Improving the 10 Types of Speed

F r e e E m a i l N e w s l e t t e r a t w o r l d c l a s s c o a c h i n g . c o m

Published for the world’s most innovative soccer coaches

ByScott Moody

First published August, 2006 by WORLD CLASS COACHING 15004 Buena Vista Drive, Leawood, KS 66224 (913) 402-0030

Copyright © WORLD CLASS COACHING 2006

All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Edited by Tom MuraFront Cover - Player working during a speed training session

Published by

WORLD CLASS COACHING

Scott Moody founded Centers for Athletic Performance, Inc. (CAP), a 5,000 sq ft facility where he implemented speed, power, strength, and stability based programs for athletes of all ages and sports.

Over the last few years CAP has seen over 2000 athletes, including many top level soccer players in their training programs. CAP trained athletes are among the best in the region: from standouts at the club, high school and college level to All-Americans, National Champions, and World Record Holders, CAP athletes catch the attention of all who witness them in competition.

Understanding and Improving the 10 Types of Speed

“Can you make my son FASTER? He seems so slow compared to the other players!”

“My daughter just needs QUICKNESS. She has great touch, but she just can’t get away from defenders!”

“My kid is just slow. I hear it’s genetic…I hear you can’t teach speed!”

These are the comments I hear from parents and coaches every day. Everyone wants to improve their speed. Just Google “Improving Your Speed” and you will get 116,000,000 hits in .30 seconds! Now that’s SPEED! But seriously, how do we take elite sprinters, volleyball players, soccer players, baseball players, football players and all other athletes, each different and unique in their genetic potential as well as within the requirements of their sport, and IMPROVE THEIR SPEED? The answer is as easy as clicking on any one of the 116 Million Google hits, printing it off and implementing it with your athletes. Any of those programs should, in some way help your team, player or child. In fact an old football coach named Ken Jones used to say, “If you do it fast enough, running around the parking lot picking up trash will improve your speed.” So what makes this journal any different? In this journal, we will break down each component of “SPEED”, and then outline how that component allows a player to become fast, quick or explosive. Then we will offer exercises or drills that should help enhance that particular area. This journal should increase your knowledge of speed, your exercise bank of drill work, and the speed of your athletes. I will also attempt to help you identify specific weaknesses in your athletes. Once you reach a greater understanding of all the components of speed, agility and quickness you can become selective in how you implement various protocols into your workouts. So let’s get started! First, in my opinion there are 3 main categories of speed:

• Cognitive (Mental) • Neuromuscular (Physical) • Situational (Sport Specific)

You could probably argue that some of the mental process are not “speed” related, and that some of the situation components are really just being able to take advantage of the physical components during the game, but that is the exactly why I chose these categories. I think that there is much more to speed than how fast you run, just as there is much more to the game than how much skill one possesses. I think the effectiveness of one’s speed lies in how one applies it, so therefore the application of specific types of speed must be identified and developed along with the types of speed themselves. And don’t think it is by chance that the 3 categories spell out the acronym CNS, which is also an acronym for Central Nervous System. The nervous system is essential for developing speed, but most people don’t start there, and that is the first mistake of most speed programs. Wiring the body to react with precision and explosiveness is where you start. Once the body is trained to fire more efficiently then you can start the process of building a bigger motor! Part 1 – Cognitive or Mental Speed

Cognitive Speed refers to things that happen between the first hint of the initial stimulus and the player’s reaction or first movement. This usually happens in under 0.2 seconds (2 tenths of a second!) The dictionary defines cognitive as the ability to perceive, judge, sense, understand, reason or think, but for our purposes we will just think of it as the mental process that deals with awareness to your surroundings, and the speed in which you can see what is happening and make a decision. These decisions come from thousands of repetitions of seeing and performing specific tasks in a particular situation. The body learns from each encounter and files the situation away as correct or incorrect, in other words, learning how to make this reaction more subconscious and thus faster. Remember, this is happening in less than 0.2 seconds, so there is not a lot of time to think about what you need to do, This is more about reacting to a particular stimulus, and having that reaction, or reflex, be the appropriate one. To break this down further, I think there are 3 types of Cognitive Speed:

• Anticipation • Recognition • Reaction

These are the first 3 of our 10 Types of Speed that we will discuss in this journal. Let’s break each of them down in detail:

1) Anticipation

Anticipation of a situation may be one of the biggest “controllable” factors in improving quickness in team sports. It’s the ability to understand the game, its movements, and the elements that affect particular outcomes within the game. Research into vision in sport had this to say on anticipation, “Focusing visual attention on important cues (good visual search) can lead to good decisions in competition, or effective anticipation. Skilled athletes may not be aware of the important visual cues they are attending to. Research has linked the anticipation of the kind of tennis serve, and consequently the trajectory of the ball, to specific cues in the visual search strategies of expert players (Goulet et al., 1988; Jones, & Miles, 1978).” (1) If we as coaches, can clue the players into what they should be looking at, we might be able to accelerate this learning process. One of the oldest strategies in the book is telling a player to watch an opponent’s belt line instead of looking at their head. This will reduce the tendency to go for head fakes, stutter steps of jukes, because a player can’t juke with his hips. We can also apply this to being mentally into the game, mentally prepared or alert. As coaches, if we can get our players into this state where they are anticipating a specific action because of another players positioning, movements, the trajectory of the ball, etc. we will have taken the first step into making our players quicker. I have a coach who always told me that a particular defender on his soccer team was slow. When we tested her, she was one of the fastest players on the team in the agility drills, shuttles, etc. After much discussion with the coach on how she was getting beat and the fact that she was fast and had great footwork in training sessions, we came to the conclusion that she had mental lapses where her anticipation skills were nowhere to be found. She had trouble seeing the whole game. She was instead focusing on 1 player or 1 event instead of watching what was going on around her.

Without the deeper look into what is really going on with this player we might have spent months on ladder drills, plyos, agility cone runs, etc. To improve her speed on the field (which is really anticipation skills) she needs to be coached as these situations are happening. Then she needs reps, in practice and in game situations or scrimmages, where she can learn to feel what is going on around her. On top of that she needs to watch good soccer being played. She needs to focus in on her position and see how great defenders position themselves to better see what is going on, and how they can anticipate the opponent’s movements. Then she needs to watch the opponent’s movements and see if she can anticipate what is going to happen next, or put herself in that situation. If she sees many reps done correctly, and gets positive, proactive coaching to set the situation for her, combined with live action drill work so she can workout the situation in her head, she will be able to shorten the thought process between seeing and reacting. All of this is happening before a decision to move or react is made. Anticipation is the set up moment for speed. It is the timing of the gun for a sprinter, picking a curve ball for a hitter in baseball or reading pass / run quickly for a linebacker in football. Once the stimulus has been given (a pitch, pass, kick, or cut), it’s time to recognize and react.

In the picture above the keeper should be coming out of the anticipation stage and entering the recognition stage. At this point her mind is playing out potential outcomes and her body is preparing to react.

2) Recognition

The second type of Cognitive Speed is Recognition Speed. How fast do you recognize what is happening? Are you aware of what is going on? Before you can get into the multi-directional speed and agility exercises you need to develop the coordinative components that precede speed. We have all seen the martial arts film where the hero, in the middle of a fight sequence, closes his eyes and lets his senses guide him to victory. Some Star Wars fanatics might refer to this as using the force! But what ever you call it, it is awareness (or recognition), and it is what links anticipation to reaction. When the elementary schools took tumbling out of the curriculum and replaced it with basketball and flag football, they decided to skip an essential building block in the foundational development of an athlete. Being a basketball player is more than knowing

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how to break a 3-2 zone, or perfecting the 3 man weave drill. Michael Jordan hit those phenomenal fade aways and highlight film dunks, not because he practiced dunking for 8 hours a day, but because he had such an acute sense of awareness that we could anticipate a situation, and adjust his body instantly with balanced, synchronized movements that enabled him to get off the perfect shot or slice through a defense on his way to the rim. When an athlete starts their growth spurt at age 11-14 this awareness training becomes increasingly important. Unfortunately, this is when sports programs start to incorporate more speed and agility work and less balance and rhythm work. As the athlete’s nervous system is looking to develop this awareness, the drill work they are doing has them moving too quickly to implement the proper protective and performance related strategies for movement. This results in uncoordinated, slower movement and a loss of confidence.

How fast do you think the girl in green (trailing) will react to the girl in white (w/ ball) sudden change of direction? The quicker she recognizes the change, the quicker she will be able to react.

If left uncorrected this awareness deficiency could also resurface in the form of injuries. When you take a close look at the specific cause of injuries, most injuries are related to unmanageable rates of acceleration, deceleration or force on or around a specific joint, muscle or tissue. By heightening our awareness, we might be able to anticipate and then quickly recognized these things and maneuver out of harms way, before an injury happens. This will also put us in better position for success athletically. When you break down multi-directional speed (or agility) there are certain components that seem to be the foundation upon which speed will be built. Some of these are:

• Spatial Awareness – knowing where your body is in space and time. • Kinesthetic Awareness – sensing changes in the position of your body,

length/tension of the muscles and connective tissue. • Sensory Awareness – being able to react instantly and successfully to touch,

sound and sight related stimulus. • Balanced Coordination – without balance the body gets out of position too

easily: once out of position the quality of the movement as well as the speed are compromised.

• Rhythmic Coordination – being able to efficiently coordinate, synchronized movement with time to successfully complete the desired task.

If you really want to prepare your athletes to become more aware, take each of the above factors and work them into your warm up, cool down or conditioning drills in daily practices. For instance:

Spatial Awareness: Develop drills that utilize the “Over, Under, Around and Through” method. Have your athletes moving through randomly scattered cones, poles, players, etc. going over, under, around and through these obstacles. You can also implement drills where the athletes have to open up passing lanes, move to open spaces, etc. This increases the ability to see the big picture and take in more information, while letting the body subconsciously react and reposition. Kinesthetic Awareness: These skills are developed by doing the plyometric drills. Everything from jumping rope to depth jumps will help develop the body’s sense of awareness to impact and how to react either protectively to prevent injury or explosively to produce power or speed. A good and easy place to start is with the following exercises:

• Ankle Bounces • Balance Jumps • Squat Jumps • Split Squats • Jumping Rope • Low Level Box Jumping

And remember we are trying to work processes that happen in 0.2 seconds, so quickness off the ground is essential to the success of these drills. If the body never learns how fast it can move, how will you ever reach your potential? A good progression would also lead you into agility drills where you are looking for a control of the movement followed by quick adjustments to any flaws in form. In other words start by demanding that the athlete have good feet before you ask them to have quick feet. If they are out of position, they may react quickly, but the price will be a hefty one if they can’t move efficiently after they react. Sensory Awareness: Use drills that allow them to see and react, hear and react, or react to touch and feel. Dribbling or footwork drills with a ball work well. Also drills where you toss a ball to a partner and call out “head” or “chest” and the partner will have to process the verbal cue to head the ball or play the ball off the chest. Balanced Coordination: Balance drills are often underutilized while being over publicized in literature. The key is to keep progressing the drills, and to get the players to buy into what they are doing and why it is important. I usually will do a drill and discuss with the players the fatigued feeling they have in the hip area, and mention to them that this is helping stabilize and strengthen the body, so that it can better react to the ground on contact…thus making them faster! Then we will do some type

of agility drill that works a similar balance move, or a balance drill with a ball that puts them into game mode so they can see the application process. Rhythmic Coordination: This feeds off all the others while setting the stage for success in the other areas. Boxers use rhythmic breathing to speed up and help coordinate their punching combinations. Rhythmic footwork combinations with the ball can help set up offensive plays, and efficient acceleration and top speed movements rely on rhythmic motions to reach maximum levels.

These factors are not independent of each other. Although we may stress them independently, they are all a part of an interconnected network that, when synchronized, and operating at its full potential, will allow the athlete to react explosively…

3) Reaction

After you recognize a situation you react. Sometimes favorably (Jerzy Dudek's double save against Andrei Shevchenko in the dying seconds of extra time of the UEFA Champions League final in Istanbul last May) and sometimes not (Chris Webber’s time out call in the 1993 National Championship game that eventually cost Michigan the game). Some people say that reaction time cannot be improved based on the fact that it is controlled by the time it takes for the sensory input to react the central nervous system and the time it takes for a motor impulse to travel from the CNS to the muscles. The fact of the matter is that this time is fast (0.142 seconds for auditory stimuli, 0.155 seconds for tactile stimuli, and 0.194 for visual stimuli according to Harbin et al, 1989). (2) In this amount of time you could barely record the difference in a stop watch, so why does it matter? I think what matters most is the cumulative effect of the first 3 (Cognitive) Types of Speed. If you can anticipate a situation, then recognize the instant the stimulus presents itself and have put yourself in the proper biomechanical position to take advantage of the stimulus, you will have success. All of the above culminate in 1 thing, reaction!

Proper positioning, anticipation, and quick recognition of the situation can be the edge you need for success.

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So when I discuss improving reaction, what I am really discussing is synchronizing all of the above types of speed to better coordinate accurate, precise, efficient movements in the blink of an eye. People with poor reaction usually are 1) unfocused, 2) unfamiliar with the particular stimulus or situation or 3) out of position. Here are some drills to enhance reaction time. Reaction Training Modalities First you have to get focused, or get wired into the situation. This is why soccer players juggle, volleyball players pepper, and basketball players dribble and do ball handling drills before practice. The first few touches are usually a little off and then you start to get into a rhythm. And then if you continue to focus you will start to get into a zone. Now the mind and body are communicating and we can move on. Here are some non-specific focusing drills:

Focusing Drills: Partner Tennis Ball Toss: (audio/visual signals)

1) one ball – catch with one hand 2) one ball – partner calls right or left 3) two balls – tossed at the same time 4) two balls – crossed, different directions

Juggling (visual/tactile signals) 1) off the knee 2) off the foot 3) off the knee and foot (alternate sides) 4) off the chest, knee and foot 5) off the head, chest, knee and foot

Getting focused is just the start. To really improve reaction you need to fine tune the motor pathways to achieve movement pattern precision. Through proper training and much repetition, the nerve cells will learn the desired response for success in a particular situation, and then become more efficient in sending and receiving signals therefore quicken response time and eventually reaction time. This simply means, once a decision has been made, how fast does the CNS coordinate the appropriate firing pattern that elicits the desired movement (avoiding an injury, making a cut, hitting a curve ball, saving a goal)? This type of speed can be trained using plyometric or shock training drills. The term plyometric has be worn down and misused in some literature, but the fact of the matter is that when used correctly, and when the athlete understands what is expected of them, plyometric drills are an awesome tool to develop reaction speed. But to take advantage of this, and without going into too much detail, you need to react to the ground as quickly as possible to maximize the effect of these drills. Most athletes that we work with come in thinking that by just jumping through these drills they are going to miraculously jump higher and run faster. That is not the case. It is not the exercise, nor the coach, but rather the effort put into the drill that will generate results! Plyometric drills can be broken down into 4 categories:

• Rapid Response – quick, almost vibration type movements like fast feet drills, line drills, dot drills, etc. where the feet move at top speed and barely come off the ground.

• Short Response – quick movements where there is a little more impact and it take the body a little more time to react. Examples would be things like ankle jumps, split squats, low level box jumping, short stair runs, etc.

• Long Response – slower movements like squat jumps where the body is able to load, be put under stretch, and then accelerate off the ground to maximum height, then land, overcome momentum and accelerate out of the landing again. Bounding is another example, as is a plyo push up.

• Extra Long Response – this is the slowest and yet most demanding of all the plyometric drills. This includes things like weighted squat jumps and depth jumps where there is much demand on the muscles and the joints to overcome greater then normal force amounts. These are saved for only the advanced athletes and should be monitored closely in the yearly training cycle.

I would suggest starting off with the rapid and short response plyos leading up to reaction type drills in practice. You will be surprised to find that the players will look a little quicker after 1 day of this as a warm up, simply due to the fact that they have temporarily “wired” the system to become more explosive.

Part 2 – Neuromuscular or Physical Speed The next four types of speed fall into a neuromuscular or physical category. These are the classic types of speed that you see in training programs, DVD’s, seminars, etc. I think there are 4 types of Neuromuscular (Physical) Speed:

• Acceleration • Deceleration • Transition • Max Speed (Speed Endurance)

As we break down the 4 Types of Neuromuscular Speed it might help to put this into perspective. This is the type of speed that needs to be developed off the field. To truly maximize and reach your genetic potential for these 4 types of speed you need to become physically more powerful and maintain that throughout your season. After witnessing the effects of non-lifting periods on athletic performance (speed, power and agility) over the last few years we decided to look a little deeper into this subject. Research in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise (3) recently found that teams that stop resistance training during the season will show a decrease in soccer performance by the end of the season. This study was very similar to what we found with CAP athletes as shown in the graph below on a high school girls soccer team who stopped resistance training, compared to girls who continued to train.

Effects of Resistance Training During the Soccer Season

-0.13

0.92

-0.71

0.99

-0.09

0.22

-2.14

0.98

-1.89

0.87

-2.5

-2

-1.5

-1

-0.5

0

0.5

1

1.5Stopped Resistance Training Continued Resistance Training

% C

hang

e

Standing Long JumpStanding Triple Jump20 yd Shuttle10 yd Dash20 yd Dash

Figure 1: CAP study on high school soccer females during the spring season. The simple fact of the matter is that as long as the efficiency of the movement remains the same and the athlete becomes more powerful through a proper strength and conditioning program, he or she will get faster, jump higher and cut quicker. Sounds simple! So when we refer to these types of speed as Neuromuscular or Physical, we are talking about speed that can be developed either by strengthening, positioning, stabilizing or increasing the body’s ability to utilize the stretch shortening cycle to produce faster more powerful movements. We will start off with the most obvious type of speed and commonly trained type of speed… acceleration.

4) Acceleration

While sprint drills (Marches, Skips, Bounding, etc.) may be the classic way of improving speed, what team sport athletes (soccer, basketball, football, baseball) need to focus on is acceleration. This is the separation, the closing the gap or the running another player down type of speed. And you can’t really talk about acceleration without talking about power production. Power is what wins in sports. A quick first step is power, and it is the beginning of the acceleration phase. A quick first step is achieved first through proper positioning, and second by generating enough power to accelerate you out of the positions you find yourself in. If you spend your off-season doing sprint drills to run a faster 40 you may end up running a faster 40, but how many 40's do you plan on running on the field? Sport is about quick hands, quick hips, quick feet, proper positioning or leverage, and enough POWER to dominate your opponent. Power starts in the weight room, but it does not end there. Power is result of the effort you put into each rep, set and cycle. If you combine this with technical work, positioning drills and knowledge of acceleration technique you will be able to apply the work you do in the weight room to what you do on the field. One of the best exercises for power is the clean, but I see so many people miss the forest for the trees on this lift. They think that just by getting a bar to their shoulders they will reap the benefits. Here is an example…

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How many of you know a player that is awesome in the weight room, but not on the field? I see football players clean 280 without ever using their hips. Their main emphasis is to "pull themselves UNDER the bar!" If you were training to be an Olympic weight lifter that is an awesome cue. But you are training to be a football player, and the last thing you want to be FOCUSED on is "pulling yourself UNDER the bar" or better yet, "into the ground!" The main emphasis of a clean in the weight room is explosive hip power (vertical, first step, separation, lateral burst, etc), yet some players never use their hips! They simply rock back and forth, swing the bar up, pick their feet up off the ground, and pull themselves under the bar. And the worst part is they can't even rack the weight properly. They catch it with their hands! The second emphasis of the clean is the catch. You need to be able to catch and stabilize the weight with a solid core and hips. If you bottom out (butt on your heels) you are letting the weight fall on you with out you having to control anything (we will cover this in more depth when we discuss Deceleration – the 5th type of Speed). Jump It up, Rack it aggressively on the shoulders, and Control It by anchoring yourself into a power position utilizing the core to stabilize the movement. Other than the clean, here are some exercises that are great for producing power:

• Squat • Squat Jump • Box Step Ups • Alternate Leg Stair Jumping • Med Ball Throws

• Rotational Scoop Throws • Overhead Backwards Throws • Lying Crunch Throws

• Sprinting with resistance (sleds, bands, chutes, Woodway Force Treadmill)

Just remember that these are exercises designed to produce power and they are not going to give you the same result if you use them for conditioning. You should limit your set to 6-8 reps or less and for the sprinting try and keep times under 8 seconds. After that point the body starts to slow down as you run out of available energy. Once it is moving slower and thus producing less power you have switched over to a conditioning exercise instead of a power exercise.

So, in a nutshell, power starts in the weight room, but it is not the exercises that make you explosive. It is the way you do the exercises (effort, intensity, technique) that give you results. Once you start doing the exercises in a results oriented manner you are halfway home in your pursuit of power.

The athlete above uses his strength to accelerate out of cuts and to run away from people on the field. Dedication to a strength training program that focuses on the “application” of strength and power, and how it is “expressed” on the field is an essential component of speed success.

The next step is learning how to use it. Once your body is capable of producing these explosive forces and you understand how to orient your body to use them, you need to start to add acceleration drills to your training. On the field I refer to these drills as “Change of Pace” drills. They can be simple conditioning based drills that will have the player jogging and then sprinting on signal, or they could be skill related drills where the player will pass and then accelerate out to the next player where they receive a pass, play it back and accelerate out again. Anytime you set up drills where a player is forced to go from walking, jogging, backpedaling or shuffling to sprinting you are working on acceleration. A good drill that I like is to line up cones (5 yards apart) down the field and have the players sprint to the 2nd cone then backpedal back to the first, then sprint to the 3rd cone and backpedal back to the 2nd, and so on down the line. After that we will progress to having them sprint out and shuffle back, sprint out and carioca back, or sprint mirroring a partner with each trying to be first out of the cut, then letting the other catch up going in to the next cut. This drill can also be used for Deceleration – 5th type of Speed as well as Transition – 6th type of speed which we will discuss later. One thing to keep in mind as you try to improve your speed on the soccer field is that the game is based not only on how fast you can accelerate, but also how fast you can decelerate.

5) Deceleration

Deceleration is considered by our staff one of the most important components of our speed and agility training. Considering that many of the injuries that plague the sport of soccer come from 2 main mechanisms: Major causes of injury involving deceleration 1) Inefficient Movement Patterns (body gets out of position) 2) Unsafe use of Momentum (can accelerate, but cannot decelerate efficiently) We will discuss movement patterns a little more in the next section when we talk about the 6th Type of Speed – Transition, but they do play an essential part in the deceleration

process as well. By “Movement Pattern”, I am referring to the choreographed sequence of muscular contractions that allow an athlete to quickly and efficiently do a specific task (stopping, kicking, cutting, jumping…). After watching thousands of young athletes change direction over the past few years there have been some specific things we have noticed when it comes to efficient deceleration. First, watch your quick players stop suddenly. They decelerate by allowing full foot to hit the ground (ankle in a dorsiflexed position – toe up as seen in the picture to the right) while the slower athletes will stay on the ball of the foot during a deceleration. This may be a protective mechanism involving the hamstring or gastrocnemius muscles to counteract the high peak breaking forces that are being generated. The hamstring muscles resist forces that strain the ACL, whereas the quadriceps muscle contract and significantly increase strain on the ACL. By pulling the toe up when breaking you allow the hamstrings to fire and hold the knee in a more stable position.

I see females or weaker, slower males stop by planting on the ball of their foot. This allows their quads to fire and the knee to drift over the toe putting the knee at risk and not efficiently reducing breaking forces. This results in a clumsy, awkward stopping motion where the knee drifts out, the core breaks and the upper body collapses. When done correctly, the heal hits, the hamstrings contract and the athlete sits back (dropping the hips) and athletically decelerates. The second factor that separates fast from slow, and strong from weak, is the use of the inside leg to control these breaking forces and momentum that they take into a cut. When running forward, planting, turning to the left and running back the way you came (a complete 180 degree change of direction), the majority of the breaking forces should be put on the left leg (inside leg). When done correctly, the athlete should start the breaking process with the right leg , then make half the turn (90 degrees) by the time the left heal hits the ground. At this point the left hamstrings and gastrocnemius fire and the athlete starts to “sit” into the cut and lean the upper body in the direction they wish to go (back the way they came). In a snapshot, this position may look similar to a lunge with the upper body leaning over the inside (left) leg.

As the athlete on the left goes into her cut, she uses the inside leg to decelerate her and keeps her body leaning over towards the direction she wishes to go. The athlete on the right uses her outside leg and therefore cannot effectively control the momentum and her upper body drifts away from where she wants to go.

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By the time the right foot (outside leg) hits the ground most of the force has been reduced and the right leg can start the acceleration process (pushing them out of the cut instead of taking all the force). If the athlete was running too fast to effectively control the breaking forces with the inside leg, the outside leg acts as a protective breaking measure to help balance the athlete before acceleration. Training deceleration comes in 2 main categories: 1) Efficient Movement Patterns and 2) Strength. Above we hit on how to use the inside leg to efficiently decelerate, but all of this is useless if the athletes are too weak to control the speed they are taking in to the cut. This is why I think deceleration training is so important. If you are first to the ball, but you can’t slow down fast enough to control it then it really doesn’t matter how fast you are. Strength is what separates the fast from the slow when you are talking about deceleration speed. Assuming that you are fast and therefore carry great amounts of momentum into your cuts, you have to be strong enough to handle that speed. Here are some exercises that that can greatly improve your deceleration speed.

• Squat (slow 4 second decent in the eccentric phase or “on the way down”) • Squat Jump (trying to “catch” quickly in an athletic stance) • Lunges (below are some cues)

• Front foot flat on the ground • Front knee directly over the shoelaces • Chest leaning directly over the front leg (not perpendicular to the floor) • Core and glutes tight

• Core Exercises • Rotational Twists (with a dumbbell or on a cable machine) • Weighted Crunches, and Glute-Ham Raises

• Super Legs • 20 Squats • 20 Lunges • 20 Split Squats (start in lunge position, jump up and switch legs, land in

a lunge position) • 10 Jump Squats

Remember that these exercises are designed to help the deceleration process, so they should be done slower and with no stress (pain) in the joints (knees, back). The whole idea is to go slowly through these exercises with a good amount of weight, thus training the muscles to take the load, not the joints. So many of the athletes that lack the strength to stop, also end up with knee and back pain because they allow their joints to take the load (force and momentum). Once the athlete is strong enough to control his or her momentum and understands how to control his or her body, the deceleration phases of your conditioning or agility drills should start to look impressive. They should be approaching the line or cone at full speed, then confidently sitting into each cut with good body lean, and very few wasted steps. At this point the focus needs to shift to how they come out of a cut. This is a phase we refer to as Transition…

6) Transition

Getting into a cut efficiently as discussed in the Deceleration portion of this journal is just half of the process. To be seen as “quick” or “agile” you must also be able to coordinate the deceleration, reaction, and acceleration phases simultaneously...or…Transition. This type of speed starts with having control of your body, understanding what the desired outcome of this movement needs to be, and pre-positioning yourself for success. For instance, if you wish to head a ball, you must track the ball’s trajectory, anticipate where it is going to be, adjust your path, speed, and angle of approach, survey your surroundings and then TRANSITION from linear movement to vertical movement with absolute precision. How quickly you can assess the situation and reposition your body will help set you up for a smooth, efficient transition from one movement or direction to another. Here is a perfect example, as the player in white (in the pictures below) begins her deceleration (notice the dorsiflexed ankle) she starts to lean back out of the cut into the direction she wishes to go, while the other player uses her outside leg to control the momentum. Now without a delay the athlete in white transitions out of the cut and a noticeable separation is about to occur.

Two things to notice in the pictures above: Notice the inside leg as the primary decelerator and notice how the athlete drops into almost a “lunge like” position as she transitions out of the deceleration and begins the acceleration (separation) process. There is much less stress on the joints of the athlete in white as compared to the athlete in red. Instead the strength and positioning of the athlete in white allows for a successful change of direction.

Plyometric drills combined with the technical precision described above will enhance the precision of the transition. We suggest rapid response and short response plyos for their quick impact and low learning curve. The focus of these exercises should be on reducing the amount of time spent in the drop down, or deceleration phase, then immediately come out of the movement at full speed with no delay at the bottom. For instance in a quick squat, the athlete should drop as quickly as they can into a ½ squat position (athletic stance), then burst up out of the drop using a little bounce at the bottom of the movement instead of a pause or delay. This will teach the body how to react faster when cutting, sprinting, jumping, etc. That bounce out of the deceleration phase is what we call the stretch shortening cycle and it is what is responsible for improved speed and power production. Don’t believe me? ...do this drill I got from Mark Verstegen while you read this article. Put your right hand flat, palm down, on your chest over your heart. Now raise your index finger and pound it down to your chest as hard as you can. Do this several times. Now take your

left hand and pull your index finger back until you feel a stretch. Right now the finger is under stretch. Now increase the pressure against the stretch, and let go with the left hand and feel the finger snap down with much more force! That is what happens when you put the muscle under stretch and then release, or maximize use of the stretch shortening cycle. It is this process that allows you to drive out of a cut without the delay. As you decelerate a stretch goes through the muscles in that movement pattern. When you rotate and drive out of the cut (using the stretch reflex as a sort of rebound) you maximize your potential for a speedy transition. Here are some low level plyos that will get you started. I suggest you use them in your warm ups to fine tune the neuromuscular system.

• Quick Squats (quarter squats done as fast as possible) • Jump Squats (quick jumps for maximum height after a quick quarter squat) • Quick Lunges (quick quarter depth lunges leaning over the front leg) • Split Squats (done for height, not depth) • Athletic Stance • 2 legged (quick feet – rapid chopping with the feet coming off the ground 1 inch) • 1 legged (quick side to side or forward and back movements over a line)

• Plyometric Jumps • 2 legged plyo turns (quick max height jumps turning 90, 180 or 360 degrees) • 1 legged plyo turns (quick max height jumps turning 90, 180 degrees in the air) • 1 legged lateral (moving down a line, quick lateral jumps)

After these drills I suggest you get the athletes moving in some change of direction drills. You can use the same drills we used for change of direction as well as accelerating out of backpedals, shuffles, cariocas, and jumps.

7) Speed Maintenance

When you are discussing top speed, or speed maintenance (speed endurance) you can now start to focus on sprint drills. This is usually where people start with speed due to all the track coaches teaching speed these days. Yes it is true that track athlete are the fastest athletes on earth when it comes to 100m, 200m and 400m, but how often are these distances used in team sports? When was the last time you saw a soccer player sprint more than 40 yds without a change of pace or a change of direction? I agree that running technique can build good acceleration mechanics, but I do not think that this is the category in which most of your speed training needs to fall. In my opinion you should focus on efficient arm action, knee drive and leg cycle, but only after the athlete understands that this is the type of form that will come into play after accelerating for 20 meters. Here are some pointers:

Arm Swing: Elbows should lead the motion – driving back going slightly out of a 90 degree bend.

Hands: The hands should be relaxed and should move from chin level to the hip. They should not reach across your body as shown in this picture (girl in orange).

Knees: The knees should drive forward towards your destination

and upward. Avoid using the term “high knee” as this gets the athlete to drive their momentum upward instead of forward towards their destination. Ankle: Dorsiflexed until impact with the ground. This utilizes the stretch shortening cycle and improves running economy as well as speed. Leg cycle: Pretend that there is a bar that is extending out of your knee (laterally) along the frontal plane and parallel to the ground. You need to think about getting your foot up and over that bar as quickly as possible, if you drag your toe (plantarflexed ankle) you will clip the bar. The goal is to cover as much ground as possible (stride length) and this “over the bar” motion with a dorsiflexed ankle allows that to happen. Then as the leg clears the bar and is headed for the ground, you need to strike the ground with the ball of the foot in a down and back direction (pawing) under the hip, thus maintaining your speed. If the foot lands in front of the hip you will decelerate, and behind the hip will lead to a loss of rhythm and therefore a loss in running economy. We have toyed with several ways to teach this, and the most effective way that we have found is to hook the athlete up to resistance so that they can feel the natural lean of the body without having to move fast. We use a Woodway Force Treadmill, but a sled and harness, or bands, will do just fine. This allows the athlete to feel supported while they work on the mechanics. Some trainers have used a wall for the athletes to lean against, but I think the added stability and strength in the hips that is achieved from pulling a sled or sprint drills on a Woodway Force are superior. This technique will also let them move forward adding a component of balance and rhythm to the drill. But once the technical component is mastered, the only way to truly train top end speed endurance or speed maintenance is to run at top speed. Here are some drills for improving top end speed:

• Flying 20 yard dashes • Build ups • Overspeed Training • Speed Endurance Work

When it comes down to choosing what type of training you need to spend precious practice time on, I think working on form with the resisted drills will kill two birds with

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one stone. You will enhance your running mechanics along with the stability of the hip and core. After that, if you still need more work, use the Flying 20 yard dashes where the athlete will accelerate to full speed over a 30 yard distance and then try to hold onto that speed for 20 yards. The leg cycle can also be seen as maximizing horizontal thrust while decreasing the vertical oscillation. You want the foot to come off the ground as quickly as possible while producing as much force as possible while it was on the ground. Or a simpler way of stating this would be: Decreased ground contact time (or GCT) and increased rate of force production (or RFP).

Part 3 – Sport Specific Speed Now we are finally at the part of the journal where we put it all together. All the components are in place and it is time to apply it. I think there are 3 types of sport specific speed for team sports.

• Speed Against Another Player • Speed with a Ball • Speed with a Ball Against Another Player

As we break down the final 3 types of speed keep in mind that these are the “Application” to the training of the first 7 types. This is where your own coaching style, sports background and technical – tactical applications come into play. The players need to see the field, anticipate situations, position for reaction, transition in and out of acceleration and deceleration phases all while controlling the ball, marking another player, or maneuvering through the chaotic environment of adjusting defenses and slide tackles. 8) Speed Against Another Player

Whether you put an offensive or a defensive spin on this type of speed the steps are the same. You need to anticipate the oppenent’s movements, recognize changes, and react to those changes with no wasted movement and adjust. The adjustments you make could be acceleration, deceleration or hesitation. Feeling or being aware of what is going on around you and instantly making the correct choice can take years of situational training and experience.

In this picture, notice number 14 in white sensing the deceleration and positioning herself to make a play. Notice the alignments of their bodies, how they are both leaning into the deceleration. The focus and subconscious reaction to the player has kept her close.

We use reaction drills that are simply progressions of our change of pace or agility drills. This allows the players to start off in a training environment that is somewhat familiar so they don’t have to think about the footwork or mechanics of the drills, they just have to focus on reacting to the other player in the drill.

For instance here are some of the drills that we will use to enhance speed against another player where we put cones down in a line (for shuttles 5 cones, 5 yards apart) or in a pattern (in triangle or diamond shapes with cones 5-10 yards apart).

• Partner shuttles – both athletes start at cone 1 and sprint to cone 2, player 1 chooses the pace, cuts at the cone and sprints back to cone 1, cuts at cone 1 and tries to beat player 2 to cone 3 (choosing a pace), then cuts at cone 3 and sprints back to cone 2, cuts at cone 2 and tries to beat player 2 to cone 4, and so on. This is a good drill because player 2 doesn’t have to think about where to run or cut, they just have to pace themselves and react to player 1. Limiting the variables allows us to focus on what is important about the drill.

• Partner Diamond or Triangle Drills – player 1 starts at the point of the triangle or diamond and player 2 starts at the base (or opposite point of the diamond). Player 1 starts forward, player 2 backpedals, mirroring player 1. At any point player 1 can make a cut towards one of the other cones (shuffling, backpedaling or sprinting) and player 2 has to mirror his movement and keep the starting distance. When player 1 gets to the cone, he makes a cut and moves (shuffling, sprinting or backpedaling) to the next cone, and so on until the he looses player 2. This can be done with set patterns, or with the freedom to make decisions on where to cut.

9) Speed with the Ball

As we start to work speed with the ball a whole new dynamic comes into play. Technical ability, for the first time, will now play a big role in our 10 types of speed. Touch, footwork, and creativity are now as big a part of speed with a ball as strength and power production is to acceleration. Years of jugging, dribbling and practicing moves you’ve picked up from Ronaldinio commercials are essential.

The best way to work this into a training session is to start with the movement prep work (drills discussed in the previous sections), and then when the players are neuromuscularly warmed up and firing on all cylinders, throw a ball into the drill. Use the footwork drills you have used for years, but have the players accelerate, decelerate, and cut around obstacles. You can set up cones in various patterns or obstacle courses and direct them with the number of touches, part of the foot, speeds and distances they must travel in set periods of time. Putting time to the drill (or distance covered in a set time) will add a sense of

urgency to the drill making it challenging and game like. Using cues that we used in the Neuromuscular Types of Speed will help the athletes bridge the gap between footwork and Speed with the Ball. For instance, leaning into accelerations will keep the ball close to you instead of pushing it out in front and chasing it. Using the inside leg to stop and control the ball (as seen below) will help you to be in position to quickly control and transition out of the cut.

10) Speed with the Ball, Against Another Player

And now we are finally to the pinnacle of athletic speed…Speed with the Ball, Against Another Player! This is where it all comes together. All the developmental strategies, technical sessions, speed and agility training, strength and power development, understanding of the game and personal athletic experience come together in this last and final type of speed. For examples of this you can go back and review most of the pictures I have included in this journal. The picture of the 2 players used to describe transition is a perfect example of this type of speed.

But how do you train it? PLAY! Get a ball and another player of equal talent and PLAY. There is no greater conditioning, speed development, skill development, or balance and

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coordination training than this! If you have a weakness in any of the areas above, it will be exposed in this type of training session or game. The player that can transition with quickness, move the ball with precision, accelerate or separate at any instant and that can react almost subconsciously to any situation correctly will most often dominate this drill. This is the culmination of years of technique and training all coming together in 2 seconds worth of sensational soccer. Some say speed is genetic, and some that people are born with the skills. But I have seen what goes on behind the scenes. The dedication to footwork before quickness and the desire to outwork and outrun everyone you train with. These are the ones that get it. So to recap… I feel that there are 10 Types of Speed that can be developed.

1) Anticipation (understanding the game, preparing mentally, being ready, preparedness,

pre-calculation of trajectory, speed, force…) 2) Recognition (seeing a situation develop and knowing what to do, decision making

speed, sensing changes in touch, sight and sound (tactile, visual and auditory indicators), cued by recognizing sequences or preparatory movements)

3) Reaction (response time, neuromuscular, motor reaction sequencing, sensing time and

decision time, improved by repetition of various neuromuscular skill work, efficiency in execution of specific motor patterns, “time between stimulus and response”, specific reaction times…)

4) Acceleration (factor of strength, power, starting explosive strength, resistance to

fatigue, genetic factors, mechanics of movement…) 5) Deceleration (strength, understanding of movement, positioning, center of gravity,

body control…) 6) Transition (the point in which you transition from deceleration to acceleration – agility,

core strength, proprioception, plyometric, neuromuscular efficiency in generating explosive force, stretch shortening cycle…)

7) Speed Endurance – Max Speed (genetic factors, ability to relax, combination of V=S(L)

x S(F), running economy and energy expenditure, also seen as a combination of horizontal thrust and vertical oscillation of the athletes center of gravity, rarely comes into play in team sports…)

8) Speed Against an Opponent (combination of the 4 physical (neuromuscular) speed

characteristics with the 3 mental (cognitive) characteristics, seeing changes in an opponent’s position, and reacting subconsciously to those, then possessing the physical ability to adjust or alter your speed to get the advantage…)

9) Speed with a Ball/Bat/Racket (combination of the 4 physical speed characteristics

and technical ball handling ability or skill, requires many repetitions to fine tune the precise motor skills, timing, tracking, trajectories,…)

10) Speed with the Ball, Against and Opponent (This is the ultimate goal, it requires an

broad understanding of the game and its limits, rules, and expectations: it also requires an awareness of your opponent (tactile, visual, auditory, etc), then the repetitions of skill

work with a ball come in to play, and finally your neuromuscular explosiveness, strength, power, proper positioning come in to play….)

But there is one more characteristic that cannot be developed and that is why it is left off the list. That is HEART. I heard someone say once that “…this is a game of inches, and I agree. It’s about the 6 inches between a man’s breast bone and his back bone.” Scott Moody Founder and CEO Centers for Athletic Performance, Inc www.capprogram.com 1) The Impact of Vision and Vision Training on Sport Performance, Knudson, Ph.D., Kluka, Ph.D., Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, April 1997. 2) Supertraining, Siff, M.C. PhD, Denver, USA, 2004 3) Zebis, M. K., Bangsbo, J. Suetta, C., Crameri, R., Kjaer, M., & Aagaard, P. (2002). Effects of heavy resistance training on muscle profile, strength and soccer performance in female elite soccer players. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 34(5),