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The Inner Circle
The Science of NFL Speed with Les Spellman
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This week on The Inner Circle Podcast, one of the top speed coaches in the country joins the show for a fascinating look at what really goes into making elite athletes faster. Les Spellman has trained Olympians, first-round draft picks, and some of the most explosive prospects in football and in this episode he pulls back the curtain on the world of speed development, NFL Combine prep, and the tiny details that can change a player’s future.
Spellman shares his unique path into the profession, from a devastating high school injury that left him unable to walk, to becoming obsessed with movement, biomechanics, and the science of speed. That journey eventually led him from Division I track to working with Olympic teams and, later, some of the biggest names preparing for the NFL Draft.
The conversation explores how players train for the 40-yard dash, why technique matters so much, and how improvements of just a few fractions of a second can dramatically impact draft stock and earnings. There is also a deep dive into the purpose behind the Combine drills, the difference between playing fast and testing fast, and how top prospects are evaluated through a combination of film, measurables, and athletic testing.
Spellman explains how he builds individualized training plans for every athlete, using video analysis, GPS tracking, force data, and years of experience to identify flaws and maximize performance. He also discusses the challenge of keeping players healthy during an intense pre-draft window, the importance of timing and recovery, and how athletes are mentally prepared for one of the most high-pressure job interviews in sports.
It is an insightful and entertaining episode packed with behind-the-scenes stories from Combine season, expert analysis on speed and performance, and practical advice for athletes at every level. Whether you are a football fan, a parent, a coach, or just curious about what separates elite athletes from everyone else, this episode offers a rare inside look at the science and strategy behind speed.
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Hey, how are we doing, everybody? Zach Klein here on the Inner Circle Podcast, and this week we have the pleasure of visiting and picking the brain of one of the elite speed coaches in the entire country, someone who has trained Olympians, former first-round draft choices, future NFL first-round picks, as he spent the last few months getting guys ready for what was the NFL Combine and currently pro days all over the country. His name? Les Spellman. He is the official speed guru for Athletes First. He gets results, and we begin the conversation about asking him how he got involved in speed training.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's wild. I'll give you like the highlights because it's it's a long story, but I broke my femur in high school and couldn't walk. And during that period where I couldn't walk and was in a wheelchair, I just became obsessed with looking at like walking gait, running gait, and just studying like how do people move. And I ended up studying it so much that I I got into running track. And I was like, Well, I'm gonna test all this stuff out on myself. And I went from wheelchair to running division one track. And um, I got to division one track, and I'm like, okay, well, the next step is become an Olympian. But you get to division one track and you realize like they're not really teaching speed, you're kind of just there being managed in an environment with a bunch of other people, and I went on YouTube because YouTube would first come out. I'm 36, so it was like uh 2009, YouTube just came out, and there's like nothing on YouTube, so I go to the library, and there's nothing in the library, so I'm like, okay, cool. Like, I think there's an opportunity post-college for me to actually try to teach some stuff because I know there's a bunch of people like me out there that don't know how to run and want to get faster, and it could help for every sport. And so as soon as I graduated college, I jumped right into the game. My first job was working with Olympic teams and just kind of took it from there. So ended up doing six Olympics. I did three winter, three summer Olympics, and made almost no money in that space. So I started DMing and emailing agents like every day. Like I got a master list from some website. Todd, you probably got an email from me at some point.
SPEAKER_00Football agents, soccer agents, just football.
SPEAKER_03Okay, just football, just football. Because I'm like, okay, well, the combine is the best opportunity to showcase your talent because there's a there's a clear black and white. Like, did he run fast or did he run slow? So I emailed like hundreds of agents, like anyone, and I got one reply for a guy named Dakota Preocop out of Oregon. He was a quarterback, and the agent's like, all right, look, Les, like I'll send him there, but I'm not paying for his training. I was like, cool. So that was my first business plan, nevertheless.
SPEAKER_04Opportunity, it's all you need opportunity though, and that's what you need, you know, exactly.
SPEAKER_03And um, I remember I was like deciding if I should put gas in my car or buy food and training this guy at the same time and just praying that it would lead to another guy. So, I mean, luckily it did, you know, over time it led to more guys, but yeah, that's how I got into the game.
SPEAKER_01Les has been uh our athlete's first exclusive kind of um speed coach and crushed it this year for us out in California, uh out in Orange County at our facility. Um, but Les, you have you also, it's not just you, right? That you have a team of people that help help you as well because I was really impressed with the fact that it's not a one-man band. Obviously, you're the the head of it and and it's your program and all that, but you got a good, good, good teammates, so so to speak.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, the the team is kind of what makes it all work. Like I'm I'm good at one thing, that's on-field coaching, but there's so many other aspects around uh the process that makes guys run fast or run slow. So you have to have a good health team. You gotta have people that are on the field that are checking the guys' like status on a day-to-day. If a guy comes in tight, you can't get you can't run fast. So we have to find ways to make sure that if they're tight, we get them to the point where they can run fast. We also have a sports science team, so they're running GPS, they're running force plates, they're taking in wellness, like we're seeing their status. Um, at one point, like at the peak of it during the during the draft season, we have 12 people on our team, and you know, there's 20-something guys out there. So there's a lot of hands, a lot of people involved in that. But it's just like running an NFL team, like you gotta have support staff, you gotta have people that are offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, things like that. So everyone has their own specialty in that space, and it allows me to really focus on what I do, which is the actual on-field coaching.
SPEAKER_01I mean, you have the the 40, which everyone knows about, right? That's the highly publicized one, and then you got the 510-5, uh, which you can explain also. And the three-cone, like for the average person out there, they don't even understand what the purpose of all these tests are. You understand the purpose of what the teams are trying to get out of why they do these. Uh and AD, I'm sure you also remember uh training for these things. So I want to hear, like, from your perspective, Les, like what were you um, what what's the purpose of all these for the average person? And then AD, how hard was it doing all that stuff as a big dude and the technical stuff? So go ahead, Les. I'll give you first.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so essentially it's like part of their job interview. So they have their game film, if they have an all-star game, they have that. And then this is like the final touches because basically scouts are looking at your game film and watching you play, and they're trying to estimate all these like physical abilities that you have. So if they think you're fast, they want to see that confirmation. If they think you're slow, they want you to run better. So this the combine in the in the pro day is just basically like a way, a standardized way to compare you to what they've previously seen in past years and also to other guys. So, like if I'm linebacker number five and I'm being compared to another guy that's a little bit faster, it's like I can improve my draft stock by increasing my speed. So I come in at the last piece of this because I'm not with them in college, I'm not with them at the bowl games and the all-star games. My job is really to take whatever draft stock they have and try to improve it. And Todd, I have these conversations with you all the time. I'm like, what do they think he's gonna run? So if you take a guy and they think he's gonna run a 4-6-5 like West Weeks and he runs a 4-5-0, but now you've just increased his draft stock and they're gonna go back, look at the tape with that context that he's actually a little bit faster than we thought.
SPEAKER_01Doesn't everybody say think their guy's a 4-4 guy, though? Isn't everybody a 4-4?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, everybody thinks they can run 4-3-4-4, and it's like, bro, there's no way, like it's it's very few and far between. And I I signed up for like all the scout websites, so like I get all the information, like what they think he's gonna run, and all this stuff, and I'm like, okay, cool, we'll just beat that. And we build our projection around what they think you are, and then try to improve that. And then all the agility stuff is just like okay, if you're if you run fast in a straight line, can you change directions? Especially if you're a linebacker, DB, receiver. Um, they kind of put this all together into a relative athletic score. So, how tall are you, how much do you weigh, how fast are you, how do you change directions, how do you jump? And that gives you a single score. Your score can get damaged if your agility stuff is not good or your jumps are not good. So we try to keep it well rounded and keep all those pieces like you just want to be like a seven to eight out of ten in everything. If you're a ten out of ten in something and a four out of ten in another thing, like that doesn't help. So it's better to be well rounded.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, isn't there some correlation to the things? Don't they talk about like if you're explosive with your with your broad jump or you're explosive with your vertical, it tends to help because you're probably gonna be explosive out of your 40 start.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but then you have so usually, yes, like 80% true. Then you get the basketball player type dudes that can just like bounce, but they're not really fast accelerators, you know, or top speed guys. So you you get a mixture of it.
SPEAKER_01AD, do you remember training for this stuff? Hell yeah, I remember.
SPEAKER_04Um, grinding, but for me, I I really never worried about like the three-cone drills and all that because I'm like, you know, natural-born ability, athletic ability that I had for my position. I was like, I really wasn't worried about it. I was just more worried about getting a fast 40, right? So, like getting it technique-wise, what I needed to do to change up my stance, my explosiveness, how you know, you know, your first couple steps, you're supposed to, you know, stay low and then gradually start to, you know, get higher as you get out, you get out your stands. So for me, my main focus was just trying to run a great 40 to be like drop the jaws, be like, what? He he did what he ran a at the he's a decent defensive tackle, you know, and and I I felt like I did that. So um everything else I wasn't worried about. I'm just gonna do it. Whatever I get, I'm gonna get as long as I run that that four that that 40 that's going, you know, make the scouts be like, God damn, this guy's different, right?
SPEAKER_01So I mean when you when you get there, AD, and unless you when a guy like Aaron shows up, they have what like six to eight weeks essentially, depending on when when they show up, when their bowl games are. And some of these games are going later and later because of the playoffs, so their window is getting shorter and shorter because the combine is still at the end of February, no matter what. Um, but they show up, you have a small window, but you also have guys that show up, they're not like 100% healthy. So you're having to work around this guy's got a groin, this one's got a tight hamstring, this guy's just physically exhausted, and they need some recovery time. So, how do you manage that whole process less with all these different guys that show up with different sort of each each one's their own? It's not like a cookie cutter process.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it's pretty, it's pretty wild now, and it changes every year. Like you said, like the the playoffs pushed into uh late January now, and then you have I think eight days after that, you have the beginning of senior bowl. So it's like it's a wild calendar, and that's why we have so many staff because like the main thing is guys need to be healthy because it it hurts you if you can't do the test at all. Like if you go to the combine and it's just like I can't do it, and then you go to pro day, I still can't do it. Like that doesn't help your your draft stock. So the number one thing we want you to be is healthy, and we also think about the year, it's like you have combine, then pro day, then rookie OTAs, then regular OTAs, then mini camp, a couple weeks off, and then training camp, and then the season. It's like the longest year of your life. So I know guys that like only can think towards March and the Combine. It's like you really have to think of that that whole year and into the end of that point, which is January. And if you don't get healthy in January when you show up that first year, it's gonna be really hard on the back end going into year two. Like a lot of guys get hurt at that point, or a lot of guys don't make it through their first year. So the health part is the most important piece, and then from a training perspective, like getting healthy is is complex because you got guys with hamstrings, then you got guys with ACLs, then you got guys with ankles. There's so many different pieces to it and layers to it. So you end up running like 18 different programs at once, which is uh which is just a logistical thing. I don't know, I don't know if you remember. You you came out to the field, we have a group at 8:30, 9, 930, 10, all staggered based around their health status. And um, yeah, it's a grind. I I definitely need to take a nap after this uh this year.
SPEAKER_01And when you're going through when you're going through like the six weeks or eight weeks, I mean you've got to have a timeline of benchmarks, right? Like through the process, like, hey, we want the guys to be here, we want to see this improvement. Do you have it like that? And then how does it throw a kink in things when all of a sudden a guy was doing position work, tweaked his ankle, and all of a sudden he loses a week or or more or can't really do it? And so because there's there's the actual reps and then there's mental reps, because it is a lot about technique to stuff, but what kind of benchmarks, timeline-wise, are you looking at during this window where you want guys to be at X, Y, and Z?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so you kind of almost visualize the pyramid. So in the beginning, you start off with like relatively a little bit of work, like low volume, low intensity, then you build to a peak of high work, high intensity, and then you drop it down. So what we try to do is those first three weeks are just building, like it's not outcome-based at all. It's all about learning your start, it's all about learning how to execute your drive phase, it's all about getting exposure to high speed. But then in the middle piece is when you want to start looking at like actual outcomes. Like, that's the time where I'm texting you, like, hey, we're nowhere near what we thought we would be, and I, you know, we need to come up with a different plan. But right around the middle of that training process is the first look you'll get at like what they're potentially gonna run. And you know it by now, like I'm I'm pretty pessimistic with it. Like, I take the worst possible outcomes and then work from there. When I first started out, I took best possible outcomes, and that didn't work out well for me because then you know let me explain let me explain why that's so important uh in my world, Zach and AD.
SPEAKER_01Because if I'm representing AD and I know from a scouting perspective what the question marks are, or and if he's supposed to run a certain thing, and if we're not on track for that, that impacts the decision of are we going to run at Combine? Are we gonna wait and run for at Pro Day? And that those kind of decisions have to be made because you're wanting to put out great times. You don't want to do things that are gonna make them go back and question the film or kind of get, you know, have have the wrong formula. You want you want everything to be the right way. So his information matters, and it's really, really important because if a tra speed coach gives us a projected time and we go off of that projected time and we let the guy go run, and that projected time is way off, and boom, that guy could lose millions of dollars because he's gonna go around round and a half lower potentially, because you had a trainer who was either telling you what you wanted to hear or just his timing was completely wrong. You want a guy who's gonna really be able to accurately do that. And I will say, Les, I think what 20, 25 guys this year. From what I know, I literally think your projections were either well uh either exactly on point or everybody did better. Literally nobody ran worse, and that was so, so important. So it gives us good information to make sure we're making the right decision for these guys because million people don't understand. Literally, millions of dollars are at risk, and we're basing it on what you're telling us.
SPEAKER_00So let me ask what's the go back to the baseline. So let's say you came in last and I came in and I'm running a 5-0, a 5-0, a 5-0. Based on technique, yeah, but could you yeah, because like AD was talking about technique. That's all I want to do is run the 40. I gotta get my 40 in the combine. That's all I care about. So if I come in 5.0, 5.0, 5.0, based on your information and you training me the right weed based on technique, how much can I improve?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so let's say you're healthy enough to test, like, because not every guy is, and you test, I create this chart where 1% improvement would equal this, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%. So what I tell guys is like if my mom came out here and just held a sheet of paper and coached you, you'll get 1% better. It's it's not hard. If you don't do football and wear pads and do spring games and all this stuff and practices, and you just ran fast, you're gonna get faster. 2% is if you do that, but you also like work on your nutrition and your diet and stay healthy. Now, when you start getting 3%, 4%, 5%, that's where it's like we have to identify a flaw or problem in how you run. And if you I've seen guys like this year, we're averaging 4.6% improvement, but it's because we're quickly able to identify problems within guys, and then we just attack that problem for the whole training process. Like if you gave every single guy the same thing, like same sheet of paper, some guys are gonna get better, some are gonna stay the same, some are gonna get worse. And I think the initial assessment, it's not really about the time, it's really about okay, this guy ran five seconds flat. Can we can we get him four percent better? And if we can't, let's tell Todd immediately like this is gonna be a really difficult one. And I think we should work on like holding him back and giving him two extra weeks. So the initial assessment, like I've seen five percent this year, I saw one six percent. I mean, what's the one?
SPEAKER_00Todd, if I get that five percent, if I'm if I'm a guy who's who's project if I'm at five. Oh on my line and I go down to a four seven five, that's millions of dollars.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it could be, depends on what position you play. And I I I know you're talking whatever, but it listen, uh every box, every team evaluates things differently. So everyone has the same ingredients, meaning they're gonna evaluate film, character, football IQ, measurables, height, weight, speed, everything 40, five times. Everyone's gonna look at all the same thing, but every team slices that pie differently. Some teams have the the character pie is a much bigger piece, some not as big, not as important as long as you can play. Some really get moved by the numbers and the 40 and all that. Others, I just care about what he looks like on film. I don't really care as much about what he does here. So you don't know, but at the end of the day, you want to check every box. And I assure you, if your speed is a negative, it doesn't help. If it's either gonna to Less's point, it's gonna confirm what they see on tape, or it's gonna make them go back and look to look at tape again. Because some guys also run fast but don't play fast. Yeah, and then and and and and all that, and why is that? And so, but at the end of the day, teams and scouts, they love traits. They love traits, so they love the measurable stuff. If a guy's got the right height and weight, he's got the speed. A lot of these guys think, well, I it's like a piece of clay. I can mold him to be what I need him to be, and he can fit in our system.
SPEAKER_00A D, when you were running off the ground, like did you you had one hand in the ground, so is it kind of like similar to the starting line at a 40?
SPEAKER_04So it's I don't remember it exactly, but it was a whole, that's what I'm so I went when I went to the when I went training leading up to the combo, and that's why that's why I talked about the technique standpoint is so important, like just changing and tweaking little things, right? From get-off, that your stands, you getting your feet lined up the right way, you know, just the trying to explode off and get the right, you know, burst and split of your arms, right? That's why I wanted to ask Les, like the importance of the technique standpoint of because it's a speed game now. And the NFL is all about speed, right? Speed, speed, everything. It ain't more, it ain't duo, it ain't a lot of downhill running. Everything's lateral, everything's about speeds. When you training guys, how do from a technique standpoint, what's the most important thing when you talk about a 40, right? Because for me it was like, okay, I feel like I did a great job at the combine, but I was a little excited, so I popped up a little too high. I felt like I ran a 4-6. I think my fucking fur life, I could have ran closer to like a four or five if I would have stayed a little lower, but I, you know, you know, I my first three steps, I was already sitting straight up and just starting, then I'm running, right? So what's what's the most important thing when you talk about the technique standpoint to running a great 40? What would you work on with these guys?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's all over the place. But I'll I'll use you as an example. So you were 285 pounds, ran a 468. So, like in in the grand scheme of things, for your position, for your weight, like that's 99th percentile. That's incredible. So, but every guy's built different. So you have guys that are length-based, you have guys that are gonna take 19 steps to run the 40, you got guys that are gonna take 21 steps. I had two guys run 427 this year. One took 21 steps, one guy took 18 and a half.
SPEAKER_01I think it's incredible that you know how many steps they took. So how do you how do you count you count the steps? How the hell do you think? No, but that's that that's what I want. That's what I want to hear less. That and like what how what step they should be on by what yard line, all that sucks crazy.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so just to back out of that, so there's there's non-negotiables. Four step has to be over five yards, seven step has to be over ten yards, twelve step has to be past 20 yards. From there, every guy's gonna be a little different. But those are the non-negotiables. So, what most guys come in? Like, if you watch AD when you first came in, the biggest thing they probably told you was like, you need to push more, you need to get more range, you need to get bigger. So, all the technique was based around getting more extension and more range. And that's almost every guy that comes from college football, y'all think about being quick off the line. In reality, the biggest limiting factor is usually range. So, all the technical pieces, the first two weeks have to do with creating more range, more extension off the line, a better torso push. We call it torso torpedo. Like you want the torso to go forward, not up. And every single step you take should just rise incrementally, which is like an art. It's kind of like a duck under what like with the legs underwater. So if you watch a duck, it's really calm up top, but the the legs are moving really fast under. And it's like that's kind of what running the 40 is like is the upper half is gonna be very calm and very and very like progressive, while the bottom half is gonna be super violent. So teaching guys like the two ends of that spectrum and then teaching them how to get the range. Most guys, you tell them to get more range, they're gonna they're gonna start to reach, like put my foot in front. In reality, it's like an engine, like I need to push the ground away and push back to create that range. And the better you can do that, the faster you can run. So almost all the first block of training is gonna be focused on creating range, big arm split, big leg split, making sure we can hit our our minimum standards. Once you get past 12, it's some of that has to do with genetics because 12 steps will take you past 20. Some guys can reach 23 miles per hour, some guys just won't. Like AD at 285 pounds of 468. I I would have been celebrating like crazy.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I know I was happy, but I felt like because you know, I think they kept saying it'd probably be gradually going up as you go to past that 10 yards, like you said, then you just natural abilities just take over from there. But I felt like if I would have just kept myself a little, I felt like I popped a look up popped up a little too damn fast. I could have, and I I felt like I would have got closer to like a four or five, because my first 40 was I think it was like a four, six, six, five or something like that. And I think it ended up averaging to like a four, six, eight with my second one. And for me, it was just that that that just popped up a little too high, a little too quick, man, for me. So I was like, yeah, I think it's amazing.
SPEAKER_01I think it's amazing. Like the things that stick out to me is which would be very hard is when you're talking about violent down below, but like calm up front. Like you talk about, I've I've heard speed coaches talk about like relax your face. Like, how in the hell are you relaxed? You're you're gunning to fast as you can, but you're supposed to just have this relaxed face because you're the you know, that's one of the things you got to do. And then the other thing that I think is crazy is how many 40s do you actually run during the training process, other than the baseline and maybe a mock one at the end? Like, guys aren't running 40s really the whole time, so you're projecting everything, right? Like, I don't know, I hear the term flying 20s. I'll explain all that to us.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so like all right, most guys won't run multiple 40s, like if you the whole eight weeks.
SPEAKER_04Like two to three that I ran, I think.
SPEAKER_03Probably like two to three on average if you're going to the combine. But then you take a guy like West Weeks, I had him do like seven or eight of them because like we had he had an extra month. He had an extra month. Extra month. We had to get down. But okay, so basically what you do is like I'll take AD as an example. At his when he ran, you went one six three in the ten, two seven three in the twenty, four six nine and the four. So your flying 20 was 196. So if I'm working with you and I say, okay, I want you to run a four or five, I would have tried to get your 196 back 20 down to a 190. So that's point that's 0.06 right there. So I would work, I would rep that back 20 in training. So there would be one day dedicated towards just that back 20.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_03And I would focus on all right, AD, like you you have everything like frequency-wise is good. We're just not there from a length perspective. So I might work on a stride length in that period. So then I have 0.06. I only need 0.03 or 0.04 more. I would work on his 10. So then I would work on hey, we're just gonna work the first part of the 40 today, just the zero to 10, and try to get that 163 to 158 and drop that by 0.05. Because if you look at the 40, like it's kind of like that Al Pacino speech, like the inches are everywhere, like it's kind of like that. Like you can pull from different spots to create a better outcome. But the best way to create a better outcome is to work on the back end and try to get the speed up in that time down, and then work on the the beginning, and then in the middle is more of like it's kind of like a dance, like it's just a rhythm that you have to learn how to transition to upright to run fast. Like it's it's not something that you could like work on and and teach a certain way, it's just you have to feel it and rep it. But the beginning and the end are the two parts where you isolate you're gonna run that back 20.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's different though, right? Because like you sometimes you get a track guy who's like awesome at the 100 meter or whatever it is, but that doesn't translate always to this because those guys start picking their pace and stride up at 50, 60, 70, and just start flying, right? You only have 40 yards, so you gotta you gotta only you gotta get off fast and sustain it because before you know it, it's over. The 40 yards is up, so you don't even have a chance to get up and going.
SPEAKER_03You gotta get you gotta get to it early. The kid that we had that ran 4'2 seven, he had to get up and go at like step 427. That sounds crazy. Wow, that shit don't sound real wild. But he had to get up and go because he's a track kid that he had to go early because these guys are so used to accelerating 60 meters, 70 meters. Like you don't have that. Like you saw it last year with a couple guys that said they were gonna break the record, then ran 4'4, but they just they just couldn't accelerate fast enough. They have to get to that speed earlier, so you gotta get up. You actually gotta get up sooner, which is like some guys think you're supposed to drive the whole 40. Uh, not necessarily, sometimes you gotta get up and go.
SPEAKER_01Explain explain the the the cutting edge tools that you use that guys can see themselves because you can tell me all the time, and you can we can rep it, but it's another thing for me to see myself. So explain kind of how that is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, the the main thing that we do, the first layer is like we record every single rep in training. So every rep that they do that's fast, we record it, and then they have a folder so they can go on the app and they can see every rep they did in training, they can slow-mo it, they can speed it up, they can draw on it, whatever.
SPEAKER_01Um, so guys, that that is that is unbelievable. Every one of our players can literally go to their app and every single start for the eight weeks that they're there. Film study. It's exciting, it's what it is, but you're going over what their angles and all that to show them kind of where they are versus where they should be at different frames and all that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, exactly. So, like we'll do a we'll do a video review with them every week, but they have all those videos and they can also look at other guys, they can look at past years, they can go back and look at the guys that ran in 2022 and all the guys we've had. So that's like the it's just like studying film for football. Like you get better the more you look at it, and then when you get evaluated and you get taught, like, hey, you're supposed to be at this landmark, you can start to see it. I think the biggest piece of advice like that I give to young kids in and training speed is like you're you're not supposed to take the speed session as like a mental session, like you're not supposed to be in there trying to do technical things, you're supposed to do that away from training. So when you go to training, you just flow, you just do your thing, you just run run fast. And if you try to do both at the same time, they're competing demands. You can't get better at technical stuff and running fast in the same day. It's impossible, you know. So that's the that's the first layer of things. Um, do you want me to keep going? What else we got? Yeah, go ahead. Okay. Um, the second layer is we we track everything on GPS, same as schools, but um max speed is something that we use to to evaluate what level we're at, like at what part of the program. So we try to build from the the beginning to a max speed at week four, week five, and then basically we try to run within 98% of that max speed for the last three weeks of the training.
SPEAKER_01So you put a chip on them, you put a chip on them, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Every player. So we're monitoring their volume, so how much they're doing, we're monitoring how fast they're running, how many accelerations, so how many like starts they do. Some guys we found can handle a lot, some guys can't. So we're always monitoring which guys we can do more with. Like a West Weeks, he's just a workhorse. Like we ran him into the ground to get that result. Then you got other guys that are a little bit more sensitive that we're doing less work with. So that's the the second layer is the GPS, like it's super important. Um and then the third layer is we use a resisted training device called a 1080. We got five of them, they're$20,000 each. And essentially what this 1080 does is like you type in the exact load that you want and percentage of body weights, like 50% body weight, 20% body weight, 10% body weight, and you have them run against this resisted training uh device, and it gives you their speed, gives you their force, it gives you their power, it tells you their stride length, tells you their frequency, like every picture that you would want for how a guy runs, and that's like our secret weapon right there. So guys run on that three times a week.
SPEAKER_00Not secret anymore.
SPEAKER_03It's out there now.
SPEAKER_04Anybody can't do how Les do it. Let them know, Les. It's different, it's levels to it, you know? It's levels to it.
SPEAKER_01And how do you get the guys to peak at the right time? Because their legs are shot, like you said, you're running them into the ground, they're doing this. Is just the speed work. We're not even talking about their the body work that they're doing, upper body, upper chest, you know, the strength stuff that they're doing and all of the other things. How do you make sure that they peak at the right time versus being burned out when the lights come on?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, I'm lucky because I I did so many Olympic games. Like the Olympics are a four-year buildup to a peak. And from that, I learned how to really taper and peak, guys. So the secret to peaking is that you don't ever want to drop the intensity. So intensity has to stay high, like you're still running fast all the way up until the time that you run, but you just drop the volume by 40%. So we're cutting back on all the extra volume, the teaching volume. Like you have to move away from teaching new things and just say, Okay, by week five, like you've learned pretty much what you've learned, and now it's about trusting the process. We're gonna drop the volume, and everything you do is gonna be fast. So we don't go out there and practice anything slow anymore. Like, nothing's like teach, learn, it's all fast. Um, so we we cut our session. If you just take like an example, you might have an hour and 20 minutes when you first start training. By the end of it, it's like 30 minutes and it's fast. You warm up, you run fast three times, you get out of there and you drop it down. So if you've seen us in the hallways in Indy, guys are running fast two days before, and everyone's like, Man, what are they doing? If you see us in our warmups before they run it, combine or pro day, guys are running fast. So we keep the speed in there, we just drop all the volume and they they tend to peak just from that.
SPEAKER_04How many days a week are you guys working on speed training leading up to the combined?
SPEAKER_03We do three. Uh I used to do two, but I realized you can get 30% more work if you just add another day. So we added the third day. So is it like Monday, Wednesday, Friday kind of thing? Or how yeah. Okay, so eat every other day. Yeah, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or fast. So Monday's like the early Excel day, kind of the starts, Wednesday's fast, and then Friday's like transition.
SPEAKER_04What day will be the recovery day?
SPEAKER_03So Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday are like your main recovery. Uh low days. So we have three high days and and three low days. So it's high, low, high, low, high, low. Um, and I found like in this process, like you have to you have to run often to run fast and peak. And then you just at the end, you take away one day, you take away that Friday, you give them an extra recovery day, and they peak. That's how we drop the volume. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00When you train for like lifting and just getting stronger, like you what you were five days, six days in a row? Or five six days in a week rather?
SPEAKER_04Getting ready for the compound?
SPEAKER_00No, just in general. Like, you're I guess my point is like when you strain, when you train the colour, I like to lab every day.
SPEAKER_01Why are you asking him? Don't ask me that question. I mean, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00If you show it right now, who's got the six pack right now? Let's show it. Just show it.
SPEAKER_04It was a little different for me, um, obviously being considered an undersized defensive tackle. I came in at 285, but from around 2017 to the day I retired, I played at 260 to 265 at 6'1 defensive tackle. And the lowest I was at was 255. And that was my 2018, my first Super Bowl. So, you know, people are like, How would you able to play that? I was like, I don't know. I had the leverage and I was fucking strong as a horse. You know, I was a guy that, you know, they had to put me in a regimen because sometimes I do a little too much. They're like, hey, we need you, hey, like we're gonna give you Wednesdays off. I'm like, I don't need Wednesdays off. All right, if you're gonna do that, I'm now I'm gonna do three workouts a day. And now they kind of like trying to no, but they had to trying to manage it with me because I I do a little too much. You know, that's just I ain't a guy that can just sit still, all right? So you trying to be like trying to give me a vet day. I'm like, I gotta do something to get better. I can't just sit around and do nothing. So if you're gonna give me a day left to do some recovery, but I gotta do some weight room shit too. I gotta get my kid stuff strong, keep my stuff conditioned.
SPEAKER_01They cut a day off of Aaron and he adds another workout in a different day.
SPEAKER_04That's how it was. So instead of two days, two workouts, I was doing three workouts that day.
SPEAKER_00So Les, like Aaron's got you know these world-renowned workouts where he's making guys that come visit with him throw up, and he's just like, You ready? That was a warm-up, right? So he's got that. What's a day in the life? Like, what is a heavy day for your guys? What walk me through that? What time are they on the track or in the building or in the facility? By the time they get there, by the time they go home, walk me through their day in the life.
SPEAKER_01And they're not on a track, they're they're on a field, they're on field trip. You're doing the same surface over the field as they're gonna run into combine.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, same surface. Right. So just disclaimer it's actually training for the combine from like a hard work perspective is significantly easier than training for football. You're you're training for one event that's very low volume and it's very intense, but it's like not crazy. So the schedule is pretty normal. So they start at 8:30 in the morning. We do about an hour and a half on the field. The hour and a half is like everything from like tissue prep and warm-ups and then post-recovery. Um, after that, they'll have lunch and then they hit the weight room, and then it's recovery. And it's pretty much that flow, those high days three days a week. And the low days are basically yoga instead of weight room. Um, we put pool work in there at times, they do rehab, a little bit more rehab massage. But the high days are relatively easy. It's one lift and it's one speed session, and we pack that in all by like one o'clock. You're you're pretty much done. Um, sessions aren't crazy long. It's all about how how intense we're doing it, but it's not a ton of, it's not hard. Like training for camp is significantly harder. Training for OTAs, all that's because you're not really training for, you're not like conditioning.
SPEAKER_04You you guys are working, but it ain't like you ain't conditioned to play a game. So that that's that was one thing that I like at the combine, you know, you start doing all them drills, you got you get a little windy, you gotta push through. I don't want to look tired, you know. And every drill you got to full run through full speed, you know, you you in you in shape, but you ain't like you ain't been like conditioning crazy to being like, you know, so it was a little different on that end too. So yeah, that's good work.
SPEAKER_01That's a big that's a big thing we have to tell the guys is post-combine for your pro day, it's it's all about the conditioning thing. Because when you're when you're working on your 40, you're doing tens, you're doing 20s, but you're not like doing position work and and hitting bags and you know, exerting that type of stuff. Yes, you're working hard, but a lot of it is so technique-based. So a lot of it is get in shape because pro day, they're gonna work you, and you don't want to be to your point, hands on your knees, and and and if you're a receiver, you get tired, no balls. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_04But my pro day I was tired of saying I was by myself too. They had me doing linebacker drills and all types of shit.
SPEAKER_01So that is brutal when it's a guy by himself, no no break with no rotation with anybody else.
SPEAKER_04Hey, Todd, I thought they're light-headed as hell. Like, I ain't gonna show it though.
SPEAKER_01So, when they're when you're doing your training, are they doing how many how many times are they doing starts versus I I mean uh the flying 20s and what is a flying 20? I hear about. And I mean, are they doing one to two starts to three starts? Is it a lot of talking, or is there like doing 20 starts every session?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so you do a lot more starts than you do high-speed stuff. You just know it's a risk. The more high speed stuff you do, the higher the risk. There's a day in the week, Wednesday, that's dedicated to running fast, and that'll be like fly 20s, which is basically build up and hit the back end of the 40-yard dash. And honestly, you probably can't do more than three to four reps of that. Like that's pretty much it. It's a short session, you build up, you hit it. We rep this start tons of times, like, and you might do 40-50 starts in a week, and you know it's it's relatively low intensity, like it's you're learning how to get in the position, you're learning how to execute it. And really the key there is like no one in this space has really learned how to do it well. So when you come to us, like it's a new skill, and in order to get better at a new skill, you need to rep it a thousand times. So we get as many reps as we can at the start. We'll do it in the afternoons, come back and practice. Starts are something you can do often now. From a timed perspective, every week we time tens, sometimes you time 20s, and then every once a week you time the back 20. Like some aspect of that.
SPEAKER_01And that's how you're and that's how you're projecting kind of what you think that they're gonna run. And do you share that with the guys or do you kind of keep that secret?
SPEAKER_03No, I tell them the truth. Like, I that's the that's the hardest part about my position is like I have to tell people bad news a lot. Like, but we we always layer it with like, okay, we're here today. This is what I want to see next week, and this is what we have to do to get there. And if we don't get there, then we're gonna do this. And it's always honest, always truthful.
SPEAKER_01And your Super Bowl, essentially, is the combine, right? Yeah, uh, and and you're you know, obviously you're sitting there watching it on TV. Uh the guys do you talk to the guys after they run their rep in between reps, number one and number two, before that, like when they first get there for the beginning of the week, they're tied up during the day at medical, at hospitals, they're doing interviews, they're doing all that stuff. But tell everyone what you guys do with your team, like you know, 11 o'clock at night or whatever it is that you do get to see the guys a little bit by a different position group because they're there for four or five days. And if you tapered them down towards the end and they haven't really done anything, you don't want it to be seven or eight days, and then all of a sudden they got to go run their 40 and they haven't done much.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you see that a lot where guys don't do anything that week and it hurts them. So we did is we get like a big suite, and in that suite, we have our therapist, we have our sports scientist, we have all the things that kind of make it look like home, and we keep the same schedule with the guys. So we're still training every day. We see them for starts one day, we see them for like tempo runs another day, we get in the weight room one day, but we're always repping the same things we've been practicing and training, and really the goal is like we want to keep them hot. I always say, like, combine, you have to run hot the whole week, and it's hard. You have to run hot mentally because you're getting questioned and you're going through evaluations and things. You have to run hard hot physically, so like you have to stay warm the whole time because if you cool down, number one, it's it's also a cold place, and it's like we've been in Cali, so your body's not used to it, it's freezing. So you have to stay hot throughout that week. So we're just touching on things. We're we're doing starts, we're building up, we're running fast, we're getting therapy. Um, guys are hopping in hyperbaric chamber and all that because A1 hooked it up with a suite. Um, so they're they're running hot there, and then essentially from that point, the time they get there to the time they run, everything is scripted. Like we've gone to 10 combines in a row. We script every minute of their day. Eat here, take a nap here, hyperbaric chamber here. Everything's scripted.
SPEAKER_01Because you when you're training the guys out in California and they're warming up, you're telling them, touch your toes, all right, do this, do that. You're putting them through the pre-warmu to stretch their body. But when they get to the combine, they're on the field, you're not on the field. So they now got to do it themselves. You give them a card, do they know what to do? Like, how do they do that? Because now they're on their own and there's only a certain time limit, too, and you want them to keep up the same routine.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so they have a card and a time limit, and we've practiced it four times before they get to indie. So this we call it stress test. We stress test them four times. First two are with the card, the second two are like use the card only if you need it. So they have it memorized, and then they go and they run. After they run, we FaceTime them. This is your time. This time when guys ran, we were kind of celebrating the whole time on the FaceTime. But normally we tell them what they did wrong. But like, uh to be honest, like this is the first year where every guy ran their fastest time the first run, minus Anthony Hill, who went 459 and then 4'5 on the second one, which was crazy. But most of the time we call them, tell them what they have to do to improve, and then they they improve it on their second run.
SPEAKER_01How nervous, how nervous are you when you're watching it?
SPEAKER_03Dude, I I don't think you probably didn't see me when they're running because I I get like so nervous and so weirded out. I'm like freaking out. I'm just like, I got everything on the line. It's all reflection of you. Yeah, it's a reflection of you for sure.
SPEAKER_01He's either gonna he gets blamed no matter what, um, and it's your fault. But it's true though, because here's what people don't understand you can train them all day long, they have to go execute, and everything is so precise. What's the difference between a 4-4 and a 4-7? Like a snap, right? It's so different, and like one step, one popping up a smidget early can affect things in such a big fact. You gotta literally hit it perfectly to kind of do what you want to do. That's that's not easy. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's a life of a coach.
SPEAKER_04That's a life of a coach. You can't go out there and do it, you can just try to prepare them to do it and hopefully they translate and do it. So that's a great reflection to you. And if they don't, if they fumble the fucking ball, you're like, God, damn. Yeah, you know, do you teach them?
SPEAKER_01Do you teach them like when you're out at the field in California and guys are running 40s, there's music, people are doing things, it's distracting. But when do you do you ever have like mental sessions with them from a visualization standpoint of like, look, pretend you're in the in Indy at the in the in in the stadium, you got hundreds of personnel watching you, it's quiet as can be as you and the finish line. Like, do you have anything like that where they can visualize it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, well, the first part is like we do like a we call it like a physical um meditation. So basically what we do is they come to a field, they come to the field and we cut the music. We don't talk to them, we just sit on the side, we tell them to warm themselves up. Everyone just stares at them like they're in a fishbowl, and they usually do really bad this day. It's a first day, and then they get mad at us, like, why'd you do that? And then we that night we do our like our speed meeting, and we're like, guys, like everyone failed that experiment. And it's hard to translate when you're in California, it's 80 degrees, you got your favorite song on, your best friends are around you. Hard to translate that to indie where it's quiet, no one's talking, no one's warming you up. There's no you know, so we try to stress test them four times and give them like an actual like visual of what it feels like and looks like, and it's on your own. And then also we do visualization. So, first part of the visualization is we play the combine for them. It's like, hey, look, this is what it looks like, this is what to expect. We draw a map of Indianapolis and then we tell them where to walk and how to move. Everything is they know exactly what they're gonna experience. And I think from like a nervous system perspective, if you're going into a game against Green Bay and you know what to expect, you know it's gonna be cold, you know it's gonna be loud, you play better because you have the expectation. When you walk into an environment, your nervous system's not expecting that level of whatever it is, quietness or or loudness, whatever it is, it's a it's a foreign threat, and you get nervous. So we try to make it as regular as possible, and we almost make it like hype it up more than what it actually is. So when they get there, they're like, nothing. This is this is chill. This is cool.
SPEAKER_01You mean you mean uh you don't have guys calm and cool like uh A D when he looked over at a coach and winked at him before he started his 40s or whatever? Like, and that's what Aaron did. He told the story about it. It's crazy. He's there.
SPEAKER_04But being prepared is everything, getting ready for that moment. You know what to expect. So when you walk this, like, oh man, I'm we've been doing this. I'm I'm good, I'm ready to go. You know what I'm saying? All you gotta do is go out there and perform.
SPEAKER_01Any fun stories or like success stories or any big wins from a training standpoint that stick out for you?
SPEAKER_04Not necessarily just the season, doesn't it? I know they're all big wins, the top ones, you'd be like, you know, or surprises.
SPEAKER_03Jeremiah Love. Like everyone knows Jeremiah is fast. Everyone knows, like you watch his tape, he's fast. But he has this thing about him where in training, it's just like everything's just smooth. It just it looks good, but it's just like smooth. You're not gonna get like a PR, PR, PR. Like, he's not gonna go out there and give like 130% effort. He's gonna give you exactly what you asked for, right?
SPEAKER_01PR personal uh what is that a personal record?
SPEAKER_03PR like personal record. Like, yep, like he's not he's not gonna go out there and give you everything on that 40 test day. Because he he knows he can get he can run what he's supposed to run and just kind of relax and chill. So the whole week we're just a little bit stressed because we're like, all right, like how do we get Jeremiah like hype? Because he's very chill. He's very chill. So all week we're checking in, like, hey, you sleeping good, are you eating good? He's like, Yep, yep, yep. And the day of the 40, he comes into the little performance center. He's got this look in his eye. He looks like a madman, just like a serial killer. Like, I'm like, bro, what are you about to do? Like, and I was like, hey, like just Want to get on the table? He's like, No. I was like, Do you want to do some warm-up stuff? He's like, No. Like, okay, what do you want to do? He's like, I want to go run this 40. So he leaves the performance center. I see him warming up. His dad calls me. His dad's like, Man, like, this dude looks different. What'd you tell him? I was like, nothing. I didn't honestly didn't even talk to him. And then uh he runs his first 40. He goes like 438. And I don't know if you guys were watching on TV, but his dad like went like this, put his hand in in his head. He's like, Oh, dang, I wasn't fast enough. Because he thought that they didn't show the time on the screen. He they thought it was like a 4-4 something because it looked like he was jogging. And then he calls me. I'm like, dude, he ran a 4-3-8. He was like, Oh, oh, we all went crazy. Jeremiah calls me, we go crazy. And we're just like, Yes, he ran 436 uh official. It was so cool to see because Jeremiah is such he has such good film. The 436 matches what what you see on film, which is kind of what you want to do. You want them to confirm what they see on film with the time, and then he just executed it perfect, and everything was good.
SPEAKER_01It's so funny how you how you say that. Because Zach, remember when you were at the combine with me and we it was like 11:30, 12 at night, and Jameer Gibbs was warming up, whatever, and I'm talking to the trainer and the speed coach, and he's like, I don't know. He's had a hamstring the whole darn time he's been here. I think he's gonna be fine, but I I I don't know. And and Jameer was so calm, cool, and collected, and then all of a sudden the lights go on and the switch goes off and boom, you know, 4-3, whatever it is. And it's it's it's awesome to see that. It's crazy watching that.
SPEAKER_00Les what impresses you more? A skilled guy that runs a 4-2-7, or a guy like I don't know, uh Lane Johnson, Jordan Davis that are 340, 350 running a 475.
SPEAKER_03It's definitely the big guys like all right. This year, shout out athletes first on this. So Spencer Final, 491, Axe, 491, uh Jalen Farmer, 493. Then we had DJ Campbell, 501, and then we had Jake Slaughter, 551. Those are all the linemen that we had, and and everybody crushed it. But these dudes, like if you look at what they ran, these dudes all hit about 20 miles per hour at 320 pounds average. It's nuts. Like, it's it's way harder. It's way harder to do that at 320.
SPEAKER_01It does drive me crazy because the media doesn't focus on the weight part as much as they do the time. And I'll never forget like Brian Thomas a few years ago, flew and he was like four three, whatever it was. But then Xavier Worthy ran and it was whatever it was. But I'm like, he was like 30 pounds less than Brian Thomas was, and the times weren't that different. That's way more impressive what Brian Thomas did at 30 pounds heavy or whatever it was, you know, compared to a guy who's 30 pounds less who goes and does that. So to your point, on a big old lineman or whoever, those those types of numbers are an Aaron Donald running what he did at that, you know. That's that's that's crazy.
SPEAKER_04And nowadays, I feel like everybody's fast nowadays. I'm like, God damn, these kids are running four, three, four, two. Everybody's running like fours. I mean, even an offensive defensive lineman's fast. I'm like, golly.
SPEAKER_00Who holds the record for the fastest speed at your uh facility on GPS?
SPEAKER_03Um, on GPS, John Ross 24-5. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00He'd be illegal in a in a school zone. You pull him over.
SPEAKER_03He can run. It's crazy. It's I mean, we've had a couple of 24s, 23s. Jeremia Love hit 23-5. I don't think people realize how good that kid is.
SPEAKER_01I wish Nick Singleton didn't hurt his foot at the senior bowl because I know his training was off the charts.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Honestly, all right. Don't quote me on this, but you can quote me on this. Is he would have ran 4-3 mid for sure. Like he can he Nick Nick can run, and like his acceleration is just different. Like, I I've only seen that acceleration one other time, and that was Jeremiah Love. And they're neck and neck in training. It's it was unbelievable to watch. Unbelievable.
SPEAKER_01And and weighing 220 or whatever. Uh, I mean, it's it's not it's not like he's 180 pounds. It's it's crazy. It's awesome to have Les on. Like he did a phenomenal job. Um, everyone loved it, and the players were happy. And obviously, when you get the results, it's amazing, but it's a lot of time energy that goes into this stuff and a lot of detail and a lot of different programs for different guys. It's not a cookie-cutter approach, which is what it's all about. I mean, and you know, Les is very, you know, you can tell he's very even keeled and all that kind of stuff. But um I'm sure it was very rewarding to see the different times, including, you know, LSU's pro day with Wes Weeks finally having his opportunity to do his thing. So we just thought it was a relevant show because you know, Combine finished, and now we're all in pro days, and guys are still running their 40s and doing the 510-5 and the three comb, which by the way, we didn't even really get the chance to talk about, but there's some serious technique with that stuff too, with you know, where to go into the turn and how where you know which hand to touch on the ground and how many steps you're doing and how to go sideways, and that's some wild stuff too, huh?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Well, it's uh it's uh it's like learning ballroom dancing in eight weeks. Like how good can you get a ballroom? Because if you get good at the test, it's just don't tempt AD, man.
SPEAKER_00You mean dancing with the stars real fast, right?
SPEAKER_01A D's AD's not a ballroom guy, he's more of a salsa guy, but I mean he can he can move those hips like nobody.
SPEAKER_00Uh in AD, eight weeks to do anything, man, even internationally known, locally respected for sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's the combine though. You learn you learn a dance that you won't do again, and you know, like you can be good at it if you have if you're like low to the ground quick and all those things, but you could also learn it. Like anyone can learn it. Like Spencer Fano hit a 7-3 Eldrill, which at 320 pounds, it's crazy. Like it's nuts. So you can get good at it for sure.
SPEAKER_00For those parents that are listening to the show less that can't afford your uh legendary$20,000 piece of equipment that will uh get these guys faster and they want to get better for their you know their young guys' uh high school football seasons or Pee-Wee football seasons. What kind of drills can you have them working on out there that obviously they're not preparing for the 40, but they're preparing to get faster and help them in their sport?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I trained this gold medalist long jumper named Jeffrey Henderson, and I said, Jeff, what'd you do growing up? He said, I just ran hills. He ran hills every day. And I think honestly, like every kid should run hills at least three times a week. Like, you're not gonna get sore from it, you're not gonna get too tired from it, but it builds your ability to accelerate to reach your peak speed sooner. Um, and it's very easy to do, and it's free. So I would run hills. Like, don't focus on technique, just run hills, and you'll get better as you get stronger. Um, come to a camp. I have free camps all the time.
SPEAKER_00So Les Spellman, the speed performance guru, the man who gets results. Thanks for joining us here on the Intercycle Podcast. Continued success, and uh, we'll see you down the road.
SPEAKER_03Yes, sir. Thank you guys. Appreciate it, I'll be back.