Your 10m Kill Zone

I’ve been experimenting recently with a load of stuff, gymnastics, waving the training volume each week and also……building AGGRESSION during a 10m sprint.

For rugby players the 10m sprint is a HUGE indicator of so called ‘game speed’. 10m is probably the most common distance you’ll sprint in a straight line, in rugby league 10m will take you up to the play of the ball. Getting quick over 10m is important!

I’ve been using a couple of methods with my athletes, especially the younger 14-16 year old players, to increase their 10m sprint times but also get them aggressive!

When I ask my clients to sprint 10m there are usually 3 things wrong;

1) They are too upright

2) They take short steps

3) They are slow!

Usually I find a lot of the younger kids also sprint with a smile on their face, can’t really explain that one! Not that I don’t want happy clients but when you’re training you gotta be focused!

To train for a faster sprint time, we can just turn the above points into positives;

1) Lean forward – Run as if you’re falling forwards the whole way

2) Take bigger steps – ‘Punching’ the knees up and throwing the elbows back usually fixes this one.

3) Get faster – Sounds simple, but a lot of people don’t seem to know how fast they can run!

So what I’ve been experimenting with to improve 10m speed is using fast and aggressive exercises mixed in with short sprints:

• Throwing knees into the focus pads between sprints to promote fast knee lift and therefore bigger more powerful strides

• Sprinting with a band round the waist and a partner pulling you back. You have to lean forward and sprint hard! This is also a great contrast exercise when you go straight to normal sprints, feels like your speed jumps up a lot after this exercise.

When the guys use these exercises back to back with sprints you can immediately see a more aggressive start when I tell them to ‘punch’ the knees up AND they lean forward after doing the band resisted sprints. Now everything that I’m shouting at them makes sense, it’s like a big lightbulb moment!

In terms of aggression, throwing knees and dragging each other around with the bands seems to trigger a switch in the minds of my athletes and they go from a smiley, slow sprint time to a fast burst of low flying rugby player!

Of course we use basic strength exercises, jumps and sled dragging, but learning to trigger aggression during sprints seems to have made everyone faster, without exception.

Try throwing some knees and band resisted sprints, I guarantee that you'll get faster! Any thoughts or comments just drop em below.

Get your FREE e-book the ultimate warm-up plan HERE and then sign up to the weekly newsletter to stay updated with all the great info from the blog!