If you're asking how to improve first step acceleration, start here. Your first stride is the one place where gym strength really pays off, because your foot is on the ground long enough to use it. But that only works up to a point. Past it, more squatting stops moving your first step, and what you need is position, rhythm and reactivity, measured on the field, not on the bar.
Watch: the video this post comes from
If you're in the gym every week, doing your strength work, and you still can't get away from anyone, it's not your effort. It's not your genetics. Most players go into the off season not sure what their strength is and not sure what their weakness is. So they do more of what they already do, and they come back for pre-season and nothing's changed.
What strength actually gives your first step
Out of a standing start, on that first stride, ground contact can be upwards of 200 milliseconds. Ground contact is how long your foot stays on the ground each stride. 200 milliseconds is a long time to be on the ground, and over that length of contact you have time to express the force you built in the gym. That's why there's a real link between squatting ability and initial acceleration.
Strength gives you something else too: a position. A stronger athlete can get lower and hold that low position through his first strides. That's what lets you project forwards and stay close to the ground, instead of standing straight up on stride two.
So first things first, I'm not telling you to get out of the gym. Early on, strength really is the bottleneck. You train it and everything else moves with it. Every athlete I measure who's early on goes through that, and it works.
Why it stops working
Every stride after the first one gets shorter on the ground. Second, third, fourth contact keeps coming down, and by about the fifth and sixth stride you're in the 110 to 100 millisecond range. In there, what's producing your speed is reactivity, not strength. Strength still does a job, it holds your posture so you can stay in position. But it's not what's creating the speed anymore.
There are three more traps I see all the time:
- ✓Power for your bodyweight. Strength on its own isn't the number that matters. You can gain strength and power and still come out worse off, if the weight you put on to get there was too much for what you got back.
- ✓The ankles. As you get stronger, your ankle has to hold that new force at contact. If it gives way, the force doesn't transfer. Now you've got a strong athlete standing on a joint that can't hold what he's putting into the ground.
- ✓Tension. Bracing belongs under a bar. If your upper back is constantly locked up from heavy lifting, you lose the smooth rotation that fast running needs.
What the best first steps look like
Watch Mbappé or Vinícius Júnior come out of a cut. On the approach, their shoulders and hands stay really relaxed. On the plant, they don't brace. On the exit, the first three strides are long and low, and the back leg drives them forward.
Now picture a player who's tense. He can't move smoothly in the air or on the way out. The back leg doesn't come through cleanly, so he has to rotate himself across. All his effort goes into the ground, and high effort means high tension. See the difference? One is strong and calm. The other is strong and fighting himself.
How to improve first step acceleration: measure both
The point where strength stops helping isn't a number on the bar. I can't tell you it's two times bodyweight, because it's different for every athlete I measure. It comes down to femur length, where your muscles attach and the levers you've been given. Two players can squat exactly the same and get completely different things out of it.
So the point is this: the session where your squat goes up and your power output doesn't. There are two signs you've hit it:
- ✓On the pitch, you're strong in the duel, nobody moves you off the ball, but in a foot race that first step just doesn't get you there.
- ✓In the gym, the lift keeps going up and your bound stays exactly where it was, or drops. Same distance in January, same distance in March, and the bar has gone up by 20 kilos.
Right? The bar moved. The athlete didn't.
To tell which side you're on, measure your lift and your 10 bound test alongside each other. The 10 bound test is a 5 metre run-in, then 10 continuous bounds, and you measure the distance. Every bound feeds the next one, so it shows how reactive you are. Test after proper recovery, not in the middle of a heavy week, or the number lies to you.
What to do if you're past the point
Don't read this and quit the gym. Keep your gym work in the 50 to 60% range, nothing to failure, no max strength. You're keeping the strength you've already got and you stop chasing more. That time goes into the reactive side and the structure: ankles that stay stable on impact, and mild plyometrics to keep you springy.
Remember your gym session and your speed session are separate on paper, but not to your nervous system. A heavy lower body session on Monday and your speed work on Wednesday draw on the same engine. So plan it around your sport, don't squeeze it on top.
Then let the validation happen on the field of play. If you want to sprint, you sprint. If you want to be more powerful, you do the thing that puts the most power into the ground for your sport. For the strength side in more detail, read where strength pays off on the first stride. For starting positions, read how to start a sprint faster.
That's what our assessment is built to find: which side of the point you're on, and what to fix first.