Need advice for conditioning/training for speed

[mytwogirls]

The short and sweet of where I am at: I'm a reformed fat guy with little knowledge of exercise, in addition to changing my diet drastically I started running pretty much 7 days a week since I own a treadmill and have lots of outdoor space available to me. About a year and a half ago I started doing P90X when I was forced to take a break from running for a few months bc of injury. I really enjoyed P90X as I had no idea of what moves to actually do with any sort of gym equipment other then say bench press squat etc, the basics. Earlier this year around April I stopped P90X and did Insanity for a change of pace. Loved it and when I was done, I found and continue to use a hybrid of P90x and Insanity to this day. This is where I am at fitness wise for a baseline.

I'm currently in a basketball league through my Church and I play softball in my local park district league. I'm looking for a way to run quicker from basket to basket and base to base. No long distance marathons or anything like that. What I was told to do by someone who used to play football for a small local college was this: do squats and lunges and basically hill or wind sprints and that was it. Since I dont really know any better I was hoping someone might be able to eleborate or add to this a little. Any help is appreciated!

[Spectral]

I'm far from an expert, but the basic idea of sprints and intervals is surely where it's at if you're looking to add speed. Honestly, it's pretty hard to improve the sort of bursty speed that's desirable for basketball, but if you get yourself out on any sort of basic interval training program, you're going to find yourself beating people down the floor pretty regularly because of hustle and endurance as much as pure speed. I really don't know how to add that first and second step speed to take people off the dribble though, that seems like it's just either there or it's not.

[Kuniku]

Yeh from what I've found out for my fitness training, HIIT is probably what you're after, combine this with some intensive leg exercises to put more power into your running and you should see improvement.

From what i've read the HIIT improves both aerobic and anaerobic cardio, so you'll be able to sprint for longer. And I guess the increase in muscle from more intensive leg exercises will put more speed into the sprint. You could probably combine the too if you do the Sprint part of the HIIT up a hill or something

I remember watching a UFC a while back and they said that one of the exercises the fighter in question did was runnning laps in the desert near where he trained sprinting up sand dunes with his trainer up on his shoulders, try that ;op

[Phrumtastic]

well there's a difference between quickness and speed. Speed is kinda like sprinting and how fast you go, kinda like from start to finish. Quickness is more of cutting and not only there's also mental quickness. For quickness, you'll need stable ankles and a flexible feet. For speed thats your thighs/calves/form. couple of tips is shifting, like gliding with your feet basket to basket and back peddling. Just move those feet the lighter the better but you want strength. not too detailed sorry ill reply later.