Running faster in soccer comes down to three things: how you accelerate in short bursts, how quickly you change direction, and how well you maintain that speed across 90 minutes. Most professional soccer players reach top speeds between 31 and 33 km/h (about 19 to 20.5 mph), with forwards typically being the fastest on the pitch at around 33 km/h. You don’t need to be the fastest person on the field to be effective, but improving even a fraction of a second over 10 to 20 meters can be the difference between winning a ball and watching it roll past you.
Why Short Sprints Matter More Than Top Speed
Soccer speed isn’t about running 100 meters in a straight line. The sprints that decide games are 5 to 20 meters long, repeated dozens of times over a match. That means your acceleration, the ability to go from standing or jogging to full effort in just a few steps, matters far more than your absolute top-end speed. Data from Spain’s LaLiga shows that the average peak running speed across all teams stays remarkably consistent at about 30.7 km/h throughout a full season, meaning players rarely hit their true maximum. What separates quick players from slow ones in a game is how fast they reach near-top speed, not the speed itself.
Forwards tend to be the fastest positional group, averaging about 33 km/h at peak, while midfielders sit closer to 32 km/h. But midfielders cover far more total ground. Your position should shape how you train: a center forward benefits most from explosive first-step work, while a box-to-box midfielder needs repeated sprint ability that doesn’t fade in the second half.
Fix Your Acceleration Mechanics
The first three to five steps of a sprint are where most soccer players lose time. Good acceleration starts with a slight forward lean from the ankles, not the waist. Think of your body as a line angled forward, with your chest over your toes as you push off. Staying low and compact through these initial steps lets you drive more force into the ground, which is what actually propels you forward. A common mistake is standing upright too early, which shifts your energy upward instead of forward.
Keep your spine aligned and your core tight. “Low hips” is the coaching cue that matters most here. When your hips drop slightly and stay under you, your legs can produce power through a longer range of motion. Drive your knees forward and up, punch your arms in sync, and focus on pushing the ground behind you with each step. After the first five or six strides, you’ll naturally transition into a more upright posture as you reach higher speeds.
Train Change of Direction, Not Just Straight Lines
In a match, you almost never sprint in a perfectly straight line. You’re cutting around defenders, reacting to a through ball, or recovering on defense at an angle. This means change-of-direction speed is just as important as linear speed, and it requires a different set of skills.
The key to fast direction changes is deceleration. Before you can accelerate in a new direction, you need to slow down efficiently. That means lowering your center of gravity, shortening your steps, and planting your outside foot firmly to redirect force. Practice this with cone drills that force you to slow down, fake one direction, and burst the other way. Sell the fake with your whole body, not just your feet. A convincing body feint freezes a defender for half a second, which is all the time you need.
Useful drill patterns include approaching a cone at speed, performing a fake shot or step-over, then accelerating past it. Another option: dribble toward a cone, stop the ball with the sole of your foot, step over it with the opposite foot, and explode in the new direction. The goal is to make the transition from deceleration to re-acceleration as seamless as possible. That transition is where most players lose time.
Build Explosive Power Off the Field
Speed on the pitch starts with strength in the gym. Your muscles need to produce large amounts of force in very short time windows, which is what sports scientists call power. Two types of training build this best: plyometrics and resistance training.
Plyometric exercises teach your muscles to store and release energy quickly. Box jumps, single-leg bounds, depth jumps, and lateral hops all train the stretch-shortening cycle your legs use every time you push off the ground. Start with lower-intensity movements like squat jumps and progress to single-leg variations as your body adapts. Two sessions per week is enough for most players, and they should be done when you’re fresh, not after a hard practice.
For resistance training, prioritize exercises that load your legs through a full range of motion: squats, deadlifts, lunges, and hip thrusts. Heavy strength work (fewer reps with more weight) builds the raw force capacity that plyometrics then convert into speed. You don’t need to train like a powerlifter, but getting stronger relative to your body weight directly improves how much force you can put into the ground with each stride.
Condition Your Body for Repeated Sprints
Being fast once is easy. Being fast on your 30th sprint of the match is what separates fit players from everyone else. Your body fuels short sprints with a rapid energy system that recovers during the jogging and walking periods between efforts. Training this system requires short, high-intensity intervals with adequate rest.
An effective model mirrors actual game patterns: work bouts lasting 10 to 15 seconds at near-maximum intensity, repeated about 15 times per set. Rest periods should be two to three times longer than the work period. So a 15-second sprint gets 30 to 45 seconds of recovery. This ratio trains your body to regenerate energy quickly between efforts, which is exactly what a match demands. Running these intervals on a field rather than a treadmill adds the benefit of sport-specific movement patterns.
Long, slow distance running has its place for building a baseline, but it won’t make you faster. If your conditioning work doesn’t include high-intensity efforts, you’re training the wrong energy system for soccer speed.
Protect Your Hamstrings
The fastest players are also the most vulnerable to hamstring injuries. During sprinting, your hamstrings stretch under tension to slow your lower leg as it swings forward, then contract forcefully to pull you through each stride. This combination of lengthening and loading is the most common scenario for hamstring tears in soccer.
The Nordic hamstring exercise is one of the most well-supported injury prevention tools available. You kneel on the ground, have a partner hold your ankles, and slowly lower your torso toward the ground, resisting gravity with your hamstrings the entire way. This type of eccentric loading, where the muscle works while lengthening, causes adaptations that make the muscle fibers physically longer. Longer muscle fibers experience less strain at high speeds, which directly reduces injury risk.
Adding Nordics two to three times per week, starting with three to four reps and building up over several weeks, protects the muscles you rely on most for sprinting. Players who skip this work tend to lose speed not because they’re slow, but because they’re injured or compensating for a previous strain.
Choose the Right Cleats for Your Surface
Your footwear affects how much grip you get during acceleration and direction changes. Stud configuration matters: research on artificial turf shows that the number of studs making contact with the ground at different angles of rotation significantly changes the traction your foot produces. When more studs carve unique paths into the turf surface, resistance increases, giving you more horizontal force to push off from.
On firm natural grass, molded studs (the kind built into the sole) work well for most conditions. On softer or wet ground, longer screw-in studs provide better grip. On artificial turf, shorter rubber studs distribute pressure more evenly and reduce the risk of your foot catching. A cleat that provides too much traction on artificial turf can actually increase your risk of knee and ankle injuries during cuts. If you play on multiple surfaces, owning two pairs of cleats matched to each one is a worthwhile investment.
Put It Into a Weekly Plan
Speed development works best when it’s structured, not random. A practical weekly layout for an in-season player might look like this:
- Day 1: Sprint mechanics and acceleration drills (10-meter sprints from various starting positions, 15 to 20 minutes before team training)
- Day 2: Lower-body strength session (squats, hip thrusts, Nordics)
- Day 3: Change-of-direction drills with the ball, integrated into technical training
- Day 4: High-intensity interval conditioning (15-second sprints with 30 to 45 seconds rest, 2 to 3 sets)
- Day 5: Plyometrics (box jumps, bounds, lateral hops, 2 to 3 sets of 5 to 8 reps each)
Off-season is where you make the biggest gains. With fewer games to recover from, you can train speed and power three to four times per week at higher volumes. In-season, the priority shifts to maintaining what you’ve built while managing fatigue. Even two focused sessions per week will keep your speed from declining over a long season.