Increasing stride length?

Strength and Power - Maximum strength contributes to joint stabilization at high velocities which aids in elastic strength expression.

Elasticity (Flexibility in motion) - Recently, a researcher found in a drop jump that muscle actually shortened a small amount as the whole system lengthened. This implies that connective tissue is the elastic part of the system. This means that max strength is even more important.

The elastic component supports the contractile component for force production and when utilized, contributes to much longer stride lengths. The ability to anticipate the need for force production is important in elastic force production

Neuromuscular Sequencing - The specific sequential firing order of the muscles involved is essential. The anticipation of the forthcoming action and the sending of the proper message to the brain to fire the muscles.

Dynamic Mobility - The ability to move a limb segment through a greater range of motion in the same time or a prescribed range in a shorter time.

 

10-Minute Stretching Routine in Soccer Speed film
1. Hamstring Stretch
2. Torso Twist
3. Hamstring Leg Raise Stretch
4. Split-leg Stretch
5. Achilles/Calf Stretch

How should endurance athletes improve endurance?
New research study reports how.

A study was conducted to investigate the effects of short-term, high-intensity sprint training on the performance of trained cyclists when performed with endurance training. Seventeen trained cyclists were randomly assigned to a sprint training. Sprint training was performed biweekly for four weeks, comprising a total of 28 min over the training period.

In conclusion, these data suggest that four weeks of high-intensity sprint training combined with endurance training in a trained cycling population increased motor unit activation, exercising plasma lactate levels, and total work output with a relatively low volume of sprint exercise compared to endurance training alone.
("Neural, Metabolic, and Performance Adaptations to Four Weeks of High Intensity Sprint-Interval Training in Trained Cyclists," 2004, Creer, International Journal of Sports Medicine; 92-98)

An Athlete's Dangerous Experiment
By Jere Longman, The New York Times

PLANO, Tex., Nov. 25 — After recording one save last season, Taylor Hooton expected to join the starting rotation next spring for the baseball team at Plano West Senior High School.

"You could count on the kid to throw strikes," said Billy Ajello, Taylor's best friend and a catcher at Plano West, which is located amid the affluent sprawl north of Dallas.

By all accounts, Taylor was popular and ebullient. He was a cousin of Burt Hooton, the former major league pitcher, and his brother pitched in college. Next spring, he would make his own mark during his senior season. But on July 15, a month past his 17th birthday, Taylor Hooton killed himself. The authorities ruled the death a suicide by hanging.

His parents and a doctor familiar with the case said they believe that Taylor's death was related to depression that he felt upon discontinuing the use of anabolic steroids. The sense of euphoria and aggression that accompany the use of steroids can be replaced by lethargy, loss of confidence, melancholy and hopelessness when a person stops using performance-enhancing drugs, doctors said.

"It's a pretty strong case that he was withdrawing from steroids and his suicide was directly related to that," said Dr. Larry W. Gibbons, president and medical director of the Cooper Aerobics Center, a leading preventive medicine clinic in Dallas. "This is a kid who was well liked, had a lot good friends, no serious emotional problems. He had a bright future."

Taylor Hooton's example is extreme, but the use of steroids by athletes and nonathletes in high school is considered even more troubling than the use of them by elite athletes who are involved in widely publicized scandals in sports like football, baseball and track and field, a number of doctors said.

While there are relatively few professional athletes, some doctors estimate that 500,000 to one million high school students, or more, use steroids. Adolescents are also more susceptible to some physiological dangers, including premature cessation of bone growth, which can limit a person's height, doctors said.

By nature, teenagers are risk takers, and they are less likely to understand the health risks or to be concerned with potential side effects like infertility, atrophied testicles, high blood pressure, liver damage and prostate cancer, some of which may not appear for 20 or 30 years, doctors said.

Anabolic Steroids May Lead to Violence

BOSTON (UPI) -- Anabolic steroids may have long-term effects on players' behavior and aggression long after they stop abusing the performance enhancing drugs. Northeastern University psychology professor Richard Melloni, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, recently found evidence that long after steroid use ends it can produce long-term aggression, the university said Friday. Melloni has been studying how steroids used during adolescence may permanently alter the brain's ability to produce serotonin. Adolescent Syrian hamsters, given their similar brain circuitry to human adolescents, were administered doses of anabolic steroids and then measured for aggressiveness over certain periods of time.

The researchers initially hypothesized steroid use during adolescence might permanently alter the brain's chemistry and a person's tendency toward aggression long after use has stopped. Their most recent findings, published this week in Hormones and Behavior, enabled them to confirm this hypothesis and conclude there is indeed a lengthy price -- namely long-term aggression -- to pay for drug abuse even after the ingestion of steroids ceases. "We know testosterone or steroids affect the development of serotonin nerve cells, which, in turn, decreases serotonin availability in the brain," Melloni says.