40 yard dash trainers

Hi,

Are there any places or people that focus solely on the 40 yard dash training?

Please help

Best suggestion? Run Track.

One guy who is excellent at this is Tony Holler, Head Track coach at Plainfield North. I'm not sure if he'll be available, but it wouldn't hurt to contact him to see what he thinks. He does work with a lot of athletes not just from his school

http://trackfootballconsortium.com/#overview

Awesome stuff from Coach Holler.

House of Speed by Beebe:
https://www.beebehouseofspeed.com/

OldTitan wrote:http://trackfootballconsortium.com/#overview

Awesome stuff from Coach Holler.

One question I've had about this stuff- has anyone who was really bad at football implemented this stuff and made a big jump in competitiveness? All I've seen that really uses it is places that were already very competitive in football using it to get a bigger edge.

tim graf in Joliet used to do it, id assume he still does.

Head Idiot wrote:

OldTitan wrote:http://trackfootballconsortium.com/#overview

Awesome stuff from Coach Holler.

One question I've had about this stuff- has anyone who was really bad at football implemented this stuff and made a big jump in competitiveness?  All I've seen that really uses it is places that were already very competitive in football using it to get a bigger edge.

I think it helps a little bit if you are a school that runs spread but I always look at 40 yard dash times as next to pointless when it comes to football. I understand the usefulness in measuring speed for a combine but there aren't many times you are running straight for 40 yards in a football. I think most kids want to have a fast time to help out with recruiting.

I've had several players who have attended these camps and I have yet to see it make a major impact on the field. Kids are much better off doing track in my opinion.

Head Idiot wrote:

OldTitan wrote:http://trackfootballconsortium.com/#overview

Awesome stuff from Coach Holler.

One question I've had about this stuff- has anyone who was really bad at football implemented this stuff and made a big jump in competitiveness?  All I've seen that really uses it is places that were already very competitive in football using it to get a bigger edge.

That's not a legitimate question?

The programs I've seen using this is Maroa, Camp Point and Shelbyville. The first two are perennially good regardless of their new involvement in this, and Shelbyville's success was due primarily to a fantastic class as they returned to Earth this year. I legitimately want to know if there's any borderline, or bad, programs that have adopted this and turned around their program.

It's still a fairly new, progressive concept so I'm not sure if you'll find any borderline/bad schools who've turned it around yet.

To me, the main point of this is to not underestimate speed and that you can grow speed in your program if it's a focus. Lifting and Speed go together, you can't have 1 without the other. Anyone who says max squatting makes you faster is dead wrong and anyone who says sprinting makes you stronger is dead wrong. Both must work and complement each other.

When doing speed work though, it must be functional and NOT aerobic workouts which is a mistake I feel gets made often. Making your football players work on speed by running sideline to sideline over and over does not make them faster. It improves endurance (minimally), but not speed.

Personally, this is what I've experienced -

Year 1 as Head Track Coach - Tried adopting this whole philosophy and was frustrated/confused when some of our better football players blew me off to lift. Didn't understand how they couldn't see the correlation between Track/Speed and Football. Finished the season with 76 kids

Year 2 as head Track Coach - Modified the philosophy to fit my views and program while incorporating what our Football coach also felt. Didn't try and ram this down kids throats (which I did the year before and did not work). Got an influx of Football players out including a Sr All State Wide Receiver (1st year out for Track) who stepped right in on our sprint relays. After the season, told all the Jrs/Sophs/Fresh that he wishes he ran Track all 4 years in High School as he felt it greatly improved his athletic and sprint ability. Finished the season with 86 kids.

Year 3 as Head Track Coach (this year) - Modified and changed a few more things for our off-season speed program (open to all athletes, not just Track). Made some more competitive activities that are functional for skill players and lineman.

Again I'm not sure how much of the TrackingFootball information has helped, but it has helped the Football coach and myself stay on the same page as we want to see both of our programs be successful. Speed always kills. You can say "You can't make a kid faster", which is somewhat true, but you CAN make a kid more efficient so to completely ignore speed in any sport or thinking running kids baseline to baseline is "Speed" work... that's a dinosaur mindset

And HI, your question is 100% legitimate not sure why it got a - .

We have really struggled in my time here at Salem...with a lot of things.  We are probably one of the few programs that have gone completely 100% in on the R.P.R. concept and the less is more / speed training philosophy of the Track Football Consortium.  We started it last year, and our kids were very receptive (probably because we have struggled so bad) and completely bought in.  Our injuries were massively reduced last season and that included concussions.  We had 0 soft tissue injures last season and only 2 this season.

We completely did away with static stretching and we R.P.R. before every practice and game.  We never run sprints to just run sprints.  We do everything with the mindset of 'how is it going to make us faster?'.  We never do anything at full speed unless the kids will get full recovery.  It is very different and it takes a lot to buy into what we do if you're looking from the outside...I get that and so do our kids.  As far as 40 times go, we time them and we take a lot out of them; we record and post everyone's time for everything we do...speed is speed...we don't exclusively do 40's though.  We bought a FreeLap timing system and do 10m flies, 20m flies, as well as lactate workouts of longer distances.  Our practices are structured so that our kids get full speed reps in skelly, inside run, and team time structured just like a game...with 25-35 seconds rest in between full speed reps. If you really read up on it, there's a ton of good information.  

Again, many are skeptical just as I was when we / I heard about it and decided to implement it...but now that we have, I'll NEVER go back to the way we did it before...our team speed has improved so much over the last two years and that's huge.  The days of getting on the line and running gassers are over for me...as someone at the last Track Football Consortium said, you're training plow horses...we want race horses with everything we do.

Lefty if I could give you a +10 I would

lefty120 wrote:We have really struggled in my time here at Salem...with a lot of things.  We are probably one of the few programs that have gone completely 100% in on the R.P.R. concept and the less is more / speed training philosophy of the Track Football Consortium.  We started it last year, and our kids were very receptive (probably because we have struggled so bad) and completely bought in.  Our injuries were massively reduced last season and that included concussions.  We had 0 soft tissue injures last season and only 2 this season.

We completely did away with static stretching and we R.P.R. before every practice and game.  We never run sprints to just run sprints.  We do everything with the mindset of 'how is it going to make us faster?'.  We never do anything at full speed unless the kids will get full recovery.  It is very different and it takes a lot to buy into what we do if you're looking from the outside...I get that and so do our kids.  As far as 40 times go, we time them and we take a lot out of them; we record and post everyone's time for everything we do...speed is speed...we don't exclusively do 40's though.  We bought a FreeLap timing system and do 10m flies, 20m flies, as well as lactate workouts of longer distances.  Our practices are structured so that our kids get full speed reps in skelly, inside run, and team time structured just like a game...with 25-35 seconds rest in between full speed reps. If you really read up on it, there's a ton of good information.  

Again, many are skeptical just as I was when we / I heard about it and decided to implement it...but now that we have, I'll NEVER go back to the way we did it before...our team speed has improved so much over the last two years and that's huge.  The days of getting on the line and running gassers are over for me...as someone at the last Track Football Consortium said, you're training plow horses...we want race horses with everything we do.

Good response and thank you for answering the question.

Couple follow up ones-
1. How many 2 way players do you have?
2. Do you find those guys run out of long term gas by the 3rd/4th quarters?

Good Questions:
1.  We had 3 full time guys this year and 4-5 last year...obviously, like many, we had a few who were part time two way guys depending on game situations etc.  This was my first concern when we starting talking about this in spring 2017...the way we structure our practices though, I feel like we get a lot of work in on both sides daily which is another post all together.
2.  Another huge concern and very valid.  I, like many, was the typical, 'we need to condition almost daily except for Thursdays to stay in shape'; and I would KILL them the first week or so of practice in August.  What a dumb ass I was.  Here's what someone said during a Track Football Consortium presentation and it hit me like a ton of bricks...'everything you do should be about speed, not conditioning.  When you put a kid on the line to run sprints for conditioning at the end of a 2-3 hour practice for what, 5-10 minutes, all you do is break the body down further than it already is and teach them to run in 4th gear tired'.  We preach to the kids about the 5th gear all the time!  If you can't get to the 5th gear in a rep, then we wait and let them recover before they can.  The other thing the same presenter said was this: 'would you rather have a conditioned kid in the second half going 3rd or 4th gear, or a fast kid who may be a bit fatigued (like all players are) who has trained to be in the 5th gear?'  We decided we'd rather bet on the fast kid all week long and twice on Sunday. In short, our kids are fresher in the 2nd half than almost any team we play...now, of course, we don't win every game.  But since we've gone to this philosophy, we've NEVER walked away from a game saying 'man, they were in better shape than us'.  And let me tell you, it was the topic of many coaches office discussions heading in to the opener in 2017...we were all in uncharted waters and it was REALLY weird!

Everything we do is based off of how much recovery time the kids will have. We never go longer than an hour and 45 on Wednesdays and Thursdays we are done in just over an hour, and that includes R.P.R. time and speed development time which we do every day.  It has worked for us...I would not suggest making these types of sweeping changes if you don't go learn about R.P.R. and the best ways to structure practices around it.

lefty120 wrote:

Everything we do is based off of how much recovery time the kids will have. We never go longer than an hour and 45 on Wednesdays and Thursdays we are done in just over an hour

man, the pussification of america continues.  

Believe me, when I first started hearing about this stuff, I thought the exact same thing.

Coach Holler is a great Twitter follow. I love his "Feed the Cats" message but one thing I haven't seen in this thread is any mention about his recruiting abilities. One of the many things he does well, and he has written about this, is that he finds the best athletes in the school and gets those kids out for track and keeps them out.

I don't know much about his actual programming but I think what he is really good at doing is not overcoaching kids who are naturally fast. He basically gets out of their way and lets them do their thing.

If you have the chance, you need to visit a TFC clinic and listen to he and Chris Korfist present. The next one is in Lisle in December. They teach sprint technique down to the most minute details. The problem with what they talk about, is that you have to be very organized, you have to coach the kids a ton on little things, and you have to do it over and over again before you find results. In our two years using his Feed the Cats philosophy, my interactions with both of them have been the exact opposite. They are constantly coaching technique.

Lefty - how is the collaboration with the Track team? Does the head coach also share the same less is more philosophy with sprinters or is it an old school coach? Or even worse...a distance coach who makes everyone run 2 laps for a warm up

I'll be politically correct with my answer and it's a great question.  Our defensive coordinator, who is the head track coach at our JH, brought this stuff to our FB program and he deserves all the credit.  I am simply the guy who jumped on board and learned from him and the others.  Our HS track coach is a a great guy but he is the distance guy you describe.  Just like everything else here in my time trying to get things going in the right direction, this is a work in progress.  We are trying to get our DC here at the high school to coach the sprinters at least...again, a work in progress that has some luggage to the situation as you can imagine.  But we will get it done sooner rather than later.

Does the HC also coach your sprinters and the distance group? Or *shudder* do they all train together? Getting your DC up at the HS level sounds like it would solve most of the issues

I'll be honest, I'm not sure how he structures his practices...I just know our sprint kids don't get coached much other than to be given workouts which include them running further than they do in races and doing things that are not at top speed all the time.

lefty120 wrote:If you have the chance, you need to visit a TFC clinic and listen to he and Chris Korfist present. The next one is in Lisle in December. They teach sprint technique down to the most minute details. The problem with what they talk about, is that you have to be very organized, you have to coach the kids a ton on little things, and you have to do it over and over again before you find results. In our two years using his Feed the Cats philosophy, my interactions with both of them have been the exact opposite. They are constantly coaching technique.

+1. Fair enough!

Since my own kids got involved in track a few years ago I started reading Tony Holler’s stuff.

I would say that as a football coach it is worth your time to read his stuff. You will not like it all or agree with it. Some of it will make you mad. But it will make you think.

You will find yourself evaluating your practices.

lefty120 wrote:I'll be honest, I'm not sure how he structures his practices...I just know our sprint kids don't get coached much other than to be given workouts which include them running further than they do in races and doing things that are not at top speed all the time.  

I don't think our guy sprinters have run a 400 in practice since sometime in 2004. Our girls team probably 2010 or so.