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Heart rate and lactate responses, along with subjective indicators, have been the go-to solution for internal load response for years. It’s time to move on. We need to fully integrate the internal load using sports thermography and other indicators of muscle response, as the neuromuscular system is just as important as the cardiovascular system.

Heart rate and lactate responses, along with subjective indicators, have been the go-to solution for internal load response for years. It’s time to move on. Share on X

Over the course of this article, I propose a major paradigm shift in sports monitoring: measure muscles directly with noninvasive means. Along with the new direction, I promise additional methodologies that fully support existing techniques in tracking the training response, including the latest concepts in sports monitoring.

External and Internal Load – Bridging the Connection

I was interviewed on thermography in sport some time ago on SimpliFaster and contributed an article explaining how ThermoHuman can help professionals monitor their athletes. In this article, I take a step back to explain the monitoring process in more detail, as it’s difficult to make progress if foundational information is not fully comprehended.

Sports thermography can summarize internal load, a product of the work performed and the current condition of the body. Using thermography to immediately evaluate residual training for readiness or post training for decision-making is both effective and efficient. The process is effective because it objectively identifies how muscle and other soft tissues are responding to training, and the speed and automation of software is fast and reliable. In my own monitoring program, it’s the focal point between both internal and external load monitoring.

The quadrant of subjective, objective, internal, and external load monitoring is often cited as a way to convey relations between types of data with monitoring in sport. Today, many of the metrics to monitor workload have had backlash in the scientific community, including the acute chronic work ratio. Furthermore, coaches have experienced a poor cultural response from monitoring, as too much measurement seemed to have caused either poor compliance or low morale.

Instead of using a conventional model for monitoring, we need a fully integrated method of bridging both the perceptual experiences and the load response to training and competing. Share on X

The solution is multifactorial and will require support staff to find alternative ways to protect athlete health while improving injury rates for at-risk populations like elite athletes. Instead of using a conventional model for monitoring, we need a fully integrated method of bridging both the perceptual experiences and the load response to training and competing.

The use of thermography weaves the athlete response, both internally and subjectively, into an objective summary that is quick and easy. Immediate decisions and adjustments can be anticipated and refined to monitor the superficial temperature, and all departments can use the information collected. Fitness coaches can adjust exercise regimens, physiotherapists can increase services and restorative modalities, and sport scientists can use their existing processes to oversee the workload of the players.

Without question, sport thermography is a perfect tool for teams that need specific information on actual muscles rapidly. Share on X

Without question, sport thermography is a perfect tool for teams that need specific information on actual muscles rapidly. If employed as a part of the internal load response with athletes, thermography connects all perspectives by tying all of the data to common areas of injury and fatigue. Impellizzeri, Coutts, and Macora proposed a model for implementation and education with internal and external loading.¹

Biochemistry and Biomechanics

A common discussion point for medical and performance staff is the desire to address the links of muscle injuries and genetics, along with mechanical and biochemical load. Risk factors such as muscle strength, poor sleep, and nutritional insufficiency can turn standard athlete monitoring into a demanding process that is both exhausting and difficult to implement rapidly. Therefore, using conventional approaches and complementing them with thermography makes sense, namely because most of the actions after assessment include passive recovery methods and local strength and conditioning. Recent peer-reviewed research on athlete asymmetries in professional football indicates potential performance loss and possible connection to past injuries. Continual struggles with risk past healing times is evident with those who tore their anterior cruciate ligament in the past and reinjured the same or contralateral leg.

Teams investing in wireless surface electromyography should consider thermography, as the entire body can be scanned quickly, improving the odds of successful screening. In conjunction with manual testing using dynamometers or other devices, medical staff is more than welcome to use sonography as a way to confirm low-grade tears and pulls. Supporting data on delayed onset muscle soreness and injury diagnosis reveal that thermography and biomarkers (creatine kinase) are potentially useful to see the severity of muscular overload. Established studies are cautiously optimistic that it’s enough evidence to include in a comprehensive monitoring program. If a club or team wishes to conduct both biochemical testing and thermography, we recommend following the same procedures as the research performed in the past.

Approaches that use pathomechanics have had mixed results in applied settings, mainly due to the complex interaction of variables outside kinematics. Athletes with mechanics outside of the typical norms found in research are not destined for injury, and those who are in normal ranges are not free from risk either. In my experience, a combination of workload, athlete age, fatigue, and mechanical patterns should be used collectively to keep athletes on the pitch and to extend careers.

Sports Recovery and Muscle Inflammation

The inflammatory response is very difficult to manage, since each day results in a possible direction down the wrong path of repair. Soft tissue, especially tendons, can remodel in a structurally weakened alignment, increasing the risk of rupture. Muscles that are chronically overused will find movement strategies and recruitment patterns that will continue to serve the demands of sport, but it frequently comes with a cost. Extended inflammation beyond normal time periods is a potentially damaging condition, especially to athletes who are genetically predisposed to pathologies. From the available evidence, it appears that delayed healing times occur when internal biochemistry and workload are not in balance, and a mere increase in temperature of 0.4 degrees Celsius can determine risk to specific muscle groups.

The inflammatory response to light exercise and heavy training is a normal condition. Only when the inflammation is accompanied by severe discomfort and followed by an impairment in sports performance or pain does the symptom pose risk. In clinical settings, physiotherapists should use thermography and reported symptoms and cross-validate those scores with primitive ortho examinations and imaging if necessary. Inflammatory responses that are beyond repair and enter the stage of degeneration can be seen by thermal scans.

Athletes who are managed properly will continue to have a typical inflammation pattern, but the severity and duration beyond normal will be reduced. Share on X

Thermography has potential for diagnosis, but for sports medicine, we (ThermoHuman) recommend using the approach for complementary purposes, including examination by a professional. Acute and chronic patterns of inflammation can guide support staff on how an injury or condition is trending. Over the years we have seen a distinct pattern for various injuries, ranging from acute tears to extended complex return to play challenges with the knee and hip. If tracked properly, inflammation patterns can be controlled and guided toward proper homeostasis. Athletes who are managed properly will continue to have a typical inflammation pattern, but the severity and duration beyond normal will be reduced.

A Case Study – Brazilian Soccer and Muscle Injuries

A question clubs ask me daily is whether sports thermography works with teams. My recommendation is for them to read the study from 2019 that utilizes our methodology². The study, conducted in Brazil, monitored elite soccer players for two years. All athletes were tracked, and thermography was used to monitor the skin temperature of the athletes. The process was repeated for two years, and the results were supportive of thermography as a complementary solution for muscle injuries.

The authors conclude:

Findings from this study show that athletes who had muscle injury in the first year (2015) did not present lesions at the same site the following year. Thus, the early identification of the risk of injury, through thermography and the preventive protocol applied, was important because there was no reinjury. Thus, the severity of lesions and time away in 2016 was lower.

It may never be possible to prevent injuries. Sport is still entertainment, and the show must go on with or without its star. What we strongly believe is that sports thermography will reduce the rate and severity of injuries, and reinjury changes will be reduced with sports thermography. Success can be measured with more players available on the pitch or court, but also in the communication and documentation of services and complaints of the athlete. Adding in training regimens and GPS data may expose practice techniques that increase risk, but only if thermography bridges the connection between internal and external loading. IT will be up to the practitioner, not just the technology, for the use of thermography to assist in injury reduction.

Emerging Research and New Frontiers

The expectation is that camera sensitivity and capturing techniques will improve in the future. Currently, the quality of camera and protocols are more than adequate to conquer the challenge of reducing muscle traits with athletes. Adding multiple cameras, creating dedicated workstations, and automating reporting are all exciting directions for us. As more teams adopt ThermoHuman, the approach to monitoring will evolve with its popularity. In the meantime, using thermography frequently is an effective monitoring process for muscle recovery.

Research has already increased, as roughly half of all sports thermography studies were published over the last 10 years. The next 10 years will certainly be exciting and promising. Better controlled studies and experiments are expected to originate from the collaborations of sport science and sport medicine. Outside of football (soccer) and swimming, I expect additional research in basketball and American football, along with rugby, cricket, and baseball.

The most radical potential area for ThermoHuman and sports thermography is software. We have already released our second version, which dramatically improves both the analysis and the reporting. What ensures that thermography is valid and reliable is the protocol of capturing the athlete and the way the information is processed.

If you aren’t comfortable with the concept of thermography monitoring, a good start is maximizing the use of body soreness scoring often seen with monitoring software. Share on X

In addition, all users need to have an action plan after imaging. We recommend sports medicine departments and fitness coaches have an idea in mind before starting the implementation of sports thermography into their monitoring program. If you are not comfortable with the concept of thermography monitoring, a good start is maximizing the use of body soreness scoring often seen with monitoring software. The future of monitoring is going to be faster, smarter, highly more accurate, and more demanding.

Injury Reduction Is Not a Holy Grail

We concur that athletes will continue to suffer injuries in the future, and no program will be perfect. The most precious athletes are often those prone to injury, and we can make a significant impact on player availability using thermography alone. By adding the use of biochemical and other forms of tracking into the monitoring equation, you can ward off obvious risks with a cooperative environment. It will require more education to get the best practices refined with thermography in sport, but I am confident that more education can turn a good monitoring program into a superior solution.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

References

1. Impellizzeri, Franco M., Marcora, Samuel M., and Coutts, Aaron James. “Internal and External Training Load: 15 Years On.” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. 2019;14(2):1-4.

2. Côrte, Ana C., Pedrinelli, André, Marttos, Antonio, et al. “Infrared Thermography Study as a Complementary Method of Screening and Prevention of Muscle Injuries: Pilot Study.” BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine. 2019;5(1):e000431.

Well, your track and field season just took an unexpected turn, didn’t it? Many states (including mine) have closed K-12 schools for the next several weeks or more, the NCAA has shut down its spring sports season, and as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, it certainly isn’t going to get any easier for your track and field team to train. It’s entirely possible that high school athletics associations could follow suit behind the NCAA and cancel spring sports entirely. Not what you had in mind, is it?

If your coaches are in a situation like mine, they’re not allowed to have any face-to-face contact with athletes during the school closures—which is why they’ve forwarded you a link to this article. We are not allowed to encourage our athletes to meet on their own in groups. We cannot be a party to any sort of organized gathering of the young humans we coach to do the sports things we coach them to do. Speaking as a coach: I get it, but I don’t like it.

In Michigan, we are currently operating under the assumption our track and field season will resume on April 13. That means that for the next month, if our athletes are going to train at all, it has to be entirely on their own. From a training perspective, it’s not like this situation is totally unprecedented. Whether it’s the state-mandated dead period before your season begins, a vacation with your family, or your lack of reliable transportation during the summer months, there are periods throughout the year where many of you have had to train independently outside of a normal practice.

Coaches, these ideas aren’t for you. This article is for the athletes. Here is a four-week plan to train speed when track practice is out of the question, says @TrackCoachTG. Share on X

For all you speed-focused athletes, this can get tricky. Your teammates who run distance events or cross country can just hit the streets and log some miles, but on your own, it’s more challenging for you sprinters to get the level of high-intensity training needed to continue making speed gains. Nevertheless, I have some ideas.

Coaches—these ideas aren’t for you. Remember, most of us can’t coach our kids right now. But we can post articles on our Twitter accounts, right? This article is for the athletes. Here is a four-week plan to train speed when track practice is out of the question.

Sprint Drills

I don’t like to call anything “warm-ups.” Some of you—you know who you are—don’t always take warm-ups seriously. You go through the motions. These are sprint drills to practice proper sprinting technique and posture. They need to be done at a high intensity with attention to detail. You most likely do some of these drills in practice already. Lots of coaches teach them to their athletes. I have two different sets of sprint drills that I use in practice so that my athletes don’t do the exact same thing every single day. Variety is the spice of life, or whatever. Here they are, with links to videos so you can see what proper technique looks like.

SPRINT DRILLS – A DAY	SPRINT DRILLS – B DAY
A-marches	walk-over knees
A-skips	A-skips
B-skips	B-skips
high knees	backwards high knees
lunge walkovers	skip for height
butt kicks	pogo jumps for height
five box jumps	backward runs (butt kick and reach)
straight-leg bounds	boom-booms
wall drills	3×30 meter accelerations

Finding Your Space

An old coach once told me: “All you need to run track is two feet and a heart.” As cute as that might be, you also need some space if you’re going to train speed effectively. Get creative and explore your surroundings. You need to find a space that has between 60 and 80 meters of open space. A city sidewalk, an empty parking lot, your neighborhood cul-de-sac, a dirt road in the country, the soccer field at the middle school down the street, your backyard, the track at the school you’ve been banished from for the foreseeable future. The world is your oyster. The main thing here is that you need enough room to be able to sprint at or near your top speed.

Other things that could come in handy would be another person, a stopwatch or a smartphone, and some circle cones or mini-hurdles. None of these are necessary, per se, but they’re nice to have. Be resourceful. You can make mini-hurdles out of PVC pipe for under $25 dollars.

 

The Workouts

Let’s make this simple. You’re going to train three times a week for the next month. You might think you need to do more than that, and it’s likely that you would if you were at practice. But we need to be conscious of a few things here. First, you’re training speed and not endurance. Second, you need to prioritize rest and recovery when you do high-intensity training. And third, there is literally a pandemic happening, and you need to limit your exposure to other humans as much as possible. Don’t be a tough guy: There’s no prize being handed out for the person who is least worried about COVID-19.

Be smart, stay safe, and take care of yourself.

Week 1, Monday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

3x 40-Yard Dash

If you can get on a track, this will be easy for you to measure: boys’ hurdle marks are 10 yards apart. If you can’t, just ballpark it. We have to improvise here. Throw down a marker for the starting line, walk off a distance that’s about 40 yards, and throw down a marker for the finish line.

Maximum intent and top speed are the goal of these drills, so make sure you take plenty of rest between each sprint—at least 5 minutes, says @TrackCoachTG. Share on X

If you have a friend, they can help in one of two ways: they can time you, or they can race you. As long as you run the same distance for each rep, your times will give you relevant information even if it doesn’t provide NFL Combine accuracy. Maximum intent and top speed are the goal, so make sure you take plenty of rest between each sprint—at least five minutes. This feels like an eternity when you’re on your own, but you have to do it. Sorry, kid.

Week 1, Wednesday

Sprint Drills (B Day)

Plyometric Training

There are lots of great plyometric drills you can do with limited space and no equipment. Two feet and a heart! You could even do some of these in your living room, as long as you don’t knock your mom’s favorite vase off the mantle. Choose three or four of these that look interesting to you.

Week 1, Friday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

10x 30-Yard Fly, EMOTM

EMOTM means “every minute, on the minute.” A friend with a stopwatch is great, but a smartphone works just as well and will never betray you (except for autocorrect). Mark off a distance that’s around 30 yards. You can start another 5–10 yards behind the line for these, since they’re flying starts instead of stationary. Sprint 30 yards and start the stopwatch as soon as you take off. Your sprint should only last a little more than three seconds. That means you have another 57 to rest before you run again. Start your next sprint every minute, on the minute, until you’ve done all 10. Maximum intent and top speed are always the goal. The faster you sprint, the longer you get to rest.

You’re not done. Over the weekend you’re going to watch so much Netflix that your brain is going to turn into mashed potatoes—and not the good kind that your grandma makes, but the sad pasty kind from the school cafeteria. Save this link and set a reminder in your phone, because come Monday you’ll forget where you found these workouts. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

You good? Cool.

Week 2, Monday

Sprint Drills (B Day)

2x 60-Yard Dash

Most of your fellow high school athletes take around 40 yards to reach top speed, and most can only maintain that top speed for a couple seconds before they begin decelerating. By that logic, then, anything from 40 yards on down is more focused on acceleration than it is on maximum velocity. In order to get to maximum velocity training, you have to use a distance that allows you to reach it and maintain it. Enter the 60-yard dash.

Again, a track would be great, but you probably don’t have access to one unless you like climbing fences, which I would never encourage you to do.

Find a big space and mark off 60(ish) yards like we talked about before, and sprint. If you have someone to time you or race you, that would be great, because we tend to run faster when a clock or a competitor is involved. If you’re on your own, that’s okay too. Make sure you rest 8–10 minutes before sprinting a second time.

Week 2, Wednesday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

Myrtl Hip Routine

5x Wickets

10x Depth Jumps

10x Box Jumps

Today you’re going to spice it up a bit. The Myrtl hip routine will help you with your hip strength and mobility. I coach hurdlers, so I like mixing this in every now and again. For wickets, use your resources. Did you build those mini-hurdles I told you about? Why not? Bruh. You have nothing but time on your hands this month. Okay, well, do you have some circle cones? No? Go in the yard and pick up some sticks, then. All you need is something you can a) put on the ground, and b) see reasonably well.

Whatever you decide to use as your visual marker, put 10 of them on the ground about six feet apart from one another. Then back up about 15 yards or so and sprint, stepping between each wicket (or cone, or stick…sticket?) that you put down. The key is to sprint fast and to maintain an upright sprinting posture during the drill.

Next, you’re going to do a series of jumps. You might not have access to a box, but lots of things will work for this. You could use a park bench, the steps of your front porch, an upside-down milk crate, the edge of the fountain outside the library, or any other surface that is a couple feet high and sturdy enough to hold you. You’ll do your depth jumps first, then take a break and do your box jumps. The goal is not to get tired here, nor to do them all in succession as fast as you can. Take your time between reps, focusing on being explosive off the ground and landing under control.

Week 2, Friday

Sprint Drills (B Day)

3x 20-Yard Dash

2x 30-Yard Dash

1x 40-Yard Dash

You know what to do. Mark off your distances and sprint. Find a friend to time you or race you. As a general rule, rest for one minute for each 10 yards you sprint. That means rest for two minutes after each 20-yard dash and three minutes after each 30. You don’t have to rest for four minutes after your 40, because you’re done. You can rest the remainder of the weekend, right after you put that reminder in your phone for Monday.

Week 3, Monday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

3x 40-Yard Dash

You already did this. Do I need to explain it again? Scroll back up to the very first workout if you forgot

Week 3, Wednesday

Sprint Drills (B Day)

2x 5 Single-Leg Hops

3x 30-Yard Speed Bounds

3x Stair Sprints

For your single-leg hops you can use equipment or your imagination. Those mini-hurdles that you didn’t build last week but definitely built over the weekend would be handy, as would the cones or the sticks. If you don’t have any of those things, pretend that you do. Imagine that you have five mini-hurdles lined up in front of you, spaced a few feet apart, and you’re going to hop on one foot over each of them. When you hop, you have to cycle your hopping leg up and through so it clears the hurdle, whether it be real or imaginary. Land and immediately hop again—bouncy is fast! You don’t want to spend a lot of time on the ground between hops. Do five on each leg, then rest and do five more.

Next, you’ll do some speed bounds. When you do these, make sure to focus on pushing off the ground on contact, driving your opposite knee, and keeping your toe in a dorsiflexed position (that means your toe should be flexed up, toward your shin, instead of hanging down).

Any stairs will work for the final piece of today’s workout, so long as there are about 10–15 of them. You could run up the basement stairs like you did when you were little and thought there was a monster inside the furnace. If you’re reading in Philadelphia, you could recreate the iconic scene from Rocky, only a lot faster. What? You haven’t seen Rocky? Kids these days.

Start at the bottom of the stairs and sprint to the top as fast as you can. Walk back down. Rest a couple minutes. There’s no drill-sergeant-turned-football-coach here for you to impress. Walk means walk. Rest means rest. Do it, and then sprint again. The goal is to be as fast as you can each time you go up the stairs, not make yourself so tired that you’re in danger of falling down them.

Week 3, Friday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

4x 7-Second Drill

You’ll probably need 80 yards for this one. Another person would be good, too. Throw down a marker for a starting line and set a timer (or have your friend set one) for seven seconds. Start the timer, and sprint as far as you can in seven seconds. Make a note of how far you made it—your friend can throw down a second marker to indicate your total distance. Then, after three minutes of rest, do the same thing again, trying to get as close to your total distance on the first sprint as you can. You’ll do this four times in total. Set a reminder in your phone for Monday, go take a shower (you smell v bad), and find Rocky on your favorite streaming service so you can watch it this weekend.

Week 4, Monday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

3x 30-Yard Fly

Mark off your start and finish areas somewhere in the ballpark of 30 yards apart. Start another 10–15 yards behind the cones. Your goal is to be as fast as you can possibly be between the cones. If you have a person who can time you, that’s great. If not, you’re going to have to push yourself. Rest for somewhere between three and five minutes before sprinting again.

Week 4, Wednesday

Sprint Drills (B Day)

5x Wickets

5x Star Jumps

10x Step-Ups (Each Leg)

5x Standing Broad Jump for Distance

I’m extremely proud of you for building those mini-hurdles. Strong work.

Star jumps are an explosive movement, and you should aim to jump as high as you can each time. If we are trying to be explosive, there’s no point in doing anything but aiming for maximum height. It’s only five, so go all out.

All you need is one stair for this. Even the curb on the side of the street will work. When you do your step-ups, make sure that you maintain appropriate sprinting posture, and that you push down hard onto the step. You’re looking to generate vertical force onto the surface while driving your knee and keeping your toe in a dorsiflexed position. Do 10 of these on each leg.

Finally, test yourself on some standing broad jumps. Start from the same spot each time and see how far you can go. Then try to go farther the next time. You won’t feel tired after each attempt, but you still need to rest a minute or two before you go again.

Week 4, Friday

Sprint Drills (A Day)

8x 40-Yard Dash EMOTM

Set your start and finish areas as close to 40 yards apart as you can manage. Get your stopwatch or smartphone ready, start the clock, and sprint 40 yards as fast as you can. If it takes you 5 seconds, you now have 55 seconds to rest. Line it up and go again. Do this eight times. You will have done 320 yards of sprint work, so you’ll be a little bit winded at the end of this one, but probably not as bad as if you’d done all 320 yards at once. You should sprint as fast as you can each time, because you don’t get faster by running slow.

One thing is for sure: If track and field starts back up in a month and you haven’t worked on your speed, you will be starting from scratch when you return to practice, says @TrackCoachTG. Share on X

The Return

If all goes according to plan, you should be back in action with your team after these four weeks. If not, it’s likely the entire spring season has been cancelled. Only time will tell. But one thing is for sure: If track and field starts back up in a month and you haven’t worked on your speed, you’re going to be starting from scratch when you return to practice. Are you willing to bet that your biggest rival has been sitting on the couch eating chips for that entire time? If it were me, I’d want to be ready for action when the time comes.

Be smart, be safe, and be fast. And for goodness sake, wash your hands.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

When you make a living in the sports performance industry, whether it’s working for a professional team or university or providing a service to a group of individual athletes, you’re in the business of making promises. These promises can be accompanied by a set of strategic recommendations, injury prevention strategies, recovery enhancements, technological improvements, or psychological interventions. The “promisers” typically have their own lane or niche.  Some skill sets are easy to identify, while others are often steeped in intrigue, mystique, and complexity (i.e., “He’s using lots of big, multi-syllable words that confuse me, so he must be an expert!”).

In my case, I’m often called upon to improve the speed of individuals and teams. Organizations know what they want. The “product” can be very measurable. And, although unspoken, this product must lead to wins and championships—no questions asked. Making a team faster with no improvement in the “Wins” column is not acceptable in the land of billion-dollar pro sports organizations. Being able to deliver on such promises is quite another proposition, and living on this razor’s edge can be quite a stressful existence. So, where do you begin?

It’s often thought that producing speedy athletes involves a special combination of well-packaged exercises and drills dispensed by animated coaches. When it comes to making an entire roster of players faster, some assume that you simply dispense more drills and exercises in a one-size-fits-all manner, preferably with loud music blaring in the background. And expensive cutting-edge technologies absolutely must be part of the package to demonstrate the efficacy of the exercises and drills, avoiding relegation to the label of old-school coaching dinosaur. While trendy exercise programming bundled with sexy tech is thought to yield rapid and sustainable results, I must bring you back to down to earth and set the record straight. Most of the bottom dwellers excel at this approach.

Anything worthwhile and sustainable takes time to cultivate. Overnight improvements are quite rare and, in sports where well-coordinated teamwork is critical for success, almost impossible to achieve. This is exceptionally true when developing speed, particularly at the team-wide level. But why does it take so long? Many variables and elements must be addressed on a comprehensive level for a team to be considered one of the fastest in the league that also can win a championship year after year. While some general managers and coaches may take an athlete-centered approach, this is only one piece of the puzzle. An attitude around speed development and application must be cultivated organization-wide to attain a critical mass of acceptance and buy-in that becomes systemically applied and considered around all decision-making.

We talk about the speed of movement, the speed of decision-making, the speed of recognition, the speed of communication, and the speed of thinking. Share on X

Hence, I’ve adopted an approach to change the organizational culture around speed when I work with various teams in both the professional and collegiate sport circles. We talk about the speed of movement, the speed of decision-making, the speed of recognition, the speed of communication, and the speed of thinking. Essentially—the speed of everything.  Running speed is a good starting point as everyone knows who is fast and who is slow. It may cut as deeply as being chosen (or not chosen) back in grade school for a team by your peers. If you were fast, you were likely chosen earlier. If you were slow, playground natural selection quickly and brutally took its course. Modern technology has made us think about speed over everything. Speed of data transfer. Speed of production. Speed of delivery. Even the speed of meeting a new partner. Thus, speed must be all-encompassing and decisively adopted by everyone. So how do we accomplish this?

Why Focus on Culture?

These days, we often hear of leaders changing the culture of a company or cultivating a positive culture around productivity, innovation, and success. “It’s not just what we create, it’s who we are!” and other lovely memes circulate through the organization and appear in elevators and above urinals. Either you are for the culture or you are against it.  The type of momentum generated by culture can be quite powerful and enduring. While some culture initiatives are simply corporate feel-good projects that never materialize into anything productive, a well-implemented strategy that has a positive systemic impact can truly vault an organization into a unique category of success. Some would say that Bill Belichick has instituted a culture of discipline, accountability, precision, talent identification, and strategic superiority at the New England Patriots that we can interchangeably superimpose on different personnel with similar positive results. Whether there’s an organization-wide culture initiative or a top-down dictatorship is up for debate, but the results are indisputable.

The term culture, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is as follows:

“The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization.”

While culture can often refer to the customs, arts, and social institutions of a country, ethnicity, or community, sports organizations often discuss culture in terms of the dictionary definition, adopting attitudes, goals, and practices in the hope that success quickly follows. In business circles, corporate culture is deemed successful only if a business is also financially viable. Employee satisfaction, career longevity, community involvement, and other qualities can be part of that assessment, but if a business is losing money, it really doesn’t matter. In the same vein, a sports organization can have lots of happy players that get along with coaches and staff, sign autographs, and attend charity events. But if they aren’t winning, the organization will make changes sooner than later.

It’s important to point out that when instituting an approach that is adopted organization-wide—a culture shift—casualties can be incurred during the implementation. In the recent award-winning Netflix documentary, American Factory, a Chinese company acquired a former automobile factory in Moraine, Ohio, intending to turn the business around and make it profitable again as an auto glass production facility. With that in mind, the Chinese factory owners—who operated similar successful factories in China—instituted a change in the corporate culture that mirrored their previous ventures. Much of that culture revolved around the speed and volume of production, sometimes to the detriment of worker safety. Slower, less productive employees also were systematically fired as part of the transition.

Clearly, the key goal of the culture change was profitability and sustainability, not affability. The company offered significantly lower wages to the non-unionized employees, and job security was limited. But the factory was operational and providing jobs to individuals who were unemployed for three to four years previously. While this is not exactly comparable to New England Patriots players taking lower salaries in exchange for championships, culture can be exceptionally ruthless on the path to success.

While it’s all well and good to discuss culture and organization-wide change, it’s quite another thing to organize all of the pieces in a manner that yields progress. In the case of movement speed, there is no shortage of experts and gurus in the industry to show you new drills, equipment, biomechanical analyses, research papers, and fancy technology.  But none of this matters if you don’t have organization-wide buy-in with everyone pulling in the same direction. Provided below is a list of requirements that give organizations a fighting chance to effect positive change around movement speed that applies to their finished product.

Personnel

When implementing a culture change, everyone must be part of the solution. It’s short-sighted to think that you only need to overhaul the players. Everyone in the organization must examine their role in increasing the speed of play as it pertains to developing a championship organization. You might be surprised how important the roles of front office executives, coaches, and staff play in cultivating an ecosystem of movement speed and everything that comes with it. The measures taken by all individuals add up to create a sum total of faster team play. While a race car requires a powerful, durable engine to attain the speeds necessary for victory, it also needs an exceptional driver, a fastidious pit crew, top-notch mechanics, and appropriate financing to ensure the team assembles all the critical pieces at the right time. The list below is not exhaustive, but it shows how the key pieces interact to maximize the possibility of improving a team’s overall speed capabilities.

Players

First and foremost, you do have to start with the players who make up your team. We have all heard the saying, “Sprinters are born, not made!” There is significant truth to this statement, and all teams and sport organizations should take heed. Selecting players who have the right combination of muscle fiber type, nervous system output, and compatible anthropometrics is critical for filling your stable with thoroughbreds. While we all like to think we can coach ourselves out of mediocre genetics, the bottom line is that biology is significantly more important than methodology. This is why all talent scouts need to arm themselves with a stopwatch in addition to their sport-specific wisdom. An athlete’s innate speed capabilities are the foundation upon which you will build other vital qualities and skills.

An athlete's innate speed capabilities are the foundation upon which you will build other key qualities and skills, says @DerekMHansen. Share on X

We often see and hear track coaches extoll the virtues of running track to prepare athletes for other sports. While I don’t disagree with this line of reasoning, I specifically like to watch athletes compete in Track and Field events because I can see them run over multiple, maximum output scenarios—a larger sample size upon which to evaluate their speed abilities per se. How do they run over shorter sprints? How do they run over longer sprints? How do they run after a bad start? How do they run in inclement weather? How durable are they over the length of multiple track seasons? How do they perform in high-pressure situations? All of these scenarios matter and provide much more information than two repetitions of a forty-yard dash at a combine or pro day.

Players not only need to be fast, but also need to have the specific conditioning to repeat high speeds consistently throughout the game. Legendary NFL strength coach Al Miller once told me that Jerry Rice’s brilliance was in his ability to repeat the same speed through the entire game. While he may not have had the glorious 40-yard dash times of Deion Sanders, he could wear down defenders with his superb conditioning. “He would run at defenders at his top speed throughout the first half of the game. By the second half, he didn’t slow down one bit, and the defensive back was at his mercy,” noted Coach Miller. This off-season preparation was entirely created by Rice’s legendary commitment to off-season training.

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Flowing from the story of Jerry Rice’s unique accomplishments, an organization must choose athletes who understand the importance of maintaining the level of commitment to speed training and preparation that got them there in the first place. It’s very common to see athletes reach the professional ranks on their talent—often fostered by the discipline and structure of a collegiate setting—only to lose their edge and motivation once they start getting paid. Like the heavyweight boxer who worked tirelessly to the title belt, their work ethic and character can quickly fall off once they achieve a taste of fame and glory. Championship organizations need players who have longevity of motivation and ability to have a fighting chance to compete for the title year after year. This means consistent dedication to training in the off-season and maintaining health and ability during the season. Not every athlete has this level of commitment and character.

Championship organizations need players with longevity of motivation & ability if they want a chance to compete for the title year after year. Share on X

Traditionally, the faster players tend to be the newer, younger stallions who were honed by their college preparation and perhaps a career on the track team. Newer and younger also means cheaper. Once players have had time to develop a resume of stats and legitimacy, they’ve earned the right to demand more expensive contracts. It’s also a good bet that they’ve slowed down a step or two—de-trained from the diet of life as a pro and less urgent off-season preparation. While they may have gained valuable tricks of the trade, skills, and knowledge to help compensate for their speed loss, the net gain may be zero. Hence, a sound return on investment may require a commitment from these players to buy-in to the comprehensive approach adopted by coaches and staff. The right combination of fresh newcomers and well-maintained veterans under the right coaches can be very difficult to slow down from game to game, and it may be only a matter of time before a deluge of speed takes over the game.

Coaches

The obvious role of the sport coach is to place their athletes in positions to take advantage of their talents. A coach who doesn’t involve the fastest players in all aspects of the game will leave some very valuable cards on the table. From a purely strategic point of view, developing schemes and plays that put fast players in open space is critical for taking advantage of individual speed potential. Players with speed often can create something out of nothing. But to achieve consistent success, coaches must play a part in systematically creating opportunities for game-breaking plays using team speed. This can include disguising formations, creating misdirection, and using the occasional trick-play to keep the other team off balance. Once the opposition is thrown off balance, team speed can quickly shift momentum and drastically change the outcome of a game.

To achieve consistent success, coaches must help systematically create opportunities for game-breaking plays using team speed, says @DerekMHansen. Share on X

Sport coaches also need to work closely with strength and conditioning staff to make sure they’ve allocated an appropriate amount of time throughout the year to work on speed development. While this may seem like an easy ask, sport coaches are often overwhelmed with technical and tactical issues, always looking for extra repetitions or run-throughs to ensure they prepare their players adequately for impending competitions. Having worked with several teams on speed programming, I’ve found it’s always difficult to ask for a few extra minutes here and there to fit in high quality sprinting reps and the associated recovery time. However difficult the ask, you not only must do it, but you also must make the head coach aware of the need to allocate the necessary time to get the job done (i.e., make players faster). Sport coaches need to understand the time it takes to reproduce maximal sprint efforts for improvement to occur.

I remember being called several years ago by a professional sports team, and the strength coach told me they had 15 minutes to work on speed. He asked, “What can we program in that time?” I told them if they truly wanted to work on speed and had to warm the players up adequately, they would be lucky to get a few quality sprints in that window, given the recovery requirements of several minutes between reps. The strength coach replied, “Our head coach doesn’t want to see guys standing around for a few minutes between reps.” I could only respond with, “Well, I guess your head coach doesn’t want your guys to get faster.” This is the reality with most sports teams.

A few strategically placed recovery breaks goes a long way to increase the speed of practice & minimize the possibility of injury, says @DerekMHansen. Share on X

Sport coaches also need to understand how the demands of practice can slow down their players. The sheer density of drills and plays during practice can slow movement speeds significantly, and the steady accumulation of these types of practices has the potential to de-train speed abilities over the course of a season. A few strategically placed recovery breaks can go a long way to increase the speed of practice and also minimize the possibility of injury. For many coaches, however, taking their foot off the gas in practice is not part of their DNA. As the old saying goes, “Fortune favors the bold.” A new generation of coaches may start to understand the value of incorporating rest breaks in lieu of rehearsing plays that may never be used in game situations.

Performance Staff and Strength and Conditioning Coaches

Strength coaches are often characterized by their love of the weight room and all sorts of weightlifting equipment. It’s not surprising that a large proportion of strength coaches don’t feel comfortable teaching sprint training to athletes. Often, strength coaches use gym-based solutions instead of actual sprint training to work within their comfort zone. Recently, more performance staff have started recognizing the value of emphasizing speed training and have adjusted their approaches accordingly. Strength coaches with less aptitude have hired consultants to help with technical training and programming. I’ve been brought in on numerous occasions to teach team staff how to coach speed throughout the season. Gradually, an acceptance of the critical on-field requirements is taking hold among performance staff. But the amount of time, energy, and money spent on education, professional development, and equipment purchases still disproportionately favors the weight room.

We often hear that performance departments should simply hire track sprint coaches to teach athletes how to run. While this is likely an improvement over the “running” skillsets of traditional strength coaches’, it’s unfortunately not that simple. While every sport can benefit from linear sprint training, speed professionals must also understand the specific requirements and the culture of the sport with which they’re working. There are limitations within every sport that restrict the ability of conventional track training conventions. These limitations include time, space, athlete awareness, and the perception of coaches.

I’m sure everyone would love just to slap down some mini-hurdles and tell people to lift their knees. News flash—it ain’t that easy. I’ve been working with teams for over 20 years, and trust me, working with team sport personalities, schedules, and logistics requires a much different skill set. The ability to adapt methods and techniques to the sport-specific needs and desires of the coaches and athletes is imperative for success. You wouldn’t drop an Olympic weightlifting coach into a sprint training group without a chaperone present to blend techniques, translate terminology, and integrate methods progressively; speed professionals must become acclimated to the culture before making any significant contributions. And it may take many years before any significant changes that make it onto the field of play are minimally realized.

Medical Staff, Physical Therapists, and Athletic Trainers

Gone are the days of receiving a physical therapy treatment, hopping off the table, and running onto the field. Return-to-play (RTP) is not as simple as a handshake, a few warm wishes, and some crossed fingers. Every dot must be connected along the continuum from injury to recovery to the restoration of function to practice and, finally, to full competition. While some people like to use words like load management, I prefer to apply the basic tenets of progressive comprehensive training that prepare an athlete for the stresses and demands of their sport. Hence, medical staff must be part of the continuum of care and must understand the demands of high-speed running that could be addressed much earlier in the RTP process than previously thought. If these staff members do not understand the mechanics, velocities, and forces involved in the movements required for high-level performances, gaps in preparation will widen and place the athlete at risk of re-injury, never mind limit their output and overall performance capabilities.

Based on my own experiences in teaching both performance and medical staff at the highest levels, none of the skills involved in returning someone to high-speed running are discussed or taught in formal medical or rehabilitation science university programs. Time and effort must be taken to equip these professionals with the tools to not only understand what they need to do but also the abilities to conduct the protocols and training sessions on their own. Some of the work could be performed in a clinical setting, with medical staff gradually moving to the weight room and field environment soon after. In some cases, athletes could be handed off to performance staff as part of the continuum of care with both parties speaking the same language to discuss the choices to date and pinpoint the next steps in the process. Such a seamless process will not only build athlete confidence in team staff but also ensure that no stone is left unturned in the RTP journey, maximizing the potential for both durability and sustainability.

Front Office

Front office executives often work hand-in-hand with coaching staff when identifying talent and choosing players in drafting scenarios, free agent signings, and trades. While every team may have different means of determining needs, it’s assumed that most successful teams draw up short-, medium-, and long-term strategies around player acquisitions that fit into their coaching style and within their salary cap. When adopting a team-speed approach, front office executives must have a strategy that identifies players who have appropriate speed abilities as well as the sport-specific skills, mindset, behavioral traits, and teamwork qualities that fit with their vision for the organization. The executives who can identify, acquire, and integrate the players with pure speed ability and the sport-specific skills to go with it will undoubtedly give their team an upper hand.

The team must also have a significant degree of depth when it comes to the speed of personnel. Competition in training camp and practice must bring out the high-speed capabilities of each and every player. If only a handful of players on a team are fast—with the average speed of the roster hovering at mediocre—the speed at which practice is carried out can be much lower and impact the reflexes and anticipatory skills of each player. Teams often strive to practice as they play, but slower speed in practice will almost always lead to the same result at game time. Thus, it’s critical the front office executives strive to acquire players that are fast at every position and throughout the depth chart.

Legendary ice hockey player—Wayne Gretzky—had notable on-ice speed. And he was surrounded by teammates who could easily match him on the ice—such as Paul Coffey, Mark Messier, Glenn Anderson, and Jari Kerri—and mesmerize opposing teams with their speed and skill. There is great video footage of Gretzky beating other top athletes, including soccer star Pele and tennis phenom Bjorn Borg, in sprinting competitions in Sweden back in the early 1980s. Clearly, organizations can only benefit by surrounding speed with more speed.

Ownership

The team owner is as important as everyone else in the planning, decision-making, and implementation chain when it comes to the team culture around speed. First and foremost, there is a financial commitment that’s implicit when seeking out the appropriate players for the roster. Renewing contracts, signing free agents, and scouting new talent efficiently all take significant resources. The right coaches must be in place to implement a system and series of programs that can maximize the abilities of each player on the team.

On the infrastructure side, owners must provide the necessary facilities for accommodating a speed-based approach. On several occasions, I’ve been contracted to guide the design and construction of ramps and hills for resisted speed training within the confines of a practice facility. This is not a small endeavor and requires the approval of budgets as part of a long-term vision. Finally, these facilities need to be outfitted with the appropriate advanced technology to track and monitor progress from session to session and networked accordingly to allow for quick analysis, review, encryption, and storage.

In some cases, ownership may choose to be stingy with spending on building the correct roster, let alone committing to a long-term approach for player development. Many professional teams turn a profit from simply being in a league full of talented, outspoken athletes. If the home team isn’t faring well for a season or two, fans still show up to see stars from visiting teams and still buy beer, burgers, hot dogs, nachos, and player jerseys. Television revenues also maintain profitability for owners and paying for “extras” that may or may not yield post-season success is not always considered a wise financial strategy. The mindset to create the potential for any distinct advantage over the competition must be hard-wired from the top down to give an organization a fighting chance for a championship.

Private Sector Service Providers

One often overlooked area that’s part of the big picture of speed development and maintenance is the private sector coaches and performance professionals who work with players in the off-season. Because most professional sport collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) limit the amount of time team staff can spend training players—with some pro sports not allowing any significant monitoring of player off-season activities—coordination and integration of contributions made by private sector professionals is critical for an organization’s continuum of care. The pro team must make efforts, within the rules of the CBAs, to communicate and share information with service providers throughout the year to build trust, disclose important information, and demonstrate a willingness to work together toward a common goal.

There will always be a handful of players who choose to do their off-season work with a personal coach or trainer who simply wants to entertain them. Organizations, however, must recognize that the majority of private coaches have a vested interest in seeing the process through to a championship and the individual accolades that can come from it. Teams also need to allow for creative license in implementing off-season work, assuming the general goals of the off-season physical preparation are agreed upon. A team built on a foundation of speed can only expect that the off-season activities of individual players should include a reasonable amount of speed work outside the gym environment. The onus is on both sides to work together for the benefit of both the athlete and the team. As with any relationship, time must be allotted for gradual growth and mutual respect. As with every element concerned with speed, this is not an overnight proposition and may take years to cultivate and optimize.

Programming and Planning

Once the proper infrastructure and personnel are in place, programming becomes one of the easier components to design and implement when cultivating a broad-based culture of speed. The different times of year have varying opportunities and constraints that all coaches and staff must take into account. A team with a well-developed culture around speed will take advantage of the entire year to maximize opportunities for improving speed and the practices of various stakeholders, and not simply put their chips on one number and hoping for results. Diversifying your speed training approaches is necessary for the volatile market of high-performance sports.

Off-Season

Depending on your sport, level, and professional league, the off-season may present either a significant opportunity to improve speed or a major obstacle to working with athletes. As a team or professional organization, you can mobilize staff and implement a comprehensive approach to consistent training for speed that will ultimately mesh with your in-season strategy.  However, if players’ unions and CBAs limit coaching time with your athletes, the off-season may not be the best time to mount your assault on mediocre sprint ability. If player participation in the off-season period is lacking, it may be the best time for coaches and staff to meet and formulate a reasonable pre-season and in-season plan around optimizing team speed.

For teams that have the opportunity to accumulate a significant number of sessions dedicated to speed development in the off-season, emphasizing quality and consistency will pay substantial dividends throughout the rest of the season. Acceleration abilities are the highest priority for training, as most sports involve relatively short accelerations repeatedly throughout a game or competition. While some programs will focus on endurance and general conditioning, accumulating hundreds of acceleration repetitions over 10-20 meters will build specific endurance qualities for accelerating. I’ve seen this work first hand, and I’ve even watched it significantly improve the results of evaluation protocols geared toward aerobic interval testing. Knowing what type of work carries the biggest bang for your buck is critical when you’re constantly squeezed for time in team sport settings. Understanding that ideal conditions will never be available for your off-season programming is the first realization to make before you achieve any progress—however minute.

Pre-Season

The pre-season is rife with sport-specific demands, many of which can quickly exceed the capacity of every player if left unchecked. Strategic objectives and player evaluations take priority over all else. Endless repetitions allow for the installation of the “system” and weeding out players who cannot survive or fit into the speed and precision of everything.  Because the bulk of energy and tissue resiliency are dedicated to these sport-specific demands, you must dispense any additional loading of a high-intensity nature very carefully with surgical precision.

You cannot overcome deficits in such a volatile, short-term period, but you can reinforce technical norms through activities prior to practice, such as in the warm-up sessions. Traditionally, warm-up activities—even the so-called dynamic warm-ups—hover in the low- to medium-intensity range at velocities and rates of force development that do not resemble what will take place in the heat of battle. A combination of fear and complacency can quickly take hold when you could easily achieve productivity with a few simple changes. Moving into more intense activities such as linear accelerations from various start positions can encourage adaptability and hasten readiness in these shorter warm-up periods with minimal risk to athletes if progressed appropriately. Imposing such a demand will have a positive effect on readiness and, more importantly, overall preparedness over numerous sessions during the pre-season period.

In-Season

In professional sports, the in-season period can become a very attractive domain for effecting changes and maintaining qualities above and beyond what at “typical” team attempts to accomplish. However, readiness and recovery seem to be the rule of the day, with fancy terms such as load management popping up more and more. Many people assume that rest and even more rest is the solution to every problem—performance deficits, injury problems, and athlete discontent. And that performance staff are unaware of the sinister effects of de-training that may occur with multiple systems—systems not appropriately stressed through practice and competition alone.

As with the pre-season scenario, you can plan warm-ups to include discrete amounts of speed work. A well organized in-season program will also include at least one session per week where you can accomplish a more ambitious attempt at consolidating speed work. If combined with a sound practice plan that gives players opportunities to hit higher speed in a sport-specific fashion—taking advantage of open space—teams may even experience speed improvements as the season progresses. For the in-season period, my experience shows “Fortune favors the bold” in that those who push the boundaries are destined to be rewarded while those who continue to back off will eventually find themselves pinned to a wall.

Post-Season

If you take the correct measures for developing and maintaining speed for the rest of the year leading up to the post-season, you’ll have very little work to do to reap the benefits. Of course, it’s only advisable to maintain some of the same routines established in the regular season once the post-season comes around. Nobody wants to peak too early; the free fall from a premature de-loading effort can be unrecoverable both physiologically and psychologically. The post-season hopefully becomes a validation of all of the well-measured training stresses you’ve imposed throughout the year.

Professional Development

A change in culture often involves facilitation, encouragement, and guidance along the journey. It might seem easier to simply change the entire staff to fit your vision for a team. However, upgrading the “software” with the current staff is often all you need, particularly if everyone gets along and has developed trusted relationships with the team’s top players. Professional development is an important commitment, but often the commitment is fragmented, planned at the last minute, and lacks overall coherence in relation to organizational goals. “Flavor of the month” professional development events are common, with staff picking their preference of who they want to see. During one off-season, it may be manual therapy techniques, the next year it’s load management practices, and next year it will be virtual reality for performance and rehab. While I understand the allure of variety, at some point you have to focus on consistency and hone specific skill sets that will translate into results over the long term. While this may not seem like an exciting approach to professional development, it is absolutely necessary in the pursuit of mastery.

Creating a long-term professional development plan within a professional sports organization seems like a naïve concept, given that time in pro sports can be short-lived. I argue, however, that front office executives would embrace employees who had a long-term vision and developed a plan around meeting those goals in an ambitious, albeit realistic fashion. Sports dynasties are not born overnight; they’re developed through careful management of variables over time, evolving every year. It’s so easy to attribute wins to personnel and talent alone. However, longevity requires that everyone working under the same roof has deliberate intent to get better every game, every week, and every season for the duration of their tenure. A focused, long-term continuing education plan must be part of that intent.

Marketing and Promotion

Faster game play in most sports is often much more entertaining than either a defensive-minded or blue-collar approach to competition. Even when slow, patient, and deliberate works regarding the scoreboard, it’s incredibly tedious and boring. There is a reason basketball has a shot clock, football has a play clock, and delay of game penalties exist. Moving fast is intrinsically appealing and looks better to the human eye. Professional leagues are now using technology and data to emphasize players’ speed on the field with wonderful dashboards and graphic displays that point more to gamification and celebration of elevated metrics. The NFL Combine may not be an integral part of draft research for individual teams, but as a promotional event, it attracts a good amount of attention and places speed front and center. Even Rich Eisen is dedicated to running faster every year in the 40-yard dash as he passes the half-century mark.

Once a team has speed, show it to the world. Speed propaganda is an untapped element within the cultural ecosystem, says @DerekMHansen. Share on X

Once a team has speed on its side, it makes good marketing sense to show the world the fruits of their labor. The team knows it, the fans know it, and more importantly, it’s embedded in the minds of the opposition every time they step into the competition arena. Perception becomes a reality, and everyone changes the way they think about that team. If you say it enough, people start to believe it. Speed propaganda is an untapped element within the cultural ecosystem.

Concluding Remarks

While I expect more people to start talking about the culture of speed (or maybe even the culture of load management) very soon, I challenge them to fully define what they envision and how they will implement it broadly and effectively. Just as we’ve seen from the people who have become overnight gurus in the art of micro-dosing training (it took me about 20 years to label and refine the concept), we quickly realize that talk is cheap and results speak volumes. If you have truly implemented a broad cultural approach to speed, you will clearly see the results demonstrated week to week so that everyone can see it at the stadiums and arenas and via live streaming broadcasts. Walking the walk takes years of planning and development, while talking can occur instantaneously. Choose wisely who you follow.

I’ve built my professional development courses upon decades of trial and error around the integration of speed techniques with tens of thousands of athletes and almost every sport conceivable. A large sample size of experiences is extremely valuable in helping you navigate through all the potential challenges and crises experienced in sport every day. The various modules of the Running Mechanics Professional (RMP) courses are a building block solution to comprehensively integrating a speed-based approach to all types of sports at all levels. We discuss the interactions you’ll have with all potential stakeholders—athletes, coaches, parents, administrators, physical therapists, doctors, psychologists, and scientists—in your quest to slow down time and speed up movement. A strong culture involves a common language, customs handed down from generation to generation, an appreciation of art, and strong leadership throughout. It does not matter what individual qualities you want to improve in a person or organization, as they still need to be surrounded by a profusion of supportive elements to ensure both quality and sustainability.

While many people will continue to put forth exercise-based or data-driven solutions, the advanced specialist will understand the exceptional importance of ecosystem building and relationship cultivation that forms the foundation of any speed-centered initiative. My personal experience over the last few decades continues to confirm this approach and will ultimately outlive my career. I desire to impart this knowledge to those who genuinely want to immerse themselves in a culture-based approach. Coursework is simply the start of this relationship—an ignition point. Ongoing ecosystem development and management is a lifelong endeavor.

The best sprinters in the world apply large amounts of force in short periods of time at maximum velocity. I believe it is the ALTIS program that has said, “Apply force in the right way, at the right time.” I have come to love this quote because the subtext here is that there is more to it than simply mashing the ground with reckless abandon. Speed and rhythm are not mutually exclusive terms. In this article, I cover how we develop the sometimes-vague ability to hold and create rhythm with drills and cues.

Getting Started with Rhythm

Instead of getting wordy with long-winded origin stories or rationale for rhythm work, let’s get started. Here’s a video of one of our former standouts, Diego Fernandez. I love this video because, although he has gone sub 1.00 in the 10m fly (22.5 mph,) he looks effortless and at peace here. He has attained maximum velocity and then he maintains a rhythm. His chest is projected slightly forward, his pelvis is neutral, and he is upright without being too tall, which can make the ground reactive force low. His arms are free of tension, while his legs look ready to strike. Because of his posture, limb timing, and rhythm, he is ready for the ground before he even gets there. He will not be as compliant in the lower limbs at touchdown. Posture. Rhythm. Timing.

Video 1. Mike Young has stated that when posture is correct, movement of the limbs is often correct. I agree, and you can see how lower body mechanics fall into place when the pelvis is square. 

If I had four sprinters this talented who put the time in on this, we would win a state championship every year. We start early in the year with acceleration complexes and begin timing flys in some capacity shortly thereafter. We don’t do flys with full run-in until a base of accelerations has been laid. I think patience is important because I am not coaching elite sprinters.

I am not just interested in an athlete’s improvement from week 1 to week 2. They could improve their top speed just because they were more motivated or timed their acceleration better. We will celebrate it, of course, but I’ve had some athletes run solid fly times gritting their teeth with red faces. Fast, but not sustainable or extendable.

Three-Bucket Position Iso Hold and Captain Morgan Hops 

I love wickets. Most of my sprinters are really bad at wickets, at least for a while. Running over wickets requires that you run fast enough, with good enough posture—and therefore, good lower limb stiffness—to have enough vertical displacement to switch thighs with terrific timing. It is the speed that creates the short ground contacts, not actively trying to achieve short contacts.

It is the speed that creates the short ground contacts, not actively trying to achieve short contacts, says @grahamsprints. Share on X

I will do wickets, but not in the first few weeks, and even then, probably not with the JV group. If it is rhythm with ground reactive force we are trying to develop, then I think we need to check some other boxes first before my beautiful wicket garden ends up trampled to bits. If I provide context with some other items first, I usually find wickets come more naturally.

I sometimes use cones or chalk lines, but athletes are often still unable to self-organize and harmonize stride length and frequency. Wickets are a force application tool, not a means to artificially increase stride length. Getting athletes to understand that they shouldn’t tiptoe or mash the ground takes time. Apply force in the right way, at the right time.

First, up is the three-bucket position iso hold popularized by Dr. Ken Clark. It is pretty simple.

• Imagine a bucket of water on your head.
• Imagine a bucket of water on your knee
• Imagine a bucket handle around your foot.

This gets them into a pretty decent starting position.

• Neutral head and “cheetah eyes.” (I stole this cue from Coach DJ Brock of Acton-Boxborough H.S.)
• Thigh parallel to floor.
• Ankle cocked ready for the ground, toe slightly behind knee.
• Think about the stance leg glute and foot being connected and wired together and try not to be too tall.

If athletes cannot hold this isometric position for a decent amount of time (say 30 seconds), and they start shaking uncontrollably, they are not ready to do wickets well. You cannot have rhythm, timing, and thigh switching in the midst of weakness and dysfunction. I encounter MANY athletes who cannot hold this position without shaking after five seconds. I suppose, over time, there would be marginal improvements if they just keep hitting the wickets, but I prefer to get out in front of things rather than work from behind after doing things poorly. Let them have some success first. If nothing else, this becomes a reference point or teaching tool when they do dynamic drills.

For a little twist on this, you can progress to Captain Morgan hops. I prefer hands on hips so they can feel their pelvic positioning. I have heard the cue somewhere to think about the pelvis itself as a bowl full of water. This variation begins the process of acquiring rhythm. The athlete should take remedial baby hops forward, without being too “toe-y.” Again, they should be actively trying to feel the glute working with the foot on the ground. This allows them to stay upright without being too tall. I usually like them to do a few reps about 10 yards in length on each leg.

The glute medius in the stance leg usually gets a nice little workout in addition to our weight room work. The glute med is responsible for stabilizing the hip joint and helps alignment of the pelvis and knee. The glutes are really active on the ground during sprinting, and weak glutes can cause back pain and knee issues.

Video 2. Isometric three-bucket holds and Captain Morgan hops are great entry-level items, as well as ways to screen for weak athletes. The hops begin the process of developing rhythm and add a dynamic twist to an isometric hold. Same goal, different task.

You can actually see the athlete in the first clip self-organize and reposition the toe under the knee. This allowed her to feel a little more stability in her stance leg and keep her foot in the raised leg more ready for the ground. 

The Captain Morgan Hop and Switch

This will be the first drill that requires the athlete to switch their thighs with correct timing. The athlete should assume the same position as the previous drill. I now ask them to hop-hop-hop and switch. I often give them a rhythm to follow to aid in the patterning and timing of this switch.

The execution of this drill seems simple, but it sets up some of the items I will get to later. It is important to note that the stance leg is actually going to be the trigger that cues the swing leg to strike. I find when the stance leg heel lifts, if the swing leg begins to strike simultaneously, the thigh switch is clean and forceful. If this is mistimed, the switch becomes stompy and some postural deviations and compensations occur.

Video 3. The athlete, while rhythmically hopping, is able to crisply and forcefully switch her thighs. Note that the stance leg cues the swing leg to strike, not the other way around.

This is a very general drill. Before I lose you because you think I am giving some gimmicky drills, understand that the end goal is to dribble and use wickets effectively, do a great block start, and run at top speed efficiently. To do all of these, timing and switching of legs takes place. I am willing to dive in at the athlete’s entry point, but most high school athletes need progressions to this by making their body care.

We still sprint weekly, but if I place these items near the main session, perhaps my point is a bit clearer without major fatigue. Remember: The goal is to have short ground contacts that don’t lack force. Punch the ground with the sweet spot of your foot.

A-Switches for All Speed Athletes

These can be done with mini hurdles or without; my preference is without. The advantage of the mini hurdles is that they provide a visual cue for when to self-organize and punch the ground. The athlete is also required to hold the isometric position while hopping dynamically. Ideally, the stance leg hops should be small and as close to midfoot as possible.

A couple drawbacks I have noted are that athletes sometimes move away from neutral head position and look at the wickets. They also extend at the knee slightly more and deliver a strike that is “toe-y.” Spacing ranges from 4–6 feet, depending on how long an athlete can stay in the three-bucket position.

I prefer regular A-switches for this reason. It’s not about just adding chaos for the sake of chaos, but when an athlete is ready for more. The wicket variation may look more appealing, but keep an eye on its execution. It is merely a thing to help upright running mechanics or to at least understand them.

To me, the A-switch is the first item that really starts the journey of dynamically progressing to wickets and dribbles. The execution has a double tap between switches. This allows my athletes to really lock into a rhythm. Once an athlete can do this, it becomes pretty easy to progress them to stepover runs (dribbles) or boom-booms.

To me, the A-switch is the first item that really starts the journey of dynamically progressing to wickets and dribbles, says @grahamsprints. Share on X

I have had success teaching athletes dribbles out of an A-switch because their slack is already reduced, instead of loosely cycling their legs on their tiptoes. I have had lots of athletes do mistimed boom-booms, which gives them less time to prepare for the ground, and thus, less stiffness and bad posture. I am all for learning and self-organization, but I want to put them in a position to succeed.

Video 4. If an athlete can do an A-switch with good rhythm, they can probably do stepover runs. Note the timing of the limbs and that the swing leg is not moving first.

If you still want to add another level of chaos, I have experimented with 1-2-3-3s. These are an A-switch variation. They’re the same thing, but they look different and are fun. Fun can be a goal. I have also called the boom-boom the left-left, boom-boom-right-rights. Often, athletes have trouble with the rhythm right away. To this, I say good! This isn’t an early-season task, but we will give it a go eventually.

Basic Jog Dribbles and Stepover Runs

For all of the reading and video-watching I have done, the best technical advice on the execution of a dribble came from a 10-year-old student of mine. He saw me watching a wicket video during snack time and asked me what I was watching. I replied that it was a sprint drill. He said, “It looks like they are riding a bike with their toes up.”

When you think about how your legs are ready for the next push on the pedals on a bike, and how your feet switch but still stay in rhythm, it makes sense.

Of course, at recess I asked him to show me. You can learn from anyone. He was instantly better at it than most of my high school athletes.

Video 5. As a progression from A-switches, stepover runs or dribbles put the emphasis on frontside mechanics but allow enough backside to set up the front. There is a nice concentric circle motion visible.

Note the heel-to-toe action upon strike. This allows the athlete to punch the ground and roll through the whole foot without being too stompy. A dorsiflexed ankle keeps them ready for the ground once again. I see a lot of these done on tiptoes. The goal is still to apply force with an appropriately fast ground contact time as a result of the speed and rhythm. Think of it as purposely stunted sprinting.

There are several benefits to these.

• Easier than setting up wickets.
• Can be done at ankle, calf, or knee heights or as bleeds from ankle up to knee. This is a great screening tool or plan B for an injured or tight athlete. It gives both of us great feedback on how we may have to alter the plan.
• Great meet day warm-up tool in a bind. Cut the fluff and get to the meat if the officials are rushing the athletes.

Here are a few videos of my athletes trying some different variations. One of the athletes in the video mildly strained his hamstring after competing in four meets in two weeks. I primarily used dribbling to progress him back to higher intensities and he still ran a school record in the 400m. He was able to stay in control and regain confidence at different heights. We did rhythm dribbles first, focusing on the switch, and then added speed progressively from calf to knee.

Dribbles

Video 6. You can do dribbles for rhythm or speed, with full arms or hands at waist. Either way, the athlete needs to be ready for the next footstrike, so cue them to eliminate slack. Dribbles are an excellent way to learn proper frontside action without being too long on the backside.

I only utilize low calf up to the knee dribbles and not ankles. I get strange outcomes when coaching ankle dribbles, so I need to get better here. It is harder to see the switch, but it would be a perfect addition to setup or recovery days. Again, think about them as a tool. It is a drill to run well at different amplitudes and partial ranges of motion.

Just like when you are goblet squatting, at some point if you want to barbell back squat, you have to do it, even if it is a partial range of motion. We still routinely sprint fast, so you can do both. I love using A-switches and bleeding them into dribbles. Again, the tasks are different, but the intent is the same.

Med Ball Unfolding Jumps for Fluid Coordination

I have to thank Carl Valle and Blaine Kinsley (Director of Baseball Strength and Conditioning, Arkansas Razorbacks) for showing this exercise on Twitter. When I first viewed it, I could see a lot of similarities to acceleration and block starts. This has a lot of potential as a useful item on days I teach acceleration concepts. I love using exercises like this, not just to potentiate the CNS, but to also provide a reference point in close proximity to the main session. Feel, then do.

Rhythm isn’t just a max velocity concept; it is also critical during acceleration. There is more to it than projecting maximally with violence, although saying it this way can help.

Rhythm isn’t just a max velocity concept; it’s also critical during acceleration. There’s more to it than projecting maximally with violence, although saying it this way can help. Share on X

Everything is general work to a track and field coach except the actual track workouts. Although I don’t experiment in the weight room with Bosch concepts, Frans Bosch has influenced some of this experimentation with movement drills and sprints.

I am not a world-leading biomechanist, but I understand that by making general work harder, the specific work may become less daunting. Antifragile pertains to the mind as well. Failure is a good thing, especially if athletes are close, and they are motivated to hit a position.

I had both of the athletes in the video below start overhead and then do a quick eccentric hinge action. They both retained excellent posture and began the jump by leading with their chest. The first athlete started from a kneeling position to further push his comfort level. He responded quite well. In super slow motion, I see several key performance indicators that later translated to an improved block start.

Athlete #1:

• Excellent posture.
• Torso and shins drop together. Note the positive shin angle.
• He looks like a mousetrap, loaded from glute to feet and ready to go.
• Lower limb stiffness is excellent, and he pronates and finishes through the big toe. I see an athlete getting to the most advantageous part of his foot at the right time.

This athlete spent a lot of time in the weight room before coming to me, and his block start is rapidly improving, as you will see later. Half of this is getting him confident enough to have his legs behind his center of mass and knowing when it is time to “go.” This exercise is great because, if they time it wrong, they get the sense that it felt off. It slows down acceleration, but not as much as a sled pull. While we still work toward top speed goals, he is able to accelerate effectively with rhythm that will pay dividends as his training age increases.

The female athlete did not start kneeling. This was her first time doing this exercise, and she volunteered to be filmed for the sake of this article. She is very strong and has run over 19 mph on our Freelap timing system. She is not a great accelerator. What I see in this slow-motion video aligns with that.

Athlete #2

• Great posture and hinge. It’s no surprise, as she has a very strong upper body and lifting experience.
• Leads more with hips than chest.
• Doesn’t get as deep of a shin angle and doesn’t take advantage of being patient to get to the ball of foot and pronate (sneakers an issue?). Arms are mistimed as a result.

However, for her first time doing it, I was pleased she got out of her comfort zone. She would absolutely get a benefit out of continuing items like this or even a basic broad jump in an acceleration complex. Timing it better would yield more power output in the jump itself. Oftentimes with plyos, jumps, and med ball work, I’m not worried about the so-called “transfer.” Just getting a kid comfortable with generally expressing more power is the first step before I worry about specifics and drawing parallels to acceleration. Working through being uncomfortable here will allow her to have a better block start.

Just getting a kid comfortable with generally expressing more power is the first step before I worry about specifics and drawing parallels to acceleration, says @grahamsprints. Share on X

This is pretty advanced, so take your time getting there. As an analogy, there’s no need to rush to a weighted Bulgarian split jump if their Bulgarian split squats need work. Both of these athletes progressed to these exercises and did so safely.

Video 7. Unfolding med ball jumps are a great way to teach patience in acceleration. Letting them feel when to “go” in a fun manner can allow them to practice acceleration KPIs in pieces with more confidence.

Skip and Switch Buildup Flys for Connected Speed

I rarely do my fly work from a static start. In top speed work, I want them to focus on their speed, posture, and rhythm and not worry about overcoming inertia. It’s safer for the muscles and easier to progress to max speed with a skip or lead-in start.

A new favorite of mine lately has been the skip and switch fly. To me, it is an early prerequisite for sprint-float-sprint work. An athlete builds into a maximal skip for distance without rocking or changing their sprint posture. The key is MAXIMAL so that there is enough vertical displacement to seamlessly transition into a rhythmic buildup or eventually a fly. I sometimes call out, “Boom, boom, boom, pow!” The “pow” is the moment when they time the step and continue to a sprint without dropping velocity.

I rarely do my fly work from a static start. In top speed work, I want athletes to focus on their speed, posture, and rhythm and not worry about overcoming inertia, says @grahamsprints. Share on X

Sometimes I just take a visual cue like a chalk line or wicket and put it in their hands. I can tell them what to do, but they have to figure out when and how to do it. If they are not projecting peacefully and maximally off the inside edge of the foot, they will feel it, and you will see it. A lot of times, high school kids are uncomfortable or shy doing things maximally. Some of the athletes below could benefit from just skipping for distance as far as possible first, which I often include on acceleration-themed days.

Skip and switch

Video 8. Speed and rhythm don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Skip and switch flys help athletes set up a peaceful and powerful entry into a maximum effort sprint without straining and gritting their teeth, which can make fly sprints a nightmare from the start.

Here’s an exchange with one of my athletes after her skip and switch fly:

Athlete: That felt weird.

Me: It looked weird.

Athlete: I’ll fix it.

Any chance I have to remove myself from cueing, I take. Again, they have to figure out when to go because it feels right. Once they race, they are on their own anyway. Opportunities to fly solo aren’t the worst thing in the world.

Rhythm Can Be General

You can start the process of this when the athletes are young. I have had the opportunity to work with athletes ages 6–30. I don’t teach 10-year-olds everything that a high school senior does, but we skip and hop in different rhythms. Unless I think a young athlete is ready and understands that they are not just a green obstacle course, I will probably leave the wickets in the trunk of my car.

Sometimes a song comes on and the music is perfect for them to do the exercise to. As long as it is age-appropriate, laying a nice base of general movement skills can pay off in the long term.

Video 9. Hopping, skipping, and bound work have endless applications, including some Fortnight dance moves. Calibration is half the battle, so meet the athletes at their level and progress from there.

The older athlete in the video improved in bounding in one session. When strength isn’t the issue, I am going to go out on a limb (pun always intended) and say most people just don’t know how to time their limb movement correctly. I had him time the foot strike with the arm swing flapping back, then coming in closer into the ribs while just marching and walking. Then we progressed to baby vertical bounds the same way, again trying to let his arms contribute. The “use it or lose it” and “it’s been a while” refrains hold true here.

Other simple tasks to do include crawling and jumping jacks. There are a lot of variations of jumping jacks, such as seal jacks, front jacks, rotational jacks, and Highland flings. These don’t make someone into an elite sprinter, but any good athlete can start here.

I remember being at the Weston Twilight meet and seeing some fast sprinters do some crazy dance moves like the BlocBoy shoot in the above video. Perhaps they can do it because they already have stiffness and rhythm. If I have a chance to do exercises like this and single leg skips with my athletes, I will. It isn’t immediately transferrable, but it is at least an indicator of talent. Making someone more athletic is always a useful thing.

Rhythm Is Universal – Apply the Methods Selectively

All of these words and items just to say that rhythm is teachable and important. Rhythm and timing are applicable to all sports. No matter what type of training beliefs you ascribe to, there is value in this.

Eliud Kipchoge displays rhythm when he runs a marathon. Usain Bolt and Antonio Brown look rhythmic at sub-max speeds in their warm-ups. Go on YouTube and watch them.

You can run any rep distance with appropriate rhythm. Here are videos of two of my athletes running with appropriate rhythm and speed for their individual workouts.

The first athlete is running split 300s at roughly 80%. He has a history of stress fractures in his feet, so I prefer the split rep and turf. He is finally getting comfortable with running.

Video 10. Regardless of rep distance, athletes can display appropriate rhythm for the task. Submaximal work doesn’t have to be junk reps. Learning this can help mechanics at max effort.

The second athlete is running 200s at race pace, fast and relaxed (25 seconds).

Video 11. Rhythm isn’t about slogging through repetitions just to say you did it. No matter the type of workout, it can be appropriately rhythmic.

Tempo running by nature is about rhythm, hence the word “tempo.” Especially when you think about the 200m and 400m, there needs to be some attention to rhythm in training, so sprinters arrive at the 150-meter and 300-meter marks relatively unfatigued. But I am not saying run 350, 450, or any rep distance just for the sake of doing it. If you believe in it, then get there first and with the appropriate athletes, but it can be run well with technique close to race level.

Again, the overarching goal is still to run as fast as we can and extend a high percentage of that maximum effort for longer.

Our goal is to look for things that can help athletes understand that there is nothing beyond top speed except losing their rhythm, says @grahamsprints. Share on X

Our goal is to look for things that can help athletes understand that there is nothing beyond top speed except losing their rhythm. We can’t only sprint, but we can’t do so much other work that our track work is watered down.

Video 12. An athlete’s timing and rhythm are set up from the moment the gun goes off. Even though acceleration phases are short, getting to that second step ready and in an advantageous position with good stiffness is key for a great transition to upright running.

This runner does a great job of switching thighs and staying relatively stiff by letting his shins drop and not exhibiting a lot of compliance. He pushes hard away from the ground without over-pushing, and there is triple extension without making it seem jumpy or artificial. If you take a picture of someone doing a block start, most know what the post-up position looks like (line from heel to shoulder and head), but it also depends what they did to get there and what comes afterward if it was useful or not. His low heel recovery and glute pushing is looking better. I haven’t coached him into or out of anything.

We have also done a few short hill run sessions, which force stiffer low limbs since the ground comes more quickly under the center of mass than if it was flat. Now that this is in place, we can begin adding blocks while adding new challenging things, but always working on our speed.

After all of this, perhaps wickets are an option. If you think about the progressive spacing of wickets from short to longer, the concentric circles move from low calf up to full knee. Dribbles are just wicketless wickets with a slightly different footstrike.

I am much better at coaching small groups or one-on-one in a focused setting than big groups during track season. It’s hard measuring wickets for so many abilities and deciding who does or doesn’t do them. In the past, I have done wickets in the first week. This was a big mistake. The idea of something being useful is not always reality in your reality.

If you coach high school track, your job is hard just because of the logistics of multiple events, space constraints, equipment, and abilities. It will probably be a better experience for you and your athletes if you keep things simple and decide on a logical place to start.

Likewise, you may find that certain things I have mentioned in the scope of this article are beyond or unnecessary for your athletes, and that’s fine too. No need to do iso holds all the time if your athletes are healthy and strong. I always experiment and add accordingly.

Once I see something has run its course, I eliminate it during the season as well. Come championship season, we may stop doing a lot of this because the athletes are already great at it. My job out in Byfield, Massachusetts, is to coach what I see and make athletes who sometimes have no business running into state qualifiers and into adults who love fitness.

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The content found in “The Dosage Debate: Maximum Velocity Sprint Training,” the precursor to this article, was the result of a thought experiment. Besides taking myself through a thinking exercise, one of the goals was to generate dialogue in the coaching community. I have received a substantial amount of feedback and questions since its release, and I feel that explaining my thought process and giving some additional information will help tie up some loose ends and lead to additional dialogue.

First, that article does not really showcase my beliefs one way or another. It is no secret that I am a huge proponent of training that has an athlete attain maximum velocity, but how a coach implements its use within their programming can have quite a bit of variance based on the constraints of their situation. Also, it is important to keep in mind that since I was having the thought experiment with myself, it referred mostly to the clientele I deal with: high school males who participate in track and field. Part of the intent with this article is to broaden the scope to any population.

What ignited the thought experiment was the idea of flipping programming design. In discussion with numerous colleagues, I have found the most common approach is to:

• Create the workout and approximate recovery.
• Administer the workout.
• Adjust recovery as needed.

The approach I took considered recovery on the front end. You can trace most of what follows here back to this quote, posed to me by an anonymous source with credit to Jay Schroeder:

“Only train athletes to a level from which they can recover.”

One way to view this is if I know exactly how an athlete will recover from sprint training, what would be the best way to train the athlete to become a faster sprinter? Here are considerations a coach at any level should think about when programming sprint dosage.

Consideration #1 – The Athlete’s Nervous System

Although a common topic in sprint training is which supplemental exercises to use to train the muscles involved, the reality is any movement starts with the nervous system. Many people consider sprinting to be the most intense human activity, and the corollary to this is it places the greatest demand on the nervous system. I often view sprinting through the lens of the amount of electrical current flowing through a person’s body.

It is hypothesized that children are less able to recruit/use fast-twitch (type II) motor units than adults. This makes sense. My 5-year-old is capable of sprinting every day because there are low levels of current flowing. An elite sprinter would obviously lie on the other end of this spectrum. It is like the shock of one of those old trick slices of gum versus a bolt of lightning. A person can handle the trick slice of gum multiple times a day, every day. Getting struck by lightning may have a person sidelined for a prolonged period of time.

It is not just the ability to produce more power, it also comes down to the efficiency of the pathways that the power can flow through, says @HFJumps. Share on X

In addition, it is not all about the raw power that is produced. When people perform a new skill, it rarely looks fluid. As the person continually undergoes the activity, the body figures out a more efficient way to carry it out. This is the nervous system eliminating the neural pathways that do not assist with the activity and deepening the pathways that allow for the best current solution. So, it is not just the ability to produce more power, it also comes down to the efficiency of the pathways that the power can flow through. Eliminating and solidifying neural pathways takes time, and can only be accomplished when the opportunity is provided, but how often is appropriate?

Consideration #2 – Frequency

I recently spoke with a college strength coach who said he had his pre-teen son sprint every day over the summer, and he continually improved his speed. As Boo Schexnayder stated in his recent article, “The Syndrome”:

“The younger athletes, because of their lower levels of power output, do very little internal damage to their bodies as they practice, train, and compete. They don’t possess the high levels of athleticism needed to hurt themselves. Thus, they require little recovery time.”

If we view this looking at a high school athlete over the course of their four-year career, we would conclude that the density of high-intensity training sessions would decrease as the athlete is able to produce more powerful outputs. I have heard from numerous coaches of elite athletes at the collegiate level and beyond that athletes can only attain maximum outputs in training once a week or less. Schexnayder continues:

“The more developed athletes are victims of the tools they possess. Their high power output levels produce more internal stress and damage. They require more recovery time.”

The following diagrams give a visual representation of these concepts:

Reality does not produce smooth curves, but an overlay of the two graphs gives a good theoretical starting point in designing sprint dosage for all ages. I have a theory that sprinting is the Fountain of Youth. As people age, a common approach to training is to decrease the intensity of activity. While this makes sense on the surface, I also think it is a self-imposed ceiling on one’s capabilities. In other words, if I am always capable of performing what is regarded as the most intense human activity (sprinting), shouldn’t I be capable of adapting to activities that are less intense?

I have a theory that sprinting is the Fountain of Youth, says @HFJumps. Share on X

Consideration #3 – The Athlete’s Insulation

When I played youth football, just about everyone played both ways, and no one thought twice about it. By the time high school football came around, however, this was very rare. Our best players may have played a few series on their nondominant side of the ball during a game. (Note: I attended a high school with 2,000 students, so ironman football was not a necessity.)

This pattern is logical. Most high school males are in the heart of puberty, and becoming a man creates the ability to produce more power. However, the body’s ability to recover from the increased power it can produce does not seem to come along for the ride. Therefore, it makes sense for coaches to utilize a two-platoon system.

This takes us to the conversation about an athlete’s “insulation.” In sticking with the electricity analogy, insulators serve as protectors from the dangers of electrical current. My corresponding thought to this is, “Can we enhance the ‘insulators’ in the body so an athlete is better able to recover from the ability to produce higher levels of power?” I believe we can by exposing prepubescent athletes to sprinting on a regular basis.

I have been part of and have observed a large number of sport practices ranging from youth to college. One commonality among them is that the opportunities to produce the highest levels of power possible are few and far between. I played multiple sports from age 4 through 21. My first true speed session was when I was 18.

A large number of sport practices, ranging from youth to college levels, don’t give athletes many opportunities to produce the highest levels of power possible, says @HFJumps. Share on X

Thanks to the efforts of many coaches and organizations, this is becoming less common, but it still exists. I currently live near a youth soccer field. Most of the practices there involve kids standing around and going through a drill where the power levels are low. I have yet to see them spend any time performing true sprints (giving the athletes time to recover fully so they produce their best output).

A common complaint by numerous groups about today’s youth is their lack of free play and activity. It seems the days of eating breakfast at home, heading out to play with the crew, and returning home when the street lights went on for dinner are long gone. During that time outside of the house, one skill that I developed was the ability to sprint. It is amazing how I can look back at my summers as a youth and see how each day represented multiple sessions of a sprint practice.

A simple game of tag at a park consisted of short bursts of maximum effort followed by recovery. Riding a bike to a friend’s house to play Wiffle ball was recovery. Running the bases and playing the field in Wiffle ball had moments of maximum effort, and the rest of the game allowed for recovery. Lunch, wherever we could get it, was downtime. The football or basketball we played afterward also followed the same pattern. All of these activities provided opportunities to chase and elude, which are excellent drivers of intent. Timing and racing are two more.

I say all this because if our youth are not getting exposed to these types of activities, we have two choices: continue to complain about it or provide them with opportunities to express maximum power. If they are not getting it in their own free time, devoting some time to it in your sport practice seems like an easy fit. Not only will they reap the rewards of developing more effective neural pathways, but their ability to recover from the higher level of power outputs may come along for the ride.

Consideration #4 – Outliers

A trend we have noticed with the freshmen in our program over the past few years is approximately 10% have had nagging hip flexor issues. Our sprint program would be classified as low volume by most, and we design everything around improving acceleration and maximum velocity. By the time they are sophomores, those issues go away, but we would prefer for this trend to not be present. We have two hypotheses that are not mutually exclusive to one another:

1. The athletes undergo a tremendous amount of change due to puberty.
2. The athletes have not experienced operating at maximum velocity, possibly due to a combination of a sedentary childhood and exposure to sports in which bouts of maximum velocity are few and far between. While incredibly intense, basketball, football, and soccer do not allow exposure to true maximum velocity (as found spiked up on a track) due to factors such as fatigue, equipment, surface, and court dimensions.

Our belief is that it is probably a hybrid of the two. The growth, coupled with their bodies being shocked into operating at an intensity they haven’t dealt with, leads to issues. We feel 10% is too high of a percentage, and we are toying with ideas from Sam Portland (speed gate golf) and Ross Jeffs (racers versus trainers) to help combat this issue.

Consideration #5 – The Load of Curvilinear Sprints

Any track coach whose athletes have performed regular training or competition on a 160-meter indoor track are well aware of the mechanical damage that moving at high velocity on a tight curve can cause. The previous article outlined the advantage of curvilinear sprints as a way to protect the nervous system because they involve the athletes moving at a velocity lower than what is found in linear sprinting. That being said, a coach must be aware of the forces placed on the musculoskeletal system when sprinting on a bend. The resultant force vector changes when an athlete is on a curve because a significant lateral component is required to stay on the curve.

The following equation gives the net force on an object moving in a circle (centripetal force). The force is based on the radius of the curve as well as the mass and velocity of the object.

Although the exact physics involved in running on a curve are quite complicated, we can use this formula to have a fundamental understanding of the impact velocity and radius have on centripetal force.

First, there is a good chance an athlete’s mass won’t change much during the course of a training session, so we will assume it is constant. With mass out of the way, we can focus on velocity. Imagine an athlete jogs on a curve at a velocity of 5 m/s. Then, on the next repetition, the athlete doubles the velocity to 10 m/s. The force required to move twice as fast and continue the motion on the curve would be four times as much because the velocity is squared. The example below shows this comparison, ignoring units for simplicity. The hypothetical mass used was 100, velocity of 5 (left example) and 10 (right example), and radius of 10 (denominator).

The next example shows the impact of the radius on force by leaving the mass (100) and velocity (10) constant in both. We can see that decreasing the radius from 10 to 5 (values in the denominator) causes the force to double.

With these examples in mind, we can use the following assumptions moving forward:

1. Force vectors are different on a bend, which places a different demand on the musculoskeletal system (when compared to linear sprinting).
2. If an athlete begins to move at a higher velocity on a bend, greater force is present.
3. If the radius is tightened, and the athlete is able to move at the same speed, greater force is present.

We can now carry these into training implications:

1. Identify the demands of the sport and design curvilinear training accordingly.
2. If you introduce curvilinear work, err on the side of caution. Like any form of training, damage can result from an improper dose, but this may be even more true with this modality because it may be foreign to a high percentage of athletes. Stimulate the musculoskeletal system—do not destroy it.
3. Do not be afraid to experiment with different radii and speeds. When operating at high speeds with sprinters, use large radii (such as the example provided in the precursor to this article). These types of sprints can help prep athletes for the nasty curves they face during indoor competitions. When operating at lower speeds, such as submaximal curve runs with high jumpers, you can tighten the radii.
4. Trust your eyes! If the athletes look fluid, your setup is probably safe. If they don’t, you may need to make adjustments. Being able to make this determination requires you to watch your athlete’s reps!
5. Even if a track athlete is only a sagittal specialist (short sprints/hurdles, long jump, triple jump), bend work still carries weight as a valuable tool in developing a robust athlete because of the variation in the force vectors placed on the body. Field and court sport coaches should also thank you for your efforts of having them spend some time outside of the sagittal plane.

• An additional force we should consider besides centripetal force is one we should never forget because it always wins: the force of gravity. According to Mike Kennedy, accomplished physics teacher and track/cross country coach at Neuqua Valley High School, “If you assume gravity acts at the runner’s belly button, the torque from the ground force and the force of gravity will put a great deal of stress on the hip, leading to injury if the athlete is not prepared for such stresses. It is essentially a class 1 lever with the hip as the fulcrum.” Athletes can perform simple serpentine runs with large radii at various speeds on a track, court, field, or hallway during a warm-up or cooldown or in the heart of the workout.

Even if a track athlete is only a sagittal specialist, bend work is a valuable tool for developing a robust athlete due to the variation in the force vectors placed on the body, says @HFJumps. Share on X

Where Does This Leave Us?

On one hand, I think designing sprint training is simple. Tony Holler and I co-authored an article that was prompted by his tweet:  “Speed training is really pretty simple. Why is there so much confusion?” If we are patient and willing to accept small gains, programming can be basic at the novice level, and the baseline will rise for all. It is hard to go wrong with having an athlete sprint 2–3 times per week if the dose is appropriate and the recovery is sufficient.

If we are patient and willing to accept small gains, programming at the novice level can be basic, and the baseline will rise for all. However, we will miss what is optimal for some. Share on X

On the other hand, as a coach who has worked with groups of up to 60, I know I am missing what would be optimal for some. Trying to address their individual needs makes designing and managing sprint training quite complicated.

As a teacher, one of my primary goals is to get people to think, so I will leave you with four thoughts to ponder in regard to sprint dosage:

• When do your athletes need to be recovered from a sprint dose?
• How long do you think it will take your athletes to recover from your prescribed dose?
• Do you have contingency plans in place?
• If you had to sprint every single day or die, how would you adapt?

Special thanks to Jake Cohen of the University of Illinois for providing feedback on the original article, which helped create this. Also thanks to Mike Kennedy of Neuqua Valley High School for his review and input for this article.

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