How to Test Athletic Speed: 40-Yard Dash, 10m Sprint & Pro Agility
Master the drills used by elite athletes and coaches to measure, benchmark, and dramatically improve your explosive speed.
The best exercises for speed depend on which quality you are training: sled sprints over 10 to 15 meters build first-step power for the 10-meter sprint, block starts and broad jumps develop rate of force development for the 40-yard dash, and eccentric squat work with lateral plyometrics sharpens the deceleration and re-acceleration the pro agility shuttle demands.
- A single sprint time ranks an athlete; split data from structured tests separates acceleration, top speed, and change-of-direction ability into trainable targets.
- 10-Yard split most diagnostic: The 10-yard split within the 40-yard dash is often more useful than the final time, because electronic timing removes the reaction-time variance that hand-timing introduces.
- 10-Meter predicts lower-body power: Because almost the entire 10-meter sprint falls within the acceleration phase, the result correlates strongly with lower-body power and is the clearest measure of initial burst speed.
- The pro agility shuttle demands eccentric strength and lateral hip stability, so athletes who are fast in a straight line will not necessarily perform well on it.
- 30 to 45 minutes: A 10-meter sprint, a 40-yard dash with a 10-yard split, and a pro agility shuttle takes roughly 30 to 45 minutes per athlete and covers acceleration, top speed, and direction change in one session.
Where to start
Dashr 4-Gate Wireless Timing System for Speed and Agility Testing with Real-Time Data
Dashr 3-Gate Wireless Timing System for Speed & Agility Performance Testing
Why Speed Testing Is More Than Just Racing to a Cone
Coaches and athletes have been timing sprints for decades, but the way that data gets used has changed enormously. A raw time tells you where someone ranks. A series of well-structured tests tells you why, and that distinction is what turns a training program from guesswork into a plan.
Speed is multidimensional. An athlete might accelerate quickly off the line but lose ground at top speed. Another might be elite at change-of-direction agility but slow through the first ten meters. Without separating these qualities into distinct measurements, you are essentially using a single blood pressure reading to diagnose an entire cardiovascular system. Testing protocols exist precisely to isolate variables, so that training time goes where it will actually move the needle.
The three protocols covered here, the 40-yard dash, the 10-meter sprint, and the pro agility shuttle, each measure something different. The 40-yard dash captures acceleration through a mid-distance sprint with a strong emphasis on the first ten yards. The 10-meter sprint isolates pure first-step explosiveness. The pro agility shuttle adds deceleration, lateral movement, and direction change to the picture. Together, they give a coach a reasonably complete profile of an athlete's movement capacity.
The 40-Yard Dash: Setup, Execution, and What the Numbers Mean
The 40-yard dash became the standard NFL combine test largely for practical reasons. It is long enough to show acceleration through a mid-distance, it fits on any grass or turf field, and it has enough history behind it that comparison databases are rich. The split times within the run are often more diagnostic than the final number.
A proper setup requires a clearly marked starting line and a finish at exactly 40 yards. The athlete starts from a three-point or two-point stance, and timing begins at first movement rather than a verbal start command. This matters because hand-timing introduces reaction-time variance that electronic timing eliminates. Research on sprint testing reliability consistently finds that electronic timing gates reduce test-retest variability significantly compared to handheld stopwatches, with differences of two to four hundredths of a second common across trained timers.
The splits within the 40 are where the real coaching information lives. The 10-yard split reflects starting power and initial acceleration. The 10-to-20 split captures the transition phase. The final 20 yards tell you about top-end velocity. An athlete who runs a 4.55 with a 1.55 ten-yard split is a very different athlete than one who runs the same total time with a 1.75 split. The former is fast off the line but slows late. The latter is slow to start but reaches a higher top speed. Training emphasis for each should be completely different.
The 10-Meter Sprint: Testing Pure Acceleration
If the 40-yard dash is the general practitioner of speed testing, the 10-meter sprint is the specialist. It looks at one thing: how quickly an athlete can go from stationary to full effort over a very short distance. Nearly all of that distance falls within the acceleration phase, which means strength, rate of force development, and starting mechanics dominate the result.
The test is popular in soccer, rugby, and track and field programs, where initial burst speed determines whether an athlete can win a 50-50 ball or beat a defender off the line. Studies in team sport science consistently show that 10-meter sprint time correlates strongly with measures of lower-body power, particularly countermovement jump height. This makes it a useful secondary metric alongside jump testing for evaluating whether a strength block is actually translating into athletic output on the field.
Setup is straightforward: a start line, a finish gate at exactly 10 meters, and ideally a second gate at five meters if you want to examine the very first push. The athlete should have a consistent starting position across all test sessions. Even a small change in foot placement or stance width can shift the time by a meaningful margin, which is why coaches who run 10-meter tests regularly will often photograph or video the start position so it can be replicated on retest days.
Among the best exercises for speed at this phase of the movement, short acceleration work ranks highest. Resisted sled sprints over 10 to 15 meters build the posterior chain strength that feeds first-step power. Block starts and falling starts train the body to express force quickly at the angles needed. Plyometric work, particularly broad jumps and bounding, develops the rate of force development that often separates average from elite 10-meter times.
The Pro Agility Shuttle: Adding Direction Change to the Picture
The pro agility drill, also called the 5-10-5, measures something distinct from straight-line speed. The athlete starts at a middle cone, sprints five yards to one side, returns ten yards to the opposite side, then finishes by running back through the middle. The total distance is 20 yards, but the demand is on deceleration, re-acceleration, and change-of-direction mechanics rather than top-end velocity.
An athlete who is fast in a straight line will not necessarily score well here. Deceleration requires eccentric strength in the quadriceps and glutes. The plant-and-cut movement at each cone demands lateral hip stability and ankle stiffness. Research on change-of-direction testing shows that pro agility performance correlates modestly with straight-line speed but is better predicted by reactive strength and lateral force production. That means a good pro agility time reflects a somewhat different physical profile than a good 40-yard dash time.
For timing purposes, the pro agility drill requires a gate at the center start position and, optionally, gates at the turnaround cones. With a multi-gate wireless system, you can capture split times at each cone, which tells you whether an athlete is losing time at the first cut, the second cut, or somewhere in the middle. That level of detail is exactly what makes a system with three or more gates significantly more useful for this test than a simple two-point timing setup. The Dashr 3-Gate System at $990, for instance, is configured to handle precisely this kind of multi-split agility drill out of the box.
Choosing the Right Timing System for These Tests
The timing system you choose shapes how much information you can extract from any test protocol. More gates generally means more split data, which means more specific training decisions.
A two-gate system is the minimum viable option. The Dashr 2-Gate System at $690 gives you a start and finish, which handles the 40-yard dash and the 10-meter sprint cleanly and works for a basic pro agility time. It syncs via Bluetooth to the Dashr app for real-time data, and includes ten free athlete roster spots, so small teams or individual coaches can get started without additional subscription costs.
Moving to three gates opens up significantly more diagnostic value. Split times within the 40-yard dash tell you whether an athlete is a quick starter or a late accelerator. The pro agility drill becomes a multi-split test rather than a single number. The Dashr 3-Gate System includes three laser modules, six regular tripods, and two mini tripods, making it adaptable for the full height range needed across different drill configurations. The online athlete management system handles automated record-keeping, which matters once you are tracking more than a handful of athletes over multiple test cycles.
For programs running combine-style testing days or working across multiple sports at once, a four or five-gate system changes how many simultaneous drills can be run and how many split points you can instrument in a single session. The Dashr 4-Gate System at $1,300 supports comprehensive testing including vertical jump (with optional software), which means a single testing session can capture sprint data and power data in sequence. The Dashr 5-Gate System at $1,600 extends this further with support for lane agility drills alongside the standard pro-agility and sprint protocols, and its modular design means existing Dashr equipment can be incorporated as a program grows.
All Dashr systems use wireless Bluetooth operation and integrate with the same mobile app, so data from a two-gate setup collected in year one carries forward cleanly if you upgrade to a four or five-gate configuration later. That compatibility matters for programs building longitudinal databases on their athletes. You can also browse the full range of timing systems to compare configurations side by side before committing to a gate count.
Dashr System Comparison: Gates, Drills, and Price
The table below covers all available Dashr configurations. The drill support column reflects what each system can test natively without additional hardware purchases.
| System | Gates | Key Drills Supported | Roster Spots (Free) | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Dashr 1-Gate (Standard) |
1 | Pro-agility, T-test, lane agility, lap events | 10 | $375 |
| Dashr 1-Gate Add-On |
1 (add-on) | Pro-agility, T-test, lane agility, lap events | Not published | $375 |
 Dashr 2-Gate |
2 | Dash, flying drills, pro-agility, T-test, lane agility, lap events | 10 | $690 |
| Dashr 3-Gate |
3 | Sprinting, pro-agility, T-tests, plus multi-split capability | 10 | $990 |
| Dashr 4-Gate |
4 | Dash, flying, pro-agility, T-test, vertical jump (optional) | Unlimited | $1,300 |
 Dashr 5-Gate |
5 | Dash, flying, pro-agility, T-test, lane agility, multi-split | 10 | $1,600 |
The jump from two to three gates is arguably the most meaningful upgrade for coaches focused on sprint and agility testing together. The jump from four to five gates matters most for programs running lane agility drills or managing multiple athletes simultaneously in a single testing block. If you are primarily running 10-meter sprints and 40-yard dashes with no agility component, two gates cover you completely and the additional cost of extra hardware is genuinely unnecessary.
Best Exercises for Speed: What the Test Data Should Drive
Testing is only useful if it changes what happens in training. Once you have baseline numbers across the 40-yard dash, 10-meter sprint, and pro agility shuttle, the patterns in the data point fairly clearly toward specific training priorities.
For Athletes Slow in the First 10 Yards
A weak 10-yard split almost always points to a starting mechanics or force production problem. The best exercises for speed at this phase are heavy sled pushes over short distances (10 to 20 meters), trap bar deadlifts and Romanian deadlifts for posterior chain strength, and broad jumps that reinforce a low, powerful starting angle. Sprint drills like the A-march and A-skip build the coordination and posture that let strength translate into ground speed.
For Athletes Who Fade in the Final 20 Yards
An athlete whose splits get progressively worse through the back half of a 40-yard dash is likely hitting a ceiling on stride frequency or top-end mechanics. Overspeed training with light resistance bands, high-speed treadmill intervals, and wicket drills (where small hurdles force a longer, faster stride cycle) tend to address this. Maximum velocity sprint work at 30 to 60 meters is often underrepresented in team sport programs, which tend to favor short acceleration work exclusively.
For Athletes with a Weak Pro Agility Time Relative to Their Sprint Numbers
A large gap between straight-line speed and change-of-direction performance almost always reflects eccentric strength and lateral mechanics rather than pure speed. Lateral bounds, single-leg squat variations, and deceleration drills where the athlete practices absorbing force before cutting are the primary tools here. Reactive agility drills, where an athlete responds to a visual cue rather than a pre-planned movement, build the decision-making component that purely physical training cannot address. For youth athletes especially, testing change-of-direction ability separately from straight-line speed avoids misclassifying a lateral-power deficit as a general speed problem.
How to Run a Testing Session That Produces Reliable Data
The protocol you follow matters as much as the equipment you use. Data collected under inconsistent conditions cannot be compared across testing dates, which defeats the purpose of having a timing system in the first place.
Standardize the warmup
Every athlete should complete the same warmup sequence before testing. A dynamic warmup of 10 to 15 minutes including leg swings, high knees, and two or three build-up runs at 70 to 80 percent effort is a reasonable baseline. Athletes who are under-warmed will record artificially slow times; those who are fatigued from an excessive warmup will too.
Set the gates at verified distances
Measure distances with a tape measure, not by stepping or estimating. Even a half-meter discrepancy in gate placement makes cross-session comparisons meaningless. The Dashr systems use laser modules and reflectors, so beam height and alignment should be checked before the first run of the day, particularly for outdoor sessions where tripods may have shifted.
Allow full recovery between runs
Sprint testing is maximal effort work. Three to five minutes of rest between runs is the minimum for meaningful results. Programs that rush athletes through a testing circuit to save time are measuring fatigue as much as speed. Record only the best of two to three attempts per athlete per drill.
Log environmental conditions
Outdoor testing in significant heat or wind introduces variance that will confound comparisons. Dashr systems include optional heat shields for outdoor conditions, but temperature and wind direction are worth noting in the session record regardless. If your program tests seasonally, trying to hold surface conditions (turf versus track versus grass) consistent across seasons is worth the logistical effort.
Review data before athletes leave
One practical advantage of a system that pushes data to a mobile app in real time is that you can review splits immediately and flag anomalies. A clearly fouled start, a stumble mid-drill, or an obvious technical breakdown is worth re-running while the athlete is still warm. Data you know is bad should not enter the athlete's record.
Building a Long-Term Performance Record
A single testing session produces a snapshot. A series of testing sessions over months and years produces something far more useful: a trajectory. Knowing that an athlete improved their 10-yard split from 1.72 to 1.61 over a six-month training block confirms that the acceleration work was effective. Knowing that their pro agility time barely moved over the same period tells you the next block needs a different emphasis.
The athlete management system built into the Dashr platform stores records and supports automated analysis over time. For larger programs, the four-gate system's unlimited roster capacity removes the ceiling on how many athletes can be tracked longitudinally. For smaller operations, the ten free roster spots included with the two and three-gate systems are sufficient for most individual coaches and small team environments, with paid expansion available as needed.
Tracking also helps contextualize individual numbers against population norms. The value of knowing an athlete runs a 4.6 forty depends heavily on whether you are evaluating a 16-year-old high school wide receiver or a 22-year-old professional prospect. Building an internal database specific to your athlete population is more useful than generic published norms, because it reflects your actual training context, surface conditions, and testing protocols. Over time, that database becomes one of the more valuable things a coach's program can own.
For coaches exploring how these systems compare against other timing options on the market, a detailed look at how the Dashr configurations stack up across gate counts is a useful reference point before purchasing. And for anyone still deciding between wireless timing solutions, understanding where Dashr and Freelap differ in practice comes down largely to software depth and multi-athlete management capability.
Programs that invest in athlete performance measurement tools early tend to compound that advantage over time, because every testing session adds to a dataset that gets more useful as it grows. The equipment cost is modest relative to what a training program costs annually. The information it produces, when acted on, is what actually moves times.
Putting It Together: A Practical Starting Point
If you are setting up speed testing for the first time, the cleanest starting point is a three-drill battery: 10-meter sprint, 40-yard dash with a 10-yard split, and pro agility shuttle. That combination gives you acceleration data, transition and top-speed data, and change-of-direction data. It takes roughly 30 to 45 minutes per athlete when done properly, and the resulting profile is specific enough to drive meaningful training decisions.
For the equipment side, a three-gate wireless system covers all three tests and provides split data within the 40-yard dash. If your budget allows for a four or five-gate configuration, the additional splits and the optional vertical jump testing give you a more complete athleticism profile in the same session. Either way, the data moves through the app in real time, the athlete roster builds automatically, and the record is there for every subsequent testing cycle.
Speed testing done well is not about generating numbers. It is about generating the right questions. Why is this athlete faster off the line than their training partner but slower at top speed? Why did the agility time improve while the 40 stayed flat? Those questions, answered by clean data from a properly run testing session, are what make training programs genuinely effective rather than well-intentioned. The full setup guide for the 40-yard dash, including start position and gate placement, is covered in detail if you want to set up the 40-yard dash with precision. For coaches working specifically with younger athletes, matching the right timing system to athlete age and program scale is worth thinking through before finalizing a gate configuration.
More timing systems worth a look
Dashr 5-Gate Wireless Timing System for Athletic Performance Testing & Progress Tracking
Dashr 2-Gate Timing System for Athletic Testing, Bluetooth Integration, Real-Time Data & Portable Design
Frequently asked questions
Are Dashr timing systems suitable for testing both beginners and elite athletes?▾
Yes, and the modular design makes this practical rather than just theoretical. A high school coach testing athletes for the first time can run the same 40-yard dash or pro agility protocol as an NFL combine prep facility. Each Dashr system supports unlimited athlete rosters on the 4-Gate model, while the 2-Gate, 3-Gate, and 5-Gate systems each include 10 free roster spots with the option to expand, so the tracking scales with your program.
Is it safe to use laser timing gates outdoors in hot or sunny conditions?▾
Dashr systems are built for both indoor and outdoor use, and each model in the lineup includes optional heat shields specifically for outdoor conditions. Direct sun and heat can affect sensor accuracy in cheaper timing setups, so the heat shield option is worth using during summer field sessions or any testing done in direct sunlight.
What does a Dashr timing system cost, and which configuration makes sense for a small program?▾
The Dashr 2-Gate system is priced at $690 and covers the most common single-distance tests like the 40-yard dash and 10-meter sprint. If you want to add split timing within a single run, which doubles the diagnostic value without extra test sessions, the 3-Gate system at $990 or the 4-Gate at $1,300 gives you that flexibility. The 5-Gate system at $1,600 is the most versatile option for programs running multiple drill types simultaneously.
How complicated is the setup process for a wireless timing system in the field?▾
Dashr systems use Bluetooth and do not require cables between gates, which removes the biggest setup headache with older timing equipment. Each system comes with an aluminum carrying case, tripods, laser modules, and reflectors, so everything arrives organized and ready to deploy. The Dashr app handles data recording in real time on Android or iOS, so you are not dealing with a separate laptop or proprietary hardware on the sideline.
Are there ongoing costs beyond the initial purchase of a timing system?▾
The Dashr app and its core data management features are included, and each system comes with free roster spots to start tracking athletes immediately. Expanding the roster beyond the included spots and unlocking optional features like vertical jump measurement involve additional software costs, though the manufacturer does not publish those figures in the standard listing. It is worth contacting Dashr directly if roster size or vertical jump testing is central to your program.
What maintenance does a laser timing gate system require?▾
The hardware is fairly low-maintenance. Keeping the laser modules and reflectors clean is the main recurring task, since dust, moisture, or smudges on the lenses can affect accuracy. The tripods and cases are designed for repeated transport, but checking that tripod legs lock firmly before each session prevents timing errors caused by gate movement mid-drill. Storing the system in the included aluminum case after each use protects the components between sessions.
How many gates do you actually need to get useful split data from a 40-yard dash?▾
Three gates give you the most coaching value from a single 40-yard run. One gate at the start line triggers timing on first movement, one at the 10-yard mark captures the acceleration split, and one at the finish gives you the total time. The Dashr 3-Gate system at $990 is built for exactly this kind of configuration, and the difference between a 1.55 and a 1.75 ten-yard split in an identical total time reflects a completely different athlete profile that a single finish gate would miss entirely.
What is the most common mistake coaches make when setting up speed tests?▾
Inconsistent starting position is the one that quietly ruins retest comparisons. A small shift in foot placement or stance width can move a 10-meter time by a meaningful margin, which makes it impossible to know whether a change in the number reflects real adaptation or just a different start. Photographing or filming the athlete's starting position during the first test session and replicating it exactly on retest days is a simple habit that most programs skip and later regret.
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