Speed Training for Athletes: The Science Behind Getting Faster

Every athlete wants to be faster. But most athletes train speed wrong. They run more, they do ladder drills, they stretch before practice and call it warm-up. And then they wonder why their 40 time hasn't moved in two years.

Speed is a skill. Like any skill, it responds to deliberate, structured practice — not just effort. At AP22, every speed session is built around three principles: mechanics first, force application second, and GPS-verified output third. Here's what that actually looks like.

Why Most Athletes Never Get Faster

The number one mistake I see from high school athletes trying to improve their speed is volume without intent. They run 10 x 40 yards every practice and expect their time to drop. It won't — at least not meaningfully — because fatigue degrades mechanics, and running with bad mechanics just grooves bad habits deeper.

Speed development requires near-maximal effort on every rep, full recovery between reps, and technical feedback in real time. You can't sprint at 95% intensity when you're on your 8th rep in 20 minutes. That's conditioning, not speed training. Both matter — but they're different sessions.

The Three Phases of Speed

Phase 1: Acceleration (0–20 yards)

This is where most high school athletes lose races and recruiting evaluations. The 40-yard dash is largely decided in the first 10 yards. Acceleration is about forward lean angle, first-step power, and ground contact time — not leg speed. Athletes who accelerate well drive hard into the ground at a low angle and project force backward and down. Tall, upright posture in the first 10 yards is a mechanical red flag.

Phase 2: Transition (20–40 yards)

This is where mechanics shift from acceleration to max velocity. The body rises, stride frequency increases, and arm drive becomes critical. Transition athletes — those who can maintain speed rather than decelerate — are rare. Hip flexor strength and posterior chain power are the physiological drivers here.

Phase 3: Maximum Velocity (40+ yards)

In football, soccer, and lacrosse, max velocity is the difference between a good athlete and a great one. True max velocity work requires sprints of at least 60 yards with 3–4 minutes of recovery. It's rarely trained correctly at the high school level because it takes more space, more time, and more rest than most programs allow.

How AP22 Trains Speed

At AP22, every speed session starts with a structured mechanical warm-up — not just jogging and stretching. We use wicket drills, A-skips, B-skips, and wall drills to ingrain proper sprint mechanics before we ever ask an athlete to go full speed. Mechanics drilled at slow speeds become available at fast speeds.

From there, we build sessions around a primary objective: acceleration, transition, or max velocity. We rarely train all three in the same session at high intensity — the quality drops and the risk of injury rises.

Every sprint is tracked with STATSports GPS wearables. We monitor max velocity, split times, and acceleration rates in real time. This gives athletes and coaches objective data — not opinions — on whether training is working. When an athlete's GPS data shows their top speed increasing week over week, that's proof. When it plateaus, we adjust.

Speed Training by Sport

• Football: 40-yard dash mechanics, burst off the line (OL/DL), route-running separation (WR/DB), open-field speed
• Soccer: repeated sprint ability, acceleration into space, transition speed (defender to forward)
• Baseball: first-step quickness out of the box, base-running acceleration, outfield range
• Basketball: first-step burst, transition speed, defensive slide-to-sprint conversion
• Lacrosse: attack-to-clear speed, dodging acceleration, ground-ball burst

The Takeaway

Speed is trainable at every level. I've seen athletes cut 0.3 seconds off their 40 time in 12 weeks with proper mechanical coaching and structured sprint work. I've also seen athletes run the same time for 3 years because nobody showed them what to actually change. The difference isn't genetics. It's the quality of the coaching and the structure of the training.

“Every tenth of a second matters on a recruiting tape. Train speed like it's your job — because for the athletes I work with, it is.”

Andrew Preston · AP22 Performance