Are your drills actually teaching speed?

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DEEP DIVE

Are Your Drills Actually Teaching Speed?

Watch any sprint training session and you'll see the same sequence.

A-skips. B-skips. Wall drills. High knees. Maybe some wicket runs.

Athletes execute them perfectly. Knees high, posture upright, movements crisp and controlled.

Then they run their sprints and everything falls apart.

If you've been around speed training, you've seen this frustration. The athlete who looks flawless in drills but can't translate any of it when they actually sprint.

There's a reason for this disconnect, and it has nothing to do with effort or coaching quality.

The problem runs deeper. It's about how the human nervous system organizes movement at different intensities.

When performing a drill at low intensity, the brain is in control. There's conscious thought about the movement, deliberate adjustments, focus on hitting specific positions.

This is cognitive organization. It works fine for learning concepts and developing coordination.

But sprinting at high intensity operates on a completely different system.

At maximum speed, the brain isn't calling the shots. The movement is organized subcortically, controlled by parts of the nervous system below conscious thought.

Nobody thinks "left-right-left-right" when sprinting. It's impossible. The intensity is too high, the movements too fast.

Reflexes take over. Automatic patterns kick in. The conscious mind becomes a spectator.

This creates a fundamental transfer problem.

Skills learned at low intensity with high cognitive involvement don't automatically transfer to high-intensity situations where subcortical processes dominate.

The neural pathways are different. The muscle activation patterns are different. The reflexes engaged are different.

An athlete perfects the A-skip because they're consciously controlling every aspect of the movement. But when they hit maximum acceleration and their nervous system shifts into subcortical mode, none of that conscious control is accessible.

It's like practicing piano slowly and expecting to immediately play the piece at concert speed. The fundamental motor program changes.

This doesn't mean drills are worthless.

They serve important purposes. They develop mobility. They build general coordination. They provide opportunities to introduce sprint concepts in a controlled environment.

Someone who has never felt what a high knee drive should look like will benefit from experiencing that position in a drill.

But the drill itself isn't teaching sprinting. It's teaching the drill.

The actual technical improvements in sprint mechanics happen somewhere else entirely.

They happen during the sprint itself.

When technical coaching happens during a high-intensity sprint rep, when adjustments are made to mechanics while moving at near-maximum speed, that's when real learning occurs.

Because now the work is happening within the same neural organization system that governs actual sprint performance.

The subcortical pathways are engaged. The reflexes are firing. The automatic patterns are active.

A small adjustment made in this state can reshape the entire movement pattern in a way that hours of drill work never will.

Think about the programs that get the best results with sprint technique. They're not the ones with the longest drill sessions.

They're the ones where coaching happens during the sprint itself. Where technical flaws get identified mid-sprint and cues are given while the athlete is still moving at high intensity.

That real-time feedback, delivered when the nervous system is operating in sprint mode, creates the transfer that drill work alone can't achieve.

This requires a different approach to technical development.

Drills can introduce concepts. They develop the mobility and coordination that supports good sprint mechanics. They provide a reference point for what certain positions should feel like.

But the drills aren't doing the teaching. The real technical work happens during sprint sessions themselves.

Drill work should stay focused and purposeful. Limited hip mobility? Targeted drills can address that. Need to develop better rhythm and timing? Certain drills can help.

But the bulk of technical development needs to happen at intensity.

This might mean spending less time on elaborate drill progressions and more time on shorter sprint reps with specific technical focus.

It might mean accepting that sprinting will never look as clean as drills, because sprinting is messier and more chaotic by nature.

The goal isn't perfection in controlled settings. It's optimal performance when everything is happening fast and reflexes are driving the movement.

So next time you see someone nail their drills but struggle in their sprints, the issue isn't lack of effort to transfer the skill.

The nervous system is being asked to bridge two fundamentally different modes of movement organization.

The bridge gets built during sprint training, not drill work.

Drills provide the environment. Coaching during sprints creates the actual improvement.