FOOTY SECRET #1 - SPEED DEVELOPMENT

Today is day #1 of the 10 Secrets of Footy that Players & Coaches Can Train in the Time Off.

I forgot to add 1 secret to the list so that will actually go to 11!
#1 - SPEED DEVELOPMENT

I've harped on about developing your max speed for years and for good reason - the fastest players at any level, regardless of skill level, can usually have an impact on games purely through their speed via chase down tackles, accelerating away from the opposition or over the back type goals.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before there are certain rules you need to follow in order to develop speed and they pretty much go against everything you've ever learnt about football conditoning such as:

• Full rest between each set with the easiest guiudeline being 1min per 10m sprinted (30m sprint  = 3mins rest) during which time you can be active (walk, stationary skills etc) but that's it.
• You CANNOT, I repeat, CANNOT develop speed in a fatigued state so you want to be in a totally fresh state when scheduling your speed sessions.
• Speed sessions will be the easiest session you'll do as initially you won't cover anything over 30m which will be 6 - 7secs tops on the slower end of the scale, then you'll rest 3mins minimum before going again. 
• Sessions can be pretty short too if you get a quick warm up in and then get straight into it and stay off your bloody phone!
• Depending on your injury history and how you "feel" generally some people will need more extensive warm ups than others but at the top end anything over 10mins is probably overkill - stay specific to what you're about to train. There's no need to do 4 x 400m jogs to prrepare for sprinting (laps suck in general!).
• Each day you feel different in regards to speed and power (good and bad days like everyone) but regardless of that make sure that you are putting everyhting you have into your sprint sets because remeber they'll only be 6 - 7secs in length at absolute maximum so there's no time to ease into it for 5secs, be explosive from the start.
• Speed takes the longest time to develop out of all other fitness qualities and also is the fastest to dissipate when it isn't being trained meaning you have to put more time into developing then more sessions then anything else to maintain it.

OK here's yet another speed program but this is probably the easiest one to follow and consists of just 2 sessions that you'll alternate every 3 - 4 days depending on how you pull up.

If you're not a big sprinter then you might use somemuscles in a way that they haven't been used for in a while and you might get a bit sore so start off every 4 days and work down to every 3.

Also for the first 2 - 3 sessions ease into your speed rather then to be explosive from the outset (like I mentioned above) but by session 4 you should be good to go.

Speed is the most neurological dependant action that the human body can do meaning it has much less to do with muscles compared to your nervosu system so improvements you make from this program will be from an improved functioning of your nervous system making frequency a pretty big thing to adhear to for this program, hence the every 3 - 4 days guideline.

To show how simply getting the sessions in and tghus increasing your "practice" time of sprinting (like walking as a toddler) check out this Twitter post of a kid doing repeat sprints and how much his time went down in 1 day - simply from the nervous system practicing the action of sprinting and getting better at it.

Here are the 2 sessions you'll alternate through:

SESSION #1...

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