The Speed Report: Minimize Training Time, Maximize Performance

by: Dale Baskett
Football Speed Specialist
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I’ve heard the concerns for years from football coaches that they only have a certain amount of time to implement new ingredients for their programs. Training year-round quite obviously can present challenges for fitting everything you want in place.

I’ve discussed in speed training articles that team speed should be developed in phase increments (periodization). To train for speed you must plan for meeting the requirements necessary to get each player faster. My suggestion is to first analyze each athlete with test procedures. There’s not a weight room program in the country that doesn’t know the max amount each athlete lifts. Those numbers don’t tell the total story because dynamic strength and power on the field can vary because of the human movement involvement. The weight room numbers indicate the growth of power and strength in that setting according to its design.

Speed testing represents similar answers as the athlete is getting faster in the channel of the performed exercise being measured. The digits don’t tell the entire story for football speed application, even though they do indicate measured growth for the designed test.

Analyze More Than Just Digits

The numbers generated in a sprint test give you an indication of how much linear velocity is being generated over a certain measured distance. However, there are other concerns if you are to develop speed and not just measure it. For example, frequency of limb movement or the lack there of. It’s an area that can be enhanced both physically and skill wise. Mechanical effectiveness, an efficiency skill that enables greater force production potential on the ground, helps create maximum limb speed effectiveness; that is, long gait and short gait during the sprint phase being measured. It also shows how well an athlete leverages the ground during the ground support phase of each stride taken; that is dynamic relaxation (no pre-tensing of muscle contraction by forcing the limbs to move rapidly). Instead one must relax and let the contraction of the muscle activity fire involuntarily to its maximum level of frequency which within itself is a learned skill activity.

There’s more to football speed that you should consider rather than just how fast someone is on a stopwatch. Look at strengths and weaknesses of each athlete as they perform their sprint testing. Your system for development should be focused on the strengths and weaknesses of their speed characteristics. Once that’s been determined you want to look at the most effective use of your time to gain the greatest results retrospectively. To complete the circle you should consider the following ideas that will help minimize your time for successful application.

Football Worthy, Speed Worthy

Various exercises used that seem speed worthy can play a certain role in football development. However, I would suggest that you become speed wary with all drills you decide to use. But I realize that takes knowledge to know what works and what is wasteful. The next question you probably would ask is what would I suggest. I simply would suggest what I’ve mentioned in past articles which is build your program around a fundamental mechanical premise of human movement for all movement skill development. If you don’t, you are shooting in the dark. Most programs haven’t considered this thought process because they are too busy borrowing ideas from the internet and collectively trying to make sense of what they see. They then proceed to build their own salad from contrived ingredients.

I realize that using balls, ropes, ladders, shoes and more are being sold as the key to making you a speed genius overnight. The simple truth is you didn’t become a good football coach overnight. The reason that’s true is because you first looked at what it took. Then you saw that commitment was required and you came to the conclusion that you wanted to become a coach. Your coaching development is now a result of aptitude and desire to acquire adequate knowledge. Speed worthy, the same as football worthy, is doing the right things to produce the best result for the time spent. This is done by using acquired knowledge that is proven to be a scientifically sound application. First you must know what that means and how it applies to your athletes.

Movement Control and Football Combo Drills

Combining speed applications with body control endeavors will save you from having to work on linear speed and body control separately. This conserves time and matches closely to what is theoretically taking place on the field of play.

• There are four sections to this drill. First, a sprint weave which will allow momentum to be displaced while linear speed is at a high velocity level. Second is the transition into lateral movement without losing any velocity on the transition and maintaining it while you’re in the zone. Third section, transition back to 80% sprint speed for 10 yards. Fourth section is a full sprint 100% intensity for 20 yards (See Diagram 1).

Diagram 1

• This is a straight quick sprint to a plant transition to a lateral run, short and quick. The action repeats itself again to a final plant transition sprinting a curve at 100 % intensity. Lean slightly into the curve and keep elbows in as the curve is negotiated rapidly (See Diagram 2).

Diagram 2

• You can alternate back and forth with this drill and diagram # 2. This is strictly sprint speed that increases velocity at each zone. Learn to shift gears as the new zones are approached (See Diagram 3).

Diagram 3

• Use a full 100% sprint for 8 yards to a decel transition on zone 2. Zone three is a lateral weave which will require keeping the arms active at all times as the athlete negotiates the weave change presented. Fourth zone is back to linear sprint at 80% velocity. Zone 5 is simply letting it go to 100 % velocity for 15 yards (See Diagram 4).

Diagram 4

• Set up a 20-yard zone and in that space have your athlete run laterally at full speed one direction to start, left or right. Every three strides he then switches direction with no break in velocity or limb speed. At the end of the zone he transitions into a full sprint for another 20 yards (See Diagram 5).

Diagram 5

Ideas for Your Program – Speed & Movement Time Savers

• Football skill drills can be speed drills as well if you emphasize mechanical function and intensity with proper recovery between efforts of various exercises.

• All movement aspects of position drills can be speed oriented if you consider the right technical applications for direction and pace changes, etc.

• Use multitudes of drills instead of the same old drills week in and week out (it creates the challenge of awareness to think and react with speed without memorizing the same movements each week).

• Use movement and speed drills in the same run through as a combo mix instead of one mode then the other.

• Look at what you are using and cut out the fat that really doesn’t fit the specifics of speed development. (Use speed training movements that are specific to field speed movements).

Categorize Speed Development Methods

The methods coaches often use are exercise oriented and most often don’t really make an athlete run or move faster. Drills are great if they provide the opportunity for force production that creates speed and movement effectively. The drills must be relative to the method utilized in order for the application to be speed useful.

You should determine what category your own applications for speed fit into. Many schools across the nation (that I visit yearly to insert team speed packages) have far too many pieces to their puzzle. The problem is that the pieces don’t have relativity to speed development. Unfortunately, coaches don’t know what’s right and /or wrong with what they may be using to develop speed. The usual applications consist of a potpourri of miscellaneous items, most of which have no developmental order. When I ask how they came to the conclusion of the alignment of development or the items chosen, they usually resort to the same answer: they borrowed ideas from a wide cross section of information to put together their own package. Pulling together an assembly of items for processing without an organized teaching / learning progression for development defies education 101. At best, that’s a shot in the dark. That is exactly what 99 percent of America’s football world thrives on for processing speed. It’s really stuff without substance or reasoning for the sequence of activities utilized. Examples are weighted ball exercises on the field, jumping rope, power shoes, tiny hurdle exercises, plyos that aren’t true plyos, running in sand and over loading weight on resisted sprinting (sled pulls). The list goes on and on and so does the time spent in vain with unrelated speed methods. The results are marginal instead of what could be outstanding results vs. time spent in oblivion.

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