Where science meets performance 📝

Doing another deep inside Turner’s Developing Powerful Athletes paper, and it lines up exactly with what we keep seeing on the floor. The main point hits you quick: sport doesn’t give you time. On pages 2–3 they show that most athletic actions happen inside 0.3 seconds, while max force can take 0.6–0.8 seconds to fully develop . So the real limiter for anything we call “speed” — (stop → start → accelerate → re-accelerate / first step) — isn’t perfect form in a drill. It’s simply how much force you can create, and how fast you can deliver it. Force in time. That’s the whole thing.

The force-time curves in the paper make it obvious (page 3–4): the athlete who hits high force early wins almost every time-dependent action in sport . And even when we finally talk change of direction, it still comes back to the same physics — the athlete who can produce and absorb force the quickest controls the angle, the stop, the reposition, and the next burst. The drill itself isn’t magic. The limiting factor is the engine. And honestly, good strength work actually teaches the body to find those advantageous positions automatically, because under load the body organizes itself fast and subconsciously. That happens way too fast for “think about this step.”

So if we’re being real, this paper supports a simple truth: if you want athletes who move fast in chaos, don’t over-invest in choreographed “speed” patterns. Build the capacity — strength, fast force, fast braking — then layer sport context. Therefore, “speed school” should probably also look a whole lot like strength work and improving rate of force development, not just cones and choreography

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