Stop Calling Ladder and Cone Drills Speed Work

About 90% of the sprints in professional soccer last less than 5 seconds. That figure is from a 2013 Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research study of 147 Europa League players (Andrzejewski, Chmura, Pluta, Strzelczyk, and Kasprzak). Those players averaged about 11 sprints a match and 237 meters of sprinting at 24 km/h or faster. None of that work looks like hopping through a ladder.

The study that should end "speed day"

Padrón-Cabo, Rey, Kalén, and colleagues put 12-year-old soccer players on a 6-week agility-ladder program, three sessions a week (18 sessions). They tested 10-meter sprint, 20-meter sprint, agility, and dribbling. The ladder group improved 10-meter sprint by 2.39%. The control group, who just kept playing soccer, improved 2.54%. Between groups there was no difference on any test. Their conclusion in the Journal of Human Kinetics (2020): ladder coordination work did not improve fitness or dribbling.

A 2020 systematic review in the International Journal of Sports Medicine (Afonso and colleagues) found only five trials that even met inclusion criteria. Their line: claims that agility ladders improve agility and other physical skills are premature.

What ladders actually train

Ladders train short, choppy steps on a pattern you can see on the ground. That looks busy. Max-velocity sprinting is the opposite pattern: force into the ground, then a longer stride. Cueing "quick feet" for 15 minutes is not a substitute for accelerating.

The NSCA's definition of agility, in Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning, is the skills and abilities needed to change direction, velocity, or mode in response to a stimulus. A ladder has no stimulus. The squares are already there. That is coordination, not agility, and it is not speed.

Cones are not automatically speed either

A planned weave through cones is change of direction. Fine, if you coach the cut: hips down, plant, get out. It is still not a sprint. If those cones sit where a 10-meter acceleration should be, you replaced the work that transfers with a drill that looks like training.

Soccer speed for a club player in Crofton or Annapolis is mostly those sub-5-second bursts, plus the strength to produce them. The hip hinge you need to finish a sprint is the same pattern I wrote about in You Don't Need to Deadlift. You Need a Hip Hinge.

What I actually do

I will use a ladder to get kids moving at the start of a session. I will not call it speed. Speed looks like short accelerations with full rest, a few flying 10s when they have earned the mechanics, and strength work that teaches the hips to put force into the ground. Cones belong in reactive 1v1 and cuts that look like the game, not a figure-8 that exists to fill the last 12 minutes of practice.

Bottom line

Ladder-and-cone "speed work" is not making soccer players slower because a study shaved 0.2 seconds off their 10-meter. It is making them slower relative to what they could have been, because the session labeled speed never trained speed. If the work does not look like a sprint or a real cut, it is not speed work.