Soccer Drills

How to Increase a Soccer Player’s Speed in Just 7 Days!
By Gary Christopher

For a soccer player to win or faster speed on the football field, seven will be learning these skills to develop blinding speed. Running faster is a skill learned that eleven pays dividends for the coming years. I have taught the following skills for 7 in the last 10 years to help soccer players ever faster on the field. Practice these skills every day and 7 in one week you will be faster than they were a week ago. I hope you enjoy and be able to use for yourself or your team faster.

If we look at how a soccer player runs, there are 7 skills they need to learn in order to get faster. Developing proper running mechanics can increase a player’s speed almost immediately.

As an example, if you look carefully at how a soccer player runs, you will see that changing, perfecting, modifying their mechanics can have a drastic change in their performance. So let’s look at it more closely.

Thirty percent (30%) of a players power comes from their arm drive. Proper arm drive starts with creating quick, powerful movements with your arms. Keeping the arms locked at 90 degrees and have them drive straight back (simulate reaching back for your back (hip) pocket and thrusting if forward to shoulder socket height will create the proper arm drive. One important key to getting faster is this, the faster you move your arms, the faster your feet will go. Increasing stride frequency will increase a soccer players speed.

Relaxing the face, shoulder and hands allows for a soccer player to become faster as well as they are not fighting themselves when they run. The more relaxed the upper body is, the faster a soccer player will run.

In order to accelerate to the ball, a soccer player must create a forward lean where their hips are slightly in front of their feet. A good way to work on this skill is to do a wall drill. A wall drill is where the soccer player stands approximately 2-3 feet away from the wall and places their hands on the wall (shoulder height). Have the soccer player run in this position for up to 5 seconds will simulate how the body should be leaning forward while they are accelerating.

Driving the knee up to near belly button height assures that the soccer player is getting the best possible stride length possible. Proper stride length is one of the keys to increasing speed. Even adding 2-4 inches to a stride length can allow a player to cover an extra 2-3 feet over 10 strides. These 2-3 feet could be the difference in scoring or defending goals.

Having the toes up when you accelerate allows the foot to land on the front part of the foot. This is critical for a player to be explosive and to get faster.

As we just learned having the toe up (dorsi flexing the foot) allows for the soccer player to have their foot strike the ground on the front part of their foot. When a soccer player accelerates, if they land on their heel first (or flat footed for that matter), all of their energy went right into the ground through their heel plus it takes more time to have the foot roll forward and then push off the front part of the foot. Landing on the front part of the foot initially saves a lot of time plus is way more explosive.

When a soccer player runs, they should be running so that the toes, ankles, knees and hips are all in a straight line or linear motion. Gaining proper linear symmetry will enhance any players speed. In other words there will not be any wasted movements from the player, allowing them to run at their greatest potential.

If a player works on these 7 skills every day, in one week they will be a faster, more explosive soccer player!

Have a great day!