As coaches we should be striving to cultivate competent athletes capable of constructive conversation that helps bridge the gap between what we know and see and what they know and feel.
A common language between ourselves and the athlete group affords us the opportunity to provide direct and concise feedback during practice sessions. If we can shorten the feedback loops and keep the action closely coupled to the coach feedback, the athlete group will have a better chance of executing in the desired manner.
Establishing a common language should be apart of a larger foundational education initiative. There is a lot of content out there around preferred learning styles but it is my belief that this foundational education is best achieved through a combination of verbal, written, and visual communication. This may be conducted through a formal presentation, informal group discussions, low intensity/density training sessions, or any manner in which you feel the group you are working with will benefit the most.
The aim of these sessions should be to lay the groundwork for what can be expected from future speed development sessions – allowing the group to…hit the ground sprinting 😉
But what do these educational sessions consist of?
When conducting these initial sessions, I touch on the concepts of projection, rhythm, and rise as they pertain to acceleration. For upright, max velocity sprinting I will highlight the positions of touch-down and toe-off. I will also discuss key words that I will use throughout my coaching such as ‘shapes’ and ‘strike’. Lastly, I may feature any drills or assistant exercises I plan to use as it is helpful for athletes to get various visual representations of what is expected.
A successful acceleration is the manifestation of the appropriate projection, rhythm, and rise depending on the task at hand. Projection refers to both the angle of attack on the first step as well as how much the center of mass projects horizontally with each and every step. There will be more patience to project maximally when the distance to cover is greater. Regarding the projection angle, athletes who project too low will often ‘cast out’ their lower shank and contact the ground well in front of their center of mass.
This leads to a moment of braking prior to any propulsion. Athletes who project too high are not applying enough horizontal force, subsequently reaching upright postures too soon and compromising their ability to safely and effectively accelerate.
“Toe-off distance was the only technical feature consistently related to sprint performance. Sprinters produced longer contact times relative to backs and may have used this to create a greater a greater toe-off distance.” (Wild et al. 2018)
Rhythm speaks to the relationship between stride length and stride frequency and the rate of change of each throughout a sprint. The patience to project creates space for the rhythm to build, but when covering short distances, stride frequency becomes more of a factor and the rhythmical progression is less pronounced. A rhythm that progresses too slowly means there is an increased ground contact time and decreased flight time. A rhythm that progresses too quickly means insufficient horizontal application of force.
Rise is set-up by the projection angle of attack from the initial step. From this, there should be a gradual rise with each and every step until upright postures are reached. Rising too quickly decreases our effectiveness of applying horizontal force and rising too slowly limits our ability to achieve front-side mechanics and reach top speeds in a safe and efficient manner.
Regarding upright sprinting, the key positions I will focus on are touch-down and toe-off. These are the most stable landmarks to assess and provide enough context to elicit an understanding of appropriate upright sprint mechanics.
At touch-down we will mainly look at where the foot strikes the ground in relation to the center of mass and where each knee is at in relation to the other. Less elite populations will display more flexion and a larger gap between their knees at the point of touch-down.
At toe-off we will look at the amount of extension through the stance leg hip, the height of the swing leg knee, shank angle relative to the ground and ankle angle of the swing leg. Sub-elite populations will display more extension at toe-off, leading to axial rotation and compromised front-side postures.
For a comprehensive analysis of these two key positions and much more check out the full PhD thesis from Deb Sides here.
Lastly, the two key words that I want to introduce right from the start are ‘shapes’ and ‘strike’. Increasing an athlete’s awareness of good (and bad!) sprint shapes is the objective of our first few speed sessions. They need to understand what it feels like and how to come in and out of those shapes. Too many athletes simply do not know what good sprint technique is – that conversation starts with shapes. Further, I will emphasis the head (neutral spine, including cervical) and feet (dorsiflexed ankles) to provide bookends for these shapes.
Coaching Tip: The warm-up provides a great opportunity to draw an athlete’s awareness towards the shapes they are making!
Regarding ‘strike’, many athletes have poor strike mechanics. Typically, if they strike the ground at all (it’s not uncommon for the feet to more or less fall to the ground passively) they do so with excessive plantar flexion and too far in front of the center of mass. Understanding the intent behind striking the ground is a critical component to setting up proper sprint technique. In relation to this, Ito et al (1994) found that maximum hip extension velocity was strongly correlated to sprint velocity.
Ultimately, we must use the ground during acceleration and abuse the ground during upright sprinting!
Breakthroughs in performance occur at a much greater rate once we raise an athlete’s competence level around sprinting (or any skill or tactic we hope to target) and a shared language is adopted. If we take the time early on to target these objectives we will see a compounding return on that investment over time with much more efficient and effective training sessions.