How NFL Prospects Train for the 40-yard Dash

you only have two runs for the rest of your career to make sure that you execute and put this on your resume as your best forty you've ever run your entire life I talked to him about taking the breaks off the beginning and so the start there are no breaks there are no stops it's all go in the middle of the 40 I tell them to melt the middle down so we're coming in hot like butter on the back end we want to blaze the back end just fire on the back end so I think that sort of resonates with the guys as it running through to understand it we're gonna have to be fast from the very beginning of the 40 come on come on come on come on come on let's do it get it let's get it arms yeah I'm not averse be receive as we look for five or four some people got me Brendan a four or five and I didn't want to show people down I'm away faster than four five that's better see you later I've gotta if I'm in my start position then I'm down here okay once I take off when my hips gonna go they'll come up here to where I ran so let's start with the hips in the position where you run already Anthony's have started to understand that there's a real technique to sprinting in the 40-yard dash when we're talking about four three four two-speed inches matter I'm looking around the four three four out of Carlo and they go right back to him again hit with a peetam they had its face down the sideline Joey effort one of the best ever at wide receiver for the Crimson Tide speed is everything the 40-yard dash has always been a marquee event for the executives and the scouts they want to know and have these guys prove that what they see on the field is what they're gonna see in this 40-yard dash the 40 is important being a receiver here by one see how fast we had Miko Hardman last year and ran for three three electronic some scouts had him at four to six four to nine and you see this kid that's going out on the field and running some of the fastest miles per hours in the league this year touchdown the 40-yard dash was huge in his selection being so high for the Chiefs this year now guys know you need to train for this in order to really allow your true speed to shine so training you know NFL guys for the 40 is very much from a mental standpoint like preparing for the Olympic Games and that's a difference you know that NFL prospects need to understand having played football in their great football players you know they're used to being able to make adjustments after a play make an adjustment at the half you don't get that opportunity and Olympic sprinting and you don't get that opportunity at the combine having Michael Johnson's presence here in the facility is huge I mean you're talking about a guy former world record holder and two events it gives us our our passion it gives us our mindset the way we think the expectation is to be world-class sir beat it so they train six days a week three of those days or what we call double days intensive days and so Monday Wednesdays and Fridays we're gonna do two times a day we break it down we always do our movements in the morning we do lifting in the afternoon on Tuesday Thursday we put in some recovery elements for them the recover Saturday we do half a day on Saturday so it's an intensive load I learn a lot more about technique just the way your foot placement is Stan's stuff like that we spend three days out of the week working on the linear elements of the 40-yard dash we break it up into starts acceleration and max velocity we spend a lot of time over those three days focusing in on posture and set up for the start because these guys don't have any props any formal training and start mechanics and what it should look like what it should feel like so we try to really provide a lot of time focusing on that element of it good yeah and we see tremendous results in the first two weeks just getting these guys technically more sound and comfortable getting into posture in position we started out a few years back really honing in on a pre training circuit just to kind of get these guys prepped up we want to make sure soft tissue wise guys his range of motions or healthy blood is starting to flow before we even get on the floor and do a typical dynamic warmup there they're getting prepped up to perform and then we go through a dynamic warmup it's very specific to the day so we're working on linear elements or max velocity elements you're gonna see some of those components in our dynamic warmup from there we start to focus right in on the speed part so we'll do a very quick schooling technical acquisition and then we've got a run the best way to learn how to run fast is to run fast often and so we take our guys to a lot of repetitions of high velocity we feel like that's the best way to get the the technical aspects of it and the performance aspects that level up quickly and that's every day and so we'll start with that same format that same flow so guys get accustomed to it they memorize it and they're able to execute it on their own by about week six get you lift never arm say rolling see rolling yep right you got a but they're not gonna allow that and it's just like so if you were if you were gonna dunk a ball a basketball right when you run it down the court you don't just run off of that dunk right you plant that's where the explosion comes from if I'm gonna I'm gonna hit you with a slingshot I'm not gonna just let it go right I'm gonna hold it pull it back I'm gonna hold it because that's where that power is gonna come from so you got a hold that I think we'd get a little bit deeper there too right so watch when it goes so you know you're not in a great position to take off right that's a good position but your body as an athlete knows this is a better position this is a better position this is a great position Yeah right that's where it wants to be it wants to be here set up is everything we teach a four-stage component we want guys to load the line we want them to lift their hips up get their center of gravity up a little bit we want that arm to become a lever and then we want them to launch out of the hole lever sweep back good both feet up power leg goes back first so left leg is there drop in zone right knee three zones we're gonna drop the right knee in tow ball foot or arch go and drop it into the ball foot yup we're gonna load both hands on top of the line yep so key number one is to load forward from here we're gonna lift upwards good the lever arm is gonna be this off arm right here with that off arm to be up long right there thousand one thousand two then we launch step out one step ready and go good and so it's those four things that we really try to put into a system so that guys can replicate that same action over and over from a power standpoint though to every every step should feel the same so the amount of power that's going into the ground on each step should feel the same but it's one two three four five six seven right okay so I'm putting this foot down quicker then I put the last one down quicker then I put the last one down quicker quicker quicker quicker quicker okay all right it's just it's just thinking that way okay make sure that every step though same amount of power so that it's not balance okay so we talked about melting the middle down the sled is what helps us to run more powerfully in the middle of the 40-yard dash yeah the run we do sleds a minimum of one time a week sometimes we'll go up to twice a week with sleds I mean we like to pull them pretty heavy you know we're going to take a percentage of their body weight and really work off a percentage of max velocity but tell us how much load to put on the sleds and research has proven that it's optimized so that's why our guys run pretty fast cuz we do a lot of push during the middle of the race is different than a hundred meter dash you've got to get up a little bit quicker in the 40 so from about 8 to 12 yards we got to start seeing you rise up and get into some of these top-end speed mechanic type positions and then from 20 to 40 can you hold on to that velocity once you hit peak speed you usually start to go down we want our guys to be able to hold it on the backend you're not trying to do something you're just doing what you normally do so what you're doing now is trying to stay low by tucking this chin you normally don't walk around like that alright you just walk like this alright so you're gonna be getting the start position you're gonna get up and run the same way just you know keep your hair where it normally would be okay all right so what you will see is that you started off here and as soon as you started they went down but then you realize that it came hard yeah so it would look good out here but there you will see him yeah a little part there is this it this is it yeah I think that position is already better with the eyes right now watch when you run it what happened look at right there yep right keep run yep yeah yep yep yep that's good I like that perfect but then yeah perfect what you did you moved it all right here you moved it right there that's weak in the whole time yep right here now you wait to see where you bite your hair back up yep so just keep it up the whole time right where it should be right here just try to make make sure you're not tucking that chin which just have it right but you almost had it there so it's very complex there are a lot of different parts in there but we're just looking at it from the standpoint of from the moment you you know get to the line and even in your approach to the line to the moment you cross the finish line there's opportunities and all of that for us to shave off time so we're looking at every step of that process in any step of that process where we can shave off some time we're gonna focus on Gerry dude is extremely special athlete he's very twitchy we've seen it on film lean pocket for two under the end zone touchdown Gerry Judy again when he came in and toured this facility one of the things he told me is I want to work on my separation I went back and watched him the video I was like I I think you separate really well on the field I think that's probably not the issue where the issue lied was getting in a technical start position once we were able to get him there he's a lecher coming out of it I mean one of the fastest guys from 0 to 5 that we've ever seen in this facility he just has a certain amount of innate natural ability that comes with the entire package guys like that our dream for coaches to work with because if we can put them inside of a system and give them the right mechanics at the right time put them in great postures in alignment those guys take off and they run really really well so he's uh he's one of the best I've seen bone okay this is one thing we talked about today this is good this is a good opening your shins are pretty much parallel to each other you got a nice projection angle the eyes could be a little bit more in front back side arm is big gives us time to unpack I like that shallow in the front so we're quick okay what can be better and this is elite elite level this angle can be more shallow just when I was talking about that over flex this one I'm talking about lower yeah so what that does that takes that knee and puts it here it's only seven degrees we're talking a matter of inches now when we're talking about four three four two speed inches matter okay so we can cut seven degrees off of that make that a hundred degree now these shin angles are the exact same I'm gonna get to the floor a little bit sooner okay this start the start position doesn't translate for the skill position at all they're never gonna be in a three point stance with those deeper shin angles but once they start to get up all of that translates so I would say from five to forty all of that translates to football speed it's guys that once they get to that seven sign then we looked at how quickly can you get your foot down we've looked at metrics or say you've got to get down in point oh six to the floor what's the same thing if a receivers coming out of a break and I break in my leg hangs in the air that's too much of a float I've got to be able to put my foot into the ground stab it and then punch down with the opposite leg so those elements carry over directly from sprint training with Gerry it's gonna be on the front end it's really gonna be zero to five I think we've already cut by five point one five from zero to five on his time right now he's already fast on the back end fast enough to run some of the best times at the combine not a lot of work needs to be done there just need to make sure that we could handle that velocity coming in but it's all in his zero to five so we do that right he's gonna run a really good time and Gerry has his own uniqueness one of the things that we're working with him on is in the drive face trying to make sure that we really leverage his ability he's quick once he gets into the drive but we can be faster by exhibiting more power during during the drive phase and so that's something that that we're working with him on the start from the most important part of the 40 once you get that start everything else is smooth transition it's really my lean in my second step I got the first step is butter is smooth but the second step I'm trying to get it underneath me shock a bit of velocity to push me more home horizontal Socko bring that power I mean he's a fast guy and what fast guys do is they run fast and so I don't know what time he's gonna put down I just know it's gonna be one of the best at the combine we're gonna work on executing making sure that he reaches his full potential and that's one of our mission statements here is I want to make sure that he doesn't leave anything in the bank you only have two runs for the rest of your career to make sure that you execute and put this on your resume as your best forty you've ever run your entire life

Channel: NFL

Views: 718,056

Keywords: nfl, nfl network, football, american football, How NFL Prospects Train for the 40-yard Dash, nfl combine, 40 yard dash, nfl draft, training, how to run the 40 yd dash, nfl prospects

Id: lLnrQ_pIdfU

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 26 2020