First up were three sets of 10-yard sprints and a 30-yard quick-start speed test.
The "yard" is an imperial unit, with 1 yard equal to 3 feet, or 91.44 centimeters.
Wang Fa's use of yards wasn't meant to show off. For one, it's universally adopted in football circles. Secondly, standardizing the unit allowed for horizontal comparisons with data from a large number of peers, helping students better understand their performance level—which was also their own request.
Wang Fa was meticulous and thorough, having explained all this to the students earlier.
After finishing the warm-up exercises with the group, Lin Wanxing stepped on the grass, took a couple of quick strides, and felt that the footing was quite different from sprinting on a synthetic track.
Wang Fa stood on the grass, having demonstrated the key technical movements to the students. A measuring tape was stretched out, and he held a clipboard and pencil in his hands.
Lin Wanxing hopped a couple of times and asked him, "Do you need me to help you time it?"
The young man tilted his head slightly, looking a bit puzzled.
Lin Wanxing pulled out her phone, shook it, and switched the screen to the stopwatch. "It's inconvenient to time things when you're holding so much, right?"
"Teacher Lin."
Wang Fa suddenly spoke.
Lin Wanxing looked at him, only to see him reach into his pocket and pull out a stopwatch. The stopwatch was old, its buttons worn transparent, and most of the paint around the dial had peeled off. It hung from a long lanyard, clearly something Wang Fa had been using for a long time.
Right in front of her, he slipped the lanyard over his neck.
Lin Wanxing was speechless.
Just as she silently put her phone back into her pocket, Wang Fa stretched out his hand toward her.
His palm was open, clearly asking for something.
Lin Wanxing: "Huh?"
"Your phone."
Lin Wanxing was still stunned.
"Are you planning to sprint with your phone, Teacher Lin? Don't worry, I don't know your password. I won't peek," Wang Fa said.
Lin Wanxing: "..."
And so, with one unnecessary question, Lin Wanxing not only temporarily lost her phone but was also "rewarded" with being the first to participate in the fitness test.
After completing the three sets of 10-yard sprints and the 30-yard quick-start test, Lin Wanxing already felt her calves aching.
It wasn't that she was exhausted just yet, but the feeling of her heart pounding in her throat after such sudden bursts of exertion was certainly memorable.
She looked back to see the boys watching her with leisurely composure.
"Teacher, you really need to exercise more."
"How are you tired already?"
"We'll call you for our morning runs from now on!"
Lin Wanxing really wanted to say, "I'm not tired at all," but she nearly ran out of breath.
Just then, Wang Fa called out to her, "Teacher Lin."
The young man twirled the pencil in his fingers. Lin Wanxing walked over to him and noticed that Wang Fa had recorded her data in the top blank row of the form, treating her the same as the students.
Wang Fa showed no intention of returning her phone. Instead, he said to the students, "You may begin."
The students had a foundation in football and had recently resumed training. As 18-year-olds, they completed these tasks much more easily than she did.
They sprinted at full speed, one after another, with effortless ease. After finishing, they competed and boasted, rushing to the coach's side to see their results.
Wang Fa remained his usual self, calmly recording each of their times for every task while the boys pointed and joked around him.
"Damn, you're so weak!"
"Qin, you're useless, Qin!"
"And what makes you any better?"
Amid the boys' lighthearted banter, they completed the first test.Unlike the standard 50-meter fitness tests commonly seen in schools, their current physical assessment focused not merely on pure speed, but on improving acceleration techniques—specifically the transition from jogging to full-speed sprinting.
Next came the agility drills: the 30-yard T-drill and F-drill.
In football matches, players constantly change speed and direction—sometimes sprinting to contest possession or intercept, other times jogging back into position. Thus, steady-paced running comprised very little of their training; instead, high-intensity interval training dominated.
Wang Fa set up markers on the field, instructing students to sprint forward 5 yards to his designated mark. Then they were to shuffle right, touching the 5-yard line on that side, before shuffling left for 10 yards to touch the farthest left marker. After that, they shuffled right 5 yards back to the central mark, and finally backpedaled to the starting point to complete one repetition, all while being timed.
This running path traced the shape of the letter T.
Lin Wanxing vaguely recalled seeing similar drills in football segments she’d stumbled upon before. It should have been a basic training exercise, but putting it into practice proved far more challenging than she had imagined.
After finishing one set following the prescribed route, she stopped and immediately felt blood rushing intensely to her limbs. Her extremities grew stiff, yet her heart pounded alarmingly fast.
It was an indescribable sensation—the scorching sun overhead, but her muscles reacting even more fiercely than the heat.
Her throat felt raw as she trudged heavily back to Wang Fa’s side. The coach recorded the data, glanced at her, then signaled the students to begin the test.
Then came the next one.
Physical testing seemed to be like this—the deeper you went, the more it felt as if your body were being torn open.
Lin Wanxing wasn’t sure if that description was accurate. It was entirely different from long-distance running, where fatigue accumulated gradually. The physical tests Wang Fa put them through felt like a sudden, brutal dissection of skin, muscle, bone, and blood.
Unless you experienced it yourself, you could never truly understand.
“Damn, it’s been too long since I last did this,” Qin Ao gasped, finishing the timed drill. Sweat dripped in large beads from his forehead, and he simply lay down on the ground.
Fu Xinshu bent over, hands on his knees, breathing heavily and unable to speak. His face was deathly pale, making Lin Wanxing want to advise him to take it easy—though she herself lacked the energy to say anything.
Throughout it all, Wang Fa maintained a serious, focused demeanor.
His back straight, he held a pencil in his distinct, bony fingers, recording data on the front of his sheet and noting technical points on the back. All the while, he corrected the students’ movements and guided them on proper force application.
“You need to record their completion time for each set. There are 2 to 3 minutes of rest between sets, and these intervals must be accurately noted. Finally, select the shortest time from the three sets as their baseline performance level,” Wang Fa explained.
Lin Wanxing panted, her mind foggy. Though she heard his words, she couldn’t process them mentally.
She could only sense that this instruction was meant entirely for her. He would leave soon, and the responsibility of supervising daily training and recording physical test results would fall to her.
That was precisely why she had insisted on experiencing it firsthand—no amount of listening could compare to the solid understanding gained from doing it herself.
Wang Fa’s explanations continued.
Lin Wanxing’s legs felt like lead as she struggled toward the finish line of this round.Her vision went dark, but because of this, she felt she could almost hear the sound of Wang Fa repeatedly pressing the stopwatch. It was a very old stopwatch, its edges severely worn. Under the sunlight, the white paper reflected a blinding glare, and his handwriting was clear and forceful.
He skillfully recorded the data for each group, having repeated this action countless thousands of times. Though Wang Fa wasn’t particularly close, and she couldn’t clearly see these details, at this moment, those sounds seemed to fall right beside her ears.
Crystal clear.
Until the final set of tests ended.
All the students lay flat on the ground, and the entire field fell into complete silence.
Wang Fa made the last notation. A gentle breeze swept across the field. Lin Wanxing, also slumped on the ground, stared blankly at the vast expanse of grass before her, momentarily robbed of speech.
=
Lin Wanxing truly felt as if she couldn’t catch her breath, as if she were about to keel over. She thought the students felt the same, but 18-year-olds really do bounce back after just lying down for a bit.
While her vision was still dark and the metallic taste of blood surged in her throat, the boisterous voices of the boys were already ringing in her ears.
"Teacher, are you okay or not!"
"Do you need us to call an ambulance?"
The air grew thick. Lin Wanxing waved her hand, signaling for them to scram.
The boys mimicked the "wee-woo wee-woo" of an ambulance, the sound circling around her.
A strong hand pulled her up from the ground.
"Stand for a while, walk slowly for a few steps," Wang Fa said.
Lin Wanxing did as she was told.
The boys stopped bothering her and instead crowded around Wang Fa, eager to see their final times, comparing them with each other.
"Coach, what’s my time!"
"Who’s in first place?"
"Last place? Last place has to be the teacher, right?"
Their voices drifted over. Lin Wanxing rubbed her chest, almost feeling like she’d cough up blood from hearing it.
"Do you know how to use the stopwatch now?"
Wang Fa’s voice suddenly sounded beside her ear.
Lin Wanxing stood on the field, some distance away from him, momentarily unsure who he was asking.
She pointed at herself. Wang Fa nodded.
"I probably know how now," Lin Wanxing said.
Hearing this, Wang Fa walked over to her.
He took the stopwatch from around his neck and handed it to her, followed by the clipboard, pencil, and—two phones.
Lin Wanxing’s hands were suddenly full, and she felt at a loss. She tucked her own phone into her pocket. And this black one… was Wang Fa’s phone?
Lin Wanxing looked at the young man.
Wang Fa was doing some simple stretches, flexing his wrists and ankles.
The boys, who had been clamoring to calculate their own times, were stunned. "Coach, what are you doing?"
Wang Fa stood at the starting line, answering them with action.
He began to sprint at full speed. Under the scorching sun, a gust of wind swept from the stands, blowing across the entire field.
Lin Wanxing had just finished the full set of tests, exhausted like a dead dog. Meanwhile, Wang Fa moved like an agile cheetah, sprinting, turning, and changing pace across the grass.
Lin Wanxing had watched a few high school soccer matches and trained with her students every day, but the moment Wang Fa truly began to run on the field, she suddenly understood the chasm between ordinary high school players and true professionals.
Wang Fa didn’t stop at all throughout. Lin Wanxing didn’t even need to pause the timer. He completed one task and immediately moved to the next, tireless.Strength, speed, explosiveness—you could feel how effortlessly he controlled his body, perfectly distributing his stamina, maintaining vigorous energy from start to finish.
As blades of grass gently lifted, Lin Wanxing pressed the stopwatch for the final time.
The students fell completely silent.
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