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Speed coach and USR founder LES SPELLMAN joins Tim Riley to break down 40 yard dash mechanics, why concentric-only lifting kills your top end speed, overspeed training controversies, and how he survived a 120 mph car crash to walk onto a D1 track team.

Les Spellman went from a fractured femur, opioid withdrawal, and a wheelchair to coaching NFL Combine athletes and building a global Speed Lab network with over 250 locations. This episode covers all of it, plus the actual coaching methodology that got him there.

On the training side: Les explains why speed training built around heavy concentric lifting produces good accelerators who fall apart in transition and at top end speed. He breaks down how to improve top end speed using overloaded eccentrics, reflexive eccentrics, heavy isometrics, overspeed work, and harder running surfaces. He gives a full mechanical blueprint for how to run a faster 40 yard dash, covering launch angle, hip extension through the first four steps, thigh pull, and relaxing through the finish.

On athlete profiling: Les calls out the overrated practice of labeling athletes when the coaching staff never actually changes the program based on those labels. Data without application is just noise.

On NFL combine speed training and the USR: Les tracked over 1.2 million youth and high school sprint tests to build age-based benchmarks, standardizing speed into miles per hour so coaches could finally compare apples to apples across populations.

On coaching development: Les outlines a three-tier pyramid (general population, youth, pros) and makes a case that group fitness instructors have better cueing and room management skills than most sports performance coaches. He also gets into constraints-led approaches, periodizing your coaching voice, and why giving your knowledge away freely online built his career faster than gatekeeping ever could.

Produced by

Q6 Media

https://q6.media

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:02:40 - Les's running habits

00:12:45 - Near-fatal car crash that changed Les' life

00:23:40 - Janitorial grind, interning, and learning to coach

00:32:42 - Ego-free coaching and giving away knowledge

00:42:00 - Scaling Speed Labs, USR, and COVID pivots

01:03:09 - The coaching pyramid

01:08:00 - Force vs. strength and eccentric training for speed

01:21:12 - Constraints-led coaching, periodizing your voice, and the Apex Fast 40 blueprint

01:36:00 - Breaking max velocity plateaus, overspeed tools, and elite dose-response tracking

01:44:06 - Three things every coach needs to do

01:51:13 - Rant & Rave

01:57:25 - Athlete profiling and GPP

02:06:06 - Unsolicited urinal advice

#LesSpellman #SpeedTraining #40YardDash #CoachEmUpPodcast #SprintMechanics #NFLCombine #UniversalSpeedRating #OvespeedTraining #StrengthAndConditioning #PerformanceCoaching

LES SPELLMAN on Sprinting, NFL Combine Prep, & Working with Pros | Ep. 137

Coach Em Up Podcast

LES SPELLMAN on Sprinting, NFL Combine Prep, & Working with Pros | Ep. 137