Blog | Training The BS Coaches Keep Shovelling About Speed

Author / Ben Skutnik

9 - 11 minutes read

The sprint-only conditioning myth

Field athletes need speed work. Field athletes need conditioning. A coach who treats those as competing ideas is working from an incomplete model.

A lot of coaches are pushing the same message right now.

Sprint more. Chase top speed. Let practice handle conditioning.

It is clean. It is marketable. It is also a thin way to prepare field athletes.

Gastin and Suppiah put a dent in the physiology behind that pitch early. Their review covered 102 studies and showed that maximal exercise is never purely anaerobic. The crossover between anaerobic and aerobic contribution landed at about 78.6 seconds. That matters because it cuts straight into the claim that field athletes can build speed, skip conditioning, and trust practice to carry everything else. Even maximal effort gets meaningful support from aerobic metabolism, and that matters even more when efforts repeat and recovery gets short.

That should not be a difficult point to grasp. Field sports are repeated-effort sports. Athletes do not get one perfect sprint in fresh conditions and then leave. They sprint, recover, sprint again, and try to keep producing as fatigue builds. That is a conditioning demand. Calling yourself a speed coach does not make that demand disappear.

This is the flaw in the sprint-only pitch. It starts with something true and then stretches it into something false. Yes, speed matters. Yes, top-end speed matters. Yes, acceleration matters. Coaches should train those qualities directly. None of that proves speed work can carry the entire conditioning burden. None of that proves practice will cover whatever the program leaves untouched.

That is where the whole thing starts to crack.

Speed is a quality. Conditioning is part of performance. Field athletes need both. Any coach with a serious performance model should be able to say that plainly.

The slogan works because it shrinks the problem

The appeal of sprint-only is obvious. It gives coaches a clean identity. It lets them posture against old-school conditioning. It makes the whole message feel sharp and modern. It also lets them dodge the harder part of programming, which is building athletes who can express speed repeatedly and recover well enough to do it again.

That is the real issue. Field sport performance is not built on one isolated sprint. It is built on repeated outputs across a game that keeps asking for more.

A receiver who wins early and fades late has a conditioning problem. A midfielder who can fly for twenty minutes and then starts fading has a conditioning problem. A back who looks electric when fresh and ordinary after a few hard efforts has a conditioning problem.

Those are conditioning problems whether the coach likes that language or not.

The slogans break down because the sport is bigger than the slogan. One clean sprint is not the same thing as repeatable speed. Being fast in a test is not the same thing as being prepared for a game. A coach who confuses those things is shrinking the sport until it fits the sales pitch.

“Practice handles conditioning” is usually cover for weak programming

This is the standard fallback.

The athletes get all the conditioning they need from practice.

Sometimes practice helps. That is not the issue. The issue is that practice is not a conditioning plan just because it includes movement.

Practice is built around teaching, tactics, personnel, stoppages, corrections, logistics, and whatever the head coach wants that day. The density changes. The volume changes. The running exposure changes. The recovery profile changes. Some practices drive adaptation. Some barely move the needle. Most are inconsistent.

A coach who assumes practice will handle conditioning is not solving the problem. That coach is outsourcing the problem to chance.

That is not efficient. That is not sharp. That is lazy.

It is also convenient. Once a coach says practice handles it, they no longer have to dose conditioning, track it, or answer for it. They can act like the demand is covered without ever showing that it is.

That works right up until the athletes start fading. Then the excuses show up. Now it is toughness. Now it is intent. Now it is competitiveness. Anything except the obvious answer that the athletes were not prepared to repeat the demands of the sport.

Speed work matters. It still does not solve the whole problem.

This should be simple, but a lot of coaches keep refusing to make the distinction.

Field athletes need sprint exposure. They need acceleration work. They need max velocity work. They need the mechanical and neuromuscular qualities that support real speed. Any coach who ignores that is missing part of the performance picture.

That still does not make sprinting a complete conditioning model.

Top speed does not automatically build repeat effort ability. Top speed does not automatically improve recovery between hard bouts. Top speed does not automatically prepare an athlete to hold useful output deep into practice or late in a game.

A strong sprint program solves an important problem. It does not solve every problem.

This is where a lot of coaches get sloppy. They take the value of speed work and inflate it into a total theory of preparation. They say sprinting gives athletes everything they need. They say practice fills in the rest. They say conditioning is overrated. They say aerobic work has no value for power athletes.

That is not a complete model. That is a narrow model pretending to be complete.

The conditioning debate gets distorted because people keep attacking the dumbest version of it

A lot of coaches hear “field athletes need conditioning” and act like someone just said “great, let’s turn them into distance runners.”

That move is cheap. It also ducks the real argument.

The point is not that every field athlete needs endless mileage. The point is not that conditioning should dominate the week. The point is not that speed work should be downgraded.

The point is that field athletes need a conditioning plan.

That plan can take different forms. Extensive tempo can work. Intervals can work. Repeat effort work can work. Small-sided formats can help when they are set up with an actual conditioning objective. Off-feet work can help when tissue stress is already high. Running can be useful. Running can also be stupid. None of that changes the underlying requirement.

The requirement is still there.

This is where the sprint-only crowd keeps cheating the conversation. They attack bad conditioning, which is easy, and then pretend they disproved conditioning itself. They did not. They only showed that bad programming is bad programming.

No serious coach was arguing otherwise.

The real question is whether field athletes need to be prepared for repeated effort, incomplete recovery, and sustained output across competition.

They do.

Power athletes still need an aerobic base

This is where the conversation often turns childish.

Some coaches hear “aerobic development” and react like the athlete is about to lose every explosive quality they have ever built. That reaction has more to do with tribe than physiology.

Power athletes in field sports still have to recover between efforts. They still have to keep expressing speed later in practice and later in games. They still have to resist the drop in output that shows up when fatigue starts narrowing their options.

That is where aerobic development matters.

This does not need to be dressed up. Better aerobic function helps the athlete recover faster and hold more useful output over time. That matters even for athletes whose game is built on speed and power. It probably matters more than some coaches want to admit because it wrecks the false binary underneath the whole sprint-only message.

The athlete is not either fast or conditioned. The athlete is not either powerful or aerobic. The athlete is a field sport athlete, and the sport keeps asking for all of it.

A serious program should reflect that.

What the sprint-only crowd actually gets wrong

The problem is not that sprint-only coaches value speed. They should.

The problem is that they keep treating speed like it can stand in for every other demand in the sport.

That is the myth.

It is the myth that one quality can carry the whole model.

It is the myth that practice will always clean up whatever the program ignores.

It is the myth that conditioning is outdated, harmful, or unnecessary.

It is the myth that power athletes are somehow exempt from the need to recover and repeat.

It is the myth that a sharp slogan can replace complete preparation.

It cannot.

A field athlete can be faster and still be underconditioned. A field athlete can love sprint work and still be unprepared for the repeated demands of competition. A field athlete can get plenty of practice and still lack the conditioning support needed to express skill and speed over time.

Coaches see versions of this constantly. The only question is whether they are willing to say what they are looking at.

What good coaching actually requires

Good coaching requires more than picking a side in a fake debate.

You do not choose between speed and conditioning. You organize them. You dose them. You place them where they support each other instead of competing with each other. You look at what the sport actually asks for and you build a plan that answers those demands.

That is harder than saying “just sprint.”

That is also the job.

A complete performance model for field athletes includes sprint exposure, acceleration development, max velocity work, repeat effort capacity, recovery ability, and enough aerobic support to keep the athlete functioning at a high level once fatigue shows up. Coaches can argue about methods. They can argue about timing. They can argue about volume. Those are real programming questions.

The need itself is not the question.

Field athletes need conditioning.

That should be the starting point, not the controversial part.

Final point

The sprint-only message keeps spreading because it is simple, clear, and easy to sell. It tells coaches they can build speed, dismiss conditioning, and trust practice to cover the rest. That pitch feels efficient. It is also incomplete.

Field sports punish incomplete preparation.

The athlete who can sprint once is useful. The athlete who can sprint, recover, and do it again when the game keeps demanding more is prepared.

That is why this matters. This is not a debate about language. It is a debate about whether coaches are building a full performance model or hiding behind a narrow one.

Field athletes need speed work. Field athletes need conditioning. A coach who treats those as competing ideas is working from an incomplete model.

If you’re ready to get into a system built specifically for field sport athletes, check out Field Strong.

Ben Skutnik

Ben, a former All-American swimmer at the Division III level, discovered a passion for training and performance that led him to earn an M.S. in Exercise Physiology from Kansas State and pursue a Ph.D. in Human Performance at Indiana University. Along the way, he coached swimmers to National and Olympic Trials and served as a strength coach for post-grad Olympians. Now a clinical faculty member at the University of Louisville, Ben combines teaching, sports science, and shaping the next generation of strength and conditioning coaches.