High-speed & overspeed treadmills are the hottest and newest gadgets in performance training, and it’s not hard to see why. The videos are all over social media, YouTube, and even the news. Young athletes running a blazing 25 + mph? That’s pretty hard to ignore. Plus, who wouldn’t want to take advantage of the latest “high-tech” & “research backed” technology and training methods that all these brilliant sports scientist are cooking up in their lab, right?
So what exactly are overspeed or high-speed treadmills, and what are the proposed benefits of using them? Overspeed treadmills are exactly what they sound like: devices that allow you to hit speeds higher than what you would normally be able to attain during training and game speed conditions. The goal here is to expose the body to these “highly controlled” high velocity/ top speed conditions, and then force the athlete to maintain these peak outputs for an extended period of time. proponents of overspeed treadmills claim that this will allow athletes to develop blazing speed and explosiveness on the court, track, or field by promoting a highly specific adaptation to high speed training, all while drilling proper mechanics and body position … Sounds great, right?
Unfortunately, just like all things that sound to good to be true, over speed treadmills have a few major drawbacks. But before even getting into them, I’d like to address the rebuttal that I can already hear coming:
“Well, I used an overspeed treadmill and it made me faster”.
First, consider that almost any training stimulus, when applied to a beginner/untrained athlete or genetically gifted athlete, will cause a positive adaptation. Hell, you could probably do bicep curls and get faster. This however, does not mean that it is the smarted or even safest route to attain optimal performance. Remember, correlation does not equal causation. If you also spent time playing your sport, lifting weights, or doing other forms of sprinting/speed training while running on an overspeed treadmill, it’s more likely that those were the source of your improvement.
1) Injury
Before addressing whether over speed treadmills are even effective in the first place, it should be noted that the risk of potential injury far outweighs any of the proposed benefits, especially when compared to other just as effective and less costly speed training tools and methods.
While proponents of the over speed and high-speed treadmills claim that they allow you to drill proper running mechanics even at these high speeds, this is simply not the case. First, consider that many athletes (even advanced and professional) have a difficult time drilling proper mechanics at submaximal speeds, let alone at supramaximal speeds! This becomes an even bigger problem when young athletes and unprepared bodies are thrown onto the treadmill, with little to no training experience in the first place.
Despite claims to the contrary, overspeed treadmill training often cause athletes to over stride considerably (where the foot lands too far out in front of the body), causing a significant breakdown in the athletes mechanics. When athletes over stride and land too far outside their center of mass, this causes a “breaking force”. This is simple physics: for every reaction, there is an equal and opposite REACTION. If the foot lands too far out, there will be an opposite (to the direction that you are running) application of force (aka breaking force). In short, overstriding makes you a less efficient and SLOWER runner. If that wasn’t bad enough, over striding also exposes the hamstrings to extremely high velocity eccentric forces, which can often result in hamstring tendionopathy, strains, pulls, and complete tears. The potential risk of injury from over striding is extremely high during normal sprinting conditions, but becomes exponentially higher when athletes are exposed to supramaximal speeds on a treadmill. In addition, athletes do not have any time to build up to top speed since they jump onto the treadmill with no acceleration phase. This subjects the lower body musculature to very rapid and intense eccentric forces that often result in injury or lingering aches and pains.
In his book Triphasic training, studies done by Cal Dietz showed that optimizing an athletes eccentric and isometric strength in the weightroom (BEFORE emphasizing dynamic and concentric dominant movements) allowed athletes to not only produce MORE concentric force (think sporting actions like sprinting, throwing, punching ect), but reduced their chance of incurring a non-contact injury significantly. When it comes to most athletes, putting a big emphasis on low-threshold training methods initially will produce far better long term results (since these adaptations will be predicated on structural and not just the neural adaptations that we see with HST’s) than throwing unprepared athletes onto a treadmill.
2) Acceleration & Decceleration
One thing is certain when it comes to team sports, and most sports in general. athletes rarely make it into top speed mechanics. Instead, team sport athletes are required to perform short bursts of quick and powerful acceleration and deceleration to complete the complex motor tasks that we see in sports. Unfortunately, since athletes instantly thrown into top speed and completely skip over the acceleration phase, overspeed treadmills fail to address the mechanics, muscles, and strength qualities that are necessary for efficient deceleration and acceleration.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that training top speed is completely worthless for team sport athletes. However, it becomes a problem when the majority of an athletes training/running volume is spent on a high speed treadmill (as it often is). Plus, there are many other time tested and prove methods for training top speed, that don’t involve putting yourself at serious risk or spending a fortune. When proper acceleration and deceleration mechanics are neglected or ignored completely, athletes shortchange their overall speed potential and increase their risk of injury significantly. If you’ve got a limited time with a group of athletes each week/day, how much of that time do you want to be spending training a non-applicable quality, using an ineffective and costly training method?
3) Force Application
When it comes to treadmill running/ sprinting vs running/sprinting on solid ground, we need to consider two fundamental differences in force application
- Solid ground: How fast/forcefully you can apply force into the ground and (MOVING FORWARD)
- How fast/forcefully you can pick up your foot and put it back down ((RUNNING IN PLACE)
With solid ground, we have a predominantly horizontal application of force (some being vertical as well) even at top speeds, where as a treadmill sprint is predominantly a vertical application of force. This is all due to the difference in surface–ones moving and ones not. According to the law of dynamic correspondence and specificity, overspeed treadmills would not be categorized as an effective tool for speed development for this reason.
This brings us to another point. Proponenets of the overspeed treadmill rave about it’s ability to improve stride length. However, as shown by the renouned sprint coach Charlie Francis, increasing stride length is predominantly about producing and applying more vector specific force–something the over speed treadmill fails miserably at as mentioned above.
4) Running mechanics don’t matter
Just kidding. They do, but not nearly as much as you probably think. Another proposed benefit of the overspeed and high speed treadmills are their ability to closely monitor any breakdown in an athletes mechanics (aka a fluffy sales pitch). In theory, this would be great for linear based sports like Track & Field (if it actually allowed you to drill application sprint mechanics in the first place, which it doesn’t), but it’s almost completely irrelevant for team sport athletes, where “optimal” mechanics can vary widely between individuals, and where “over coaching” can be a very really performance killer. Again, it all comes down to effectiveness and training economy. Even if these things did do what they claim to do, how often do you want to spend your precious time and energy in the gym training a non-applicable quality?
5) Professional athletes don’t use them
Sure overspeed treadmills are flashy and easy to market (especially to parents), but they’re not fooling world class athletes and their coaches. If training at these blazing speeds really worked, why don’t we see athletes like Usian Bolt, Justin Galtin or Tyson Gays using them, or high level track & field coaches boasting about their effectiveness ? The answer: Because they DON’T work, nor is there a substantial amount of evidence in the literature to the contrary.
If you’re a coach or trainer looking to purchase an overspeed treadmill, do yourself a favor and invest your money into time tested and proven tools like sleds, barbells, dumbbells, bands, and some turf to sprint on. You’ll save yourself a butt load of money, and a potential lawsuit when one of your kids blows a hammy. Plus, no world class athlete was ever built in a shinny indoor “sports performance” lab on a treadmill.