The Speed Secret: How Concentric Power Explodes on the Track
Ready to take your game to the next level? Before we dive into the science of speed, make sure you’re signed up for our upcoming elite showcases and camps at myfootballcamps.com. For specialized recruiting advice and performance resources, head over to coachschuman.com and check out the latest from the club at boardwalkbeastsfb.com.
If you’ve been following our series on triphasic training, you know that speed isn't just about moving your legs fast. It’s about how much force you can put into the ground and how quickly you can do it. In our last session, we talked about the eccentric phase, the "braking" system that stores energy. But today, we’re talking about the payoff. We’re talking about the concentric phase.
In the weight room, the concentric phase is when you push the bar up or stand up out of a squat. On the track, the concentric phase is every single time your foot strikes the turf and propels you forward. It’s the explosion. It’s the "Go" button.
At Boardwalk Beasts Football Club, we don’t just want "strong" kids. We want explosive athletes. You can have a massive engine, but if you don't know how to put that power to the pavement, you’re just a fast car stuck in neutral.
The Payoff: Why Concentric Power is King of the 40-Yard Dash
Think of the concentric phase as the delivery man. The eccentric phase (lowering) and the isometric phase (the transition) do the hard work of gathering the packages, but the concentric phase is the one that actually gets the goods to the door.
Physiologically, this is the "overcoming phase." It’s where your muscle fibers shorten to overcome a load, in this case, your body weight and gravity. While everyone loves to brag about their bench press or squat numbers, those are just measurements of force. On the track, what matters is your Rate of Force Development (RFD).
How fast can you go from zero to one hundred? That is determined by how well you’ve trained your nervous system to handle the concentric explosion.
Visual: A high-speed shot of an elite sprinter exploding out of the blocks, muscles under extreme tension, showcasing the start of the concentric drive.
1. Intramuscular Coordination: Firing the Whole Battery
To run a sub-4.5 or a sub-4.4 forty, you can’t just fire some of your muscle fibers. You have to fire all of them, and you have to do it instantly. This is what we call Intramuscular Coordination.
Inside the muscle, two things need to happen for a maximum concentric explosion:
- Motor Unit Recruitment: This is your brain’s ability to "turn on" as many muscle fibers as possible. Most untrained athletes are only using a fraction of their potential power. Training the concentric phase teaches your brain to recruit the heavy-duty, fast-twitch fibers immediately.
- Rate Coding: This is the frequency of the signals. Think of it like a machine gun. Instead of one shot every second, your brain needs to send thousands of signals per second to the muscle to keep it vibrating with power.
When you see a Boardwalk Beast athlete fly down the sideline, you’re seeing a masterclass in rate coding. Their brain is screaming at their muscles to fire at the highest possible frequency.
2. Intermuscular Coordination: Releasing the Brakes
This is where most athletes get it wrong. They think that to run faster, they just need "stronger" quads or "stronger" hamstrings. But your body has a built-in safety feature. When your quads (the agonists) contract violently to push you forward, your hamstrings (the antagonists) naturally want to "clench" to protect your knee joint from flying apart.
This is a protective reflex, but in a sprint, it’s like driving with the emergency brake on.
Advanced concentric training improves Intermuscular Coordination. It teaches your nervous system to "shut off" the opposing muscles at the exact micro-second they aren't needed. If your hamstrings stay too tight while your hip flexors are trying to pull your knee up, you’re fighting yourself.
We train our athletes to "release the brakes." When that antagonist muscle relaxes, your prime movers can unleash 100% of their power without any internal resistance. That is the difference between a kid who looks "stiff" and a kid who looks like he’s gliding.
Heat vs. Power: Don’t Leak Your Energy
I tell my players all the time: "If you're slow in the transition, you're just getting warm."
Here’s the science: When you load your muscles (eccentric), you store kinetic energy in your tendons and connective tissue, like stretching a rubber band. But that energy has an expiration date. If your concentric transition is slow, that stored energy doesn't just sit there waiting for you. It dissipates. It turns into heat.
If there is a "lag time" between your foot hitting the ground and your leg pushing off, you’ve lost the "free" energy from the stretch-reflex.
- The Well-Trained Athlete: The transition is so fast that 95% of that stored energy is recycled into the next stride.
- The Untrained Athlete: The transition is slow, the energy leaks out as heat, and they have to use 100% muscle power for every step. They get tired faster and run slower.
We want springs, not sponges. When a Boardwalk Beast hits the track, we want that ground contact time to be as short as possible. That is how you generate personal records.
Reactive Ability: The Chaos of the Sprint
Sprinting is essentially a series of "plyometric" jumps. It requires Reactive Ability, the ability to switch from absorbing force to producing force in milliseconds. This is a complicated motor task. It requires the stretch reflex, the concentric contraction, and the stretch-shortening cycle (SSC) to fire in perfect synchronization.
When you train specifically for the concentric phase, you are teaching your body to organize what I call "physiological chaos." You are taking all that raw, kinetic energy you absorbed in the eccentric phase and focusing it into a single, violent point of force.
Visual: A professional athlete in mid-stride on a track, captured at the moment of peak ground force production, demonstrating perfect form and explosive concentric power.
How We Build the Beast
In the weight room at Boardwalk Beasts, we focus on the "payoff." We don't just move weight; we move weight with intent. Whether it's dynamic effort days or explosive box jumps, the goal is always the same: Minimize the lag, maximize the blast.
If you want to see how this translates to the field, come watch our standings or check out our summer flag champions. You’ll see athletes who don't just run; they explode.
Final Thoughts from Coach Schuman
Speed is a skill. Just like throwing a spiral or catching a fade, the ability to produce concentric force is something you can, and must, train. You can spend all day getting "strong," but if you don't train your nervous system to unleash that strength in the blink of an eye, you’ll never reach your full potential.
Don't be the athlete who fights their own body. Don't be the athlete who leaks energy as heat. Be the athlete who handles the chaos and turns it into pure, unadulterated speed.
Ready to get faster? Don’t wait for the season to start. Get ahead of the competition by joining us at myfootballcamps.com. Check out our schedule for the next camp in your area, whether you're in the Southwest, Southeast, or right here in Jersey for our Last Chance Showcase.
For more deep dives into sports performance, visit coachschuman.com and follow the Beasts at boardwalkbeastsfb.com. Let’s get to work.
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