If there was one quality I would always choose as a coach it would be speed. You can have big players and strong players. You can have fit players and smart players. But the truth is that speed kills. Period. So knowing the importance of speed how do we get faster? Unfortunately many still believe this is the way to develop speed.  And while 'speed' ladders might be useful for working on different footwork patterns, coordination or simply to help an athlete warm-up they don't do much in terms of speed development. Below are four ways to improve your speed and dominate your game. Speed Tip #1 - Increase Your Stride RateThere is formula that gets passed around coaching circles that speed = stride rate x stride length. While there is some truth to this there is more than be done than simply working on these two qualities. When we talk about stride rate we are referring the the turnover of the legs. How quickly can an athlete take a given number of steps when sprinting. And primarily what we are concerned with here is training the relevant muscles to fire quickly. And to do so is not so much a questions of strength or fitness as it of nervous system development. There have to be elements in the training program where the athlete is performing movements at high speed with sub-maximal loads. Speed Tip #2 - Increase Your Stride LengthHave you ever seen an athlete whose arms and legs are moving really fast? But the weird thing is they aren't moving faster than any of the other athletes in the game. Some coaches get fooled into thinking some of their athletes that move like this are really fast. But when you test them they aren't fast. And in games they...