The best explosive exercises for footballers are the ones that look like the game: flat-out sprints, flying sprints, ins and outs, curved runs with the ball, and bounding. A single flat-out sprint trains more qualities at once than any balance board or isolated drill ever will. Below are the five I'd give a footballer, how to set each one up with cones and a stopwatch, and why they work.
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Why a flat-out sprint beats any single-focus drill
When you go flat out, you need acceleration to get there and top end once you're there. That's two different scenarios already.
Your ankle has to stay stiff on every contact. Your knee has to be stable on impact and not collapse forward. Your hip extension (driving the leg back behind you) is trained. Your aggression is trained. Your relaxation is trained. Nobody isolated anything, and you still trained all of it.
That beats any single-focus program. Even a squat isn't just knee focused. Even when you try to make something knee focused, you've still got other qualities involved. So throw the balance board out. See?
Every explosive exercise below is built on that idea. Real speed, real intent, measured.
Explosive exercises for footballers: the five I use
20 m build, 10 m fly
The goal is your top speed over a 20 to 30 m stretch, the distance that matters for a winger running down the line or a striker running onto a through ball.
- ✓Mark out 20 m to a cone. That's your build-up.
- ✓Mark a second cone at 30 m.
- ✓Time the 20 to 30 m section only.
You can time it with a stopwatch, or film it and time it afterwards. Turn the time into km/h and you know your top speed over that segment.
15 m build, 20 m fly
Same idea, harder. You only get 15 m to accelerate, so you have to hit top speed earlier. Then you've got 20 m to hold it.
- ✓15 m to the first cone.
- ✓20 m cone to cone, timed.
Shorter times over that 20 m mean faster top speed and better ability to hold it. That's speed endurance: holding your top speed for longer, not just touching it.
50 m ins and outs
This one is about finding another gear. It trains you to switch on, relax, then switch on again, which is exactly what happens in a game.
- ✓Accelerate for 20 m.
- ✓10 m into top end.
- ✓10 m holding top end, staying relaxed.
- ✓Final 10 m re-accelerate and find the new gear.
It builds the ability to hold faster top speeds, and it trains coordination between tensing and relaxing at speed.
Acceleration into a curved run with the ball
Games aren't run in straight lines. This one simulates, and over-simulates, what you actually meet on the pitch.
- ✓Accelerate for 20 m.
- ✓Go into a 25 to 30 m curved run with the ball, using both the inside and outside edge of both feet.
- ✓Re-accelerate into a 10 m straight.
It works the parts of the foot that handle change of direction, and it trains coordination at higher speeds with the ball at your feet. More on why curves matter in curved sprinting in football.
Bounding
Bounding is the one exercise that can make you faster without adding more running. You jump from one leg to the other, covering ground every time.
- ✓Power bounding: every bound for max distance. Trains the forward push you need to accelerate.
- ✓Speed bounding: land with a stiff leg and get off the ground as fast as you can, like you're getting off hot coals. Closest to what happens at top speed.
To test it, start 5 m back from a tape measure, run in, do 10 continuous bounds and measure at your heel. If you're well under 30 m, elasticity is likely what's holding your speed back. I go through it properly in plyometrics for speed.
How often, and how hard
Explosive work only works if it's actually explosive. If you're doing it tired, you're training a slower version of yourself.
- ✓Do these fresh, not after a heavy gym day or the day after a game.
- ✓Bounding: one session a week. If you do both power and speed bounding, alternate them week to week.
- ✓Not every sprint needs to be 100%. Running fast all the time doesn't get you faster. Running fast when it's needed does.
- ✓The moment your times start dropping off in a session, stop.
And time everything. A drill you don't measure is a drill you can't progress. Right?
The bigger picture
These five cover a lot of ground, but they're not a program on their own. Speed has over 100 subcategories, from your first 5 m to your top speed to how long your foot stays on the ground. The right exercise for you depends on which of those is costing you the most.
That's the system: assess, find the bottleneck, fix it in order, measure again. If you want to know which of these explosive exercises your speed actually needs first, start with our assessment.