Why the stopwatch lies

Match data shows that the speed which decides games rarely looks like a 40 m test. In English Premier League goals, 83% of player involvements included at least one high-intensity movement. Straight runs were the most common action (32%), but decelerations (20%) and turns (20%) together made up as much again (Martínez-Hernández, Quinn & Jones, 2023).

The sprints themselves are not textbook sprints either. When Caldbeck and Dos’Santos coded 901 Premier League sprints, they found (2022):

• 86% followed a curved path, not a straight line
• 66% began with a rolling start, not an explosive one from standing
• 52% came straight after a change of direction
• 49% ended in a duel or a ball action

A static 10 m or 40 m test captures a small slice of this. Players need to accelerate while already moving, run on a bend, and arrive ready to do something.

The forgotten skill: stopping

We obsess over how fast players go, yet the game asks them to stop just as often. A meta-analysis of elite team sports found that high-intensity decelerations outnumber high-intensity accelerations in most codes (Harper, Carling & Kiely, 2019). Braking means absorbing large forces in a fraction of a second, so it is a physical capacity to build, not just a technique to tidy up (Harper et al., 2022).

Change of direction adds a twist: the sharper the cut, the more speed you must shed first. Dos’Santos and colleagues call this the angle–velocity trade-off (2018).

• Shallow cuts (about 45° or less) are about keeping speed through the turn.
• Mid-range cuts (60–90°) need more braking on the approach.
• Sharp turns (135° or more) are really deceleration tasks, with the step before the plant doing much of the work.

Testing needs the same nuance. Total 505 time mostly reflects straight-line speed, so the COD deficit (505 time minus 10 m sprint time) is a cleaner measure of how well someone actually changes direction (Nimphius et al., 2016). Fast players can still have a big deficit, and that is where training should go.

Agility starts in the eyes

The best players often move no faster than anyone else; they simply start sooner. When higher- and lower-skilled rugby league players took a reactive agility test, the better players won mainly through faster decisions, not faster movement (Gabbett & Benton, 2009).

That is why sport scientists separate two things that coaches often lump together. Change-of-direction speed is a pre-planned cut around a cone. Agility is a change of direction in response to something: an opponent’s hips, a bouncing ball, a gap opening (Sheppard & Young, 2006). The two share surprisingly little and behave as separate skills (Young, Dawson & Henry, 2015).

The training evidence follows suit. Over seven weeks, small-sided games improved reactive agility and decision time in Australian footballers, while pre-planned cone drills did not (Young & Rogers, 2014). If you want players who read the game faster, they have to read something while they train.

Building the engine

Perception decides when to go; force decides how fast you get there. Three findings shape how to build it.

Acceleration is about direction of force. Faster accelerators are not simply stronger. They are better at pointing their force horizontally into the ground, and that technical ability explains acceleration better than total force does (Morin, Edouard & Samozino, 2011). A simple 30 m sprint profile shows whether a player is limited by force or by velocity, which points to heavy sleds and strength work or to more top-speed sprinting (Samozino et al., 2016).

Top speed is big force in short contacts. Faster runners do not swing their legs faster. They hit the ground harder in a shorter contact (Weyand et al., 2000; Clark & Weyand, 2014). That puts reactive strength and hamstring capacity at the centre of top-speed work.

Sprinting alone is not enough, but you still need it. In football-code athletes, sprint-only training did not reliably improve sprints of 20 m or less, while combined, resisted, strength and plyometric methods did (Nicholson et al., 2021). The practical message: sprint often with maximal intent, then add force on top.

And regular exposure to top speed may protect players. Elite Gaelic footballers who reached more than 95% of their maximal velocity in training had much lower odds of injury than those who reached only 85% (odds ratio 0.12). Too little and too much exposure both raised risk, a U-shaped pattern (Malone et al., 2017). Pair that with Nordic hamstring work, which roughly halves hamstring injury rates (van Dyk, Behan & Whiteley, 2019).

Coaching movement as a skill

Jeffreys, Huggins and Davies described how this thinking runs through Swansea City’s Premier League academy. Their starting point is the game itself, not a definition of speed.

• Start with the phases of play. Defending, attacking, and the two transitions between them each have tactical principles.
• Turn principles into tasks. Pressing, breaking forward or recovering each ask for particular movements.
• Classify movements by what they achieve. Initiation movements start or redirect motion. Transition movements, such as jockeying, side-shuffling and backtracking, keep a player balanced while they read the play. Actualisation movements cover ground fast.
• Coach to the task, not the clock. A technique that is slightly slower on a stopwatch can still be right if it lets the player do the job.

The training itself blends closed drills (for building blocks such as acceleration) with open, task-based work that carries variability, decision-making and instant feedback. Coaches add “degrees of freedom” through spatial and timing challenges to keep each player at the edge of their ability.

Delivery is pragmatic. Much of it happens through RAMP warm-ups (raise, activate and mobilise, potentiate) before every soccer session, so players get frequent, short doses of movement practice. If the session is about pressing, the warm-up builds deceleration and jockeying. Speed sits beside strength (“gameforce”) and conditioning (“game-endurance”), each tied to the first team’s style of play.

What a GameSpeed week looks like

In season, speed work has to fit around matches. In EPI’s example week between two games, the fastest, most specific sprinting sits two days before the match, once the heavy loading is done.

Whatever the day, the dose rules are the same: maximal intent, full recovery between reps, and stop when quality drops (Haugen et al., 2019).

Six things to take back to training

• Start with the game. Speed matters when it serves a task, in attack and in defence.
• Map phases to movements. Know which initiation, transition and actualisation patterns your playing style demands.
• Build force. Strength, plyometrics and resisted sprints raise the ceiling, and eccentric strength makes braking safer.
• Sprint fast every week. Plan exposures above 90–95% of top speed, from rolling and curved starts.
• Coach movement as a skill. Progress from closed drills to open, game-like tasks where players have to read and decide.
• Fit the club’s system. Deliver speed through warm-ups and around the team’s week, not in competition with it.