Traditional football skills training and ball drills on their own will not make you a faster athlete.
Speed and agility need to be trained in isolation and the development of these two athletic attributes takes place off the field.
Speed & Acceleration
Speed training consists of acceleration mechanics, max speed mechanics and improving rate of force development.
When it comes to football, your straight-line speed can give you the edge over your competition. Being faster than other players will improve your ability to get to the ball on the attack or race back to block a shot as the last line of defence.
However, speed training for football is very different to the kind of speed training elite sprinters will do. All sports performance training should be specific to the sport. Football is reactive and unpredictable. The reason for sprinting is not to reach a finish line. There will be change of direction, acceleration, deceleration, jumping and tackling to consider as well as the sprint! A sprint on a football pitch is also likely to come after you have already spent up to 45 minutes in active competition.
Acceleration (a critical component of sprinting) separates elite athletes from the rest. A study by Lockie et al analysed sprinting ability in football players with tests for power, strength and leg stiffness to differentiate elite from non-elite athletes. Subjects were divided into 2 groups based on sprint speed. The elite group were found to have faster acceleration, higher strength and higher power measures than the non-elite group.
You can work on your acceleration mechanics to make you a more efficient athlete by using some of my favourite drills, including:
- Staggered broad jumps
- Ball drops
- Wall sprints
- Ground starts
- Falling starts
- Jump back starts
Maximum speed is the highest rate of speed an athlete can attain.
In 2020, Mbappe was crowned the world's fastest football player with a top speed of 36+ km/h.
Max speed is particularly important for wide defenders who perform the greatest number of sprints over 20m in a match. Although wide defenders, wide midfielders and forwards achieve the greatest sprint distance in a match, it is important all players, regardless of position, work on improving their max speed.
Here of some of my favourite max speed drills:
- A skips
- B skips
- Single leg high knees
- Alternate bounding
- Elevated hip switch
- Straight leg shuffle
- Single leg cycling
Aside from the mechanics and drills, the single most important thing you can do to improve your acceleration and max speed is to get in the gym and improve your rate of force development! Improving RFD will improve a players’ ability to develop larger forces in a shorter period of time making them more explosive. Research shows the combination of both maximal strength and power training improves RFD and is most likely to occur through increases in musculo-tendon stiffness, enhanced muscle force production and increases in neural drive.
Strength training improves rate of force development and has been shown to make football players faster. The value of good sprinting speed for footballers is well supported by research. Ekblom (1986) found that the absolute maximum speed shown during play was one of the parameters that differentiated elite players from those of a lower standard. To be a better player and play at a higher level, you need superior acceleration and maximum speed.
Agility & Change of Direction
Agility training isn't just about fast feet.
Agility is “a rapid whole body movement with change of velocity or direction in response to a stimulus’’.
It's about integrating the mind and the body to prepare for game situations.
For example, when you're dribbling down the field, and you make a hard cut to get around a defender, that's agility.
To train agility properly, you need to start with change of direction.
These drills should have predetermined movement patterns. In other words, you should know which direction you're going to move before you actually execute the drill. They should include a combination of change of direction "mechanical" drills, plyometrics and drills that sharpen your acceleration and deceleration.
There are loads of change of direction drills you can practice, and you can even make up your own. Some of my favourites for football include:
Linear:
- Stop and go
- Accelerate to back pedal
- Back pedal to hip flip
- Y cut
Lateral:
- Lateral shuffle
- Carioca run
- Lateral short shuttle
- Ascending/descending lateral shuffle
You then need to incorporate the cognitive component to properly train agility.
This cognitive component will create better instincts, reactions and more awareness on the field.
Some excellent agility drills for football are the mirror drill and ball drops.
The final point is that each of these drills should be specific to the sport as well as the position!
Jamie Bynoe-Gittens
Borussia Dortmund & England Midfielder
References:
1. Lockie RG, Murphy AJ, Knight TJ, Janse de Jonge XAK. Factors that differentiate acceleration ability in field sport athletes. J Strength Cond Res. 2011;25(10):2704-2714
2. EKBLOM, B. (1986) Applied physiology of football. Sports Science, 3, p. 50-60
3. Andrzeiewski,M., Chmura,J., Pluta, B., Strzelczyk, R., Kasprzak, A. (2013). Analysis of sprinting activities of professional soccer players. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 27, 2134-2140.
4. Maffiuletti, N.A., Aagaard, P., Blazevich, A.J., Folland, J., Tillin,N, & Duchateau, J. (2016). Rate of force development: physiological and methodological considerations. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 116, 1091-1116.