The Speed Mechanic

The Speed Mechanic The interventions I have with all clients is positive and encourage self development and growth as an athlete and as a person.

“Speed is an emergent behavior arising from the interaction between body, brain, and play.”

We apply sprint science, biomechanics & ecological dynamics to improve movement transfer across sports. Experienced and Professional Strength and Conditioning Coach that offers a progressive and educational program that follows the principle of Learn - Train - Sustain!!

Speed isn’t a number on a stopwatch. It’s a problem the player solves. ⚡Every session at The Speed Mechanic runs the sam...
30/09/2026

Speed isn’t a number on a stopwatch. It’s a problem the player solves. ⚡

Every session at The Speed Mechanic runs the same loop:

1. Assess. We watch speed inside the game problem: opposition, space, time and pressure. What did the player do, and what information were they using?

2. Hypothesise. Where’s the limiter? Is it the information, the decision, or how the body expresses the action? Before movement changes, information changes.

3. Intervene. One clear change, matched to the hypothesis. Physical work sits inside the loop rather than replacing it.

4. Re-assess. Back to the same problem. Was the action earlier, cleaner, more decisive? The result becomes new information, and the loop starts again.

That’s Play → Brain → Body: the problem, the information and decision, then the expression.

Swipe through to see how it works 👉 and drop a ⚡ if you’ve ever been told to “just get faster” without anyone asking why.

Book a session or join the Speed Intelligence System via the link in bio.

We just pulled the sprint data on 59 young athletes, ages 6 to 17.If speed developed the way most coaching still assumes...
29/09/2026

We just pulled the sprint data on 59 young athletes, ages 6 to 17.

If speed developed the way most coaching still assumes — linearly, with age, driven mainly by getting bigger — this graph would be clean. A smooth line down. Older always faster.

It isn’t clean. Not close.

Some 9-year-olds outrun some 15-year-olds. Reactive strength barely moves with age at all, while sprint times keep falling. Two players can post the exact same time and be limited by completely different things.

That’s the problem with “just get faster.” Speed isn’t one number, and it doesn’t come from one place — it’s Body, Brain and Play working together. When a player doesn’t perform the way their testing says they should, that’s not noise. That’s the diagnosis trying to tell you something.

Swipe through to see how we think about it differently. 📊

Which layer do you think gets ignored most in traditional speed training — Body, Brain, or Play? Drop it below 👇

Comment “SIS” and we’ll send you the framework.

28/09/2026

WE LOVE TALKING ABOUT LOAD MANAGEMENT.

Until it actually inconveniences us.

Every weekend I see young players doing:

Saturday: Schoolboy representative football.
Sunday: Academy football.

Then Monday training.

And we still talk about:

“Load management.”
“Injury prevention.”
“Player welfare.”
“Long-term development.”

Something doesn’t add up.

Football isn’t simply 90 minutes of exercise.

It’s acceleration, deceleration, sprinting, braking, cutting, jumping, landing, contact and thousands of high-speed perception–action decisions.

Research shows neuromuscular performance, force production and hamstring function can remain impaired for 24–48+ hours following match-play.

So what exactly are we expecting from the same player the following day?

The same:

→ Force
→ Stiffness
→ Coordination
→ Sprint ability
→ Braking ability
→ Decision-making
→ Technical ex*****on

Probably not.

And this isn’t just about injury.

It’s about performance.

The irony?

We monitor GPS.

We measure wellness.

We discuss ACWR.

We build dashboards.

Then someone says:

“He’s our best player. We need him.”

And suddenly load management disappears.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Load management isn’t about collecting more data.

It’s about making better decisions with the data we already have.

And ACWR certainly isn’t a magic solution either. A large randomised trial in elite youth football found that an ACWR-based intervention did not reduce health problems.

The better question is:

What load has the player experienced, when did they experience it, what did it demand, and have they actually recovered?

Because:

Saturday → Sunday → Monday

isn’t automatically development.

Sometimes it’s simply competition density disguised as development.

If we genuinely care about:

Performance.
Development.
Injury reduction.
Player welfare.

Then those principles have to apply when they’re inconvenient.

Not just when they fit the schedule.

Maybe the biggest load-management problem in youth football isn’t a lack of data.

Maybe it’s a lack of willingness to act on it.

Every 1-2-1 starts on film. We diagnose the actual limiting factor — not technique, not generic drills — then intervene,...
27/09/2026

Every 1-2-1 starts on film. We diagnose the actual limiting factor — not technique, not generic drills — then intervene, and reassess inside the same session. Progress isn’t promised. It’s shown.

This profile is assessment 4 of an ongoing series for this player. Swipe to see the full breakdown → 👉

Which attractor do you think your player would test as — Force, Timing, Rhythm, or Elasticity? Drop it below 👇

Coaches: this exact system is what we teach inside the membership. Link in bio.

We’ve made speed too simple. 👇For years, speed development has largely been framed around physical qualities:⚡ Accelerat...
25/09/2026

We’ve made speed too simple. 👇

For years, speed development has largely been framed around physical qualities:

⚡ Acceleration
⚡ Maximum velocity
⚡ Force
⚡ Strength
⚡ Stiffness
⚡ Elasticity
⚡ Ground contact time

And yes…

ALL of these matter.

But footballers don’t experience speed in a testing environment.

They experience it in the game.

They have to:

👀 Perceive
🧠 Anticipate
⚡ Decide
🏃‍♂️ Organise
💥 Apply force
🔄 Adapt
⚽ Execute

All while the environment is constantly changing.

A player can have a great 10m sprint…

…and still struggle to accelerate at the right moment.

They can be physically powerful…

…and still arrive late.

They can have excellent change-of-direction qualities…

…and still struggle to react to an opponent.

That’s the problem with treating speed as purely physical.

At Speed Mechanic, we think about it through:

BODY × BRAIN × PLAY

BODY
Force • Strength • Stiffness • Elasticity • Coordination

BRAIN
Perception • Anticipation • Decision-making

PLAY
Space • Time • Opponents • Teammates • Ball • Task

The research around ecological dynamics and perception-action coupling supports this broader view of sporting performance.

The physical qualities matter.

But they’re part of a much bigger system.

So perhaps the better question isn’t:

“How do I make this player faster?”

It’s:

“What movement problem is this player struggling to solve?”

Diagnose the problem.

Intervene.

Re-assess.

Then put it back into the game.

Don’t just develop faster athletes.

Develop athletes who can solve movement problems faster.

👇

What do you think? Is speed still being treated too much as a purely physical quality?

Save this for your next speed session.

Share it with a coach who needs to see it.

24/09/2026

DON’T JUST GIVE THE ATHLETE A DRILL. FIND THE PROBLEM. 👇

This is how we use the Assess → Intervene → Reassess process inside the Speed Intelligence System.

We watched the player sprint and identified limitations around stiffness and timing.

So rather than throwing random “speed drills” at the problem, we selected interventions designed to influence those qualities:

🔹 Pogo sticks
🔹 Split squat hold + plate
🔹 Sled acceleration
🔹 Reaction acceleration

Then we re-sprint.

Why?

Because the exercise isn’t the outcome.

The change in movement is the outcome.

Did stiffness improve?

Did timing improve?

Could the player express those changes when sprinting?

That’s what we want to know.

The process:

SPRINT → OBSERVE → DIAGNOSE → INTERVENE → REASSESS

This is fundamentally different from:

“Here are 5 speed drills. Do these.”

We don’t start with the exercise.

We start with the problem.

And we don’t assume an intervention worked because the athlete performed the exercise well.

We go back to the sprint and look for change.

That’s Speed Intelligence.

Play creates the problem.
The Brain finds the solution.
The Body expresses the solution.

What actually relates to speed? 👇We’ve tested 40+ athletes across 50+ individual tests.Now we’re starting to look beyond...
23/09/2026

What actually relates to speed? 👇

We’ve tested 40+ athletes across 50+ individual tests.

Now we’re starting to look beyond individual test scores.

We’re asking:

What actually relates to speed performance?

And the early data is interesting.

📊 10m Acceleration ↔ Flying 20m: 0.89
A very strong relationship in our current dataset.

🧠 Movement IQ ↔ Projection: 0.76
Interesting questions around how movement quality and projection interact.

🦘 CMJ ↔ RSI: 0.68
Jumping performance and reactive qualities aren’t completely independent.

⚡ 5m Reactivity ↔ 10m/Flying 20m: ~0.50
Reactive qualities appear to have a relationship with sprint performance — but clearly don’t explain everything.

And then there are the weaker relationships.

That’s arguably where it gets really interesting.

Because speed isn’t one quality.

It’s not:

“They’re slow → make them stronger.”

Or:

“Their acceleration is poor → give them acceleration drills.”

The better question is:

What is actually limiting this athlete’s movement?

Force?
Stiffness?
Timing?
Rhythm?
Projection?
Reactive qualities?
Perception-action?

And then:

Can we change the problem and see the performance change?

This is only our current dataset. Correlation doesn’t prove causation.

But that’s exactly why we’re collecting the data.

Stop guessing. Start testing. Start questioning.

More coming from the Speed Mechanic testing project.

17/09/2026

We didn’t make this player faster.

We changed what their body could do when speed actually mattered.

And that distinction changes everything.

We started with a 505 change of direction drill.

The player accelerated, planted, changed direction and re-accelerated.

A familiar test.

But instead of immediately prescribing more sprinting, more strength or another fancy agility drill, we asked a different question:

What is actually limiting this player’s ability to change direction?

Was it force?

Stiffness?

Timing?

Rhythm?

Or the player’s ability to perceive the moment and organise their movement around it?

Because a poor 505 time doesn’t tell you which one is the problem.

It tells you something happened.

It doesn’t tell you why.

THE INTERVENTION

We selected interventions designed to improve stiffness and timing.

Not because stiffness is the answer to every speed problem.

But because this player’s movement suggested that how they organised force and timing during the change of direction deserved attention.

We worked on the physical qualities.

Then we returned to the 505.

Same player.

Same test.

Different opportunity to express what they had developed.

THIS IS WHERE SPEED TRAINING NEEDS TO CHANGE.

The traditional approach often looks like this:

Poor change of direction → prescribe more change of direction drills.

Slow sprint → prescribe more sprinting.

Poor agility → prescribe more agility.

But what if the drill is only the starting point?

What if the real coaching skill is identifying the limiting factor, selecting an appropriate intervention, and then testing whether it changed the player’s movement?

That’s the Speed Intelligence System.

Observe → Intervene → Re-assess.

Not more exercises.

Better decisions.

THE BODY–BRAIN–PLAY CONNECTION

The assumption that getting a player faster in testing will immediately impact there game is nuanced.“Speed” is heavily ...
16/09/2026

The assumption that getting a player faster in testing will immediately impact there game is nuanced.

“Speed” is heavily misunderstood with a hyper focus on physical speed instead of considering speed as the interconnected ecosystem of the body - brain - play.

Speed of decision making and ex*****on of those decision’s. Speed of communicating with the environment. Speed of football actions.

Now that not saying physical speed isn’t important that also naive but it is part of a bigger ecosystem.

15/09/2026

Before vs After 🤔

What do we witness in the initial assessment?

🟢 Lacks Projection
🟢 Reduced front-side organisation
🟢 Lacking hip extension torque and force.

We then run an intervention to support the player with the current limitations we witness.

What do we see after?

⚫️ Better front side organisation
⚫️ Slightly better projection (more work to be done)
⚫️ Better hip extension torque increasing force into the floor.

Assess - Intervene - Re-Assess

No one is the finished article when you compare to useless technical models. 😉

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