Nature vs Nurture: Investing Your Time Where it Counts

As the stakes of professional sport have grown, so has the time and money invested in youth development. Modern professional team sports now scout the best talent from as young as 6 years old, supporting them with strength and conditioning, technical development, education, meals, and, in some cases, housing, in the hope of increasing their probability of becoming a professional athlete and making a return on their investment. The role of a physical performance coach prioritises the athletic development of the athlete to help them meet the physical demands of their sport – including speed, strength, endurance - and ensures they have the physical capacities to execute the specific skills of their position.

Speed Qualities in Team Sports

The role of physical performance and success is well-documented within the game of football. Faude et al. (2010) found that straight-line sprinting was the most frequent action preceding a goal. Comfort et al. (2014) claimed that 11% of a game of football is spent sprinting, consisting of counterattacks, recovery runs, and pressing – these actions are key match moments and considered determinants of performance and success (Rodríguez-Fernandes et al., 2019; Tortu and Deliceoglu, 2024).  More research suggests that academy footballers outperforming their cohort across the 5-20m range were more likely to become professional footballers (Dugdale et al., 2021; Saward et al., 2020).

In rugby union, there is a small but significant correlation between sprint performance (10-30m) and key attacking performance metrics such as line breaks, tackles broken, metres gained, and most importantly, tries scored (Hart et al., 2023; den Hollander et al., 2009; Smart et al., 2014). This was observed in both forwards and backs, but is likely more relevant in backs, given the increased volume of high-intensity accelerations and sprinting they complete in matches (Duthie et al., 2006). Research into youth rugby league suggests elite players possessed greater speed qualities than sub-elite players; in sub-elite levels, a similar trend was observed in starters vs non-starters (Gabbett et al., 2009).

Field hockey demonstrates similar trends to rugby – volumes of high-speed running varied based on position, with midfield players accumulating the highest volume compared to defenders or attackers, however elite player recorded larger volumes than sub-elite players regardless of position (Jennings et al., 2012; Lam et al., 2026) – these efforts are compiled with key match determining events such as counter attacks, recovery runs and duels. Compared to their sub-elite counterparts, elite hockey players have also been found to have greater maximum velocities (Vanwanseele and Aeles, 2016).

Given the clear importance of sprint performance across team sports, understanding how speed develops throughout adolescence is critical. However, improvements in youth sprint performance are rarely linear and are often confounded by biological maturation.

How Speed Develops in Youth Athletes

Athletic development is well-documented as a curvilinear process rather than linear in youth athletes. In professional academy football, the most consistent improvements in sprint speed are observed between the ages of 12 and 16 years old. Williams et al. (2011) reported approximately a 3% improvement each year across this period, with the largest margins of improvement typically occurring at the ages of 15 and 16 years of age. More non-linear trajectories have been reported by Saward et al. (2020) and Dugdale et al. (2021), who demonstrated that sprint performance progress varied through these ages, plateauing and in some cases declining by the age of 18. Longitudinal research in Australian Football and track and field suggests similar findings: athletic development in ages 13 and 14, in particular sprint ability, accelerates before the rate of progress diminishes and occasionally declines into late adolescence (Edwards et al., 2023; Tønnessen et al., 2015). A systematic review by Tingelstad et al. (2013) in elite and non-elite team sports suggested several physical qualities improved up to the age of 16, then followed a similar plateau between the ages of 16 and 20.

It should be stated, however, that sprint speed has been evidenced to improve past the age of 20: Haughen et al. (2019) found that world-class sprinters typically peak around the age of 25. So why is there very little evidence to suggest the same for team sports? Track athletes’ training is singularly devoted to maximising velocity, with competitions often few and far between. Team sports involve training endurance, strength and speed qualities concurrently, alongside the technical and tactical development of their sport and often dense periods of competition. The body has a finite ability to adapt to physical stimuli; attempting to train this many skills and/or capacities simultaneously will likely dilute the progress in any one domain.

Clearly, there is a non-linear relationship between sprint ability and age, despite athletes being in an elite environment designed to maximise their physical and technical progress. One of the key causes of this pattern is Peak Height Velocity (PHV).

Maturation and Peak Height Velocity

Biological maturation is the process by which bodily tissues, organs and systems mature, and is rarely perfectly aligned with chronological age across individuals (Cummings et al., 2021). PHV is a commonly used way of assessing the level of maturity – this is the period in which growth in height is at its maximum rate (Malina et al., 2015), and individuals are categorised into pre-, circa- and post-PHV based on their relative temporal proximity to this exponential growth. They are also often categorised into “early”, “on-time” and “late” depending on when they experience PHV relative to their age.

In professional youth sport, athletes typically experience PHV around 14 years old (Bult et al., 2015); however, this varies massively across individuals. In males, during PHV, there is a spike in testosterone, a vital hormone in muscle hypertrophy, haemoglobin production and bone mineralisation (Moran et al., 2017), all physiological processes that make these athletes extremely trainable, and their athletic capabilities post-PHV are temporarily superior to those pre- or circa- PHV (Randor et al., 2012), until those later to mature catch up (Moran et al., 2020; Valente-dos-Santos et al., 2012).

Another contributor to the non-linear athletic development of athletes going through PHV is “adolescent awkwardness” – this is defined as the temporary disruption of neuromuscular control and proprioception that coincides with the growth spurt of adolescence (Hill et al., 2020). These biomechanical, physiological and perceptual changes have been linked to increased injury instances and reduced athletic performance (Borato et al., 2025).

Coaching Takeaways

Sprint speed is clearly a key determinant of performance in team sport; however, its trainability across adolescence is often overestimated. The longitudinal research discussed above suggests that the majority of meaningful improvements in sprint performance occur between the ages of 12 and 16, but most importantly, coinciding with PHV. Once biological maturation stabilises, the rate of improvement in sprint performance often diminishes and sometimes declines. This is more common in team sports, where athletes aim to train several physical, technical and tactical skills and capacities, some of which involve inhibiting pathways of another. Track sprinters demonstrated an ability to continue progressing their sprint performance into the mid-20s. While they may aim to address particular elements of sprint performance (initial acceleration, top speed, speed endurance, etc.), all fall under the category of maximising velocity over a given distance - their training periodisation is therefore manipulated to provide the best possible conditions to do so, unlike the typical team sport athlete.

This begs an important practical question for strength and conditioning coaches: how much time, resources, and energy should be spent trying to target marginal sprint performance gains, particularly in post-PHV athletes?

As always in strength and conditioning, the answer is not a straightforward one. Sprint exposures are still an important means for training hamstring robustness, neuromuscular qualities, tendon stiffness and preparation for the extensive elements of team sport training and competition.

A coach may benefit from viewing sprint development as an emergent quality of many skills and capacities, rather than an isolated quality. Developing lower body strength, plyometric performance, addressing key injury sites and movement quality – these are all means of improving force production ability and reducing risk of injury, but may also indirectly influence speed simultaneously.

“Nature” provides the largest surge in sprint performance during PHV, while “Nurture” aims to refine and ensure tissues can facilitate it within the demands of the sport. The role of a strength and conditioning coach is not to overcome maturation, but to understand it and intervene where and how it truly counts.

References

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