How Much Faster Do You Need To Be?

The fastest 20 meter sprint recorded at the AFL Combine / Draft Camp is 2.75secs by Joel Wilkinson from the Gold Coast Suns in 2010.

Broken down that gives us a 10 meter split time of 1.37.05secs

Broken down even further, each meter is covered, on average, in .1375secs

As we're not all speed machines lets use some more realistic figures and say that 20 meters can be covered in 3.2secs which gives a split time of 1.6secs with each meter covered in .16secs.

Doesn't sound like much does it?

But if you're a backman, and even worse a slow backman, who is just 1 meter behind your opposition, with the right kick you're done and dusted and standing the mark for a shot on goal.

By the numbers, speed doesn't look like much but as with all sports, every split second counts, especially with sprinting speed.

AFL teams look for potential draftees to be able to cover 20 meters in 3secs or less.

3.0secs would get you looked at.

3.2secs probably would not.

Still it doesn't sound like much though does it?

.1 of  a sec? A piece of piss.

As a backman you might think that just being 1 single meter behind your forward opposition player on a lead, as .1 of a second is nothing but over a 20m lead it actually means that you're actually 5% behind him which is a quite a lot for a game that focuses a lot on the 1%'ers.

There's not too many teams who actually train for speed but it can be improved, especially starting speed.

In nutshell, get stronger, keep bodyfat on the low side and actually train maximum speed as it takes as little as 5 days for any maximu speed gains to dissipate all together. This means that it is essential to train it either at training each week or in a separate session.

You don't need much volume, nor would you want to do a lot of volume in season so keep total distance to 200 meters or less per session.

As you can see any improvement will be more then adequate when you see how it really breaks down with meters per second.