How to shoot harder

What actually helps, and what only sounds like it

Shooting harder is not strength. It is timing.

That sounds contradictory, because we call it shot power. But the ball does not go faster because you push against it harder — it goes faster because your foot is moving quickly at the moment of contact, and because that speed transfers cleanly into the ball. The first part is muscle. The second is technique, and for most people that is where nearly all the unclaimed speed is sitting.

What happens in the last tenth of a second

Everything that matters happens just before contact, and it is far too quick to feel. Four things decide almost the whole number:

• Where your standing foot lands. Too far away and you are reaching; too close and you end up over the ball. This is the most common cause of a soft strike and the easiest thing to change.
• Where you hit the ball. With the instep, slightly below the middle. Catch it with the toe or too high and the speed disappears into spin and into the ground.
• Whether you follow through. If your foot stops at the ball, the speed stops there too. Following through is not decoration.
• Whether you are relaxed. A stiff leg moves slower than a loose one. Plenty of people strike the ball harder when they try calmer, which is the opposite of what they expect.

Why you have to measure it

You can read all four of those and get nothing out of them, because you cannot feel the difference. A strike lasts a tenth of a second; by the time you notice anything, the ball has gone.

With a number attached, that changes. Take ten shots. Change one thing — standing foot half a boot closer. Take ten more. If the number moves, you know. If it does not, you also know.

That is the whole idea behind our app: not a figure to boast about, but a figure to turn a dial against. See how fast do you shoot for what normal numbers look like, and football speed radar for the ways to measure.

Your weaker foot is the quickest win

Almost everyone has a foot that lags behind, and almost nobody trains it. Which is where the largest jump you have left is hiding: your good foot improves by a few per cent with real effort, while your other foot can move tens of per cent because nobody has ever paid it any attention.

Measure both and you see exactly how wide the gap is. That number is uncomfortable, and that is why it works.

A routine that works

• Take ten real shots and go flat out. That is your baseline.
• Change one thing and take ten more. Two changes at once and you will not know which one did it.
• Do the same with your other foot.
• Repeat every few months with the same ball in the same spot. A wet ball on wet grass travels slower, and that is not a worse strike.

That way you are measuring your own progress instead of the weather and the ball.

What does not help

A longer run-up helps less than you think — past a few steps it adds almost nothing and costs you accuracy. New boots do not help. And wanting it harder helps least of all: people who psych themselves up to go flat out tense up, and a stiff leg is a slow leg.

The app measures your strike with your phone camera and then shows you twelve frames of the moment before contact — your standing foot, your instep, the ball. No scores and no stars: the frames, and the number beside them.

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