A method and apparatus to improve adaptation speed of a digital receiver is presented. The receiver includes an equalizer to initiate adaptation to a transmission channel responsive to a first control signal, a slicer coupled to the equalizer to generate symbol decisions based at least in part on an equalized digital signal, logic to receive the symbol decisions and generate a selection signal when a lock onto a training sequence of the symbol decisions occurs, first and second phase detectors to detect phase errors of the equalized digital signal and an incoming digital signal, respectively, and a clock generator to generate a clock signal responsive to one of the first and second phase errors.