Speed Training Program

The Basics That Nobody Gets Right

Speed training isn't about running faster. It's about reprogramming your nervous system to recruit more muscle fibers in less time. The whole Speed Training Program concept gets butchered in almost every gym bro routine I see, so here's what actually works. You build speed through three mechanisms: improved rate of force development, better elastic energy storage and return, and refined coordination. Most people only address the first one and call it a day. That's why they plateau after six weeks. My approach starts with plyometrics and depth jumps before any sprint work. You can't express speed if you can't produce force quickly into the ground. A 30cm box drop with a 1.5 second ground contact time is a reasonable baseline before touching a starting block.

I've seen too many athletes jump straight into interval sprints thinking that's speed training. It's cardiovascular training at best. Speed work is low volume, maximal effort, full recovery between reps. Six to eight reps of 10-20 meter bursts with 45 to 90 seconds rest between each. That's it. You should feel like you could do more after the set. If you're gassed, you did cardio, not speed work.

The Week I Wasted on Wrong Variables

Back in 2014, I was working with a collegiate sprinter who couldn't break 11.2 in the 100 meters despite training five days a week. Her times were flat. She was exhausted constantly. I pulled her workout log and realized she was doing 60% of her sessions at threshold intensity. Anaerobic capacity workouts masquerading as speed development. We cut her volume by half, added contrast training (heavy squats immediately followed by jump squats), and moved her sprints to the beginning of sessions when her CNS was fresh. She dropped to 10.84 within eight weeks. Not because she trained harder. Because she trained smarter and less.

What Beginners Miss

First, acceleration and top speed are different skills. Acceleration is about horizontal force production and pushing the ground away from you. Top speed is about pulling the ground under you with less ground contact time. Your program needs both, but most people only train one and wonder why their 40 meter time doesn't improve. Second, arm carriage matters more than leg speed. I know that sounds backwards. But if your arms are sloppy, your hips rotate and you leak energy. Keep the hands at about belt buckle height, swing from the shoulder, not the elbow. The backswing should reach ear level, the forehand swing reaches forward to about nose height. Simple check: film yourself from the side. If your hands cross your centerline, fix it before adding volume. Third, you need strength before you need speed. The relationship between maximal force output and sprint velocity is well established. If your squat is less than 1.8 times your body weight, your speed potential is capped regardless of how much plyometric work you do. Build the force first, express it later.

Programming It Out

A proper Speed Training Program cycles through phases. Preparation phase focuses on force production and tendon stiffness, usually eight to twelve weeks. Conversion phase introduces ballistic movements and short accelerations, four to six weeks. Realization phase is competition-speed work with minimal volume, two to four weeks. Most people skip straight to realization and wonder why they pull hamstrings. Here's a sample week during the conversion phase: Monday: Plyometrics (depth jumps, bounds, hop variations) plus acceleration drills. Wednesday: Strength work (squats, deadlifts, weighted lunges) with contrast jumps. Friday: Sprint repetitions at 95 to 100 percent, full recovery between reps. Saturday: Light technique work or active recovery. The rest days aren't optional. Your nervous system adapts during recovery, not during the session.

Where It Falls Apart

Speed training doesn't help if your motor patterns are broken. I've worked with athletes who had such poor hip flexion mechanics that no amount of sprinting would fix it. They needed mobility and motor control work first. If you can't actively lift your knee to hip height while standing, sprinting faster won't help. It'll just reinforce bad patterns. Also, speed training is brutally demanding on the hamstrings and groin. If you have a history of these injuries, you need to build up eccentric tolerance first. Nordic curls, tempo Romanian deadlifts, single-leg work. Four to six weeks minimum before introducing high-velocity running. I learned this the hard way with a client who went straight into bounding drills and tore his right hamstring Grade 2. Set his timeline back four months. Another limitation: age. After 35, the fast-twitch fiber population naturally declines. You can still improve speed, but the ceiling is lower and recovery takes longer. A 40 year old doing this program needs more rest days and lower volume than a 22 year old. The mechanics don't change, but the dosing does.

Resources

For a structured Speed Training Program, the Charlie Francis methodology is the gold standard, though some of his original material is outdated. More current options include the book Sprinting: Step by Step by Gavin Smith, which covers acceleration mechanics well, and the Athletes Performance library for video-based coaching cues. Free resources exist on YouTube but quality varies wildly. Look for coaches who show slow motion breakdowns and explain the why, not just the what. If you want something downloadable and systematic, the PDF guides from the Society of Australian Speed Coaches cover the periodization model I described above with weekly templates. It's free if you register on their site. Start slow. Film everything. Adjust based on what the video shows, not what you think you're doing. That's the whole thing.