How to get faster in soccer - an interview with speed and strength coach Melanie Redd
Speed and strength in soccer is as equally important as skill in the modern day game.
With youth teams increasingly looking to mirror their professional counterparts, and play an energetic, high-pressing game, speed and strength training is a vital component needed for success and to avoid injuries.
GoPlay caught up with Ohio-based Speed and Strength coach Melanie Redd to discuss building speed for young soccer players.
Melanie has been in the training business for 10 years. After quitting advertising sales she took up her passion for training. And after finding a niche in the market for young athletes, she now sees high-school age children make up 99% of her business.
Melanie also identified that girls are still really under-served in the U.S in terms of speed and strength training. And she has made it her mission to get girls the same access that the boys have and to “really move that needle in terms of strength speed and injury prevention for girls”.
“I work with whole teams, I don’t really do whole lot of personal training - the team space is really my thing and a focus on girls,” says Redd.
“My mission really is to get the girls the same access that the boys have and to really move that needle in terms of strength speed and injury prevention for girls.”
Ethos and principles
What are the principles of what you are trying to do?
“First up in any situation we want athletes to move well and that varies from athlete to athlete. In the high school space you have children that look like children and kids that look like grown-ups in the same weight room, on the same team.
“So what I figure out is how we train everybody in the same environment but work out where people are. So the 13 or 14-year-old in his first year at high school has no real experience in the weight room as opposed to a senior who’s been in there for several years. It’s important to meet these athletes where they are, so I do that with a movement pattern-based approach.
“When a kid is new in the weight room I check their movement patterns. I do a quick assessment to see if their movement patterns are functional - meaning they have a healthy range of motion. Then I can decide the load and are they going to use a bar or are they going to use dumbbells for these lifts or are they going to use no weights until their movement patterns improve.
“If there is a problem, is it a motor learning issue? Or is it simply a strength problem?
“I can get really technical here and that is where the strength coach really comes into their own. I am then asking questions and getting feedback and then trying to work out how quickly I can get these kids moved up to the kids above them in the strength and movement spectrum. So I can start narrowing the gap. The rest is about performance - speed, acceleration, technique and all that stuff,” says Redd.
Injury prevention first and foremost
“Every sport that I want to work in the bucket I want to fill first is protecting athletes and creating durable bodies. So we try to prevent injuries, we can’t prevent all of them, especially in contact sports, but we can definitely reduce the risk.
“You don’t really know where the risk is. There is no metric for risk.
“You can look at two kids doing the same thing. If one does not have great movement patterns and the other is super athletic and their body does want they want it to do, we can quickly determine which one might be more at risk. It doesn’t matter what team sport it is, soccer, American football all starts with trying to reduce the risk of injury.
“The beauty of that is the same things that reduce injury also make them strong.
“I’m always thinking in my head straight away injury prevention but the athletes and parents don’t want to think about that.
“Coaches understand that we have to have less injuries. The goal is to keep everyone healthy first.
“You want the top players to be healthy and we want our bottom players to be healthy. And we want all top players to keep pushing and want the bottom players to be more serviceable - so that they can get more playing time and that will then let the top players get some rest.
“A high school soccer team will play two or three times a week, so that’s a lot of wear and tear and we have to create some durability.”
Prepare a high-intensity, pressing soccer team
So how do we prepare a team to play at a high intensity?
“It really depends on how long an off-season or a pre-season is. So typically in my world I have about four months before the season starts to get these teams ready I like to have at least four months to work with teams, then we can take our time and really evaluate our athletes.
“Sprint training in my opinion should start with shorter distances and work to systematically increase those distances over time. That is the best way to protect the hamstrings because hamstring are a issue when it comes to sprinting. And of course pressing requires a high volume of sprinting.
“The last thing you want in your pre-season is a hamstring strain because they can be chronic and if you’ve had one before you probably have more than one. They usually are a re-occurring problem. You think they’ve gone and they come back. They come back usually in the middle of a game which is very frustrating for athletes and coaches.
“So what we try to do is short distances over time with tempo runs. Even though the elite level of intensity is much higher there are still those times when you’re jogging, walking and sprinting at junior level.
“The question that arises is, how much slower work should we be doing if we are trying to push the speed of the game?
“So by the time the season starts can we match the sprint demands in practice that are required in a game. And also the recovery goals as well, so a week out from the season what we are doing in practice mirrors what we’re doing in games at the start of the season.”
Explosiveness
How do we develop explosiveness in our young athletes?
“Explosiveness is something you’re going to build with things like broad jumps. Standing on two feet and jumping as far out as you can.
“We can also build explosiveness in the weight room. I realize not everyone has access to a weight room so for my teams that don’t have access to the weight room we are doing broad jumps at least once a week and we are doing resistance jumps as well with a band and we are trying to fight against that resistance. In the weight room it’s about power cleans and barbell snatches and dumbbell snatches.
“Explosive movements can be done in the weight room or even things like medicine ball throws and some rotational work too, although that doesn’t really come into play with soccer players as much, but we do a little bit of that.
“The good thing about explosiveness is that you can do it in small doses as long as the athlete is creating an explosion in those movements. If they’re dialing it back and it becomes more like a lift than an explosive movement then that is where the coaching comes in.
“If they are giving 100% of their effort behind that one rep then explosive work is done with recovery in between every rep and then fewer reps.”
Acceleration
How do we develop acceleration?
“Acceleration can be improved by getting the kids strong on one foot, and that is done on the field and in the weight room. Things like single leg squats, single leg deadlifts, being able to jump and land on one foot. Landing properly with the knee tracking out over the little toe. Acceleration drills are also done in line with explosiveness - fewer reps with rest in between,” says Redd.
“Then you have top speed. Your first five or seven steps of acceleration then you get into top speed. In soccer you might have acceleration, top speed, deceleration, change your direction, acceleration, deceleration and you have to train for all of that in your sessions.
“It’s great when someone is strong on two feet. I also do squats and weighted squats in my programs but the best exercises for soccer players are spending time on one foot and we’re going to spend a lot of time getting strong and stable on one foot.
“If you’re strong on one foot it will reduce the risk of injuries dramatically. Kids are more coordinated this way and can change direction more fluidly if they’re solid on one foot. They will get faster from just a few exercises and if they can master these exercises and get strong it fills buckets.
“There is absolutely no reason not to do it unless you can’t coach it. The big thing is in the lower body. And with injuries the warning signs are the knees coming together and then hips collapsing. So what we want to do is create strong glutes, strong hips, strong and durable hamstrings, stronger groins. If they kick with the same leg the groin can really take a beating and we do a lot of natural work which is not true single leg, but it’s a precursor to single leg work.
“When it comes to coaching a true single leg I am looking for the ankles to be mobile but stable. If the heel is lifting off the ground then it is tight. And if the ankle is tight, then the knee is going to try and take over that mobility and it’s not supposed to and so it puts the knee at greater risk. And so we have to fix that. I always tell athletes to get their knee over there pinky toe and not that big toe.
“Sometimes they hear it and they don’t do it and that’s a motor learning issue. But if they hear it and understand but their knee is just not going where it is supposed to go then there is a muscle weakness going on. Then that is where somewhere like me has to do more assessments to figure out which muscle groups are weak. In a lot of cases the inner thigh is too tight or the gluteus medius is too tight and we need to do strengthening exercises.
“These sort of exercises are thrown into the warm-up because we usually don’t have a great deal of time,” says Redd.
‘I can’t get this kid any faster’
“Everything is connected and if we start at the bottom of our bodies the big toe is typically the first point of contact when an athlete is running. Unless they are a heel-to-toe athlete and some athletes can stay relatively fast heel to toe but that’s not we want what we want to say and we can’t always fix that
“What coaches will say is: ‘I can’t get this kid faster, he’s not getting any faster.’
“And I will say to them take your shoes off and he get into a push-up position. Then is the toe bent back or is he on the tip of his toe and if he’s on that tip and his toe is so stiff he won’t get any propulsion. We need that joint to be pretty loose in order to propel us.
“The next joint up is the ankle and the ankle is supposed to be both stable and mobile. And all this comes from functional movement systems. The knees job is stability only. The hips job is mobility and stability. Then lower back is stability, mid back is mobile and stable but with soccer we are dealing more from the hips down.”
Changing direction
Changing direction in soccer is integral. how do we improve that?
“I do a number of change of direction drills but the problem is if you set up cones the athlete knows where they’re going to go.
“It’s patterned and planned and they do need to master those things and know what change of direction is. And I do need to coach them to get lower and having a lower base of support to make them harder to knock over.
“Strength will help in the change of direction anyway. The most stable athletes are on one foot the less coaching I have to do. It’s one of those things where you are reacting so it’s really hard to coach.
“Once they have mastered the planned drills whether it be a triangle or a box we move into chaos. I try to have athletes competing to because they go harder. But to make it more game like we have to make it more chaotic.
“They are responding to a whistle or a color of a cone. I do a drill call the mirror drill when you get two athletes and one athlete decides whether it’s a sprint jog or a shuffle and the other athlete has to copy or mirror,” says Redd.
Game-related training
“But making training competitive and fun is not easy, but it’s a really important aspect.
“I like to make it game-related because I’ve seen athletes figure out how to do cone drills who are not responsive on the field. So I use them to a degree in the beginning.
“The problem is cone drills and ladder drills have become so popular on YouTube.
“There is usually music and they’re fast and fast feet are important for sure but if you get too far into things then practices that are not game-like can become problematic.
“I don’t mind a few minutes doing it but I’m not going to spend much longer.
“I want kids to get faster and not just a look better. They’re great in the cone drill and the ladder drill but when they step on the field they’re not great then we have a problem.
“Then it’s my job to try and fix that.”
‘We have to stop speed ladders’
What is your pet hate? Or something you see that has you shaking your head.
“I hate YouTube ladder drills and I was thinking of a nice way to say that,” says Redd.
“I don’t even know where my ladder is. It’s in my house somewhere. What I hate is when people imply that ladders create speed.
“We have to stop speed ladders. Speed does not come from short, choppy steps it simply doesn’t. Speed comes from long strides and as quickly as possible.
“There’s nothing in a soccer game that looks like that ladder drill.”
“Speed does not come from short, choppy steps it simply doesn’t. ”
Top tip
Asked what her top training tip for strength speed, Redd says: “We have already spoken about it but it’s the single leg work.
“I’m really lucky that I work with teams and coaches and get to and help them build their strength programs.
The single leg training has been the biggest most effective evolution in my world. I have seen athletes become so much more athletic by getting strong on one leg. To the point where it’s creating more opportunities and you can’t ignore that.
“It fills all the buckets it helps prevent injuries helps you get stronger and helps you get faster and it helps and get more fluid in the change of direction.”