How to Get Faster in Soccer: 5 Essential Aspects of Speed
Ever wonder why some players seem to glide past defenders while others struggle to keep up? As a soccer player, there are two main ways that you can be fast: you can be fast physically or fast mentally.
Physical speed in soccer isn’t just about running fast in a straight line; it’s about developing explosive movements, improving reaction time, and mastering the ability to accelerate quickly in all directions with and without the soccer ball. The players who dominate matches are those who’ve learned to combine their speed with other important skills such as soccer IQ, decision making, awareness, composure, first touch, ball control, passing, dribbling, shooting, and defending.
As a soccer player, coach, and sports coordinator, I’ve seen and experienced firsthand how important it is to be able to perform every soccer skill with speed. Whether you’re making an important pass in tight spaces, performing a quick turn to beat a defender, or sprinting to defend or attack, having that extra burst of speed can be the difference between making the play or missing the opportunity entirely.
The truth is, if you want to become a better soccer player and get in soccer shape, you have to be fast both physically and mentally, although you can succeed by favoring one. In this blog post, I’ll share 5 essential tips and drills that will help you build explosive speed, reaction time, and agility needed to dominate a soccer game.
How do you improve your speed for soccer?
Develop a Strong Athletic Foundation
As a footballer, your athleticism is the foundation of your speed because the more athletic you are, meaning the more body awareness, balance, coordination, and access you have to your tissues, the easier it is going to be to control your body and the soccer ball at speed. To improve your overall athletic performance, it is important to focus on training your central nervous system, fascia system, breathing mechanics, playing a lot of soccer, and cross-training with other sports.
The most important foundations of athleticism include the following, and once you have developed these traits, you’ll be able to run faster.
- Improve your body’s biotensegrity via the fascia system, which involves training the feet, the hands, and the tongue
- Learn to lock the ankle, create ankle stiffness, and apply force through the ball of the foot
- Improve strength in isometric positions
- Improve your body’s ability to create and absorb force through plyometrics
- Develop a back-chain dominance during movement
- Improve the spiral characteristics of your body
Improve your Running Mechanics and Arm Techniques
Proper running mechanics and arm techniques are essential for soccer players who want to run faster, because mastering these fundamentals will help you accelerate quickly, reach maximum speed faster, and not get as tired. For running, it is very important to understand the internal and external rotation that is involved with the femur and humerus heads.
When you sprint forward, your femur internally rotates as you push off the floor and externally rotates to land in a bow shape during the landing phase, while your humerus mirrors this opposite spiral pattern.
Get Faster Mental Speed
Mental speed is just as important as physical speed because it determines how quickly you can process game situations, make decisions, and react to changing situations on the field. To develop faster mental speed for soccer, players need to learn the game through experience, use video analysis, positive self-talk, journaling, visualizing, meditating, and game situation drills will improve their reaction time and help them anticipate plays before they even happen.
Focus on Recovery
Just as important as all of the physical, mental, and technical training you do on the soccer field is recovery. Prioritizing your recovery through improved sleep, nutrition, hydration, more exposure to native EMFs, and protection from Non-Native EMFS will help you maintain speed throughout your game or training session, build explosive speed more effectively, and reduce the risk of injury and burnout.
Practice Sprint Training Consistently
Once you have worked on your athleticism, improved your running mechanics, and established proper recovery habits, it’s time to put theory into practice with consistent speed training sessions. As obvious as this might sound, the best way to get faster for soccer is to sprint faster consistently.
Before a soccer training session, team training, or on a day off from team training, you can spend some time working on max sprints, which can be as simple as sprinting the entire field, half the field, any other length, resting, and repeating this for a certain number of reps. You can also work on other footwork, plyometric, speed ladder, agility drills, or weight training, but really, the best way to improve your top speed for soccer, on top of the tips above, is simply to sprint at full speed regularly.
Final Thoughts
To summarize, getting faster in soccer requires a holistic training approach that combines building a strong athletic foundation, mastering proper running mechanics and arm techniques, developing mental speed, prioritizing recovery, and consistently practicing high-intensity speed drills. The key is understanding that physical speed alone isn’t enough – you must train your body’s fascia system, improve your spiral movement patterns, and sharpen your mental processing to truly dominate on the soccer field.
By implementing these five essential aspects into your training routine and committing to consistent practice, you’ll develop the explosive speed, quick reaction time, and agility needed to glide past defenders and perform at your highest level.
FAQs
How to get explosive speed in soccer?
To improve your explosive power as a soccer player, the most important factors to focus on are the same ones on this list: developing your athletic foundation, having good form in anything you do, improving your mindset and central nervous system, and focusing on recovery. On top of these things, to improve speed, it is important to do plyometric exercises, acceleration drills, reaction speed drills, strength training, and sprint drills at top speed regularly, but with enough recovery periods to improve overall performance and physical condition.
How to improve stamina in soccer?
To improve your stamina for soccer, just like with speed, it is important to focus on developing your athletic foundation, having good form in anything you do, improving your mindset and your central nervous system, and focusing on recovery. On top of these things, and instead of the drills for speed, you can do other exercises that challenge endurance levels, such as shuttle runs, interval training, soccer flying sprints, the beep test, or high-intensity exercise such as cross-training with other sports.
What is the best training equipment to get faster for soccer?
The best soccer training gear and equipment to perform soccer speed drills and help players get faster includes cones and other agility equipment like hurdles and poles. Additional equipment includes a speed ladder for foot speed exercises, plyometric boxes for box jumps to develop explosive power, a quality soccer ball for training with the ball, and a stopwatch or soccer tracker to track your progress during sprint training and high-intensity training sessions.
