The Spellman Performance Team recently trained speed and acceleration with Surf Soccer.
This twelve week effort helped the Surf boys add 3 ECNL Championships to this storied program's 12 prior National Championships. Importantly, Surf’s foresight in embracing elite speed performance training again demonstrates their commitment to excellence.
Curious how Spellman Performance helped the U19, U16, and U13 teams get there?
Keep reading.
The Challenge
Surf Soccer has always been regarded as a premier club in the soccer world, and their objective was clear: enhance their players’ speed and agility, helping them gain a competitive edge in games as well as prepare them for playing in tournaments and the playoffs.
Danny Tonks, who’s been with Surf Soccer for 9 years and currently serves as the Director of the Boys ECNL and Head Coach of the U19 and U17 Boys teams was a big reason why.
“We put a huge value on speed and acceleration at Surf”
Danny said.
“The athletic component is so important in youth, college, and professional levels. It helps us implement the football side of things at the best of our ability and helps athletes reach their full potential.”
The Solution
Enter Spellman Performance.
Based on past experiences consulting for the US Men’s National Team and working with other high level professionals in the Soccer space, the Spellman team understood the importance speed and acceleration have on a soccer player's performance.
“On average a soccer player could accelerate over 50 times in a single game.”
Said Les Spellman, founder of Spellman Performance.
“Improving these qualities will greatly impact the performance of soccer players at any level. By micro-dosing and adding in the proper training, we know we’re able to improve an athlete’s acceleration and we’re thrilled Surf Soccer saw that vision and trusted us to get the results.”
By designing a speed training program centered around three components: acceleration, max velocity, and deceleration, the Spellman trainers were able to create a customized program for the Surf Boys ECNL teams.
Over the course of a 3 month period, Surf Soccer players dedicated themselves to the Spellman speed training program twice a week with a Spellman Coach as a supplemental piece to Surf’s practice schedule.
“The training has been a huge positive. We use it as supplemental to our football training. The boys enjoy it, they enjoy working with the Spellman coaches too. They’ve created a good culture and encourage a great work ethic within the training sessions.”
Throughout the course of the training, the data was collected and analyzed weekly to track and monitor the athlete's progress.
The spellman team collects data to learn key insights in acceleration, ground contact times, and body angles to help drive the direction of the programming
The Spellman team combined their proven speed system with the Universal Speed Rating technology to track progress, identify areas of improvement, and provide real-time feedback to each player.
As an added bonus, Surf has seen a lot more than just improved speed and acceleration.
“The training with Spellman Performance has helped us progress through a long season, and has ensured our players are prepared heading into big events like the playoffs and ECNL Finals. We’ve seen a big improvement in their sustainability in games and their explosiveness in 1v1s, pressing, all of that.” - Danny Tonks
The best part? The data backs it all up.
20 Surf athletes that have entered the 20 MPH club and 2 athletes have come in over 21 MPH for the Boys ECNL teams.
Ultimately, Surf Soccer got what they were looking for.
“It’s been a big value to us and helped us be able to compete for our National Championships”
Danny concluded.
The ECNL National Championship victory is a testament to Surf Soccer's commitment to constant growth and improvement as well as the impact faster and more explosive athletes can have in a sport like soccer.
“I truly believe the early success is just the beginning of what we can achieve together and we’re excited to continue working with Surf to explore new areas of speed training to continue propelling their players. I know I can speak for our entire team when I say we’re excited to just keep building with Surf Soccer.” - Les Spellman
Looking to learn how to implement these systems in your program? Check out our course, How to Build a Speed Training System to learn about building the same speed system with your athletes.