Acceleration & power training with Anthony Elanga

One step ahead! 👟 Anthony Elanga

Acceleration is the rate of change of velocity.

It can take up to 60m to reach max speed, so given the typical distances run in football acceleration may play a more important role than max speed.

And whilst football isn’t all about linear sprinting, acceleration capabilities are key for many situations of the game. Starting from various velocities and positions, a player has to produce high amounts of acceleration to leave an opponent behind, get to the ball/position first, or catch up with an opponent. Other actions require the production of acceleration during changes of direction, cutting manoeuvres, or even jumping.

When training acceleration, we’re looking for:-

▶️ Forward lean or positive body angle

For acceleration, we want to move forwards as quickly as possible. So we need to create a large amount of force backwards into the ground. Body angle plays a huge role in the direction of force/travel.

▶️ Ground reaction forces

This is the force exerted by the ground on a body in contact with it. Force = mass x acceleration. So the greater the force pushing forward, the greater the athlete’s acceleration.

▶️ Fast and efficient hip switch

We want the recovery phase of the back leg to be as short as possible so that the legs switch positions as fast as possible. So we want to minimise cycling of the back leg and train the hip switching movement effectively.

▶️ Dorsiflexion and ankle stiffness

Dorsiflexion puts your foot in an ideal position to absorb the shock of the landing and tenses your muscles to spring forward into the next stride and allows a reduced ground contact time per step.

Every stride during a sprint creates substantial ground reaction forces, and the muscles and tendons surrounding the ankle must absorb these forces to direct force back into the ground and push off for the next stride. If they’re not up to it, energy will be lost at that point of contact.

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