The first 10 metres of any sprint decide most sporting contests. Whether you play football, rugby, basketball or compete on the track — if your acceleration mechanics are wrong, no amount of fitness training will fix it. Here's what's actually happening when fast athletes leave you behind, and exactly how to change it.
Read article →Speed is the most decisive quality in modern football. But most footballers train their fitness, not their speed mechanics. There's a significant difference — and it explains why some players seem naturally fast while others plateau regardless of how hard they work. This guide explains what sprint coaching actually does for footballers.
Read article →Parents often ask when their child should start formal sprint coaching. The answer isn't what most people expect. Early technical coaching produces the most lasting results — but only when it's delivered in the right way. Here's what the evidence says and what we've seen in years of coaching young athletes in Edinburgh.
Read article →If you've never had 1:1 sprint coaching before, you might not know what to expect. This post walks you through exactly what happens in a first session at Edinburgh Sprint Coach — from the warm-up through to the technique assessment and what you'll take away at the end.
Read article →Most gym programmes do nothing for sprint speed. Some of them make it worse. The exercises that translate most directly to faster running are specific, often underused, and require knowing why they work — not just that they do. Here are the five we prescribe most often and exactly how to use them.
Read article →High jump is one of the most technical events in athletics — and one of the most misunderstood. Most athletes never receive proper coaching on the approach, takeoff, or bar clearance mechanics that determine performance. Here's a complete overview of what high jump coaching actually involves, who it's for, and why Edinburgh Sprint Coach is uniquely placed to deliver it.
Read article →The first 10 metres of any sprint decide most sporting contests. Whether you play football, rugby, basketball or compete on the track — if your acceleration mechanics are wrong, no amount of fitness training will fix it.
In over a decade competing as a GB and Scotland international athlete — and years since coaching at Meadowbank Sports Centre — the same pattern appears consistently. Athletes arrive convinced they need to get fitter. What they actually need is to learn how to accelerate.
Acceleration is a skill. Like all skills, it degrades when practised incorrectly and improves dramatically when coached properly. The frustrating reality for most athletes is that years of sprinting without coaching has built deeply ingrained mechanical patterns that feel completely natural — and are completely wrong.
What Actually Happens in the First 10 Metres
When a sprint starts, three things happen simultaneously. Force must be applied to the ground, the body must find the optimal lean angle, and the stride length must build progressively from short and powerful to long and fast. Elite athletes do all three near-perfectly. Most recreational athletes fail at all three simultaneously.
The most common error is standing too upright too quickly. Watch most amateur footballers or rugby players sprint from a standing start and within three strides they're already in the upright maximum-velocity posture — before they've built anywhere near maximum velocity. This means they spend the first 15 metres fighting against their own body position, applying force in the wrong direction.
The Lean That Changes Everything
Effective acceleration requires a forward lean of approximately 40 degrees — not from the waist, but from the ankles. The entire body acts as a lever leaning into the sprint. This is the same mechanical position as pushing a heavy object — you naturally lean forward to apply force.
When this lean is correct, the push-off applies force backward and down, which propels the body forward. When the athlete stands upright too early, the force goes downward — generating vertical movement rather than horizontal speed. You work just as hard and go nowhere near as fast.
The lean should come from the ankles, not the waist. Bending at the waist drops the hips and reduces power output dramatically. Think: your whole body is one straight line, angled forward.
The Drive Phase
In the first five metres of any sprint, strides should be short, powerful, and fast. The foot should push directly backward and down with full hip extension at each push-off. Most athletes cut this push-off short — pulling the foot forward too early, reducing the force applied with each stride, and never building the momentum the lean angle was designed to create.
Think of the drive as pushing the ground away behind you with maximum force. The stride lengthens progressively as speed builds — not immediately. Trying to take long strides from the start is one of the most common acceleration errors and is guaranteed to slow you down.
Arm Drive in Acceleration
The arms drive the legs. In the acceleration phase, the arms must pump aggressively — driving back past the hip and forward to chin height with a powerful, full-range action. Short or restricted arm action limits leg speed directly. Athletes who dramatically improve their arm drive often see immediate improvements in leg turnover without changing anything else.
If you want to test your acceleration mechanics, film yourself from the side on a phone. Watch for three things: how long you maintain the forward lean, whether your foot is striking under your hip or in front of it, and whether your arm drive is full range. All three errors are immediately visible on video.
Why This Matters More in Team Sports Than Athletics
Track athletes sprint over distances that allow them to reach maximum velocity. Most team sport sprints never do. In football, the average sprint is under 20 metres. In rugby, the decisive acceleration from a breakdown or set piece is typically 10–15 metres. Basketball and hockey sprints are shorter still.
This means the acceleration phase isn't just important in team sports — it is the sprint. Athletes who cannot accelerate explosively will consistently be beaten to the ball, outpaced off the line, and unable to recover defensive positions regardless of how fit they are. Speed coaches know this. Fitness coaches often don't.
How We Fix It at Edinburgh Sprint Coach
Every first session begins with a technique assessment. We watch the athlete sprint, identify the specific mechanical inefficiencies causing the problem, and build a correction plan around those exact errors. The corrections aren't generic — they're tailored to what we observe in that specific athlete's movement.
The most common fixes in the first 2–3 sessions are: correcting the lean angle, extending the push-off phase, and improving arm drive range. These three corrections alone consistently produce measurable improvements within 4–6 weeks for athletes who have never been coached before.
Sessions from £60 at Meadowbank Sports Centre. Book at edinburghsprintcoach.com/bookings.
Speed is the most decisive quality in modern football. But most footballers train their fitness, not their speed mechanics. There's a significant difference — and it explains everything.
The fastest footballers in the world are not fast because they run more. They are fast because they run better. The mechanics of sprinting — the lean angle, the arm drive, the foot strike, the knee drive — these are technical skills that can be coached, improved, and measured. They are not genetic gifts reserved for elite professionals.
In years of coaching footballers at Edinburgh Sprint Coach, the pattern is remarkably consistent. A footballer arrives with decent fitness, does a lot of running in training, and cannot understand why faster players keep beating them to the ball. Within four sessions of technique work, their 20m time drops measurably. The fitness didn't change. The mechanics did.
What Football Speed Actually Requires
Football sprint demands are specific. The average sprint in professional football is under 20 metres and lasts approximately 2.5 seconds. There are dozens of these per game, with active recovery between each one. What determines performance isn't maximum velocity — it's acceleration, repeated sprint ability, and the capacity to accelerate from multiple body positions and directions.
This means training for football speed is distinct from general fitness training and from track sprint training. The priorities, in order, are: explosive acceleration from a standing start or jog, first-step quickness from different directions, and the ability to maintain acceleration quality across a 90-minute game.
The Three Things Slowing Most Footballers Down
Heel striking: Most footballers land on their heel when sprinting. Every heel strike is a brake — it creates a deceleration force at ground contact and increases the time the foot spends on the ground. Elite sprinters contact the ground for 80–90 milliseconds. Recreational athletes who heel-strike are often at 140–160ms. That gap compounds across every stride.
Upright posture in acceleration: Standing too upright in the first 10–15 metres means the force being applied goes downward rather than forward. The forward lean that looks so natural in elite players doesn't just happen — it's trained, refined, and maintained under competitive pressure through years of coaching.
Short arm drive: Restricted arm action limits leg speed directly. The arms and legs are mechanically coupled — the range and speed of the arm drive dictates the range and speed of leg turnover. Footballers who cross their arms across the body while sprinting are losing pace with every stride.
In football, 70% of all sprints are under 20 metres. Training your 100m is largely irrelevant. Training your 0–15m acceleration will change every game you play.
A Simple Football Speed Session
After a proper dynamic warm-up, a basic football-specific speed session looks like this:
- Falling starts: 6 x 10m — builds forward lean mechanics naturally
- Standing start 15m sprints: 6 reps, full 2-minute recovery — trains pure acceleration
- Standing start 20m with cut: 4 reps each direction — trains change of direction off acceleration
- Repeated 15m sprints: 8 reps with 30 seconds recovery — builds repeated sprint capacity
This is the session structure. The coaching is what makes it effective — watching the mechanics of each rep and making real-time corrections that prevent the reinforcement of bad patterns.
If you're serious about improving your football speed, have yourself filmed sprinting from the side. Watch for how long you hold the forward lean in the first 10 metres and where your foot contacts the ground relative to your hip. These two observations alone will tell you where most of your speed is being lost.
How Quickly Can You Expect Results?
The honest answer is fast — faster than most athletes expect. Footballers who have never had sprint coaching typically show measurable improvements in their 20m time within 4–6 weeks of consistent work. The improvements come quickly because the errors being corrected are significant and the corrections are specific. Fixing a heel strike alone can improve 20m time by 0.15 seconds, which in football terms is the difference between reaching the ball first and arriving a step late.
Edinburgh Sprint Coach works with footballers at every level — from grassroots players to competitive amateurs. Sessions with Beth Campbell or Lorna Fleming start at £60. Private Consultation sessions with Allan Smith or Allan Hamilton start at £80. Book at edinburghsprintcoach.com/bookings.
Parents often ask when their child should start formal sprint coaching. The answer isn't what most people expect — and getting it right makes a significant difference to long-term athletic development.
The question comes up at Speed School constantly. Parents watch their child run, notice something looks inefficient, and wonder whether they're too young for coaching. The short answer is no. The longer answer explains why starting earlier, done correctly, produces better results than starting later.
What the Research Shows
Sports science consistently identifies ages 7–12 as a critical period for developing fundamental movement skills — including sprint mechanics. The nervous system is highly adaptable during this period, meaning technical motor patterns are learned faster and retained more durably than they are in adolescence or adulthood.
Athletes who develop good sprint mechanics early carry those patterns forward through their entire sporting career. Athletes who develop bad patterns early — and most do without coaching — spend their teenage and adult years fighting against ingrained habits that feel completely natural because they've been practised for years.
Why Good Habits Are Easier to Build Than Bad Ones Are to Break
This is the most important point for parents to understand. Every sprint a young athlete takes without coaching is practising whatever pattern they've developed naturally. Natural patterns are rarely efficient ones. By the time most athletes receive their first sprint coaching at 16 or 17, they have run thousands of sprints reinforcing mechanics that need to be completely relearned.
A seven-year-old who learns to drive their knee correctly, land their foot under their hip, and drive their arms through full range will still be doing those things at seventeen — automatically, without thinking, under competitive pressure. That's the compounding advantage of early technical coaching.
At Speed School, we regularly see eight and nine-year-olds make faster technical progress than adult athletes — not because children are more athletic, but because they don't have years of wrong patterns to overcome.
What Coaching Looks Like for Young Athletes
Coaching for young athletes is fundamentally different from adult coaching. Sessions at Speed School are fun, energetic, and built around games and challenges that develop sprint mechanics without the child feeling like they're in a technical coaching environment. The learning happens through movement, competition with peers, and consistent positive feedback.
We don't put eight-year-olds through the same technical drill progressions as a 25-year-old footballer. We develop the same underlying mechanics through age-appropriate activities that keep the child engaged, confident, and developing. The results are measurable — but the environment is designed to be enjoyable first.
The Speed School Answer
Speed School runs every Monday at 6pm at The Meadows in Edinburgh for athletes aged 8–15. It's Edinburgh's dedicated youth sprint coaching programme, designed specifically for this purpose. The session structure develops acceleration mechanics, stride technique, coordination, and reaction speed — the complete foundation of athletic speed.
£15 per session or £40/month. No experience needed. All sports welcome. Book at edinburghsprintcoach.com/speed-school.
The best indication of whether your child is ready for sprint coaching isn't age — it's whether they can follow simple instructions and maintain focus for an hour. Most children can do this from around age 7-8. If your child can do that, they're ready to start building the technical foundations that will make them faster for life.
If you've never had 1:1 sprint coaching before, you might not know what to expect. This post walks you through exactly what happens in a first session at Edinburgh Sprint Coach.
Most athletes who book their first session arrive with a mixture of excitement and uncertainty. They know they want to be faster. They've never been formally coached on how to run. They're not sure what the session will involve or whether the improvements they've heard about will actually apply to them.
This post is a complete walkthrough of what happens — from arriving at Meadowbank through to what you take away at the end.
Arriving at Meadowbank Sports Centre
Sessions take place at Meadowbank Sports Centre, 139 London Road, Edinburgh EH7 6AE. There's parking on site and the facility is easily accessible by bus from the city centre. Arrive five minutes early for your first session — your coach will meet you at the entrance and take you through to the track or sprint area.
Wear comfortable sports kit and flat-soled running trainers or spikes if you have them. There's nothing specialist you need to bring — just a water bottle and footwear you can sprint in.
The Warm-Up
Every session begins with a structured dynamic warm-up. This isn't the generic stretching routine most athletes do before training. It's a progressive protocol specifically designed for sprinting — a five-phase sequence that takes approximately 20 minutes and prepares the neuromuscular system for maximal-effort work.
The warm-up itself is coaching. Your coach watches how you move through each phase, observing posture, hip mobility, coordination, and movement patterns before you've taken a single sprint. By the time the warm-up finishes, your coach already has a clear picture of what to focus on in the session.
Research shows that static stretching before sprinting reduces power output by up to 8%. Every session at Edinburgh Sprint Coach uses dynamic warm-up protocols only. The difference in performance is measurable.
The Technique Assessment
The first sprint of the session is a technique assessment sprint. You sprint at maximum effort over 20–30 metres and your coach observes your mechanics. We look at posture and body position, arm drive mechanics, foot strike and ground contact, knee drive, and the acceleration lean angle.
We also time this sprint. That time is your baseline. Every subsequent session, we time the same distance. Progress is objective, measurable, and recorded — you always know exactly how much faster you've become.
The Coaching Session
Based on what the assessment reveals, your coach designs the rest of the session around your specific needs. If your arm drive is restricted, we work on arm mechanics. If you're overstriding, we work on foot strike. If your lean is too upright in acceleration, we work on falling starts and drive phase drills.
The session is one hour of focused work with real-time feedback on every rep. You won't be counting down to the end — first-session athletes consistently say the hour passes faster than any other training session they do.
What You Take Away
At the end of the session your coach gives you a summary of the two or three key mechanical issues identified, the drills to work on between sessions, and a recommendation for what to focus on in your next session. If you're considering a monthly plan, your coach will recommend the most suitable option based on your goals and the improvements observed.
Don't arrive trying to impress. The assessment sprint should be your natural, uncorrected sprint — not your best effort at running correctly. We need to see what you actually do so we can identify what's actually limiting your speed. The session is most useful when it starts from an honest baseline.
Book your first session at edinburghsprintcoach.com/bookings. Private Consultation with Allan Smith or Allan Hamilton from £80. Private Sprint Session with Beth or Lorna from £60.
Most gym programmes do nothing for sprint speed. Some make it worse. Here are the five exercises we prescribe most often — and exactly how to use them.
Speed is force divided by mass. To run faster you need to apply more force to the ground per stride. Strength training is the most direct way to increase force production capacity — but only if you're doing the right exercises with the right intent.
The mistake most athletes make is following generic gym programmes — bicep curls, chest press, lateral raises — that develop aesthetics rather than athletic power. These exercises do nothing for sprint speed. The exercises that transfer to the track are specific, compound, and trained with an emphasis on force production rather than muscle fatigue.
The 5 Exercises
1. Back Squat
The back squat is the single most important exercise for sprint speed development. Full-depth squatting develops the leg drive power, hip extension strength, and joint loading tolerance that directly underpin acceleration mechanics. Athletes who squat heavy consistently are almost universally faster than those who don't at equivalent sprint training volumes.
The key is heavy, low-rep training — sets of 3–6 reps at significant load. Sets of 12–15 reps with light weight develop endurance, not power. For speed, train the squat like a strength exercise: 4 sets of 4–6 reps, full depth, with enough weight that the final rep is genuinely challenging.
2. Hip Thrust
Hip extension at push-off is the primary power source in sprinting. The glutes are the largest, most powerful hip extensors in the body — and in most athletes they are dramatically undertrained relative to the demands sprinting places on them. The hip thrust develops glute power directly and specifically in the range of motion used during sprint push-off.
Train hip thrusts heavy. A barbell hip thrust with 1.5x bodyweight for 6 reps is a reasonable medium-term target for a serious sprint athlete. The exercise should be trained with full hip extension at the top of each rep — pausing momentarily at full extension to ensure glute activation rather than hip flexor compensation.
3. Romanian Deadlift
The hamstrings serve two critical functions in sprinting: hip extension during push-off and knee flexion during the recovery phase. Hamstring weakness is both a performance limiter and the primary injury risk factor in sprint athletes. The Romanian deadlift develops hamstring strength specifically in the lengthened position — the position under highest load during sprinting.
It also develops the hip hinge movement pattern that underpins sprint mechanics. Athletes who learn to hinge properly at the hip in the weight room carry that pattern onto the track automatically.
4. Box Jump
Maximum velocity and explosive acceleration both require the ability to apply force to the ground rapidly — not just powerfully. The box jump develops the rate of force development: how quickly maximum force can be generated from a relatively relaxed starting position. This quality is the bridge between raw strength and sprint speed.
Train box jumps for height, not volume. The goal is maximum explosive output on every rep — 4–5 sets of 4–5 reps with full recovery between sets. If you're fatigued enough that jump height is dropping, the training stimulus for power development has already passed.
5. Nordic Hamstring Curl
Hamstring strains are the most common sprint injury. The Nordic hamstring curl — kneeling with feet anchored, lowering slowly toward the ground using hamstring eccentric strength — develops the specific hamstring quality that prevents them. Research consistently shows that athletes who include Nordic curls in their training have significantly lower hamstring strain rates than those who don't.
These are hard. Start with 3 sets of 3–4 reps and progress slowly. The eccentric loading that makes them effective is also what makes them taxing — they require a minimum of 48 hours recovery before the next sprint session.
All five of these exercises require good technique to be safe and effective. If you're new to any of them, start with lighter loads and focus on movement quality before adding weight. A single session with a qualified strength coach to check your form on these five exercises is worth more than months of practising incorrectly.
How to Integrate These With Sprint Training
Strength and sprint sessions should not be done on the same day where possible. Strength training reduces the neuromuscular readiness needed for quality sprint work. A typical weekly structure is: sprint session Monday, strength session Tuesday, rest Wednesday, sprint session Thursday, strength session Friday, active recovery weekend.
If same-day training is unavoidable, do sprint work first — always. Sprinting on pre-fatigued legs from a strength session produces lower quality work and increases injury risk significantly.
High jump is one of the most technical events in athletics — and one of the most misunderstood. Here's what coaching actually involves and why it matters.
When people think of athletics coaching in Edinburgh, they usually think of sprinting. High jump is less visible but arguably more technical — and the coaching available in Scotland for this event is limited. At Edinburgh Sprint Coach, high jump is coached by someone with a 2.29m personal best, four British titles, and appearances at the Commonwealth Games and European Athletics Championships. That level of expertise simply isn't available anywhere else in Scotland.
Why High Jump Is So Technical
A high jump attempt lasts approximately four seconds from the start of the run-up to landing. In those four seconds, the athlete must execute a curved approach run at precise speed and angle, a penultimate step that transfers horizontal velocity into vertical projection, a takeoff that generates maximum upward force from a single-foot contact, and a bar clearance that requires precise body position at maximum height.
Each of these phases is coachable. Each of them, when done incorrectly, costs centimetres. The cumulative effect of correct technique versus incorrect technique at the same level of fitness is typically 20–30cm of bar height. That difference — entirely technical — separates club athletes from national-level competitors.
The Approach Run
The curved approach run is the foundation of high jump performance. The curve creates the lean that allows the body to rotate over the bar during clearance. The speed of the approach determines how much energy is available for conversion into vertical lift. The angle of the penultimate step determines how effectively that energy transfers from horizontal to vertical.
Most club athletes have never been coached on their approach. They run in a curve because they've watched others do it, with no understanding of the specific path, acceleration pattern, or foot placement that makes the approach work. Coaching the approach alone typically produces the fastest height improvements of any technical element.
The Takeoff
The takeoff is the highest-force event in the jump — a single-foot contact lasting approximately 140 milliseconds during which the athlete must convert all accumulated horizontal velocity into upward projection while initiating the rotation needed for Fosbury Flop clearance.
The penultimate step lowers the athlete's centre of mass, the takeoff foot plants with the knee driving upward, and the arms drive simultaneously to add vertical momentum. When all three happen correctly and simultaneously, the result is maximum height from available speed. When any one fails, the jump is compromised.
The Fosbury Flop looks effortless when done correctly. It is not. The back arch, hip elevation, and leg kick over the bar require precise timing and significant body awareness that only develops through coached repetition.
Who High Jump Coaching Is For
At Edinburgh Sprint Coach, high jump coaching is available to athletes at every level — from complete beginners who have never attempted the Fosbury Flop to competitive athletes looking to improve their personal best for club or national competition.
Friday Night High Jump at Meadowbank is a weekly group session that offers consistent coached practice in a competitive group environment. £40/month or individual slots available. Private 1:1 sessions with Allan Smith provide undivided coaching attention focused entirely on your technique — from £80 per session.
If you're new to high jump, don't start by working on bar clearance. The approach run and takeoff mechanics determine 80% of performance — the clearance is largely determined by what happens before the bar. Learn the approach, learn the takeoff, and the clearance will follow.
Book a high jump session at edinburghsprintcoach.com/high-jump.
