Speed Development in Young Athletes

The ability to sprint is a fundamental motor skill, and speed is a distinguishing characteristic of successful performance in many sports. Despite the importance of speed to long-term athletic development, there is a lack of evidence-based training guidelines to improve the sprint performance of young athletes. This chapter will describe how speed and the biomechanics of sprinting naturally develop throughout childhood and adolescence. The chapter will also demonstrate that non-specific forms of training, including plyometric, resistance, and combined training, can transfer benefits to sprint speed in young athletes. However, it is sprint-specific training that may offer the greatest potential to increase speed, and this chapter will review evidence and provide guidelines for the use of sprint-specific training in young athletes. This includes the use of unresisted forward and backward sprinting as well as resisted sprinting that takes into account the individual ability of each athlete to work against external load.