Wednesday 14 October 2009

How to Develop Football Speed?

How to Develop Football Speed?

In a series of articles specially written for Youth Football, Mike Antoniades will look at the long term development of young footballers with a specific focus on football motor development and speed. Over the next four articles Mike will go through the theory, training methodologies, training advice and coaching drills for developing football coordination, agility and speed.

Many coaches and trainers believe that speed is something you are born with rather than a skill you can develop. Genetics is a very important factor and does make a difference to the make-up and shape of athletes and their capacity to become stronger and more powerful. But strength and power are only two components of speed. They will assist in how fast you can run in a straight line, but in a multidirectional sport like football, being able to run fast in straight lines only, or having the capacity to lift very heavy weights in the gym, will not necessarily transfer onto the football pitch in terms of speed.

Football Speed is a Skill and just like any other skill it can be taught, it can be developed, and it can be improved through a systematic and progressive training approach.

Coaches and parents of young footballers, although they have the best interests of the children at heart, are just copying training drills or methodologies that they hear about or see the professional teams doing and in many situations these are detrimental to the football and physical development of the youngsters.

Many professional football clubs have used specialist Sprint coaches whose background is Track and Field to improve the speed of their players, but the biomechanics of straight line sprinting is different to the multi-directional speed, required in football. Practicing straight line sprinting continuously, will improve a player’s conditioning, but it has very little functional benefit for a multidirectional sport like football.

Why?
Because full-out sprinting in a football game only makes up about 1% of the total movement in a 90 minute game! You may ask, is the ability to run fast over 50 metres not important? Of course it is, but let’s put it into perspective.

Football is a multi-directional, explosive sport where there is a change of movement every 4 seconds. There is little benefit in football players spending too much time on drills which develop maximum straight line velocity when they would benefit more from shorter multi-directional explosive training using the ball. So focusing on football specific movements and individual technical skills is far more beneficial to the development of the young footballer.

Professional footballers work very hard during a 90 minute game and the statistics make interesting reading:
Average During 90 minutes

• 1200 changes of Direction 1 per 4.1 sec
• Standing – 18%
• Walking forward & backward - 38%
• Jogging - 18%
• Low speed running - 15%
• Moderate speed running - 8%
• High speed running - 2%
• Full out Sprinting - 1%



How do you develop Football Speed?
In most football clubs whether at youth, amateur or professional level, there is no effective teaching of Speed! There are many different ways of approaching the structure of Speed training, but even today with all the modern coaching methodologies and available knowledge and research, Speed training is coached as part of fitness and in many cases it is counterproductive to the development of football speed.

No consideration is given to the relationship between functional movement, the neuromuscular system, the energy systems, the type of speed required for the sport, the effect of the training on young athletes, recovery periods and other influencing factors.

Age is one of the most important factors. Coaches must remember that children are not mini adults and cannot train in the same way.

Did you know?
• 65% of footballers over the age of 12 are slower turning on one side than the other, by up to 0.85 of a second.
• Many young footballers can improve their speed and quickness just by correcting their running biomechanics.
• Reactive Speed can be improved by up to 30% with the correct training in just four weeks.
• If youngsters don’t acquire the basic movement skills by the age of 13 then they will very rarely make professional footballers.


Scientifically it has been proven that strength is determined by developing the muscular system. Endurance is determined by the cardiovascular system.

Speed is determined by the nervous system and coordination.
There are three key factors to developing football speed:
The Optimal Training period for developing speed

Training the Neuromuscular System, when and how can this be done?

Training Football Specific Speed
These subjects will be covered in depth by Mike Antoniades over the next few weeks on our blog.
Mike runs coaching workshops and seminars on Soccer Speed and The Long Term Development of Young Footballers, in the UK, Europe and the USA . He is the author of the DVD “Feel the Speed!” on how to develop football speed, and he also lectures at various universities on Biomechanics and injury prevention. He has developed a number of protocols for Performance and Rehabilitation which are being used successfully in professional teams and private practices.

Tuesday 6 October 2009

Monday 5 October 2009