A better approach to speed training starts with understanding the movement—not collecting exercises.
By Michael Johnson, DPT, ATC, STC, CSCS
Spend time around a track, football field, or speed-training facility and you'll see athletes performing all kinds of drills.
High knees. Falling starts. Wall drills. Sled pushes. Various starting positions.
Many of these drills can be valuable. But I've always believed that choosing a drill should come after answering a more important question:
What are we trying to accomplish with this movement?
Over years of coaching athletes and working as a physical therapist and athletic trainer, that question has become one of the foundations of how I teach speed mechanics.
Start With the Movement, Not the Drill
When I'm teaching an athlete to start and accelerate, I don't begin by thinking about how many drills we can fit into a workout.
I begin with the movement itself.
What does the athlete need to do? What components contribute to that movement? Which components can the athlete already perform effectively, and which need more attention?
For a sprint start, that might involve how the athlete establishes a starting position, manages forward lean and support, coordinates the arms and legs, or transitions from a stationary position into acceleration.
Those components are related, but they don't necessarily have to be taught all at once.
Sometimes it makes sense to simplify the movement so an athlete can concentrate on a particular demand.
Other times, the athlete needs to experience a more challenging situation that reveals how well previously practiced movements hold together.
My general approach is:
Observe the whole → break it into components → identify what needs development → train the components → reintegrate the whole.
It's a process I have used and refined throughout my coaching career.
Give Every Drill a Job
I don't believe a drill needs to be complicated to be valuable.
A simple movement can provide useful information if the coach understands what to look for.
For example, I use Falling Starts early in my Speed Progression.
The athlete begins upright, tips forward, and responds when a step becomes necessary.
This relatively simple task allows me to focus on the athlete's first-leg response without immediately adding all the demands of a conventional starting position.
I'm not trying to teach the entire acceleration pattern with that one drill.
I'm trying to introduce, observe, and develop particular movement characteristics that we will revisit later.
That distinction is important.
A drill doesn't need to accomplish everything. It needs to accomplish something meaningful.
A drill without a clear purpose is simply activity.
Why I Developed a Speed Progression
Over time, I organized my approach into a nine-drill Speed Progression.
The drills aren't simply a collection of exercises that I happen to like.
Each changes the movement problem in a particular way.
We begin with relatively simple movements and progressively change the athlete's circumstances—introducing different body positions, balance demands, forms of support, coordination challenges, and movement constraints.
Some drills isolate a component. Others make selected demands more challenging.
Eventually, we return to a practical starting position and ask the athlete to organize those components into a complete movement.
That final step is essential to how I coach.
An athlete might perform a particular action well during an isolated drill but struggle to reproduce it when the demands of the complete start return.
I want to see what happens when we put everything back together.
Coaching Is More Than Correcting What Looks Wrong
Another important part of this approach is observation.
When an athlete performs a movement differently than intended, I don't automatically assume I know why.
A deviation might reflect several factors, including how the athlete understands the task, their current coordination, their physical capabilities, or the strategy they've chosen.
The movement tells me what happened.
It doesn't necessarily tell me why.
That is why I prefer to observe, identify something meaningful to address, provide an appropriate correction, and reassess.
Sometimes the next repetition tells me more than the previous ten.
There Isn't Only One Way to Teach Speed
I don't believe my Speed Progression is the only way to teach starting mechanics.
There are different approaches to developing athletic movement, and research on motor learning indicates that both practicing a complete skill and practicing selected components can be useful, depending on the task.
My system developed through years of coaching, observation, experimentation, and refinement.
It reflects how I organize movement problems and teach athletes to solve them.
I believe it provides a useful structure for both training and evaluation, while recognizing that improvement within an individual drill doesn't automatically establish improved sprint performance.
The complete athletic movement remains the ultimate reference point.
Before Your Next Speed Drill
The next time you're planning a speed workout, consider asking yourself a few questions.
What specific movement am I trying to improve?
Why am I choosing this drill?
What should I be watching?
And how will I determine whether the athlete can apply what we're practicing to the complete movement?
You don't need the most complicated drills or the longest list of exercises.
You need a clear purpose for the work you're asking your athletes to perform.
Start with the movement. Give every drill a purpose. Then bring the pieces back together.
Research and Further Reading
The following publications provide background on motor-skill practice, sprint training, and the relationship between training methods and athletic performance. They are not studies of the IGNITE BLOX Speed Progression itself.
- Fontana, F. E., Mazzardo, O., Furtado, O., Jr., & Gallagher, J. D. (2009). Whole and part practice: A meta-analysis. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 109(2), 517–530. https://doi.org/10.2466/PMS.109.2.517-530
- Haugen, T., Seiler, S., Sandbakk, Ø., & Tønnessen, E. (2019). The training and development of elite sprint performance: An integration of scientific and best practice literature. Sports Medicine - Open, 5, Article 44. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-019-0221-0
- Brearley, S., & Bishop, C. (2019). Transfer of training: How specific should we be? Strength & Conditioning Journal, 41(3), 97–109. https://doi.org/10.1519/SSC.0000000000000450
About the Author
Michael Johnson, DPT, ATC, STC, CSCS
Coach Michael Johnson is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, Certified Athletic Trainer, and Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. A longtime coach across multiple sports, he has spent years developing and refining practical approaches to athletic movement, speed development, and performance training.
He is the developer of the IGNITE BLOX Speed Progression, a nine-drill coaching system designed to introduce, develop, and progressively integrate movement components involved in athletic starting mechanics and acceleration.