Tony Holler is a track and field coach and a football and basketball physical trainer. He works at Plainfield North High School. He is also a member of the Illinois Track & Field Hall of Fame and co-director of the Track Football Consortium with Chris Korfist. Tony Holler is the author of the “Feed the Cats” training method. In this post, you’ll learn how their athletes train for speed during the off-season.

It’s really important to understand that less is more. You need to be essentialist. Essentialism is the disciplined pursuit of less. Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it´s about to how to get the right things done. The discipline pursuit of less which is really important in speed training.

With the “Feed the Cats” program basically cats are are athletes. We want athletes. When you ask any coach to define “athlete” or “athletic”, they always say: fast, explosive… Those are always the first two words. So if those are the first two words, those are the things that we need to chase in the off season.

Coach Tony Holler believes the speed is just not another bucket to be filled. He believes that as you increase max velocity linear speed, everything grows with it.

We do want to create apex predators, which is not just speed. Speed may be the most important thing. We’re gonna sprint fast, we’re gonna lift heavy, we’re going to jump high and far, and we’re going to bounce. According to Tony Holler, those are the four pillars of athleticism. 

APEX PREDATOR

• Sprint fast
• Lift heavy
• Jump high/far
• Bounce

It’s important to know way too many coaches want to do capacity work constantly and if you’re doing capacity work without first developing speed, you’re not going to develop speed. However if you develop speed, that is to say, if you can run faster, you can run fast over and over again. So you should always train speed before you train repeated speed.

Speed creates sprint capacity. Sprint capacity does not improve speed.

The same can be said about speed endurance. Too many coaches go right to that speed endurance thing. Their athletes run a whole lot and they never develop the quality that’s most important which is how fast you run. For example, Marcelus Moore could run 24 miles an hour. That made it pretty easy for him to run 48 seconds in the 400 because all he had to do was run 19 miles an hour for 400 meters. It’s pretty easy for a guy that has that kind of speed reserve to back off and do it for a long time.

Speed creates speed endurance. Speed endurance does not improve speed. To break 48.00 seconds in the 400 meter dash, you must run 19 mph for 400. Not too hard if you can run 24 mph.

Coach Tony Holler likes to say you need to:

• Be general in the weight room. For him people are specific.
• Be extreme in speed training. Too many people are general in speed training.
• Be specific in practice. So let the sport train the sport. Get fast away from the sport, and get strong away from the sport.

Be general in the weight room. Be extreme in speed training. Be specific in practice.

Tired is the enemy. You must train fresh. This is another one of the huge mistakes that coaches make. Somehow coaches are in search of getting their guys tired and sore. They think that the more they do, the better. Tony Holler tells you the opposite: the more you do, the slower you’ll get.

You must train fresh. Tired is the enemy.

Coach Tony Holler´s pyramid is much different than most pyramids. Most pyramids of coaches is all about the base being hard work, soreness, just grinding, and that type of stuff. His base is “rest, recovery and sleep with nutrition involved”, and then we get right to sprinting.

Coaches love to embrace the suck but in “Feed the Cats” we say: “Fuck the grind”. If you are grinding constantly, you’re most likely getting slower every day. Coaches that do this, they don’t time athletes so they don’t even know they’re getting slower. 

Coach Tony Holler believes that winning is better than hard work. A lot of coaches have that backwards, that hard work will somehow create winning. Tony Holler says that you better focus on winning because he thinks that performance is more important than fatigue. What that means is that we performed in off season workout yesterday, we will perform again today. In an off season workout we perform every day and we measure performance.

Winning > Hard work

Performance > Fatigue

We want to play the long game, especially with coaches like Tony Holler who are starting with 14 years olds that we want them to be fast when they’re 24. We’re not trying to get them fast today and tomorrow. We’re trying to learn how to be a sprinter. 

“If you make a profit every day, you will never go broke.”

Les Spellman

OFF SEASON SPEED TRAINING

This is how Tony Holler´s athletes train and how they start the winter. Basically they do a 4-daywork week because this works for them. They do not have good attendance on Fridays. So they do a speed workout on Monday, an X-factor workout on Tuesday, a speed workout on Wednesday, and another X-factor workout on Thursday. They take Friday off. If they went to a 5-daywork week, which Tony Holler doesn’t really believe in, they would do speed woukout again on Friday. And when do they lift? They always lift after workouts, not before. Coach Tony Holler says: “Never let the weight room interfere with speed”. In addition, never let the weight room interfere with a kid’s sport.

• Monday: Speed
• Tuesday: X-factor
• Wednesday: Speed
• Thursday: X-factor
• Friday: Off
• Saturday: Off
• Sunday: Off

Lift after workouts.

Never allow the weight room to interfere with speed.

Never allow the weight room to interfere with the sport in season.

SPEED WORKOUTS

On a speed day the athletes do 10 speed drills in 10 minutes, and then they do 3 timed sprints, (for example, 3 timed 40 yd). They always take 5 minutes rest between the timed sprints. They always record, rank and publish. Tony Holler calls this “the food of cats”. What do they do? They do 10 yard flies, 10 meter flies, 20 yard competition flies, 35 meter flies outside on the curve, and 40 yard flies outside. They do accelerations but they never do 10 because Tony Holler doesn´t want guys to rush their acceleration. Instead they do a 15 yard acceleration usually out of the blocks into a 10 yard fly. And then they also do dashes like 40 yards, sometimes extended to 55 meters. So they do a lot of different things.

Speed day: 10 speed drills + 3 timed sprints

Record, rank and publish: The food of cats.

• Flys: 10 yd, 10 m, 20 yd, 35 m, 40 yd.
• Acceleration: 15 yd into a 10 yd fly.
• Sprints: 40 yd, 55 m.

They hand out miles per hour wristbands. This is absolutely huge. Tony Holler suggests that everybody do this. He also suggests that you look into truck stick for the big guys because if you have a 220 pound athlete that can run 20 miles an hour, that’s damn good. He’s not ever going to be at the top of your list because he’s only running 20 miles an hour, but when you multiply his weight times his speed, that’s amazing. Truck stick is another name for the physics equation of momentum.

Truck stick (Momentum)

p = mV; p = Kg x m/s

X-FACTOR

X-factor are exercises. These are not scientifically proven to make you super fast, but they have a reasonable expectation of getting you faster. Fast guys are good at certain things. We are trying to get better at bouncing, snap (that’s elasticity), power, big split (trying to get a big split of the thighs), and hardwiring (habit forming).

X-factor day

• Bounce: pogo jumps…
• Snap: lunge…
• Power: bounding to see how far we can bound in 6 bounds, triple broad jump, high throws with a 14-pound med ball, wall busters…
• Big split: long lunge, extreme isometric lunge…
• Hardwiring: wickets (hands up, timed, competition…)

In a drill like the air lunge you´re working at the same time on bounce, on snap, on power and big split. This is one of the best drills you could possibly do. Slow guys can’t do that.

“Sprint as fast as possible, as often as possible, staying as fresh as possible.”

“Rest, recovery, sleep.”

“Tired is the enemy, not the goal.”

“Do less, achieve more.”

“Never let today ruin tomorrow. Never burn the steak.”

“You don´t plant beans and grow corn.”

“Speed grows like a tree.”

“Speed is the tide that lifts all boats.”

“Speed is the best barometer of health.”

Tony Holler

“In speed development, the nervous system only understands quality.”

Boo Schexnayder

“Always choose quality over quantity.
This rule applies to every life situation.”

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

“The quickest way to destroy fast twitch muscle fibers
is to bathe them in lactic acid for prolonged periods of time.”

Kelly Baggett

Bibliographic references:

• Holler T. [Coach Tony Holler]. (2023). Off Season Speed Training – What We Do & How Often [Video]. Recovered from https://youtu.be/f4yFnSfM1i0?si=bDQwoxzniwqEtKWh
• Holler T. [Coach Tony Holler]. (2023). Off Season Speed Training – In-Depth Breakdown (with Kyle Bolton & Les Spellman) [Video]. Recovered from https://youtu.be/axWYg-zEcnU?si=9oZ1s_VHAlJ_wNjs
• Holler T. [Coach Tony Holler]. (2024). Feed the Cats: Speed Training Through a New Lens [Video]. Recovered from https://youtu.be/xz32rvnxSrA?si=fyTxMw0BCctF9OEQ