Everything Speed Part 1

Everything Speed · Part 1 of 7

Two kids run the same 60-yard dash time. One steals 30 bags a season and the other gets thrown out on routine plays. Same stopwatch, very different speed.

That gap is what this series is about. Speed isn’t one quality. It’s a set of skills that can be taught, trained, and built around each athlete’s body.

The big idea: four speeds, not one

When people say an athlete is “fast,” they usually mean one of four things:

• Acceleration: how quickly you go from slow to fast, like the first three steps of a steal.
• Top speed: the fastest you can run once you’re upright, like scoring from second.
• Game speed: speed plus reading and reacting, like getting a jump on a fly ball.
• Change of direction: how well you stop, turn, and go again, like rounding first.

They’re related, but each one is trained differently. An athlete can be great at one and average at another.

Engine vs. spring

The simplest way to understand speed is to think of two systems working together.

The engine is muscle producing force. It dominates acceleration, when the athlete is pushing hard against the ground with longer contacts. The spring is tendon and connective tissue storing and returning energy. It dominates top speed, when each foot strike lasts about a tenth of a second.

Most athletes lean toward one or the other. We’ll come back to why in Part 6.

Time is the limit

In the weight room, an athlete can take several seconds to reach maximum force. On the field, they never get that long. Sprint ground contacts last roughly 0.08 to 0.10 seconds, and a pitch or a swing happens in a fraction of a second (Zatsiorsky and Kraemer).

So the fastest athletes aren’t just strong. They produce force quickly.

Speed is a skill

Frans Bosch’s work on coordination makes a simple point: the body learns movement by solving problems, not by memorizing cues. Dan Pfaff and Stu McMillan at ALTIS coach rhythm and positions the same way, as skills that improve with good practice.

That’s why speed can be trained at any age. It’s also why sloppy, tired reps teach the wrong lesson.

Sprint first

Charlie Francis built his programs around one priority: high-quality speed work comes first, and everything else supports it. Fred Duncan puts it plainly: sprinting will drive weights, but weights won’t always drive sprinting.

Lifting matters. It just doesn’t replace sprinting. (More on that in our earlier post, Add Sprint Training to Maximize Performance.)

Sources: Zatsiorsky and Kraemer, Science and Practice of Strength Training; Frans Bosch, Strength Training and Coordination; Charlie Francis; Dan Pfaff and Stu McMillan (ALTIS); Fred Duncan.