in the lactate metabolism and the energy supply is trained and optimized without oxygen.
Speed endurance training is mainly used for sports that involve longer sprinting distances. This is especially the case in athletics and swimming. Especially the distances from 200 meters in swimming and from 400 meters in sprinting are particularly demanding, because good speed endurance is required.
First the speed should be trained and only then should speed endurance training be started. A definition by Zintl from 1994 explains speed endurance very appropriately: “Speed endurance = fatigue resistance at loads in submaximal movement speeds, whereby the anaerobic-lactacid component plays a determining (KZA) or not insignificant (MZA) role in terms of energy”. KZA refers to short-term endurance and MZA refers to medium-term endurance.
Speed training for soccer
Especially for soccer there are some exercises to improve the speed, so that for example an attacker is faster on the ball than a defender of the opposing team. In soccer we usually use weight sleds, parachutes and weights, which are connected to the players during sprint training. Against this resistance different sprint distances are then covered.
These aids increase the training stimulus to make the training more effective. In soccer, however, speed is not the only important factor. Also the feeling for the ball and especially the speed with the ball is very important.
The hare hunt is a game that combines both requirements. Two groups stand opposite each other, lined up on hats. Starting from one group, one row of cones is one third apart.
From the other group the cones are two thirds of the distance away. The group that is closer to the cones starts with a sprint to the cone, taps it and sprints back to the starting line as fast as possible. Simultaneously with the start of the first group, group two starts and tries to catch up with the soccer players from group one and to clap off. This exercise can be varied at will by adding the ball and modifying the individual exercise modules.The start command can be acoustic, tactile or optical, the start position can be lying, standing, sitting, etc. There are no limits to the variation possibilities for the trainers in this exercise.
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