The biggest myth in youth athletics is that speed training is for track kids. It’s not. The soccer player who beats their defender to the ball, the receiver who creates separation on a slant route, the shortstop who reaches a chopper in the hole, the lacrosse middie who breaks past a slide — every one of those plays is decided by speed.
If two athletes have the same skill level, the faster one wins. Period. That’s not a slogan. That’s the tiebreaker that decides 50/50 balls, contested catches, recruiting offers, and the difference between making varsity and watching from the bench.
The good news: speed is the single most coachable athletic quality. Skill takes years to develop. Speed responds to the right training in weeks. The bad news: most youth athletes train it wrong — or don’t train it at all.
The Three Pillars of Speed
At Run Speed Performance, we break the work down into three pillars. Each one is non-negotiable. Skip any of them and the others stop working.
- Speed workouts — the actual sprinting that builds your top end
- Form & technique — the mechanics that decide how much speed your body produces per unit of effort
- Strength building — the ground-force foundation that makes the other two pillars work
Below is the framework we use with every athlete who walks into the Carrollton facility — from 8-year-olds running for the first time to high school seniors prepping for combines.
Pillar 1: Speed Workouts
Daily — The Foundation
These run before every practice, every game, every workout. They’re not optional, and they’re not glamorous. They’re the difference between an athlete whose body is ready to fire and one who pulls a hamstring on the third sprint.
- A-Skips. Build vertical foot strike, core control, and the rhythm pattern your body uses at top speed. 2 sets of 20 yards.
- B-Skips. Train the sweeping leg motion and ground reaction that drives forward propulsion. 2 sets of 20 yards.
- Dynamic mobility. Leg swings, hip openers, walking lunges with rotation. 5-7 minutes total. The body has to be ready before it’s asked to be explosive.
Weekly — Peak Power
This is where speed actually gets built. Two sessions per week, full recovery between reps, never run when fatigued.
- Flying 60s. 20-meter run-up into a 60-meter sprint at maximum velocity. Builds top-end turnover speed — the gear most youth athletes never reach. 4-6 reps.
- Hill runs. 30-40 meter incline sprints. The hill forces the drive phase mechanics that decide the first 10 yards of every play. 6-8 reps.
- Box jumps. Vertical and broad. Trains explosive ground force without the wear-and-tear of repeated max sprints. 3 sets of 5.
- Speed endurance: 6-8 x 300m. The brutal one. Builds the lactate tolerance that keeps speed alive in the 4th quarter, the second half, the back end of a tournament. Paced reps, 90 seconds rest.
Pillar 2: Form & Technique
Poor mechanics cap an athlete’s ceiling and shorten their career. The two most expensive flaws we fix in young athletes:
- Standing up too early in the drive phase. The body wants to come upright by step three or four. Resist it. The first 8-10 yards should stay angled forward — that’s where 0.2 to 0.4 seconds live in a 100m time and where 50/50 balls are won.
- Vertical pushing instead of horizontal. Athletes who pop up are wasting force into the ground instead of behind them. The cue we coach is push the ground backward, not down.
The fastest fix for both: video. Record every athlete sprinting from the side. Watch the playback at half-speed. The mechanical flaws that take a coach 30 minutes to describe become obvious in 10 seconds of replay. We use video analysis on every athlete at the facility — and we recommend parents do the same at home.
Pillar 3: Strength Building
Speed is built in the weight room as much as it’s built on the track. The faster an athlete can produce force into the ground, the faster they move. Three movements drive the bulk of that adaptation:
- Squats & power cleans. Total-body force production. Squats build the engine, cleans teach the body to fire it explosively.
- Hamstring curls (eccentric focus). The hamstring is the most-injured muscle in youth speed sports. Eccentric loading prevents that and builds the back-side force needed for top-end velocity.
- DB push press. Trains arm drive and total-body coordination — the part of sprinting most kids ignore until it’s the bottleneck.
Reps and loads vary by age. For athletes under 14, we keep loads light and form perfect. For high schoolers, we periodize across the calendar — heavier in the off-season, lighter and more explosive in-season.
What This Looks Like in Practice
The mistake most parents make is thinking their kid’s club practice or school season covers speed training. It doesn’t. A travel soccer practice is 90% ball work. A football practice is 80% scheme. A baseball practice is 90% skill drills. None of those build the underlying engine that decides who gets to the ball first.
Athletes who add 2-3 dedicated speed sessions per week — even 30 minutes each — consistently outperform peers who don’t. Within 6-8 weeks, the difference shows up on game film: the kid who reaches the ball first, the kid who catches the runner from behind, the kid whose name a college coach circles after one tournament.
The Bottom Line
Speed isn’t a luxury — it’s the foundation every other athletic quality is built on. Skill, strength, agility, conditioning — none of them matter if you can’t get to the spot first. Coach the three pillars. Coach them year-round. Coach them with the same intensity you coach the sport itself.
If you’re ready to find out what’s holding your athlete’s speed back — whether it’s mechanics, strength, or just untrained top-end — book a speed assessment at the Carrollton facility. We video, we measure, we benchmark, and we build the plan from there.
Run Speed Performance specializes in youth speed development for athletes ages 6-18 across all sports. To schedule an assessment or learn about facility programs, visit the bookings page.
