Develop Relevant Speed for Football

First things first, speed is 100% trainable. There are physical qualities that determine an individual’s ability to express speed (or express the force required in the relevant time window to the ground), but the skill of speed application can always be improved.

And speed is a skill. Yes, aspects such as muscle fibre make-up, anthropometrics and previous training history (amongst other factors) can be key in an athlete’s potential to reach a certain speed. However, the skill of sprinting can reap massive rewards when trained appropriately.

HOW DO YOU DO IT!?

Before developing context to which the player can express football specific speed, the basics around speed and the ‘rules’ from a physical perspective, must be established.

Even before you look at bringing game specific context, is the player effective at accelerating? Can the player drop the trunk and centre of mass before projecting themselves forward? Can the player get in a position to use the ground efficiently and push in the right direction?

These are kinematic questions that are just a part of the puzzle. And this is only related to acceleration. But it’s certainly the place I would start the process of developing game relevant speed.

A sprint occurs every 90-120 seconds in game and most of these actions occur from a rolling start.

This is where practicing acceleration from one ‘static’ position such as a 2-point stance is not exactly setting the player up for success. Varied practice is going to be the best route here.

Primarily though, freezing the number of options and ‘closing’ the environment is the first step. Establish what effective positions in acceleration look like. I.e, Foot position when landing and direction of force as well as angle of the trunk. Aid the player in understanding what the best positions are to accelerate well.

The likelihood is that your player will get slower initially. When we are trying to create adaptation in movement (new skills), there is certainly more brain activity resulting in slower application of that skill.

Does the Technical Model Differ from Other Sports?

Sprinting is still sprinting. To a large extent, no it doesn’t. I feel though that there are idiosyncrasies with football that make the technical model slightly different. The ball is a huge factor in this. Or the presence of the ball in, and out of possession.

When you think of a top-level footballer who is also very fast, you think of Mbappe. For a footballer, his speed is phenomenal. The technical model of Mbappe is a sight to see. In acceleration, he hits a lot of the KPI’s kinematically that we want to see. Ground contact underneath Centre of mass, effective push and use of the ground as well as the trunk angle leaning towards the direction of travel.

Compare this with Messi. He has a different technical model which is arguably as effective (especially when he was younger). When we add the ball into the equation, dribbling changes the technical model. Close control and manipulation of the defender and the angles in which you want to hit to change direction mean that we wont see the projection of the hips and the larger angles that you want to see at top end speed.

Messi is obviously a generational talent. His dribbling style at top-end demonstrates high step frequency and a shorter stride compared to Mbappe who demonstrates the opposite.

Which one is correct? Both are. Stride length and frequency preference will be individual to the player. It is up to the player to work out what is effective. The coach should create an environment in which the player can figure out their own effective strategy. Analysis through video in reference to the context of the situation can be useful in this process.

Image Credit @kenclarkspeed - Instagram

Training Considerations

In my experience, Isometric holds (wall holds) and some resisted accelerations can be useful tools in this process. Coaches may believe that banded accelerations can be seen as having little transfer in acceleration; I disagree. I feel that you’re allowing the athlete more time to practice effectively pushing into the ground. Additionally, it’s a special strength exercise that is specific to acceleration.

Wall holds are seen as a marmite exercise – you either love them or hate them. My view is that they can be sometimes useful in the development process. You can teach the athlete about certain positions of acceleration. Would I spend loads of time here though? No.

After practicing effective positions for acceleration, I would start the make the environment slightly more open. What does their acceleration look like from a rolling start? Can I bring some chaos in or make it more competitive. An exercise needs context so that it can then become an skill that can be repeated in many different scenarios. Practice makes perfect. Or should I add, VARIED practice in context, makes perfect.

96% of sprints that occur during a game are less than (<) 30 metres per game. Does that mean that we should be practicing top speed? 1000% yes. Reaching top speed is incredibly individual. One player may reach top speed at 8 metres, another at 36. Who’s faster in this case?

Obviously, this is a trick question. There’s no context here. But maximal speed, or the acquisition of it, rises all ships. Meaning, that is we can increase a players maximal speed, you can see their acceleration and change of direction speed increase as well.

How do we practice this? There are two schools of thought. We can use technical exercises such as A’s, B’s, skips, bounds, scissors, wickets or even kinograms (ALTIS’ method for analysing kinematics) to make adjustments from a technical point of view. In a team setting, individualised approaches can be nearly impossible unless it is in a rehab or private setting.

Alternatively, you can just ensure that the players get exposures of over >95% of top speed in training or over the week (if you are monitoring objective data) via competitive exercises or direct sprinting.

My approach is again a mixed one for this – do both. The max v technical exercises can be added to any training or game-day warm-up. As long as these exercises have clear external cues (the more memorable the better) and there is the correct amount of buy-in, then these exercises can be useful in developing athletic qualities relevant for speed.

Ultimately, the only way football players (soccer) will sprint in-session is through a competitive exercise. Either pit the player up against one or a group of players or have them being chased down by an opponent. The more fun and competitive the better. Within reason of course.

Change of Direction Considerations

Change of direction and agility is different beast. The footballer needs to understand the basics of movement. To move right, we must push left. To move forward, we must push back. What happens when the foot lands too far in front? What happens when you are too upright? What happens if we push too far wide?

Fail at being effective, do better next time. Is that too simple? Again, we work from a closed skill to a more open, chaotic environment. Can you push off well at 180 degrees? Now do it to evade an opponent. Now do it with the ball. It’s a simplistic model, but it works.

Test, analyse, practice, application, re-test.

Developing Context

This can be done in several ways. I use to spend a load of time developing linear speed qualities before even bringing in practices for game-specific qualities. Now, the ball is out almost immediately. Allow the skill to be practiced with an element of chaos in session 1. Or every session on a longitudinal model.

Deceleration (another post altogether) can be practiced in isolation but tie it into changing direction and then create a game-based scenario to practice this. The fastest football players are masters of deceleration, manipulating their own (and their opponents) body position and can re-accelerate effectively with or without the ball from a variety of positions.

ALTIS’ Gamespeed Model

ALTIS nail the model here – speed is not just acceleration and top-speed. Its multi-factorial. There are cognitive components to speed expression. Knowledge of in-game mechanics. How play develops, how players slow down to speed-up in certain scenarios.

There are energy system demands as well. Can the player demonstrate contextual speed and then repeat that for 90 minutes (+).

The continuum of practice runs from a closed environment to an open, chaotic environment where the player has multiple stimuli. Technical to skill expression and so on. Reacting to your opponent is a skill. Use the rules of movement to your advantage.

If a player needs to accelerate by lowering the centre of mass and getting their feet in a position to apply force into the ground effectively, slow them down so they pop-up. There are numerous examples here.

Ultimately, if a player has a high level of in-game mechanics and can apply their speed qualities to a good number of scenarios then I believe they have effective ‘game-speed’.

Technical exercises that incorporate game scenarios are the place in which speed has its highest transfer. I feel that the coach who has one foot in both can create an environment that harnesses speed development and will have the most success.

If your players are part of a high pressing team then they need to have a decent amount of capacity for acceleration and top-end speed running. The same can be said for a team who counter attacks at pace.

If the model is possession based, its likely that the team will have higher instances of shorter distance acceleration and decelerations – as well as a good amount of lower intensity work.