Holds made Lum’s group faster over 30 metres and Dhull’s over 10. Use them across a range of knee positions, and keep lifting for jumping, shuttles and squat strength. No trial has found one correct starting angle.

Thirty-three national floorball players completed 12 sessions in Lum and colleagues’ randomized trial. Each was put in one of three groups: a control group, short sharp pushes, or long sustained holds. An isometric hold means pushing hard against a fixed bar or wall that never moves. They were then tested over 30 m and in held squat pushes at 90° and 120°. ¹

The sustained-hold group improved its 30-metre time more than the control group. It also pushed harder in both squat positions and built force faster at 120°. But Lum did not record early split times, first-step knee position or the force put into the ground, so the faster time does not show where in the sprint the gain came from.

The first step needs more than an angle

Nineteen semi-professional footballers ran 20-metre sprints in Wdowski and Gittoes’ study of the first step. How hard a player pushed backwards on that first right-foot contact tracked closely with their split times, with correlations from 0.66 to 0.751. ²

The footballers accelerated by driving force straight back while wasting little of it sideways. A knee angle fixes where the joint sits, but says nothing about which way the player pushes or how long the foot stays down.

Takai and colleagues measured 67 footballers and 17 sprinters over 60-metre sprints on a 50-metre run of force plates. The fastest footballers matched the sprinters’ early speed with shorter ground contacts and quicker steps, even though each step pushed them forward less. ³

Two players can reach the same early speed in different ways: more force, longer push, or faster feet. Giving them the same hold angle because their knees look alike assumes they solve the sprint the same way, which neither study showed.

Strength spreads across a range

Thirteen participants in Lanza, Balshaw and Folland’s controlled study trained knee extensions at a fixed 65° for 14 sessions over four weeks. Their maximum push increased at the position they trained and at three of the four other positions tested. ⁴

The 50° gain came close to the improvement at 65°, while 80° — the same distance away on the other side — gained less. Strength did rise at positions they never trained, but not in a neat, even spread around the trained angle, and not in a pattern that would hold for every player or exercise.

A 65° knee extension and a 90° squat are also different jobs. They differ in hip position, the direction of the push, the equipment and even how the angle is measured, so the numbers on the two are not the same football position.

Seventeen college Kho-Kho athletes completed five weeks in Zhang and colleagues’ small trial comparing holds against lifting. The hold group improved more in right-knee pushing force at the 75° test and in early speed over an 8-metre sprint started from a squat. ⁵

Zhang’s programme mixed knee-extension holds, squat holds and wall sits rather than training only at 75°. So it links a mixed hold programme to one gain at one angle and a faster start, but cannot show the sprint improved because the training matched that angle.

Eleven of the original 28 athletes dropped out, leaving groups of nine and eight. There was also no group that simply carried on as normal, and the two groups were matched on how hard the work felt rather than on how much work they actually did — so normal sport training, repeated testing and unequal workloads could all have played a part.

Oranchuk and colleagues reviewed 26 studies and found that three things changed the results: how stretched the muscle was during the hold, how hard the athlete tried to push fast, and how heavy the effort was. Holds at longer muscle lengths built more muscle and carried over better to moving lifts, trying to push explosively helped rapid-force results, and tendons only changed when the effort was at 70 percent or more. ⁶

A coach picking a hold should write down the body position, how fast the player is meant to push, how hard, and what it is meant to improve. The knee angle on its own tells the player nothing about how the effort was applied or what should change.

Football’s broader trade-off

Dhull and colleagues split 105 highly trained male players at random into three groups: holds, lifting, or football only. Both training groups used contrast work, meaning a heavy effort followed straight away by an explosive jump. Ninety-seven players completed two sessions a week across ten off-season weeks. ⁷

The hold group paired squat and single-leg holds with jumps. The lifting group paired loaded squats and deadlifts with the same kind of jumps. Because both included jumps, neither programme’s sprint gain can be pinned on the heavy exercise alone.

These are the plain before-and-after averages. The researchers drew their group comparisons from figures adjusted for where each group started, so the raw numbers here should not be used to name a sprint winner.

Both programmes cut straight-line sprint and planned turning times by similar amounts. Lifting produced bigger gains in jumping, repeated shuttles and squat strength, so loaded squats and deadlifts stay in the programme when those qualities matter in the same block.

Holds can take the heavy slot when the equipment for loaded squats is not there and early straight-line speed is the priority. Players still need jumps and sprinting. Lifting stays central when the same block also has to improve jumping, repeated accelerating and braking, or full-range squat strength.

Dhull studied highly trained adult men in the off-season. The trial cannot tell you how much to do in season, cannot be applied to women or academy players, and does not show that its 90° squat hold matched the knee position players actually used in the faster 10-metre sprint.

Choosing the next block

Twenty-three professionals from one club were tracked across 13 matches in Oliva-Lozano and colleagues’ study. Most sprints started from a jog of about 5–6 km/h rather than from standing, and both the starting speed and the demands differed by position. ⁸

Starting from standing still tests how well a player accelerates, but it does not copy every match situation. Players who mostly accelerate while already moving need rolling starts at the speeds they actually enter at, as well as flat-out starts from standing.

Measure pushing force with the same equipment, body position and instructions used before the block. Test the chosen position and at least one position either side of it: that shows whether the gain stayed in one spot or spread across a useful range.

The 10-metre split needs the same start position, surface, footwear, timing gates and routine every time. Dhull averaged three runs and reported a repeatability score of 0.74 over 10 m against 0.95 over 40 m, so the early split is the less trustworthy number.

Altmann and colleagues reviewed 90 studies and 167 football speed tests. Most total and average times repeated well, scoring above 0.75, with run-to-run variation under three percent. Clubs should work out how much their own setup varies before calling a small improvement a real one. ⁹

A standing jump or a lifting strength test checks the qualities Dhull’s lifting group improved more. A rolling-start sprint checks the match situation a standing start misses, and the position-by-position force test shows whether the player adapted to the hold itself.

Naming one correct football angle would need a trial that measures each player’s knee and hip positions through the first 5 m, gives some players holds that match those positions and others holds that do not, keeps the lifting and sprinting equal across groups, and reports early split times. No study has done that.

If pushing force rises only at the chosen position and the 10-metre time does not beat the player’s normal test-to-test wobble, cut the holds and put lifting and sprint starts into the next block.