With respect to the development of world class sprint speed we know that the only means that absolutely must be present is the sprint work itself. Everything else severs a simulative and supportive role and can be accomplished in many ways depending on the peculiarities of the athletes, training environment, trainedness and so forth. Looking at preparing the big and small skill football players in American football the speed needed to compete are much less whereas many of the athletes also need a great deal more muscle mass in order to withstand the many high impact collisions. Charlie has often stated that most of the sprint work should be kept under 30 meters for the vast majority of football players. Does this mean that flying sprints EFE etc should not be used for neural patterning? It seems like long work under the alactic threshold could be effective for many of the players for the purposes of both height to CNS exposure and breath as well as rate of relaxation amongst other things.
Looking at the 40 yard dash and the transfer that the vertical and broad jump have they seem like training means that might be relevant for athletes at the lower levels of development but the dynamics are so much different how much do they really mean? For instance as Charlie always states testing such as shot throw squat bench multi response jump are only relevant if they are performed regularly in the training likewise these results may be skewed based on how much the athletes work on single response jumps. It seems like if these numbers are not rising, but the athlete is “flying right” then it really does not matter.