If you are wondering…

“Why does top speed matter? My kid plays a sport where he or she doesn’t have enough room to reach top speed before they have to turn/cut/whatever.”

 

You are absolutely correct to wonder that, it’s just good reasoning.

And indeed, most field and court athletes will almost never touch their top speed in a game due to those exact reasons.

How many times do they get to just sprint all-out in a straight line for 30-40 yards without having to react or adapt to a ball or a defender?

 

However…

 

Top speed directly correlates with acceleration ability which makes it a GREAT predictor of how fast your athlete will be able to get from A to B, no matter how short the distance.

Athletes with higher top speeds will get up to higher submaximal speeds than their slower teammates and opponents.

 

A lot of NFL skill-position players have top speeds of 21-23mph, but they RARELY break 18mph during a game because that is about as fast as an athlete can move while still being able to turn or change direction quickly.

A runningback with a 23mph stop speed is able to accelerate to that 18mph “gamespeed” faster than one who has a ceiling of 21mph, AND, more importantly, he is able to stop and reaccelerate to that 18mph faster than a slower defender.

 

These are obviously substantially faster speeds than we are dealing with in this program, but the rule still stands scaled back to top speeds of 13-15mph and “gamespeeds” 11-12mph.

 

My good friend Jose Catano of Catano Performance up in Massachusetts put together this short video clip (22 seconds) demonstrating that concept. It’s my favorite visual, real-world illustration of this that I’ve seen so far.

 

 

There are of course nuances to this, but generally, top speed is a great indicator of the nervous system’s output ceiling.

“It is the tide that raises all ships” as Coach Tony Holler in Illinois always says.