I'm all about sprinting speed.
There is nothing more coveted in team sports than speed.
The easiest way to be fast is to be born fast but if you fail at that, and most of us do, then you still train to become faster.
All that being said I'll suggest that just 1% of local/amateur football teams are training speed which is ridiculous.
They may think they're training speed but I can tell you tight now, with the lack of rest periods, you are not.
Speed is broken down into 2 categories:
1 - Acceleration
2 - Max Velocity
Acceleration is the initial part of any sprint whether from a dead stop or a moving start and most of footy actions are exactly this.
Max Velocity is your top speed style which is achieved by most L/A footballers at the 15 - 20m mark of a sprint but can only be held for 1 - 2secs.
1 - 2ses doesn't sound like much but when Usain Bolt covers over 10 meters per second at top speed, then that's over 20m in that time frame.
Also think of it like this - say you can sprint at 10m/s and your opponent 8.5m/s.
Yes you are already faster then them but as fatigue sets in during games then your 80% will still be faster then them (8m/s v 6.8m/s).
If your the slower bloke then he cannot fatigue even one ounce to be faster then you, which will not happen during a game.
Also you'll never hit true top speed in a game either as you'll rarely run in a perfectly straight line, under zero fatigue but your sub-maximal speed is still better then anyone else and you'll 'slow down the slowest" over the course of a game.
The reasons speed doesn't get trained properly is simply because coaches don't how to train it.
It's as simple as that.
Any personal trainers or fitness coaches you get to run your pre-season still struggle with it.
But you know what?
Training speed is simple.
For acceleration you would use a variety of starting positions starting as close to the ground as you can and working up to a more upright position as you progress through the weeks.
Low to the ground acceleration positions requires more 'muscle" to get out of these positions and utilise slower ground contacts so they are easy on the body, especially at this time of the year.
The slower the contact time, the less stress on the nervous system.
I would start over 5 and 10m for 3 - 5 sets with FULL REST.
Instruct your players to literally dawdle back to the starting position as speed can only be enhanced in a conditions of non-fatigue.
I would also pop the speed training segment on the end of your warm up.
Use sprinting cues with your players such as 'push the ground away from you" to elicit the response we're after.
5 - 10m sprints at anything short of full pace will not be suffice here - they must move, or attempt to move as fast as they can.
Looking forward, there should be an acceleration component in each of your training sessions throughout the entire year and I would also send your players home with another session to do on their own if your team is only training 2 per week.
They are only performed for low volume so they need to be done a bit more frequently to attain the volume needed for adaptation.
Max Velocity has 2 methods it can be trained with.
The first is extending acceleration sprint sets from 10 - 20m, to 30 to 40m which is the easiest way to implement them in a team setting.
The other but better way, in my opinion, is to use flying sprints.
Flying sprints are performed by using a fly zone of 5 - 20m that you use a build up run into.
The build up run is similar to acceleration sprints but you'd just jog into a stride and then stride into a sprint, hitting top speed just at the start of the fly zone.
Velocity sprinting uses far quicker ground contacts then acceleration which stresses the nervous system more than just about anything in the world ever, so the volume only needs to be low and the quality needs to be super high.
Again use FULL REST between sets.
I'd introduce velocity sprinting post Xmas but only to those players who have done at least 4 weeks of acceleration training leading up to it.
If players only roll up in Jan, then they will need to wait until at least Feb to do velocity sprinting.
Post Xmas you would cut some of the acceleration volume down to accommodate the velocity work which would also be added onto the end of your warm up.
The last bit of speed training, well all training really, is take data.
Have your players do the sprints in groups of 4 - 6 like you normally would and use your iPhone to record each sprint.
Make sure you have clear markers every 5m, measuring it all out so it's actually right.
When .001 of a second makes a difference, then attention to detail MATTERS.
I use a heel to toe walk to measure out my sprints.
My foot is a perfect 25cms long (or short but whatever) so 20 heel to toes = 5m.
Easy.
Use clear markers at 5m intervals so you can split times which can show specific strengths and weakness players have, which means you can individualise their training a little bit.
Once you've videos them, then send them to me over Facebook messenger and I'll time each player, if you've set it up right.
We'd repeat this on the first session of the week each week and gather the data to see improvements in your players speed.
I'm not super quick but I challenge your players to beat my sprint times, the times of a 39 year old!