What Speed Actually Is (And Why Most Coaches Misunderstand It)

Speed in athletics is the quality coaches talk about most and plan for least. Many of us still treat it as a gift: an athlete arrives fast or they do not, and our job is to build fitness around whatever speed they bring. In my experience, that view costs athletes years of development. Speed is a skill. It can be developed, refined and protected across a career when it is coached deliberately.

This is the first of ten weekly articles on speed progression, written for coaches of junior and youth sprinters and middle-distance athletes. Athletes and parents will find plenty here too, but the focus is on what we do as coaches and why.

Where Coaches Go Wrong With Speed in Athletics

The most common mistake is testing speed instead of training it. A squad runs a timed 30m in September, the fastest athletes are labelled sprinters, and everyone else is steered towards longer events. Meanwhile, the speed work itself becomes a warm-up afterthought or a set of tiring reps at the end of a session.

The second mistake is confusing effort with speed. Harder is not faster. Athletes who strain to sprint tighten their shoulders, shorten their stride and lose the rhythm that fast running depends on. Therefore, the coach who shouts "push" on every rep is often slowing the group down.

What Speed Is Actually Made Of

At a mechanical level, speed is stride length multiplied by stride frequency. That definition is accurate but not very useful on the track. A more practical breakdown has four parts. First, force: how much an athlete can push into the ground. Second, the time available to apply it, which falls to around a tenth of a second per contact at top speed. Third, direction, which is where technique decides whether force sends the athlete forwards or upwards. Fourth, the nervous system, which coordinates the whole movement and fatigues long before the muscles do.

Each phase of a sprint loads these differently. Acceleration is dominated by force and body angle. Maximum velocity depends on stiffness, posture and short contacts. Holding speed draws on both fitness and the ability to stay relaxed. As a result, two athletes can run identical times through completely different profiles, and they need different coaching. Our article on the science of speed in athletics covers the physiology in more depth.

Speed in Athletics Is Coachable

Genetics set a ceiling, but very few junior athletes are anywhere near theirs. Coordination, posture, rhythm and relaxation at speed are all learned. They respond to good cues, frequent exposure and patience. In practice, the athletes who improve most are rarely the fastest at 13. They are the ones who sprinted fresh, often and well for several years.

This has a direct implication for programme design. If speed is a skill, it needs to be practised the way skills are practised: when athletes are fresh, with full recovery and clear intent. A tired athlete sprinting at 90 percent is not training speed. They are rehearsing a slower pattern.

Why Speed Matters Beyond the Sprints

Middle-distance coaches sometimes see speed as a sprint coach's concern. Yet most 800m and 1500m races are decided in the final 200m, and the athlete with the most speed in reserve usually wins. A faster athlete also runs any given pace at a lower relative effort, which saves energy for the finish.

That is why speed sits at the centre of both our sprint coaching and our middle-distance coaching. Our piece on why speed still wins 1500m championships makes the case in detail.

The Framework for This Series

Everything in the next nine articles rests on a few principles. Technical quality comes before intensity. Speed is trained fresh, early in the week and early in the session. Speed endurance is built on top of speed, never instead of it. Strength supports speed but must not crowd it out. Finally, progress is monitored over months, not judged on a single session.

These principles sit comfortably alongside the long-term development guidance from England Athletics and the event demands set out by World Athletics. You can see how we apply them at each stage on our training pathway.

What This Means for Your Squad

If you coach young athletes, start by auditing where speed sits in your week. Is it ever trained fresh? Do athletes get full recovery between efforts? Is anyone tracking it over time? Honest answers to those three questions usually reveal where the easiest gains are.

The Finish Line

Speed in athletics is force, timing, direction and a fresh nervous system working together. It is not fixed, it is not only for sprinters, and it responds to deliberate coaching. Next week, we look at how to lay the foundations in young athletes.

If you would like to see how we coach speed at Wimbledon Park, athletes aged 12 and over can book a free trial session, and coaches are welcome to get in touch.

Next Monday in the speed series: The Foundations of Speed Development in Young Athletes.