If you want to know how to increase top speed sprinting, it comes down to three things. Train your body to put a big force into the ground in a very short time. Expose it to real top speeds, not just hard running. Then let your nervous system fully recover before you ask it again. Most players get one of those three wrong, and that's why their top speed sits still for years.
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The one quality that makes the rest easier
Here's a question I ask every athlete who wants to go from 33 to 36 km/h, or from 36 to 40. What's the one quality you can train so that, by training it, everything else gets easier or unnecessary?
My answer: maximum force in a very short amount of time. That's top speed. Train that properly, and a lot of the separate ankle programs and knee programs people collect start to become unnecessary.
Why a short time? Because at top speed, your foot is only on the ground for about a tenth of a second. Anywhere from 100 down to 90 milliseconds on the ground is a strong target when you're flat out. There's no time to push with muscle in that window. The force has to come back from your tendons, which work like springs. They stretch when your foot lands and fire the energy straight back into the ground. I go deeper on this in ground contact time explained.
Your body has never been there
Most football weeks never get you near flat out. Small-sided games and possession work don't do it. Then one day the ball goes over the top and you need to hit 34 km/h to get there. Your ankle has never been pushed to that level. Parts of your body have never been pushed to that level. Not once. Maybe in a game, but by the time you're tired and two runs have already happened, you're not hitting your max anymore. So why would you get to 34 km/h and get to the ball? You won't.
Your nervous system decides how fast you're allowed to move. If it's never exposed to high speed, it never gets asked to go faster, and it doesn't.
I remember the first time I hit 40 km/h. It felt too quick. The force going through my leg was so aggressive I thought I was about to fall over. Your body reads that speed as a threat. And that's exactly what keeps you chasing it. You can't get used to a speed you've never touched.
How to increase top speed sprinting: the fly
The main tool is the fly sprint. Build up over 20 to 30 metres, then run a 20 metre fly, which is your top speed zone. "Fly" just means you're already at speed when the timing starts. Focus on max speed and putting the foot down aggressively. Time it on gates, or film it on your phone and measure it afterwards.
What should it look like? Watch the best sprinters at top speed and a few things stand out:
- ✓The foot lands under the body, not out in front. A foot landing in front acts like a brake on every stride.
- ✓Very little bounce up and down. The energy goes forwards, not into the sky.
- ✓The ankle works like a spring. It holds firm on contact and returns the energy, instead of collapsing.
A coach's note I've sent to an athlete after a session: "Looked springy today. Stride length is longer from just being stiffer." Stiffer, not tenser. That's the whole idea. A stiff, reactive leg returns energy. A tense, braced one soaks it up.
Fewer reps, fully recovered
Running fast all the time doesn't get you faster. Running fast when needed gets you faster. A rep where you're told no time will naturally sit around 97%. A test where your goal is 100% is a different thing, and it costs more.
After a single flat-out session where you hit 100% to 105% and ran a personal best, our own figures from around 1,000 athletes show 7 to 24 days to full neurological freshness, depending on the player. Pushed past their actual max speed, it can be up to 50 days. To be clear, those are days until the nervous system is 100% fresh again, not days until you can train. You keep training in that time. You just don't keep testing your max and expecting a new number.
Your nervous system only adapts to a higher level than before when that recovery is allowed to finish. If you keep stacking flat-out work on top before it's finished, the brain pulls the handbrake. Reactions slow, the first step gets heavier, and you spend longer on the ground every stride. And the moment you feel yourself dropping off in a session, stop. Anything after that point is training the slower version of you. See?
It takes time in the right order
This is what top speed looks like when it's built properly. Isaac Kadouh went from 25.2 to 32.1 km/h over 18 months and made his debut in goal for Lebanon's youth national team. Xavi went from 22.3 to 31.2 km/h in 17 months, then won the U14 Golden Boot with 31 goals. James went from the low 20s to 32 km/h in 14 months.
None of them got there by sprinting more. They got there by finding which part of top speed was holding them back, the ground contact, the landing, the stiffness, the recovery, and fixing it in order. If your problem is getting going rather than top end, read how to get faster for football.
Every session we run is timed and reviewed on film, so you can see it move.