Parallel Performance

I say this to my young athletes all the time: acceleration is an aggressive movement. If you approach it without intent or treat your reps casually, you won’t get the results you’re after. Every rep should be performed with maximum effort because you’re trying to move your body mass from a standstill to high speed as quickly as possible. That requires aggression, intent, and commitment.

Acceleration itself is actually pretty simple to train. One of the biggest things I see missing with young athletes is the ability to turn on quickly. They struggle to go from zero to that first explosive step, or from a standstill to getting their center of mass in front of their leading foot.

That ability depends on several physical and neurological qualities. It’s not just about producing force. It’s about how quickly you can produce it. The faster an athlete can react, shift their center of mass forward, and attack the ground, the quicker they’ll be off the line.

Another important quality is the transition from an eccentric contraction to a concentric contraction. That rapid switch is trainable, and it should be viewed as its own performance variable, not just something that happens during acceleration. Instead of only adding more resistance to sprint training, we should also measure and improve how quickly an athlete can make that transition. In my opinion, that’s one of the most overlooked pieces of acceleration training.

A simple thing that often gets overlooked in acceleration training is switching your stance. Whether your right leg is in front or in back on that first step, each leg has a different job. The front leg and back leg produce force differently, recruit different muscles, and work through different ranges of motion.

If you always start from the same stance, you’re repeatedly stressing the same tissues in the same way. By alternating your lead leg, you expose both sides of your body to the demands of accelerating. This helps build strength, coordination, and resilience more evenly.

One of the easiest ways to improve coordination is simply practicing both stances. Think about a soccer or football player who is only comfortable passing or shooting with their dominant foot. They are limited. But when they can use either leg confidently, they become more versatile and can react to whatever the game gives them.

Acceleration is no different. Train both stances. Your times will probably be a little different at first, and that is completely normal. The goal is not for them to be identical. The goal is to keep the gap small so you are developing a more balanced, coordinated athlete.

Starting from a standstill is often viewed as the easier way to accelerate, but if you’re in a two-point stance, it’s still a change of direction. Before you can move forward, you first have to drop your center of mass, then redirect your momentum horizontally. That transition is a skill that needs to be trained just like the first step itself.
The first step is important, but so is the ability to rapidly transition from an eccentric to a concentric contraction. The faster an athlete can absorb force, lower their center of mass, and redirect it forward, the more transferable that quality becomes to competition. In game situations, athletes are constantly reacting, dropping, and reaccelerating, so improving how quickly they can drop and go has a direct impact on performance.

Here’s a general timeline:

1–3 weeks: Mostly neural changes. You become better at recruiting muscle fibers, coordinating movement, and applying force. Tissue changes are minimal.

4–8 weeks: Early tissue remodeling begins. Tendons start becoming stiffer, muscles begin changing architecture (such as increased fascicle length), and connective tissues start adapting.

2–6 months: Significant structural adaptations occur. Tendons become stronger and stiffer, muscles continue remodeling, bones respond to repeated loading, and tissues become better at storing and returning elastic energy.

6–12+ months: Deeper, more durable adaptations accumulate. The longer you’ve sprinted consistently, the more resilient and specialized your tissues become.

The recipe for getting faster as a soccer player is actually pretty simple. First, you have to figure out where you’re starting. Then you consistently expose yourself to higher-speed stimuli. Over time, that raises your speed ceiling.

The next step is understanding that top speeds are difficult to maintain for long periods. That’s why you have to condition them. By building the capacity to repeatedly reach those higher speeds, you increase the likelihood of hitting your top speed when it matters most, during the game.

At the end of the day, the goal isn’t just to be fast. It’s to be able to use your speed to create an advantage over the opposing players when the moment calls for it.

Bounds:power. All soccer players should be doing them.