Speed for team sports: moving past track & field

Speed determines the outcome of many game-changing plays across sports ^[8]. We watch the soccer forward sprint after the ball en route to the opposing goal to create a scoring opportunity. Or we watch an American football wide receiver sprint down the field to make a reception and then accelerate even faster to gain separation and score a touchdown. These are explosive game highlights.

But what about the rest of the game? The most explosive plays last a matter of seconds, but team sport players are on the field intermittently for hours. What kind of speed, then, is on display over the course of a full game, and how can we prepare the players to have the requisite fitness for it?

The overarching question is: do we want fast people playing in the game, or do we want people in the game who can play fast?

Team sport sprinting takes a lot – maybe too much – from track & field

Most coaches agree that the latter is the primary goal. If the former type of player was more effective, then team sport coaches would solely recruit track & field athletes and try to teach them the game.

Indeed, the obsession with linear speed has driven many team sport professionals to seek help from the track & field community. After all, these are the coaches responsible for developing the fastest people in the world. Coaches can certainly learn great lessons from them, but problems arise when team sport coaches lose sight of their own goal: helping their players play the game faster. Trouble starts to brew if coaches become too myopic towards speed for team sports.

For example, ask almost any team sport coach who has studied speed training and one name will continue to pop up: Charlie Francis. One of the prominent areas of Francis’ coaching development is global stress management. In particular, Francis focused on aspects of central nervous system (CNS) stress and how different forms of training can tax the CNS to varying degrees, with repercussions for recovery. He devised a training sequencing strategy known as “high/low” sequencing, where the exercises that tax the CNS the most are placed on “high” days and those that are of significantly lower stress and more restorative in nature on “low” days. The sequencing of the training week is structured so that “high” and “low” days are alternated on a daily basis or from one training session to the next.

The “high” days might feature activities like maximal sprinting (>95% speed for the respective distance), intensive plyometrics, explosive jumps/throws, Olympic lifting and maximal strength training. The “low” days can include aerobic capacity work (<75% speed for the respective distance), cross-training for aerobic development (cycling, swimming, etc.), remedial strength training, mobility/flexibility work and individualized recovery strategies.

Francis ensured a minimum of 48 hours between “high” sessions to allow for recovery, where “low” sessions might only need 12-24 hours of recovery time while also aiding in the restoration from the prior “high” day.

One point Francis emphasizes in his writing is to avoid the “medium intensity” zone, or that zone where the athlete is moving at 76-94% of their maximum speed. In his words, this zone is “too slow to be specific to the training objective” and “too high to recover adequately within 24 hours.”^[1]

Many team sport coaches have attempted to copy and paste Francis’ high/low model for sprinters when training their players. While on the surface it’s a great concept to apply a stress management model to the training process, the problem lies in the context. Francis was a track & field coach who adopted his means and methods to suit his sprinters. While a certain range of sprinting volume is necessary for a sprinter, the same volume may not be appropriate for a team sport player.

What is a “sprint” in a team sport?

In this article, when I talk about physical loading, I will focus strictly on distances covered and the speeds achieved, as monitored by GPS units. I will not venture into the perceptual-cognitive or decision-making aspects of team sport, although these factors are crucial for attaining high-level game speed. Instead, the discussion will center on locomotive speed and organizing training for linear speed for team sports players.

GPS technology allows us to measure many important, basic locomotive metrics, but questions still remain as to what constitutes a “sprint.” For example, some research using GPS technology has referenced movement classifications like low-intensity, moderate-intensity, high-intensity and “sprinting,” which is anything above 6.4 m/s (14.3 mph).^[2] However, when I analyze data from testing American football perimeter players (i.e., wide receivers and defensive backs) with the 1080 Sprint machine, I find they are able to exceed this speed almost immediately after 5 meters. Even the slowest players at these positions are surpassing this threshold before 10 meters. From this standpoint, 6.4 m/s would be indicative of a sprint longer than 5 meters.

However, I also noticed that the same players cross this threshold when performing tempo work, even though this kind of running is far from maximum effort. For example, I might have a wide receiver perform a “cut 100-yard run” where the player runs 50 yards out, decelerates, touches the 50-yard line, pivots and runs back 50 yards through the starting line. I might ask the player to cover this distance in 14 seconds. We can assume that the direction change takes about 1 second to complete, so the player has to cover 100 total yards in 13 seconds.^[3]

Average Velocity of Tempo Run = 100 yards / 13 seconds = 7.7 yds/sec

Convert to Meters/Second – 7.7 yds/sec * 0.9144 = 7.0 m/s

Without even looking at peak velocity values, we can already see that the average velocity to cover that distance in the prescribed time is around 7.0 m/s (15.7 mph). For a defensive back whose top speed exceeds 9.4 m/s (21 mph), which is very common among high-level collegiate or professional players at this position, this tempo run would average around 74% of maximum sprinting speed (MSS) or less. The previously-mentioned speed threshold of 6.4 m/s (14.3 mph) can be under 65% MSS for the fastest players. According to Charlie Francis’ high/low system, this kind of work could be placed on a low day!

We, therefore, achieve the same or similar speed with a very short-distance, maximal sprint effort or a longer-distance submaximal tempo running effort. From an intent and neural activation standpoint, the former is much more intense, and most coaches would program each form of training differently. Yet both would expose the athlete to somewhere around 60-75% of maximum speed capability.

Clearly, when using a generic speed of locomotion metric to determine a “sprint,” things can become complicated.

The track & field coaches at ALTIS recently designed a model of team sport game speed components which included their own zones of linear speed expression based on percentages of maximum speed. They classify these zones under the category of “energetically-determined (conditioning) abilities” and the ability to endure speed.^[4] These zones, in effect, create a spectrum of the various intensities of running that players may or may not experience in a team sport game.

The following table shows these zones, how they are classified according to a player’s maximum speed, and sample speed ranges based on a player with a maximum speed of 10 m/s (22.4 mph):

In my opinion, these zones are much more informative for training design because they are based on a player’s true maximal speed output. Each zone is illustrated as a relative percentage of the upper limit of speed performance. Rather than asking what a “sprint” might be, we can start to ask instead, “How intense was the speed effort?” From here, we can use GPS technology to determine which speed zones a player is actually touching across training and games, and how much volume of running in the game falls into each zone.

Case study: American football cornerbacks run a lot but sprint very little

As a performance coach for American football, I can only speak confidently about my findings in this sport. For the sake of simplicity, I will discuss one position associated with high running volumes: the cornerback. In American football, cornerbacks are defensive backs that primarily play along the periphery of the field and cover various zones, as well as wide receivers in man-to-man coverage situations. Because of their role in most tactical designs, they have to run a lot.

The first question might be: how much of the total distance covered in each game relates to exposure in each speed zone? When I looked into this myself, I was shocked to find just how little of the distance a cornerback covers actually exceeds the moderate intensity zone.

As we can see, these cornerbacks were entering the high to maximal speed intensities for only 1-2% of the total distance covered throughout a game.

Now, before we go further, it’s important to recognize that the GPS units pick up all forms of movement, including warming up and walking around throughout the game. I might find that these cornerbacks are covering an average of 5000-5600 total yards per game, but much of that total distance covered is them simply walking around.

Even with this consideration, it’s still quite informative to realize that, of all those yards covered, there may only be 60-80 total yards that fall into the high intensity to maximal speed zones.

But, for a sport like American football, just looking at percentage of total distance may not be enough information given the intermittent nature of the game. It may be more informative to calculate the sprint efforts that exceeded each threshold and compare that to the total number of plays a player was on the field. A cornerback might average 60 plays a game between playing on defense and special teams. Of this total number of plays, as little as 7% of them (4 plays) will be of high intensity when based on maximum locomotive speed (>88% MSS).

Of course, just because sprint efforts are at lower speeds for the rest of the plays doesn’t mean that the player isn’t experiencing a great deal of intensity in other areas. The accelerations, decelerations, changes of direction, perceptual-cognitive elements, maneuverability, collision with other players and the sheer emotional stress of the game make for some serious allostatic loading. Improving a player’s ability to play the game at a fast pace has a great deal to do with all of these areas.

But, if the context of discussion is strictly sprinting speed, then the reality is that the vast majority of the game is played in a low intensity environment. This means that a track & field model of training will likely have some major holes if used to prepare an American football player.

Programming sprinting in the off-season to prepare for in-season demands

I believe it’s more appropriate to expose a football player to each speed zone to some degree throughout the off-season to ensure that the player has the capacity to endure various forms of speed expression. The middle zone that Charlie Francis avoided in his methodology is likely worth exploring for holistic fitness development in team sports. This is part of what’s required for work capacity in the game. However, we don’t have to completely mimic the game either. One of my favorite quotes comes from author and coach Steve Magness: “The goal of training isn’t to mimic a game. It’s to prepare for the demands of that game. Sometimes to prepare you have to go longer, faster, shorter, etc. to train the capacities you need.”

GPS data from games and practices offers a roadmap for designing sprint training during off-season periods. Once we understand the sprint-related demands of practice and games we can plan the development of our players towards the higher intensity zones. This means we may largely exceed the moderate-to-high-intensity demands of the game during training sessions. There are a few reasons for this. One is fairly logical: if the player can adapt to and tolerate larger volumes of higher sprint intensities, then the game may become less physically demanding.

Another reason is that the available training time in the off-season is limited. Time on the field during workouts may only be 30 minutes to an hour. In comparison, sports practice may be up to two hours and the game itself may be four hours or longer. However, given that 90% of that time is spent at low to very low speeds, we should focus the limited training time on the most intensive forms of running. Sports practice can then help “fill in the gaps” by further developing the lower-intensity zones.

Lastly, accruing high-speed running in training may act as a “vaccine” against hamstring-related injury.

Many coaches try to avoid high speed sprinting in training for fear of causing a hamstring muscle injury in workouts. Their logic is not flawed, as one study found that 60% of the hamstring injuries occurring in Australian rules football (AFL) happened when the players were in excess of 80% MSS.^[4]

The problem is that, in most field-based sports, the players will be in situations where they have to sprint far greater than 80% MSS, even if it is only for one instance. The risk of hamstring injury drastically rises in this single instance if the players have not prepared to handle that level of intensity.

Some practitioners have turned to isolated strengthening exercises like Nordic hamstring curls, explosive bridging or other similar exercises to help mitigate hamstring injury risk. The goal is to activate the hamstrings in a similar fashion to how they are used during high speed sprinting. However, one study found that these strengthening exercises can only reach 18-75% of the electromyographic activity experienced by the hamstrings during sprinting.

In other words, nothing can quite simulate sprinting other than sprinting itself.

One paper analyzing high-speed sprinting in Gaelic football noted that athletes who were regularly exposed (i.e., on a weekly basis) to sprinting at >95% of their maximal velocity were at reduced lower-limb injury risk compared to players exposed to lower velocities (<85% MSS).^[5] Additionally, chronic exposure to these higher speeds seems to have the greatest protective effect, as acute spikes in high-speed running are associated with greater risk of hamstring injury.^[6]

Thus, chronic exposure to high-speed sprinting may act as a “vaccine” in the sense that sprinting is task-specific for field-based sports and may promote positive adaptation and a protective effect against task-related risk.^[7]

Sample training weeks for off-season training with high-speed running and sprinting

In a controlled setting like off-season training, we can design training that is progressive in nature so we may achieve gradual exposure to high-speed running. For example, with an 8-week off-season training period in American football, we may design a template for the first four weeks like this:

In this example, the rationale is to emphasize the weight training early to build strength and power qualities while starting to introduce running volumes. Four out of five days are devoted to weight training, while three out of five are devoted to field-based running. Saturday and Sunday are recovery/off days.

The major running emphasis throughout the week is moderate intensity speed (78-88% MSS), primarily in the form of short accelerations, which might constitute 10-15 yards of sprinting per repetition. Longer-distance running is achieved in extensive fashion with technical drills and extensive tempo running to prepare the lower limb soft tissues for more intensive efforts in the next block. Using the cornerback position in American football again as an example, extensive tempo running might be covering 100yds per repetition at a pace <75% MSS.

The second 4-week block of off-season training might look like this:

As we progress towards summer training camp, the goal is to give the players more running exposure and increase the running intensity. We reduce the weight training to three out of five days, while the field-based running increases to four of five days. Again, the overall emphasis is primarily moderate intensity speed, but with added exposures to maximal and high intensity speed.

The week will start to resemble in-season practice, where more intensive days are placed at the start and the intensity tapers down across the week. Maximum speed exposure becomes important, so the goal for Monday is to have each player touch 95% MSS or higher for at least one repetition. They can achieve this through intensive build-up sprints or flying sprints. Long accelerations and intensive tempo running might constitute covering longer distances like 60-100 yards at 80-90% MSS, bordering the moderate to high intensity zones. Repeat sprint ability might be at shorter distances of 15-20 yards at maximum effort with high volumes and minimal recovery time. We can also incorporate position-specific movements into this kind of work to build task-specific work capacity.

Wrap-up: speed for team sports

All of these discussion points and examples drive home the message that team sport players experience a wide range of speed intensities. Therefore, it may be best practice to embrace the moderate intensity zones just as much as the low and high intensity zones.

It’s important to reiterate that these examples are based on data obtained from American football, and is also team-specific. Different sports and different teams within the same sport might reveal different requirements for training. But the overall goal is to motivate team sport coaches to define what a “sprint” and “speed training” really mean in the context of their sports, both from performance-enhancing and injury reduction standpoints.