As a coach I often think of what is the one attribute that I would love to see in a player. I can name a few, skilful, strong, good reader of the game, brave. These are all attributes that will make a player stand out from their peers and be hugely beneficial on any team. One attribute that will stand out as equally if not more important than all of these is SPEED. A fast player will stand out on a pitch. I would go as far to say that a fast player can compensate for a deficiency in other areas of his game because their speed will get them out of trouble or put them in places on the pitch that a slower player just cannot get to.

In saying that, as a coach then I have thought over the last few years have I ever put enough emphasis on coaching players how to get faster and the simple answer to that question is no! Why is that I hear you ask? There are numerous factors to not spending time coaching speed and the main one was a lack of knowledge over the years in how to coach this skill. I call it a skill as I see it as being a real skill. I attended a coaching talk a number of years ago by a member of the S&C staff from Leinster Rugby. His talk was very good, I took a lot of notes but looking back the type of stuff he was telling us club coaches was very technical. Around the same time I had a conversation with a prominent Dublin player. He was at the time rehabbing an injury. During the course of the conversation he was telling me that the Dublin management had drafted in sprint coaches to work on the players running techniques in an effort to cut down on injuries. All in all I reckoned coaching speed/sprinting was far too technical for me.

My thinking on the matter has changed significantly over the last few years. The main reason for this has come since meeting and getting to know Aidan O Connell. To those of you who don’t know Aidan he is the High Performance Manager for Cork GAA. My first introduction to Aidan was in 2016 when he came on board as S&C coach for the clubs footballers in their first year in the Senior Championship. At that time Aidan was S&C coach to Munster Rugby elite players. Aidan has since moved in to his job in Cork GAA where he is guiding the needs of Cork’s intercounty squads while also building structures to improve the coaching capabilities within the county. From my early conversations with Aidan and the more detailed ones I have had with him in the last few years he simplified the coaching of speed. Aidan put it as simply as this, ‘every player can be coached to get faster. To gain speed a player must repeatedly sprint at their maximum effort, 100% top speed.’ The key when coaching speed is to give players max rest periods before repeating their 100% effort. This is where I and I’m sure other coaches have fallen down in the past in that when doing sprint work with teams we repeat the sprints too quickly. This leads to the session becoming more fitness/endurance and the players speed will decrease as they become more tired.

I recently was lucky enough to sit in on a Webinar Aidan delivered to coaches involved in the Rebel Og coach mentoring program. One part of Aidan’s presentation was on Speed Development. This is an area that we all can introduce to our training sessions, there are huge gains to be gotten from coaching our players to get faster. Here are some of the key points Aidan made and I am glad to share with you.

  • Placement in the session. Speed work should be done early in the session when the players are fresh. Ideally it should be the first segment after the warm-up.
  • 2 types of Speed Work. 1. Acceleration 0-20m 2. Max Velocity 20m-40m
  • There are 3 methods of coaching the speed work, Race, Chase or Relay. My using one of these we can tap in to the players competitive streaks. All kids and adults love to race, there’s great fun to be had in this type of work and it’s sure to get the players laughing.
  • Intensity. As already stated this has to be 100%. Emphasise this to the player.
  • Rest. Give the players max time between sprints to recover and lower their heart rates. This then allows them to react their 100% effort. A rule of thumb for the rest period is 30sec for every 10m sprinted.
  • Distance. (for juvenile players) 0-30m Volume 6-10 sprints. Starts can vary, standing, lying down, back to back, face to face. Mix them up to give variety.

Draft Speed Session Plan

  1. 10m race x 4reps starting on each 30sec = 2mins
  2. 20m chase x 3reps starting on each 60 sec = 3mins
  3. 30m relay x 2reps (teams of 3 to 6 players depending on numbers) a leg of the relay each starting on each 90sec = 3mins

Total time for speed work = 10mins

So that’s it folks, that’s how easy it is to coach speed! Nothing too technical, just repeated effort at 100% with max rest in between. I wish someone had told me that many years ago! There are serious gains for us as a club if we can put the work in with our players to improve their speed. From the slowest to the quickest they can all get quicker. Let us all commit to working on making our players quicker when we get back on the field in the not too distant future.

You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards, and when you reach your limits, that is real joy.
― Arthur Ashe

Let’s all reach for higher standards!

I just want to take this opportunity to thank Richard O Farrell and Frank O Hanlon for asking me to write this piece for the club website. Hopefully we can all start a coaching conversation which will lead to a culture of better coaching standards within the club.

Stay safe and chat soon.