Contents
- What it measures
- Speed
- Effort
- Short or sub-maximal
- Duration
- about 10 min for a group
- Equipment
- cones, stopwatch or phone
Set-up
A start line and a finish line at 10, 20 or 30 m, with a few metres after the finish to slow down.
How to run it
Standing start, front foot behind the line, the athlete starts on their own. The time runs from the first movement to crossing the finish. At least two trials with full recovery in between. Always use the same start and the same distance.
What to record
The best time in seconds, and how it was taken (stopwatch, phone app or timing gates). Hand timing reads about 0.2 s fast: never compare a hand time with a gate time.
By age
- Under 10 Playful challenge
- 10 to 12 Offered
- 13 to 15 Offered
- 16 and over Offered
Everywhere: no ranking of children, no public results, no selection from results. Under 16: parental consent and the child's own agreement. A health check before any maximal test, and stop if you feel unwell.
Reading the result
- Compare the athlete with themselves: same protocol, same surface, same measuring method. Paak publishes no age norms.
- No published retest figure: a small change may simply be day-to-day variation.
- Published variants: 10 m, 20 m, 30 m. Record the one you use and only compare results obtained with the same one.
- Timing: a hand-held stopwatch reads about 0.2 s faster than timing gates, and experience does not fix it. Never compare a hand time with an electronic one.
On the test day
On the test day this test comes in position 4 of 13: short tests first, maximal efforts last, after about 5 minutes of rest (athletic test manual of the Deutscher Fechter-Bund and IAT Leipzig, 2023).
Dashed border: maximal effort. Gold: this test.
Before: Countermovement jump (phone app) After: Agility T-test The field tests guide
Sources
- Hand vs electronic timing over 40 yd, n = 81
- Start method changes sprint time (block vs standing starts)