Go Muscles vs Show Muscles – How Weight Training Will Make You Faster!

If your aim is to become faster on court, then constant sprint training might actually be inhibiting your progress. Instead you need to mix your speed sessions up with specific strength training which will help grow your ‘go muscles’ and give you the extra kickstart you need. 

The ‘go muscles’ refer to the muscles in our posterior chain (back, glutes, hamstrings and calfs) at the back of our body. These muscle groups contain most of the body’s power meaning that strengthening them will help you to increase your overall speed. 

Now for the science(y) bit. 

The posterior chain controls your backward force, and helps stabilise your spine and hips – essentially keeping the body upright. It works with your anterior chain (front of the body) to keep you stable in your everyday movements. It has half of the body’s muscle mass so strengthening these muscles is essential for better agility, lower body strength, and stabilising the lower body and spine to help your to avoid isolated injuries to the ankles, knees and hips (very common in netballers). 

So how does strength training make you faster?

Put simply, by increasing the muscle mass and volume in your glutes, hamstrings and calfs, you allow your body to exert more force through singular movements meaning that each step forward has more power allowing you to be faster. 

There are a number of fundamental exercises you should be incorporating into your weight training in order to develop the posterior chain strength including:

• Deadlifts
• Pull Ups
• Glute Bridges/ Hip Thrusts
• Kettlebell swings
• Prone DB Rows

Why not give the following session a go next time you are in the gym:

A1 – 5×5 Deadlift (at 80-90% RPE)

B1 – 10 x SL Elevated Glute Bridge*

B2 – 10 x Prone DB Rows*

*Complete as superset – 3 rounds 

C1 – 10 x KB Swings*

C2 – 5 x Pull Ups*

*Complete as superset – 3 rounds 

If you are looking for sport specific programming to help you with your training in the gym, why not sign up to our NETGym membership? Just £15 per month with no contract. Easily access over 100 sessions on your phone anywhere, anytime.