Speed training has become one of, if not the biggest, topics in sports performance in recent years. Everyone wants to spend 8 months in the offseason getting athletes faster.
One of the biggest missed opportunities is continuing to do speed training in season.
As a coach, this is when you have the athletes for the longest stretch of time. They have to show up to practice daily, and in the offseason, there is a chance they play another sport and dedicate time to that.
We know we want our athletes to be at their fastest and most explosive during the season, not in the offseason. As coaches, we also want to keep our athletes healthy during the season. Sprinting can be viewed as dangerous – no one wants to pull a hamstring. Actually, sprinting at max effort is one of the best ways to prevent hamstring injuries. By touching max speed 1-2 times per week, we actually protect the hamstring from strains. Those muscles need exposure to high speeds to be prepared for them in games.
So how do we do this?
If we are thinking of football, basketball, soccer, lacrosse, baseball, rugby, or softball, we can assume that the athletes are reaching a top speed at least once per game. This means they need 1 more time per week to sprint at max speed.
As a coach, you might think the athletes are sprinting during practice or during conditioning, but that's typically not true max speed. During conditioning, athletes will hold back to conserve energy, or when they do go all out at the end, they are too fatigued to reach max speed.
The best way to still get this stimulus in season is at the end of the warm-up or early on in practice with specific drills and games.
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At the end of the warm-up add in 2-3 max effort sprints. Allow full recovery and make sure the athletes know this isn’t punishment or conditioning. A rule of thumb is to allow 1 min of rest for every 10 yards sprinted. I would have the athletes sprint 20-30 yards and then rest 2-3 minutes. This may sound like a lot of rest, but if they walk back to the starting line and you have 2-3 sprint groups, this should play out pretty naturally. Motivate them with races, competitions, and incentives for winning.
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For specific drills and games, this would be much more sport-specific. We still want to follow the same rules of 2-3 max effort sprints of 20-30 yards and sufficient recovery between reps.
For football, this could be 1-on-1 routes of offensive versus defensive players. All of the routes would be deeper options – go, corner, post, etc. The players could also do special teams drills or position-specific work where the players know the intent is max speed sprinting.
Soccer players could also do sport-specific longer sprinting drills. They could also work on sprinting down the field, racing an opponent to a ball.
Basketball players would benefit the most from a fast break outlet into a layup or dunk.
For baseball and softball, players could sprint to first to beat out a grounder or chase down a fly ball.
There are some sports where sprinting at top speed does not occur as often like tennis and volleyball. It would be best to stick to races and competitions at the end of a warmup.
Overall, sneaking in 1-2 days per week of max speed sprinting should not be much of a challenge, but I know it gets lost in the busyness and chaos of in-season. It is best to do this a day of the week that is an equal distance from the previous and upcoming game. If the sport is always played on Friday, then Tuesday or Wednesday would be your best bet.
Don’t let the speed improvements in the offseason go to waste by neglecting speed in season.