My 5 Biggest Lessons in Speed Training

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When I was 26, I coached my first NCAA champion in the women’s 55m dash, Callen Martin.

Looking back, there were things I did well, but many things I’d do differently.

Often, great athletes can make coaches “look good,” even if the training is far from perfect.

I’ve been obsessed with speed and power training from age 13-14, but I’ve reconsidered a good portion of my approach since coaching Callen, 15 years later. These days I’ve been able to help many athletes succeed in their speed training, who may have slipped through the cracks in the past. Here are 5 of my biggest lessons in speed training gained over the last decade and a half:

Squats Don’t Guarantee Speed
Stimulation is King
Master Resisted Sprints and Overspeed
“Constraints Based” Approach > Cues + Drills
Speed Endurance Training is Both Over and Under-Rated

Squats Don’t Guarantee Speed

One of the things I got most excited about as a young coach, was how much my sprinters squats were going up in the weight room.

After all, it’s not too hard to get an athlete without much lifting experience, to boost their squat max.

I had an unfortunate surprise, however, with squatting and many of my longer sprinters, and elastic jumpers.

We would improve their squat by a large margin, but then their performances didn’t increase in tandem. In some cases, these athletes got slower. On a recent podcast, Mike Bruno shared a story of an elastic sprinter, who despite increasing her squat-related capacities, got substantially slower in the 100m over the course of a year, as the gained strength didn’t fit with her structural “superpowers”.

Strength is a Low-Hanging Fruit: But Take Care in How Far You Chase It

It is great to get stronger, and strength in the weight room is a low-hanging fruit for many athletes. At the same time, thinking a single lift is a magic route to unlimited speed gains on the field can be damaging, especially when we take that lift farther than we should. Elastic athletes need more elastic volume (i.e. long sprints, quality plyos, hurdling, etc.), and have nuances in the gym that can help them achieve their highest success.

Stimulation is King

In my seminar with Austin Jochum in June of 2024, Austin spoke on the principle of “stimulus”.

Beyond, sets, reps, technique, and constraints, how innately stimulating a movement is plays a massive role in how one adapts.

Many of the best coaches I’ve worked with are also masters of creating that stimulating training environment.

There are layers to how stimulating a training segment is, let’s take sprinting as an example. The least stimulating way to sprint is by yourself, with nobody watching, without a timer, and with no outcome goal (i.e. not chasing down prey or running away from a predator). Add a timer or timing gate, and the sprint automatically becomes more stimulating. Add spectators, and the sprint is now even more stimulating. Add competitors, trying to beat the time you are running, and the stimulation increases further. Add a powerful team environment, a coach you believe in, and a feeling of an overall higher purpose, and again, even more stimulation.

If You Sprint Fast Alone in the Woods, Does Anyone Hear You?

Of course, this is a big reason that any action in a team sport is inherently stimulating, things many performance coaches forget.

Any short sprint in a team sport carries many of the above qualities to it. The performer-environment relationship is ever-present.

When we get to any directed sprint, jump, and throwing work outside of team sport, we must remember the stimulation that is inherent to sport itself and use the needed human, task-based, or environmental stimulation to bridge the gap.

Master Resisted and Overspeed Work

All speed and track coaches believe in resisted sprinting, although they may argue over the optimal resistance level.

If you want to accelerate better, you should be familiar with sled, hill, and machine-based resistance protocols.

You get a lot more mixed opinions on overspeed and assisted sprint training.

Many believe that it will “mess up” an athlete’s mechanics, such as creating too much braking force. There is a line by which you can overdo over-speed work, but in general, many top sprint coaches make good use of the method. I’ve seen it done very well by a variety of coaches, and athletes get very fast as a result. On the flip side, I’ve seen the double-edged sword of early peaking, or too much season-round intensity using it, leading to increased injury rates.

Gary Marinovich Pulling the Overspeed = Stimulating Sprint Experience

Based on the level of stimulation alone over-speed is one of the most engaging methods out there.

Very few things are more specifically potentiating for a sprint athlete.

A mastery in the art of speed training is scaling the potentiation effectively. through an athlete’s year, and career.

Use over-speed (or near-overspeed, or even a nice tailwind) well, and you can help an athlete break plateaus. Use it poorly or excessively, and you flip into the realm of new walls to performance. In learning to use, combine, and alternate both resisted and over-speed work, there grows a mastery of the sprint development equation.

Take a “Constraints-Based” Approach to Technique

I quickly got sick of trying to “fix” athletes’ sprint technique with any sort of instructions or cues (it didn’t work).

I am fortunate in my early realization that technical improvement came from feeling and problem-solving vs. barking cues and constant instruction.

Once this distinction is made, sessions become far more enjoyable, and athletes improve more quickly.

One struggle Callen had in sprinting was exploding from the blocks. She took a safe, “timid” first step and exploded from that point onwards. I spent a lot of time “coaching” her rear arm drive and the “conscious” length of her first step. Every time she went to race, she just regressed into that short step-out. If she “tried” to leap far, she ran slower.

Stride Ladders: There is Depth to This Tool Many Miss

What would have been far better would have been stride ladder work and integration.

This would start with setting out tape marks or cones and having her run over them, out from the blocks.

To improve learning, it wouldn’t have been one “perfect” series, but rather different variations of step pattern and first step length.

This could have been preceded, or “super-setted” with standing broad jumps, medicine ball throws + long jumps, or bounding work. This would help communicate the concepts of elasticity and air time in a start, while still allowing her to solve the “problem” of an explosive start in her authentic way.

(For an expansion on this topic, resisted sprint concepts, and more, join the hundreds of coaches/athletes who have taken “Sprint Acceleration Essentials”)

Speed Endurance is Over/Under-Rated

First off, the common high school track “tempo-death march” is one of the most unfortunate training methods in existence. I didn’t know how sad it could be to be a track athlete until my first high school volunteer coaching stint in 2021 where I saw the “sprinters” hit 2200-2400m of “sprint” volume on a day (ouch). Unfortunately, 8x300s and the “200-300-400-500-400-300-200” craziness still lives on. This makes me happy coaches like Tony Holler have sought to end this madness by going entirely the opposite direction, focusing on quality 10-meter flys and 40-yard dashes, plyometric training days, select quality speed endurance, and social stimulation (rank-record-publish). At the same time, many coaches speak on the need for more sprint, speed-endurance, and even aerobic volume in a training program.

The truth is, most answers lie in the middle.

Quality, stimulating speed work is vital to a program.

But yet… many athletes need more speed endurance work, tempo, and overall sprint volume to reach their maximal potential (especially but not limited to, 400m sprinters).

Search long enough across the span of elite track coaches, and you’ll see plenty of anecdotes of athletes who needed to do more sprint volume, and longer runs, to be their best. Charlie Francis spoke of sprint athletes who needed quality long sprint reps (300-500m). Andy Eggerth has talked about lactate and sharpness, as well as decathletes who needed quality 300m reps to stay explosive late in the season. Rana Reider told me extensive tempo sprints were important for intermediate-level sprinters. Ross Jeffs has his “metabolic” classification of sprinter, who absolutely needs longer sprint distance efforts to be their best.

Athletes who are “super-fast-twitch” do better with lower-volume training programs.

Athletes who are more intermediate twitch, need more volume to fully stimulate their system.

The answer, however, is not just more volume, it’s more stimulating volume. This is where the art of coaching comes in.

Ross Jeffs Archetypes: Concentric, Elastic, Metabolic

Dragging athletes through 12x200m tempo death marches is a poor choice for helping them get faster. Rather, finding ways to chunk, complex, and integrate reasonable and relevant volume is key to great sprint progress over time.

About Joel Smith

Joel Smith is the founder of Just Fly Sports and is a sports performance and track coach in Cincinnati, Ohio. Joel hosts the Just Fly Performance Podcast and has authored several books and coaches in both the high school and private sectors.

Joel was a strength coach for 8 years at UC Berkeley, working with the Swim teams and post-graduate professional swimmers, as well as tennis, water polo, and track and field. A track coach of 17 years, Joel coached for the Diablo Valley Track and Field Club for 7 years and also has 6 years of experience coaching on the collegiate level, working at Wilmington College, and the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse. He is currently coaching high jump at Milford High School.

Joel has coached 4 national champions, multiple All-Americans, and NCAA record holders in track and field. In the realm of strength and conditioning, his programs have assisted 5 athletes to Olympic berths that produced 9 medals and a world record performance at Rio in 2016.