The flying 10
A flying 10 times 10 meters or 10 yards that you enter already at full speed. You build up over 20 to 40 m first, so the time measures top speed and leaves the start out.
What's a good flying 10
To turn a flying 10 time into speed, divide 10 m by the time. Every reference time below is for 10 m, not 10 yards.
| Who | Speed | Flying 10 m |
|---|---|---|
| Usain Bolt, 70-80 m of his 9.58 in Berlin, 2009 | 12.34 m/s | 0.81 s |
| Fastest men in team sports | About 10 m/s | About 1.00 s |
| Fastest women in team sports | About 9 m/s | About 1.11 s |
| High school senior, sub-23 s 200 m | 9.0 m/s | 1.11 s |
Bolt: Maćkała and Mero, 2013. Team sports: Haugen et al., 2019, 23 sports. High school: Track Football Consortium.
Across the 23 sports in Haugen's data, men's top speeds ran from 7.5 to 11 m/s, which is a flying 10 m of 1.33 down to 0.91 s. Women ranged from 6 to 9.5 m/s, or 1.67 down to 1.05 s.
10 yards or 10 meters
Football programs often time a 10-yard fly, which is 9.144 m. Multiply a 10-yard time by 1.094 to get the equivalent 10 m time, or use the top speed calculator. A 0.90 s flying 10 yards is 10.2 m/s, or 22.7 mph.
How to set it up
Give yourself enough run-in to reach top speed before the zone. The Track Football Consortium found most developing athletes peak between 30 and 40 m, and used runs of 50 to 70 m. Younger and slower athletes get up to speed sooner and can use a 20 m build-up.
Ten meters at top speed takes about a second, so a small timing error moves the result: a 0.02 s error on a 1.00 s fly changes the speed by 2%. Freelap advises athletes faster than 10 m/s to use a longer zone so the time stays above a second. A flying 30 is steadier if you want a number to track week to week.
Finding your fastest 10 m in any rep
With gates, you pick where the zone goes and hope that's where the athlete hits top speed. Sprintbrick records your distance from a receiver behind the start 100 times a second and searches every rep for your fastest 10, 20 and 30 m, wherever they fell. You can also tag a rep as a fly with its zone and build-up, from a 10 m zone up to 60 m, and the app keeps your best flying times as records.
Flying segments are where Sprintbrick's timing is strongest: in side-by-side runs with OVR gates, every segment after the first 10 m came within 50 ms of the gates. Full results.