To train sprinting and jumping in the same week without them fighting, put the fastest, most explosive work first in every session while you are fresh, keep at least 48 hours between two maximal-effort days, and let the lift support the speed work rather than compete with it. You do not add jumps to a sprint week. You build one week that does both, and order is what makes it work.
Updated August 2026. This is the Film Room, the 1st & Goal Athletics blog out of Ocean Township, New Jersey, where we coach athletes across Ocean and Monmouth County. The question we hear most from athletes trying to program their own week is some version of "how do I get faster and jump higher at the same time without one wrecking the other?" It is the right question, and the answer is not a list of jump exercises. It is a week. Here is how we build one.
Sprinting and jumping come from the same place
Sprinting and jumping are the same quality expressed in two directions, which is exactly why training them together works and why doing it carelessly backfires. Both are maximal, explosive efforts that ask your nervous system to fire as many muscle fibers as hard and as fast as possible in a fraction of a second. A sprint is horizontal power into the ground. A vertical jump is that same power aimed up. The muscles, the intent, and the demand on your central nervous system are nearly identical.
That shared root is the good news and the trap. The good news: work that improves one tends to carry over to the other, so you are not choosing between them. The trap: because they draw from the same well, stacking them badly drains that well faster than either would alone. You cannot treat a jump day and a sprint day as two separate, unrelated efforts, because your nervous system does not see them that way. It sees two withdrawals from the same account.
Why doing both badly is worse than doing one well
Doing both sprint work and jump work badly in the same week is worse than doing just one of them well, because half-recovered maximal work trains you to be fast while tired, which is the opposite of the goal. Speed and power are built at full freshness. The whole point is to produce your single fastest, hardest effort, then recover, then do it again. When you cram sprints and jumps into back-to-back days without spacing, every session after the first one starts from a nervous system that is still paying off the last one.
What that produces is an athlete who is very good at grinding out mediocre efforts and never touches their actual ceiling. You feel worked, so it feels like training. But you spent the week rehearsing sub-maximal speed, and speed is a skill of maximal intent. If the choice is between two hard, well-rested speed-and-power days or four half-cooked ones, the two clean days win every time. This is the same reason a program that ignores recovery quietly caps itself, which we break down in why every program is half recovery.
What goes first in a session, and why the order is not negotiable
Inside any single session, the fastest and most explosive work goes first, always, because speed and power can only be trained when you are fresh, and everything else can be trained tired. This is the one rule that is not up for debate. The order in a session is:
- First: the highest-speed, most explosive work. Sprints, jumps, and anything maximal and short. Fresh nervous system, full rest between reps.
- Second: strength work. The lifts that build the force behind the speed. Still demanding, but it tolerates a little fatigue.
- Last: conditioning and accessory work. The stuff that is supposed to be done tired, because being tired is the point of it.
Do it backwards and you have sabotaged the session before the part that mattered. A "quick" conditioning finisher done before sprints means every sprint after it is slow, and slow sprints train slowness. If a workout has jumps or sprints in it, they come off the top, while you are the freshest you will be all day. Nothing about that order changes with the athlete or the sport.
Where the lift lands in the week
The lift belongs on the same day as the speed work, right after it, not on its own day sandwiched between sprint days, because a heavy leg day is a maximal nervous-system effort too and it needs the same 48-hour spacing a sprint day does. This is the mistake that catches people who are trying to do everything: they run a sprint day, a heavy squat day, and a jump day on three consecutive days and wonder why nothing is improving. To your nervous system, that is three maximal days in a row with no recovery between any of them.
Pairing the lift with the speed work solves it. You are already fresh and firing for the sprints and jumps, and the strength work rides on top of that same primed state. Then the next day is genuinely easy, and the day after can be your next maximal effort. One hard day does the speed, the power, and the strength together; the recovery is real because the hard days are actually spaced. Strength that never transfers to speed is usually a spacing problem, not a strength problem, which we get into in strong but slow: why the squat number is not showing up.
Rest is a training variable, not a gap
Rest between reps and between days is not downtime, it is part of the prescription, and cutting it is the fastest way to turn speed training into conditioning by accident. Two kinds of rest matter here. Inside a session, the rest between sprint or jump reps has to be long, often several minutes, because a maximal effort needs a nearly full nervous system to repeat at full quality. Cut that rest to make it "harder" and every rep after the first is slower. You did not make the session tougher, you made it a different, worse session.
Across the week, the rest between two maximal days is what lets the adaptation actually happen. You do not get faster during the sprint. You get faster in the recovery after it, when the body rebuilds to handle the next one. A week with no easy days is a week where nothing consolidates. If every rep and every day feels the same level of hard, none of them was your fastest, and fast is the whole point.
What a real week looks like, in season and out
A workable week puts two maximal speed-and-power-plus-lift days far enough apart to recover between them, fills the gaps with easy or skill work, and shrinks in volume once games start. Out of season, when training is the priority, a clean template looks like this:
- Day 1: Maximal day. Sprints and jumps first, then the lift. Full rest, full intent.
- Day 2: Easy or off. Mobility, light aerobic work, skill practice. Nothing that taxes the nervous system.
- Day 3: Second maximal day. Same structure as Day 1, maybe a different emphasis (more jump, or more acceleration).
- Day 4: Easy or off.
- Day 5: Optional lighter power or skill day, depending on how recovered you are.
- Weekend: rest, or sport.
In season, the games are the maximal efforts, so the training week gets smaller, not larger. You keep one true speed-and-power day to hold onto what you built, drop the second maximal training day because the game is filling that role, and spend the rest of the week recovering and staying sharp. The athletes who lose their speed mid-season are almost always the ones who kept training like it was July. The preseason version of this build is in football preseason conditioning, and where your numbers should sit is in speed benchmarks for high school athletes.
The signs the week is beating you
The clearest sign your week is beating you is that your fast work is getting slower, because a well-built week should have you producing your best efforts, not grinding out declining ones. Watch for these:
- Your times or jumps are trending down, not up, over two or three weeks despite consistent work.
- You feel flat and heavy on your maximal days, not springy. Speed days should feel good, not like a slog.
- Nagging tendons and joints, especially knees and Achilles, which is often too much high-intent volume with too little recovery.
- Your warmup never quite "turns on." If you never feel fast, the week is not letting you recover enough to be fast.
Any of these means the answer is almost never more work. It is more spacing, more rest between reps, or one fewer maximal day. The week is a system, and when it is beating you, you fix it by subtracting, not adding.
Common questions about training speed and power together
Can you train sprinting and jumping in the same week?
Yes, and you should, because they build the same explosive quality in two directions. The key is spacing and order: put the sprints and jumps first in a session while you are fresh, keep at least 48 hours between two maximal-effort days, and let easy or skill days fill the gaps. Trained together with proper rest, sprint work and jump work reinforce each other. Crammed into back-to-back days, they drain the same nervous system and both stall.
Should you sprint or lift first in a workout?
Sprint first, always. Speed and explosive work can only be trained at full freshness, while strength work tolerates a little fatigue. If you lift first, every sprint afterward is run on tired legs and a taxed nervous system, which trains you to be slow. The order inside every session is fastest and most explosive first, strength second, conditioning last.
How many days a week should you train for speed and power?
For most athletes, two true maximal days a week, spaced at least 48 hours apart, is the sweet spot out of season, with easy or skill days in between. More than that rarely helps because speed is built by quality efforts followed by recovery, not by accumulating tired reps. In season, one maximal training day is often enough because the games themselves are maximal efforts.
Why am I not getting more explosive even though I train hard?
Usually because the hard work is not spaced to let you recover, so you are training tired instead of fast. Explosive gains come from full-effort work followed by real recovery, not from stacking maximal days back to back. If your jumps and sprints are trending flat or down, the fix is almost always more rest between efforts and one fewer hard day, not more volume.
How much rest do you need between sprint reps?
Long enough to repeat the effort at full quality, which for true maximal sprints often means several minutes between reps. Speed is a skill of maximal intent, so a rep run on an under-recovered nervous system is a slower rep that trains slowness. If you are cutting rest to make the session feel harder, you have quietly turned a speed session into a conditioning session.
Should you keep the same training week during the season?
No. In season the games are your maximal efforts, so the training week should shrink, not stay the same. Keep one true speed-and-power day to maintain what you built and drop the second maximal training day, spending the rest of the week recovering and staying sharp. Athletes who train in season like it is the off-season are the ones who lose a step by October.
Building a week that makes an athlete both faster and more explosive is exactly the kind of thing a facility does and a video cannot, because it depends on how the whole week fits together for one specific athlete. If you want that built and coached in person, see how we structure training at 1st & Goal, from Ocean Township and across Monmouth County, and get in touch to set up a session.