Training for the 40-Yard Dash

By 4Football Staff · October 23, 2026 · 10 min read

The 40-yard dash is a few seconds long and made of several skills. Here is how the start, the drive phase and top speed are trained, and how to practice without getting hurt.

A coach holds a stopwatch, a player crouches at a line, and about five seconds later somebody's recruiting file gets a number attached to it. The 40-yard dash is the most quoted test in football, and it is also one of the most misunderstood. Players treat it as a single act, "run fast," and then wonder why months of running did not change the time.

The dash is really three or four separate jobs stacked together: a start, an acceleration phase, a transition and a short stretch of near-top speed. Each one is trained differently, and each one can be the weak link. This guide breaks the run into its parts, explains what the best-supported training methods do for each part, and lays out a sensible weekly structure. It is written for high school and college players, and for parents and coaches who help them.

One caution up front. Maximal sprinting is among the most demanding things a body does, and hamstring and groin strains are common in sprint work that is rushed. Everything below assumes a clean medical history and a coach or athletic trainer who knows you. If you have a current injury, talk to a doctor or athletic trainer before changing your training.

What the test actually measures

The 40-yard dash is a straight sprint over 40 yards, run from a standing start in a three-point stance. At the NFL Scouting Combine it is timed electronically, and the 10-yard split is recorded along with the full time. Many high school camps, college camps and school gym classes use hand timing instead.

The split matters because the 40 is mostly an acceleration test. A sprinter keeps getting faster for a long way, and a football player is not fully upright and at top speed until well into the run. So the opening 10 to 20 yards carry a big share of the total, and a player who starts slowly rarely makes it back.

Timing method matters just as much as training when you compare numbers:

• Hand timing relies on a person's reaction at the start and at the finish, and it usually produces faster numbers than electronic timing. A hand-timed 4.6 and an electronically timed 4.6 are not the same performance.
• Electronic timing starts the clock from a trigger, a switch or a laser, and stops it when the athlete crosses the finish gate. Details of where the clock starts differ between systems.
• Surface and conditions change times. Turf, grass, track and a wet field all give different results, as do wind and temperature.

Because of this, the useful comparison is always against your own earlier times, measured the same way, on the same surface. A player who drops a tenth of a second by the same method in the same place has gotten faster, whatever the absolute number says.

The parts of the run

Sprint coaches describe a dash in phases. The names vary slightly between coaches, but the structure is consistent.

A player who is slow in the drive phase usually needs more force into the ground and better body angles. A player who is quick early but fades usually needs better upright mechanics or more speed-specific strength. Timing the 10-yard split separately from the full run tells you which describes you.

Getting out of the stance

The start is a skill, and it responds quickly to coaching because there is a lot of waste to remove. A few principles hold across most good instruction:

1. A balanced, loaded stance. Most of the weight sits over the hand and the front foot, with the hips a little above the shoulders. The goal is to be able to fall forward the instant you move, not to be comfortable.
2. Push, don't pop up. A common error is raising the head and chest on the first step, which converts forward force into upward motion. The first steps should travel low and forward, with the body at a steep angle.
3. Arms and legs move together. The arm opposite the driving leg drives back hard. Wild arms that cross the body waste energy and twist the torso.
4. Short first steps. Very long steps early on usually mean reaching, with the foot landing in front of the body and acting as a brake.
5. Eyes down and ahead, not up. Looking at the finish line too early lifts the chest.

Players often disagree about which foot to put forward, how far apart the feet should be and how far back the hand should sit. These are individual choices; a coach can help you try versions and time them, because the best setup is the one that gets your hips moving forward fastest without wasted motion. Practicing starts is cheap because a start only needs five or ten yards. Many programs run a short block of starts at the beginning of the sprint session, when the athlete is fresh.

Drive phase: where most time is won

After the first step, the body must keep pushing hard against the ground while gradually standing up. Coaches build this with drills and with resisted work.

Wall and posture drills

Wall drills, where an athlete leans against a wall at a steep angle and practices driving the knee up and the foot down, teach the angle and the position of the leg during the push. They look easy and low-tech, and they are mostly valuable as a way to learn what a good shin and torso line feels like before adding speed. Marching and skipping variations let a coach check posture without the demands of full speed.

Sled work

Pushing or pulling a weighted sled makes the athlete hold a forward lean and drive hard through each step. Sled work is widely used for acceleration, but the load matters. Heavy loads slow the movement and change the mechanics, so a sled that is far too heavy teaches a slow, grinding pattern. Sprint coaches generally recommend loads light enough that the athlete still moves with sprint-like speed and positions, rather than a slow shove. Exact loading guidelines vary by coach and by research summary, so follow the program your coach sets rather than copying a number from a video.

Short hill sprints and resisted runs

A gentle uphill grade has a similar effect to a sled: it forces a forward lean and strong pushes. It also tends to shorten the stride naturally, which can help an athlete who overstrides. Resistance bands and partner resistance work on the same idea. Use them sparingly and keep the focus on clean mechanics.

Falling starts and three-point accelerations

Acceleration runs of 10, 20 and 30 yards, begun from a stance or a standing "fall" forward, are the core practice. Because the drive phase is short, these are the sprints to repeat often, with full rest, so that every rep is a quality rep.

Top-end speed in the last half of the run

Maximum velocity mechanics involve an upright torso, a high hip, quick leg cycling and a foot that strikes under the body rather than far ahead of it. Athletes who try to "stride out" often make a common mistake: lengthening the step by reaching, which lands the foot ahead of the hips and slows the runner. Speed comes from applying force quickly, not from covering ground with each step.

Two training ideas are popular for this phase:

• Flying sprints. The athlete builds up speed over a set run-in distance, then sprints at full effort over a marked zone. Because the acceleration is done before the zone, the athlete practices top-speed mechanics without the fatigue of a long accelerating run.
• Overspeed or assisted work. Light assistance, such as a slight downhill or a band that pulls the athlete along, can expose the body to faster leg turnover. This is advanced work with real injury risk, and it should only be done with a coach.

Most high school players gain far more from improving the start and drive phase than from advanced top-speed work, because the 40 spends so little time at top speed. If you only have time for a few things, spend it on acceleration.

Strength and power behind speed

Sprinting is repeated, forceful contact with the ground. Players who are stronger relative to their body weight generally have the raw material to push harder, and strength training supports the 40 in several ways:

• Squat and hip-hinge patterns, such as deadlifts and Romanian deadlifts, build force through the hips, glutes and hamstrings. See our guide to the core lifts for football for how those are usually taught.
• Single-leg exercises such as split squats, step-ups and lunges help with the one-leg-at-a-time nature of running.
• Hamstring strengthening, including eccentric work (lowering phases), is widely used in sprint programs to help protect against strains.
• Power movements and jumps train the nervous system to produce force quickly. Our article on vertical jump training covers how jump work is progressed.

Strength alone will not make a player fast. The gains show up when the strength work and the sprint work run alongside each other, and when the athlete is not so fatigued from the gym that the sprint sessions suffer.

Rest: the part players skip

Every real sprint is a maximal effort. To run another rep at full quality, the body needs enough recovery that the nervous system and the energy systems have recovered. In practice that means several minutes of walking and rest between full-effort sprints, not a short break. Many players blur this by turning sprint sessions into conditioning, jogging back and running again almost immediately. That trains endurance and teaches the body to run at less than full speed, which is the opposite of what a speed session is for.

A reasonable rule: if your last rep was clearly slower than your first, the session has become conditioning. Stop, or end the speed work and move on to something else.

A sample weekly pattern

The following is an illustration of how a player might arrange a week, not a prescription. Your coach, strength staff or athletic trainer should shape the real plan around your age, experience and schedule.

Keep the volume modest. A speed session can be effective with relatively few total sprints, because each one is hard. Adding more reps tends to add fatigue rather than speed.

Warm-up and injury prevention

Sprinting at full effort on cold muscles is the quickest route to a strain. A dependable warm-up includes general movement to raise body temperature, dynamic stretches and mobility work for the hips, ankles and hamstrings, a series of progressively faster runs and a couple of practice starts. Our guide on warm-ups and prehab lays out a full routine.

Pay attention to warning signs. Sharp pain in the back of the thigh, groin or calf during a sprint is a reason to stop immediately, not to run through it. A tight feeling that builds over several sessions is a sign to reduce volume or take a lighter day. If pain persists, see a doctor or athletic trainer rather than guessing.

Test day

If you are preparing for a specific test, practice the real conditions. Run on the same type of surface, wear the footwear you will wear and rehearse the stance and the commands you will hear. Many athletes get their best times when they have rehearsed the routine several times so that nothing is new on test day. Sleep and eat well the day before, arrive early and take your time warming up. Our guide to combine preparation for college prospects goes through the full test-day routine for the other drills too.

Do not expect a dramatic change every week. Speed improves in steps, and young athletes who are still growing may find that their times vary with their changing bodies. Track your results in a notebook with the date, surface and timing method.

Where the 40 fits in recruiting and the draft

The 40 is one input among many. Coaches evaluating a player also watch game film, which shows how fast a player plays rather than how fast he runs in a straight line. Position matters a great deal as well: a team looking at an offensive lineman and a team looking at a cornerback are asking different questions of the same stopwatch. If you are curious about how scouts treat these numbers, see the draft section, and for recruits, the college and high school pages show where programs are located. A player is not defined by the time. Many productive players ran modest numbers, and plenty of fast players never developed the other skills that matter.

The short version

• The 40 is mostly an acceleration test, so the first 10 to 20 yards deserve most of the work.
• Compare times only when the timing method, surface and conditions match.
• Train the start, the drive phase and upright sprinting as separate skills.
• Pair sprint work with strength training, including hamstring and single-leg work.
• Rest fully between maximum-effort sprints; otherwise it becomes conditioning.
• Warm up thoroughly and stop at the first sign of sharp pain.
• Keep a log so that you can see your own progress rather than chasing someone else's number.