Keep Getting Faster on Your Own – Four More Weeks of Speed Training

I didn’t want to have to write this. When I wrote my first four-week speed training plan, I was hopeful that by now you athletes would be back with your coaches, working to get better and make up for lost time. Instead, it’s June. Restrictions are starting to be lifted, but it’s entirely possible that you’re going to have to keep training on your own for a little while.

The goal for these workouts is to get faster and more athletic, not to “get in shape.” This isn’t conditioning. Science tells us that your aerobic fitness—the thing coaches are really talking about when they talk about “getting in shape”—deteriorates much, much slower than your pure speed and power. Take a look.

If you’re pretty well conditioned, you can take around a month off before your aerobic conditioning falls apart too much, but you have a week or less before speed gains start to slip. Unless you’re a cross country runner, your coaches don’t need you out running endless miles in the summer heat. If they think they do, have them come talk to me.

If you’re pretty well conditioned, you can take around a month off before your aerobic conditioning falls apart too much, but you have a week or less before speed gains start to slip. Share on X

What I have for you is four more weeks of speed training that you can do on your own. You can also do this with a friend or with a small group, depending on your state’s guidelines for social distancing. If you train with other people, make sure to be safe and stay far enough apart from one another that you’re not breathing in each other’s faces or swapping sweat. Bring your own water bottle. Be smart. Nobody wants to see fall sports canceled because people were irresponsible as soon as they returned to the real world.

Sprint Drills

Here are the sprint drills I posted way back in March. There’s nothing new here, but I’m sharing them again in case you need a refresher. All of the links are videos, so watch those if you need to see examples.

SPRINT DRILLS – A DAY	SPRINT DRILLS – B DAY
A-march	Walk over knees
A-skip	A-skip
B-skip	B-skip
High knees	Backward high knees
Lunge walkovers	Skip for height
Butt kicks	Pogo jumps for height
Five box jump	Backward run (butt kick and reach)
Straight-leg bounds	Boom-booms
Wall drills	3×30 meter accelerations

I do have to emphasize one thing, based on a few videos I’ve seen athletes and coaches post from their solo workouts. These drills need to be done at a high intensity with lots of attention to detail. These are meant to teach your body the posture, shapes, and movements required to sprint, so if you’re doing these slowly or going through the motions, you’re missing the point. This isn’t a warm-up. It’s all about quality, improving performance, and getting your body ready for speed.

The Workouts

For this four-week segment, you’ll train three times per week. Some of you will want to train daily, but you have to give your body a chance to recover if you want to see growth. Think of it this way: If you were in the weight room and you maxed out on Monday, you wouldn’t try to max out again on Tuesday. Sprinting is kind of like that. You should be “maxing out” with these workouts by pushing maximum velocity on every rep. You can’t do that every day without putting yourself at serious risk of injury. Recovery is important. Take days off.

Some of you will want to train daily, but you have to give your body a chance to recover if you want to see growth, says @TrackCoachTG. Share on X

Speaking of recovery, you’re going to need to get comfortable with standing around in between reps during these workouts. The goal is not to be tired. It’s to be fast and explosive—to max out —on every sprint. In order to perform at its fullest potential, the body has to be fresh. Be patient. You’ll be better for it in the end.

Just like in the table of sprint drills, I sprinkled links throughout the rest of this article so you can see the drills and exercises demonstrated. I highly recommend clicking those links and watching the videos. Let’s get to it.

Week 1, Monday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

3x 40-Yard Dash

The 40-yard dash is a staple of lots of speed training programs because it touches on both acceleration and maximum velocity. It’s the standard for football testing, but it’s also really relevant for every other team sport. Think about it: How often will you ever sprint more than 40 yards at once in any team-sport situation? The answer is not very often. Most of what we do in field and court sports falls under the umbrella of acceleration (and deceleration and changing directions, but that’s a different conversation).

But if that’s true, then why not sprint even shorter distances? Well, you will. But to answer your question, you’re going to sprint 40 yards because when you increase your maximum speed, you also increase your ability to accelerate. The weird thing is that the opposite isn’t true: You can’t increase your maximum speed by working only on acceleration. The 40 allows you to work on both, which is what makes it a great training option.

If you have access to a track, use the boys’ hurdle marks (which are 10 yards apart) to measure 40 yards. If you don’t have access to a track, but you do happen to have a tape measure, measure off 120 feet. I went ahead and did the math for you because I know you’ve been out of school for a while. If you don’t have either of those things, do your best to get close to 40 yards by walking off 40 big steps anywhere you can find room—the sidewalk, an empty parking lot, a field, a country road. You get the idea.

Sprint 40 yards as fast as you possibly can. If you’re working with a partner, have them time you with a stopwatch or a smartphone. Timing is always better than not timing, because it gives you instant feedback and something to shoot for. In fact, now seems like a good time to remind you that, if possible, you should time every single sprint you do in any of these workouts.

Timing is always better than not timing, because it gives you instant feedback and something to shoot for, says @TrackCoachTG. Share on X

After you sprint, rest for at least five minutes before you sprint again. Do three reps total and call it a day.

Week 1, Wednesday

Sprint Drills (B Day)

5x Wickets

5x Single-Leg Drop Jumps (each leg)

5x Depth Jump for Height

5x Depth Jump + Broad Jump

We talked about wickets back in March, but if several months of taking classes on Zoom has turned your brain to mush, then go ahead and watch this video to refresh your memory. Basically, wickets are a sprinting drill that teaches proper posture and stride patterns for max-speed sprinting. That means you have to perform these drills as fast as you can, that you should focus on running tall with your hips in front, and that you should rest enough between each run-through to be able to run fast again the next time.

Drop jumps are great because they teach your body how to absorb force. And the more force you can absorb, the more you can produce. This won’t make you short of breath, and you might feel silly doing it if you’ve never done it before, but I promise you that each time you land, your fast-twitch fibers are firing instantaneously to keep your body from collapsing and falling over. Find a raised surface that’s a couple feet high, jump off the surface, and land on one foot. That’s it. It’s important that you stick your landing and find your balance rather than walking out of the drill the second you hit the ground.

A depth jump for height is just like a drop jump, except that instead of sticking the initial landing, you immediately perform a second jump from the ground. From a raised surface, like the porch steps, a park bench, or a picnic table, jump down and land with two feet. As soon as you land, immediately jump as high as you can and land with two feet again, sticking your second landing. It’s really important that you do not spend a lot of time on the ground between jumps. There’s a fancy word for this (it’s “amortization phase”), and that’s all well and good, but what it means for you is that you want to absorb the force of your landing and then immediately produce explosive force with your jump as quickly as possible.

For the depth jump + broad jump movement, keep everything exactly the same as your depth jump for height. The only difference is that instead of landing and jumping as high as you can, you’ll be landing and jumping as far as you can. Sometimes it helps to have a visual target (like a chalk line or a stick) to reach for and hold yourself accountable for maximum intent on each rep. Whatever you do, make sure each jump is of the utmost quality and effort.

Week 1, Friday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

4x 20-Yard Dash

Remember when I said you’d sprint short distances, too? That’s what you’re going to do today. By definition, there’s basically no way you will achieve your maximum velocity over the course of 20 yards. That’s okay, because you’re still going to get a chance to work on your acceleration mechanics and on using big, powerful steps to generate speed.

Lots of people think you need quick feet to accelerate, but that’s not really true. You need to be able to push down and back with enough power to propel you forward, then do it again and again until you’ve reached full speed. Short, choppy steps won’t do that for you.

For these sprints, I’d recommend starting in a three- or four-point position, but you can play around to start in a way that most closely mimics your sport. If you’re a wide receiver, you could use a standing start. If you’re a prolific base-stealer on your baseball team, you could start facing sideways like you would if you were leading off from first base. No matter what, remember to think of your steps as powerful, not quick.

You won’t need quite as much recovery as you would for a longer sprint, but I’d still recommend at least three minutes between each rep. I know you get bored easily and have a short attention span. You can do it. Sprint 20 yards, listen to an entire song on your earbuds (or AirPods if you’re fancy), and then sprint again.

Week 2, Monday

Sprint Drills (B Day)

5x 30-Yard Hill Sprints

Today you’re going to continue to work on the acceleration mechanics that you practiced on Friday of last week by doing hill sprints. There are two reasons why hill sprints count as acceleration. First, they’re only 30 yards, which means you probably aren’t touching top speed. Second, because of the incline of the hill, a forward body lean is necessary for balance. You can’t stand straight up and down while sprinting uphill.

Here’s a tip for choosing a hill for hill sprints: If it’s a good sledding hill, it’s a terrible sprinting hill, says @TrackCoachTG. Share on X

Here’s a tip for choosing a hill: If it’s a good sledding hill, it’s a terrible sprinting hill. What I mean is that if a hill is too steep, you’ll be much too slow and your mechanics will turn to garbage really quickly. You’ll be practicing bad habits, and we don’t want that. The hill has to be gradual enough that you can still sprint at a relatively high speed and maintain proper mechanics. Try to find an incline that’s around 30 degrees. I know you don’t have a protractor, but you do have eyeballs. 30 degrees. Terrible for sledding, perfect for sprinting.

Sprint. Walk back. Rest for five minutes. Sprint again. Do it five times. Go home.

Week 2, Wednesday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

2×10 Hurdle Hops

5x PAP Jumps

3×5 Single-Leg Deadlifts (each leg)

You don’t have to have hurdles to do hurdle hops. You could use cones, pieces of scrap wood, sticks you found in the yard, or your imagination. For this drill, focus on ankle stiffness by contacting the ground and immediately bouncing back up. When we let our ankles, knees, or hips collapse too much, we spend too long on the ground. The most force you can apply in the least amount of time is the goal.

Post activation potentiation, or PAP, is another fancy training concept that isn’t actually all that fancy. What it means is this: When you lift something heavy, there’s about a 30-second window of time immediately after the heavy lift where your body can produce more explosive force than it could have if you hadn’t just lifted something heavy. So, in order to do this, you need something heavy.

Weights are good, but so are cinder blocks or 5-gallon buckets filled with dirt. Use the heavy thing you found and do two full squats with it (or, alternately, deadlifts if a better choice given the weight). Then, after you set it down, perform 1-2 two-footed vertical jumps as high as you possibly can. This isn’t a bounce drill, so you can regain your balance and rest for a couple seconds after each jump. As long as you perform both jumps within the 30-second window, you should be good. Take a break, and then do it again until you’ve done five rounds.

Single-leg deadlifts aren’t all that complicated. Watch the video. If you don’t have weights, it’s okay. If you do, it’s even better. Use what you have.

Week 2, Friday

Sprint Drills (B Day)

2x 60-Yard Dash

You get it. Mark off 60 yards in the most accurate way you can, and sprint your little heart out. You’ll need 6-8 minutes of rest between reps.

Week 3, Monday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

3x 40-Yard Dash

Sound familiar? If not, I have serious questions about your short-term memory. Scroll back up if you need to.

Week 3, Wednesday

Sprint Drills (B Day)

5x Wickets

2×10 Leg Exchange Plyos (see video below)

10x Rear Foot Elevated Split Jumps (each leg)

5x Consecutive Broad Jumps for Distance

For all of the jumps today, you should once again be aiming to minimize ground contact time. On the leg exchange plyos, you’re working on ankle stiffness and bounce.

On the elevated split jumps, it will be harder to bounce in the same way due to a flat-footed landing, but you should still try to get back off the ground as quickly as you can.

You already know how to do a broad jump, because we talked about it during Week 1. What I want you to do here is to get as far as you possibly can in five jumps, and I want you to measure how far you made it. Write your distance down somewhere, because you can take this exercise with you into the future and try to beat your distance next time. You don’t have to wait for some guy on the internet to prescribe these movements to you. Learn them, master them, and hang on to them forever.

Video 1. Leg Exchanges Plyos demonstrated by Coach Matthew Watson from his article “Plyometric Training Systems: Developmental vs. Progressive.”

Week 3, Friday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

1x 20-Yard Dash

1x 30-Yard Dash

1x 40-Yard Dash

1x 50-Yard Dash

Really spicing things up here, aren’t we? For these, your rest will vary. Take one full minute of rest for every 10 yards of the previous rep. That means you’ll sprint 20 yards, then rest for two minutes. Sprint 30 yards, then rest for three. Sprint 40 yards, then rest for four. After you sprint 50 yards, you can rest for the next couple days.

Week 4, Monday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

3x 30-Yard Dash

Measure your distance. Sprint. Time yourself if you can. Rest. Repeat.

Week 4, Wednesday

Sprint Drills (B Day)

5x Single-Leg Drop Jump + Hurdle Hop (each leg)

5x Stair Sprints

3×6 Bounds for Distance

The first movement sounds more complicated than it is. You already know how to do both individual parts of the exercise, so you just have to put them together. You’ll need a raised surface and something to hop over, like a mini-hurdle, cone, or stick. From the raised surface, drop down and land on one foot. Then, immediately bounce off the ground and hop over the hurdle, cone, or stick, and land with the same foot again. Do five on each leg.

For stair sprints, you need a flight of around 15 steps. If you can’t find this anywhere, you could substitute the hill workout you did last week. Sprint to the top of the stairs as fast as you possibly can, walk back down, rest at least three minutes, and do it again. If you have someone who can time you, that would be awesome.

A fantastic jumps coach from Illinois named Rob Assise recently wrote an article about bounding. If you have time, read the whole thing. But if you don’t, at least watch the videos in the article to see what it looks like when athletic high schoolers such as yourself bound correctly.

From a standing start, bound six times and see how far you can get. Rest for three minutes or so and do it again, and try to beat your previous distance. Every time you do this, try to get a little farther than the time before.

Week 4, Friday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

3x 20-Yard Fly

For these, you need a friend and a couple cones or other objects to use as visual markers for the 20-yard distance. Back up another 15 or 20 yards from there and start sprinting. Your friend should start the stopwatch when you cross the first cone, and stop the stopwatch when you cross the second cone. That’s a 20-yard fly.

You ran 20-yard dashes way back in Week 1, but those were from a standstill. These use a flying start to tell you how fast you can cover that distance when you’re already moving fast to start with. All in all, you’ll cover around 40 yards or so of ground, but you’ll only be timing the fastest part of that distance.

The Return

If the best-case scenario plays out, fall sports will go off in your state without a hitch. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to show up to practice the first day looking like someone who didn’t just play video games and eat Hot Cheetos all summer? And don’t act like you don’t have time. Each one of these workouts should take you around 40 minutes, start to finish. All told, that’s a grand total of two hours per week. It’s not like we’re training for a marathon here. Prioritizing speed is always a good use of your time, and it shows that you’re committed to your own athletic development, your coaches, and your teammates.

Prioritizing speed is always a good use of your time, and it shows that you’re committed to your own athletic development, your coaches, and your teammates, says @TrackCoachTG. Share on X

Finally, let me say this. Your coaches love to know that you’re putting in work. Take videos of yourself. Analyze your technique. Share your workouts on social media. If you want some feedback, you should absolutely feel free to tag me on Twitter or send me a DM. I might not be a coach at your school, but I’d still be happy to give you some pointers. After all, I’m having speed-coaching withdrawal since track and field season was canceled this spring.

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