Speed Is a Skill: Building Year-Round Speed During School
#75 - Strength & Speed Coaching - Pursuing Your Best ⚡️
If you work in a school setting, you’ve probably heard some version of this:
“We already run at practice.”
“We don’t have time for speed work.”
“I don’t want to risk hamstring pulls in-season.”
Speed can feel complicated.
I’ve felt that tension myself — especially when the room is full, the time we have in class is tight, and multiple teams are in-season.
It doesn’t have to be.
Speed gets treated like something seasonal.
A camp.
An off-season phase.
Something athletes will “pick up” somewhere else.
But speed doesn’t really work that way.
Speed is a skill.
And like every other skill we value, it has to be taught, placed, and reinforced intentionally. Year-round.
Why Speed Belongs in School-Based Training
If you had to choose one athletic quality that transfers across almost every sport, it’s speed.
Acceleration.
Deceleration.
Change of direction.
Top-end sprinting.
Force production in short time frames.
Speed underlies almost everything else.
But in many schools, sprinting gets treated as:
Conditioning
Punishment
Something athletes “just do”
Or something sport practice will handle
But if Strength & Speed class is about long-term athletic development, sprinting deserves intentional coaching just like lifting does.
The Three Most Common Fears
Let’s address the concerns honestly.
1. “We Don’t Have Time”
You don’t need 30 minutes of speed work.
You need:
2-5 quality sprints
Full recovery
Clear intent
That can take 6-10 minutes at the front of a session.
Speed doesn’t require more time.
It requires better placement.
2. “In-Season Is Too Risky”
Poorly dosed sprinting is risky.
Intentional, low-volume sprinting is protective.
When athletes sprint consistently throughout the year, their bodies adapt to it.
Mechanics improve.
Exposure becomes normal.
And the shock of sudden max-speed effort disappears.
The biggest injury risk often comes from not sprinting for weeks and then asking athletes to go full speed in a game.
Consistent exposure is safer than seasonal spikes.
3. “They Already Run at Practice”
They run.
That doesn’t mean sprinting is happening.
Practice is often:
Tactical
Reactive
Sport-specific
Fatigue-based
School-based speed training is different.
It isolates:
Acceleration
Mechanics
Max velocity exposure
Intent
That’s sprint training.
It’s different from just running around at practice.
Speed Is a Skill
We teach:
Squat patterns
Hinge mechanics
Pressing technique
Bracing strategy
Why would sprinting be different?
Speed must be:
Demonstrated
Cued
Progressed
Not assumed.
If athletes don’t sprint with intent in a controlled environment, they won’t suddenly master it under pressure.
Placement Matters More Than Volume
One of the biggest mistakes I see is coaches trying to “add” speed.
Speed isn’t something you add.
It’s something you place.
Inside a weekly structure, speed should:
Occur before heavy fatigue
Stay low in total volume
Be consistent week to week
If you’ve followed A Week in the Life or Programming Mastery, you already understand this principle.
Structure first.
Then dose.
Speed fits inside the system… first.
Tony Villani has coined the phrase, “Priority, not majority.” Meaning, it doesn’t have to take very long but it is extremely important, enough to center a lot of your programming around it.
What “Enough” Looks Like
For most school settings, “enough” speed work looks like:
2-5 max velocity exposures
Recovery between reps
Clean mechanics emphasized
Intent protected
That’s it.
You don’t need:
Endless ladders
110-yard repeat conditioning
Exhaustive sprint circuits
Random drill collections
Quality over quantity. Intent over exhaustion.
Year-Round Speed During School
Speed doesn’t need a separate season.
It needs consistency across seasons.
Weekly Speed Dose
Monday
SHREDmill: Short bursts. Intent over distance. Effort is visible. Force is prioritized.
Block Day (Tuesday or Wednesday)
Atomic Stations: Sprint, jump, throw, and bounce. The most athletic things a human can do. Compete with intent, move like an athlete. We rotate our sprints each week.
10 Yard Dash
Fly 10 - 10
Fly 30 - 10
40 Yard Dash
Thursday
SHREDmill – Short, high-quality bursts of speed. Intent over distance. Transition speed from acceleration to max velocity.
Friday
Linear acceleration variations
Varied Position Starts
Prowler (XPO Trainer)
Partner Resisted Band Sprints
Partner Races
When we treat sprinting as a skill:
We increase transfer across sports.
We reduce avoidable injury risk.
We build confidence in our programming decisions.
If we believe Strength & Speed class exists to develop better athletes, sprinting belongs in the program.
Not as conditioning.
Not as punishment.
But as a skill we coach deliberately.
And the good news is this:
It doesn’t require more time.
Just better structure. (And it belongs inside the school day.)
What’s Coming Next
In the next editions of this series, we’ll break down:
How to teach sprint mechanics simply and effectively
Which drills transfer
How to track speed and make progress visible
But before we get into drills or tracking systems, this foundation matters.
Speed belongs.
And it can be taught responsibly inside real school constraints.
Keep pursuing excellence,
Preston Pedersen, M.Ed., CSCS
Strength & Speed Coach • Pursuit PE ⚡️