Curved sprinting in football matters because very few runs in a game are perfectly straight. You bend a run to stay onside, curve around a defender, turn and go, or open your hips to receive. Straight line speed is still the base, around 80% of what your running stride is. But the rotation, the curve and getting your leg underneath you out of a turn have to be trained at speed too.
Watch: the video this post comes from
Here's how we look at it, and how we train it.
Straight line speed is the base, not the whole story
Don't get me wrong. Straight line speed training has major importance. It's the biggest part of how you run, and it's where your top speed comes from. If your top speed is low, every other kind of speed runs out of room.
But people tend to think running always happens in a straight line. In football it's not the case. A winger curves a run down the line. A striker bends his run across the back line. A midfielder receives on the half turn and goes. Every one of those needs you to lean, rotate and put force into the ground through the inside or outside edge of your foot.
Curved sprinting in football: the drill
One of the drills we use: accelerate for 20 m, then go straight into a 25 to 30 m curved run with a football, then re-accelerate into a 10 m straight.
On the curve, use both the inside edge and the outside edge of both feet. That works the parts of the lower foot that do the job in a change of direction. It trains coordination at higher speeds, and it mimics, even over-mimics, the runs you'll make in a game.
The re-acceleration at the end is the important bit. In a game, the curve is never the end of the run. You come out of it and go again.
The rotation: get the leg under you
The other side of game speed is rotation. Picture a defender jockeying, side shuffling, then having to turn and sprint. Or a player shuffling across, then breaking.
We train that with a side shuffle into an overspeed bungee. The athlete shuffles sideways like they would in a jockey, then the bungee cord pulls them into a big acceleration. The magic happens in the twist: how fast the hips and upper body rotate, and how quickly they get the left foot underneath them with the right foot following straight through.
The mistake I see is athletes placing the leg out in front instead of getting it underneath them. At first the bungee is a bit too fast for them, so they reach. Over time they learn to get that foot under the body, and there you go: a real speed start out of a turn.
Then I look at the torso. Too upright, and they lose the forward drive. We want the sternum a bit more forward and more full hip extension, the back leg pushing all the way behind them. Less steps, more distance per step. See the difference?
Put it in a game shape
Drills on their own don't look like football. So we also run a game simulation.
Set up a box 10 to 20 m across, with a player on each side, or even just one if that's all you've got. The working athlete goes into the box and receives from one side. They turn, open up on an angle, make multiple turns in the middle like a game, and pass across to the player on the other side or back to where it came from.
Then every third or fourth time, they drive out of the box with the ball at max speed. Out, back in, make the pass, and keep operating. Open touches, cuts, turns, breakaways. We run it for 15 minutes straight, improvising like a real game.
That's the point. You turn, you curve, you break away flat out, and you do it tired, the way a match asks you to.
What to check in your own running
- ✓Film a curved run side on and from behind. Are you leaning into the curve from the ankle up, or just turning your shoulders?
- ✓Watch the first step out of a turn. Does your foot land underneath you, or reach out in front and brake?
- ✓Check your chest. Upright and tall means less drive. Sternum slightly forward means you're going somewhere.
Every session we time it and film it. The time tells you whether something changed. The film tells you why. Curved runs, rotation and turns sit on top of the same engine as your straight line speed, so we build that engine first, then train the shapes the game actually uses. If you want the full picture on cutting, read how to improve change of direction speed.