Speed School 101: Accelerate Better!

Whether you're in the middle of offseason training or looking to maximize your inseason microcycle, when it comes to the Physical aspect of your player profile, there are few qualities that can have a bigger impact on your game than Speed; in over twenty years as a sports performance coach, whether it is when working my pro teams, when I working with the number one ranked men’s team in the NCAA, or when I trained the NCAA’s Women’s Most Improved Team in the Country, one sentence I’ve never heard from a coach is “Our athletes are TOO fast.” While there are few absolutes in the athletics world, every athlete that we’ve been fortunate to work with over the years has been happy to build more speed, more explosive ability, more dynamism on the field. There are many, many physical qualities that go into building a great soccer player – Balance, Coordination, Strength, Power, Stability, Agility, Mobility, Fitness, and countless more – but it’s tough not to notice the game-changing ability that Speed can deliver.

When we talk about Speed, it can be very helpful to be specific with what we’re actually talking about. One of my all-time favorite research studies looked at professional soccer players in England and found that, when it comes to speed on the soccer field, there are three distinct qualities we want to improve:

1)      Linear Acceleration – sprinting straight ahead for short distances (0-10yds)

2)      Agility – decelerating, changing direction, and reaccelerating in multiple planes of motion

3)      Maximum Velocity Sprinting – sprinting over longer distances (10-100yds)

What research tells us is that each of these three qualities are independent and need their own specific training to optimally improve. So, if you want to be better at one of these, you need to do work that specifically addresses that quality. And while Agility and Maximum Velocity Sprinting are critical parts of the game, today we’re going to look at three things you can do on your own or before practice to help improve your speed in Linear Acceleration.

When it comes to speed on the field, it’s hard to overstate the value of the “quick first step”; the ability to rapidly accelerate past your opponent or to rapidly close down space on the field. In this capacity, it’s essential to continue to grow in your tactical knowledge to know where to be and when to get there… but having the ability to explosively accelerate into space is one heck of a skill set to add to this tactical knowledge!

Improving your ability to sprint faster over shorter distances, to improve your Linear Acceleration ability, starts with teaching your body to produce more force, more explosively. The fastest athletes are often the most powerful ones as well. To help with that, the Standing Long Jump is a great drill. Try to do these 1-2 days a week for 2-3 sets of 3-5 repetitions, taking time to walk back and rest between each repetition: speed work isn’t fitness work, you need to do this type of work with maximal effort and little fatigue.

Along with producing more force, more explosively, it is important to teach your body the right mechanics to apply this force. To help teach these mechanics, the Linear Wall Drill – Singles, can be a tremendous for learning key tips like where your feet should be, how your shin angles should look, and how to effectively move your legs to be your fastest. These can be done either a few times a week or every day, for 2-3 sets of 5 ‘steps’ each leg.

As great as the Linear Wall Drill – Singles are for teaching proper mechanics, you need to be able to move from the super stable position of leaning against a wall to a challenge closer to the dynamics of when you actually sprint on the field. To help with that, the Harness Linear Acceleration Skip is a foundational tool for youth (and even professional) soccer players looking to improve on-field sprinting ability; it does a fantastic job of helping you learn to produce more power all while rehearsing the proper short distance sprinting mechanics trained in the Linear Wall Drill - Singles. Skipping, done properly, is very similar to your brain and body to sprinting, but the movements are just a bit slower, making it easier to fix mechanical errors that can slow you down on the field. Try these for 2-3 sets of 10-20yds, and once you get comfortable with the form, try these with your partner applying a bit more resistance with the harness as well!

Finally, it seems obvious, but it’s a key training point that many players can still miss: to get better at sprinting, you need to sprint! To go along with teaching your body how to produce more force, more explosively with the Standing Long Jump, and teaching it better acceleration mechanics with the Linear Wall Drill – Singles, it’s essential to put all of these skills into practice with Timed Acceleration Sprints. Find an open area, get a timer of some sort (the stopwatch app on your phone, an actual stopwatch, or, if you just have them laying around, laser timing gates), and sprint as fast as possible over 10-20yds, timing yourself each repetition. Try to do these 1-2 days a week for 3-5 repetitions, each time trying to break your previous speed record. Again, speed work isn’t fitness work, you need to do this type of work with maximal effort and little fatigue; a good rule of thumb for Timed Acceleration Sprints is rest 1 minute for every 10 yards you sprint.

And there you have it! Four simple drills that you can do this week to improve your Linear Acceleration ability to help you accelerate faster and be more explosive on the field. These can be done before practice (as the last part of the warm-up process), or on their own in speed-focused session. Give these a try and hopefully you’ll feel more mobile, more explosive, and ready to move your best on the field!

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us through our Contact page here and, for more general and sport-specific training information, visit our Instagram at: atsc_solutions. We also have a vault of proven, effective programs that we implemented at the Division I and professional sports levels for purchase on our Products page here. And if you’re looking to take your game to your highest levels, click here and let’s work together either in-person if you’re in the Cape Fear area or here if you’re interested in our individually-specific online training!