3 ways to improve your speed in football
One of the international strength coaching greats the late Charles Poliquin once told me there was a direct inverse correlation between speed over 20 metres and annual salary in team sport athletes. From my experience also, this seems true.
Kyneton footballer going through elite pre seasons testing - measuring his 20m an 40m sprint times.
You don’t have to have even played football to know that good acceleration is a huge advantage to break away from the opposition in the game. If you have watched AFL you can see that majority of the greats from the past 10 years have all shared this attribute. Chris Judd, Lance Franklin, Gary Ablett jnr and Dustin Martin are all renowned for their short ‘break away’ speed from the contest. This is why we test the 20 metres clubs we train. So how does one develop their sprint acceleration?
The most telling element of one’s speed potential is unfortunately mostly out of our control, which is your genetic muscle fibre type distribution. There are 3 types of muscle fibres; Type I which are low-speed high endurance, Type II which are moderate speed and moderate endurance and Type IIx which are low endurance and high speed/power. At birth, everyone inherits a particular percentage of each fibre type which will in part dictate your performance potential. Less Type IIx and more type I will ultimately limit your speed potential, but that’s not to say you can’t drastically improve it, and here are 3 reasons how.
Improve your strength. There is a correlation between squat strength and speed over 20 metres. This is simply because your acceleration is dictated by the ability of the legs to apply force into the ground. Your upper body strength and abdominals also play a crucial role in speed, as our running movement actually starts in the upper body whilst abdominals help counteract torque generated from the lower body.
Fix your muscular imbalances. The most common imbalance we find in players is a weak vastus medialis (VM) and posterior chain, particularly the lower back. Imbalances like this impair performance greatly. In the case of a weak VM, this impairs knee stability whilst running, whilst the posterior chain is directly responsible for the majority of the running action. This is why our initial strength programming with clubs focuses on weeding out these imbalances in their playing list.
Get leaner. Fat tissue slows us down. It is added weight that has no performance application to speed. It is a major performance contributor, which is why we measure players body fat percentage in our club testing