10 % Rule of Speed Training

If you’ve read speed training articles, or watched most presenters and dvds, and even if you’ve gone through coaching education you’ve heard it.

10%

That’s the most you want to load according to conventional wisdom, 10% of bodyweight. Of course that’s a bit arbitrary because are we talking a sled or parachute. Grass or track or turf? So it’s evolved a bit to be no more than 10% decrement in speed.

Only 10%

It’s been handed down over the last few decades like a prized heirloom from mentor to apprentice, coach to athlete.

10%. No more or else! If you use more, you risk detriment to sprint technique.

Almost all coaches will agree without thinking twice. This is blanket rule for sleds or other resistance training and it’s applied broadly to both acceleration and maximum velocity.

Why?

I stuck to this 10% rule in my early sprint training days because it’s what other track coaches taught me and made some sense. However, over time, I couldn’t find the full logic and my background as a weightlifting coach probably made me biased toward more load. As I did graduate work in biomechanics I developed a new lens to analyze it. For many years now, I have used heavy resistance (50% to > 100% Bodyweight) to improve acceleration in team sport athletes.

One way to add weight for Mark Sanchez?

If you ask most proponents of the 10% limit why, you won’t get many solid answers, because people aren’t asking the right questions. Let me help ask some.

Are you training acceleration or maximum velocity?
Big difference. The kinetics and kinematics are not the same in acceleration and max velocity.

Quick Review: Kinetics is about motion and causes (torque, force, impulse, rate of force development, etc…) and kinematics (velocity, acceleration, joint angles, alignment, etc…) describes the motion. From a technique standpoint, it’s chicken and egg. Each impacts the other.
In terms of force production what we know today is that the HORIZONTAL component is large in pure acceleration, but the VERTICAL component is dominant in maximum velocity. A heavy sled provides horizontal resistance. Makes sense why a heavy sled wouldn’t translate to max velocity sprinting.
It can be argued that in most team sport settings, it is acceleration that is more common and therefore more important. Right now what I’m talking about is focusing on improving acceleration. Since we are talking about acceleration, and most of the research on resisted sprinting is on max velocity, THROW IT OUT.
So what, if it acutely changes some kinematics?
Sprinting with resistance changes the kinetics and kinematics. So what? Is that inherently bad? Isn’t that often a goal of training drills?

In coaching athletes I am often trying to change kinematics. That can be the main point. I may be trying to develop a greater arm action, or a larger horizontal force component, or a higher stride frequency. It’s not whether or not heavy sleds changes things. For the coach it’s a question of; is it the change you want?

Speaking of different kinematics, what about some other drills that we use? Wall drills change the upper body kinematics, but we decide that the value of training the core and lower body motion is worth the temporary change in the upper body. Plyometrics have different kinematics as do many “technical” drills. Why are those OK but, heavy resisted sprinting is not?

Remember also, of the little data there is on acceleration, this is an acute change while doing the resisted run. The question is what does it do to the actual acceleration mechanics without resistance?

What are you using it for?
This is a key question that should drive our decision to use any drills. I like to classify drills as technical, training, or applied. This helps guide our selection based on athlete and training session goals.

Technical drills are designed to improve motor control, build kinesthetic awareness and teach the athlete how to move. Training drills are designed to elicit a training effect such as force characteristics, or energy system development. Applied drills are intended to add variability and let the athlete discover the movement solutions to different problems.

In a movement training session we will have some of each, but with a focus on one area more than others. I think resisted sprint drills can be used in different ways.

An athlete may get a technical benefit out of heavy sled resistance if it brings about kinesthetic awareness, helps them understand the feel of driving back. In working on 40 yd dash starts, I’ll use that heavy sled to build awareness of what it feels like to have tension in the start position.

It also can be a training drill. We can use it to build special strength and work on the impulse components. When used in a contrast method (which for me is almost always) it has a potentiating effect on the following un-resisted accelerations.

What research says it’s detrimental?
There is research, almost all of it on maximum velocity sprinting, which shows changes in kinematics with heavier resistances. Does that mean it causes negative adaptation?

I don’t care if the athlete’s time over a distance is 1000% longer if the technique is right. Lets imagine I have a very heavy load on the sled. The athlete goes for 6-10 steps. If it only moves a few inches on each stride, so what? As long as the mechanics are right and the contact time is good, why not? You are getting a stimulus even if it didn’t move.

Not exactly what I had in mind.

I definitely think you can cause detriment to acceleration technique if you use it poorly. Add a lot of resistance to the athlete and their form could fall apart. Allowing this while yelling “Drive harder!” isn’t what I consider good coaching.

Tips to best use heavy sleds for acceleration
Enough questions already. Bottom line, I question the proposed rationale for limiting sleds resistance to 10% when training pure acceleration. You might want to question it too. Here are some tips I use for sled resisted acceleration.

Use heavy sleds for pure acceleration.
After using these techniques and analyzing video I advocate using loads greater than 50% and sometimes up to 100% for the first 5 steps of acceleration and that’s it. If you are getting into longer distances I think you need lower resistance. As a matter of fact, we barely ever use any horizontal resistance during max velocity. I might be more inclined to add a weight vest to influence the vertical component.

Make sure you get the effect you are looking for.
Heavy sleds are going to change something. Whether its kinetics or kinematics, consider how the change will influence the adaptation you like. If I have a very strong athlete, who is a plodder with long ground contact times already, I need to be wary of very heavy sleds because the change may not be what I was looking for.

Contrast with free accelerations
Always follow heavy resisted acceleration with free acceleration. If you are using it as a technical exercise than this clearly makes sense. If you are using it for a training effect, it may not be as clear cut, but I still follow with free accelerations.

I advocate a “guided learning” approach to movement training. I introduce technical and training effect elements, then allow the athlete to solve movement problems. These applied drills are key for the individual to adapt the technique to their personal and environmental constraints. I think it’s a key to get a transfer effect into actual sport competition and preventing that robotic look to movement.

Use waves for more reps.
With an athlete that can handle a higher training load and will benefit from more reps, use contrast waves. Just increasing volume, you could add more reps in each set of resisted runs and then go to more reps of un-resisted accelerations.

Instead I would suggest doing multiple waves. Each wave would include 2-5 reps with resistance and then doing at least as many un-resisted. These contrast sets can then be repeated by going back to resistance and finishing with un-resisted. I find this helps with the motor control adaptation better and prefer a series of waves where each wave has fewer resisted reps.
Go Use It
So now it’s time to figure out what you are going to use. Ask the questions, analyze the acute effect. Review training adaptations and decide what works. That’s what coaches do!

Multi-Directional Movements: Base Positions

As I have been outlining my Hierarchy of Coaching Success, we have started with the big picture and keep delving deeper.  As we got to outlining the strategy, I categorized multi-directional movements.

The "base" category really isn't movement, it's the exact opposite. It's important however because athletes are moving into and out of this position .  Many movements are initaited from a static or quasi-static base position.

Many coaches use the term athletic base to describe the common, closed stance, hip/knee bent, "ready" position.  You can see it through-out many different sports.  In this position we find that the athlete is standing with the feet, hips and shoulder in-line, and they are generally facing the action.  They usually have obtuse angles at the knee and hip with the shoulder slighty anterior to the knee depending on sport and relative body segment lengths.  Their weight is distributed to the ball of the foot and they are in a balanced position to react in any direction.

This isn't the only "athletic base" position however.  In many cases, setting up in an "open" or "split" position is advantageous to that sport or the next action needed.

The split athletic base is often used defensively when the athlete either wants to direct the movement and/or is likely to move in a certain direction.  Its also common as seen in the photos above as a position thats moved into to execute a sporting action.

So from a training perspecive this means a couple of things when I have analyzed a sport and know we need this.

Train to be in the position.  This means the athlete needs the range of motion, joint stability, and muscle strength to be the proper position for efficeint movement.  Mobility and strength work come into play.  Exercises like squats and lunges have a place in developing this.

Train to get into this position.  If the athlete is moving and has to get into a base position, there is the deceleration load on the body.  Training for the eccentric strength and stability demands can have a big impact on an athlete's performance.  We will do this through progressively demanding drills that use speed, assistance, reaction, and external loads.

Train to get out of this position.  Athlete's also need to get to the next demand and usually want to do it quickly.  Here we need to make sure they can generate a high rate of force development from the position with weight training, medicine balls, plypmetrics.  We also want movement efficiecny, so I will execute movement drills from these positions and may use; resistance, weight vests, and reactive conditions if appropriate.

Base positions don't seem exciting or sexy to train, but it's critical.  Many one on one battles are won and lost when an athlete can get into or out of a base position faster than another.  What base positions are your athletes in?  How do they get into and out of them?  Are they still doing it well near the end of the game?  These questions, and addressing the training needs will help your athlete.

Hierarchy of Success

Seth Godin's blog today has a lot of carry over into coaching. Here's an excerpt;

The hierarchy of success
I think it looks like this:

1.Attitude
2.Approach
3.Goals
4.Strategy
5.Tactics
6.Execution
We spend all our time on execution. Use this word instead of that one. This web host. That color. This material or that frequency of mailing.

Big news: No one ever succeeded because of execution tactics learned from a Dummies book.

Tactics tell you what to execute. They're important, but dwarfed by strategy. Strategy determines which tactics might work.

But what's the point of a strategy if your goals aren't clear, or contradict?

Which leads the first two, the two we almost never hear about.

He continues the article and discusses how each should drive the other. It's probably important to define two of these that are often used interchangeably; Strategy is WHAT you're going to do, Tactics are HOW you're going to do it.

When you hear a lot of coaches talking about training (or arguing) its often about the last two. The execution of the drill or lift is important to most of us. Countless arguments focus on execution.

The tactics may be doing heavy singles or using lunges over back squats or deadlifts. We can go on and on with the arguments over tactics. There are more presentations and dvds on tactics than we will ever need.

I have to agree with Seth here. In the big picture, no one succeeds because of tactics and execution. You may fail if you don't do those well, but they don't bring success.

I'll say it again. The way you do the plyo drill or lift the weight wont bring success. This sounds like blasphemy coming from a coach who believes in teaching and enforcing proper technique, but I believe it's true.

I can have my athletes execute the best single leg, recovery focused, butt kick bounding out there. They did it because I decided that it was the best tactic to build specific explosiveness for sprinting.

However, if the goal was to play faster on the offensive line, but employed the wrong strategy of building specific explosiveness for sprinting, then I have a problem. I should have been building explosiveness for acceleration or acceleration against resistance.

So you can see how getting the goals and the strategy right are more important than execution and tactics. We do have discussion however about the next one up the hierarchy, approach.

Your approach in coaching terms are the broad strokes. If you see athletes who need to be faster will you use "technique drills" to develop speed or do believe strength is the primary focus. This can influence the goal to be either "we need better sprinting technique" or "we need to be stronger!" Do you believe in developing general athleticism or sport specific skills? The broader questions of approach will dictate how you set goals.

The last one, attitude, I think is more of the overall philosophy you have. Towards performance, towards competition, towards life. It's the driving force behind the rest.

It's also why I think there are some coaches who are relatively successful in spite of their execution, tactics, strategy, goals, and sometimes even approach. Because of an attitude, they can affect their athletes effort and focus. At times, when the window of opportunity is big enough, and the complexity is not too great, the right attitude can trump some mistakes in all the other steps.

NSCA 2009

Just got back from NSCA in Las Vegas. No speaking this time, but will be speaking on multi-directional speed in Orlando next year. It's easy to forget how enjoyable and valuable it is to get to spend time seeing friends and colleagues, that you may not spend time with often.

One of the things I was looking forward to, was actually trying the new Woodway Speedboard. I have worked with the Woodway Force for years both in research and in training. Its a great tool for many aspects of speed training, energy system development, and diagnosis.

Like the Force, the Speedboard was intriguing because it is self propelled. It would offer the opportunity to provide video analysis and feedback easily. It would allow instant changes in speed for in-outs or interval work, and we could switch between users quickly.



For me a key though is how it feels to a sprinting athlete, along with what it does to both the kinetics and kinematics. I haven't got one yet to do video analysis, but the feel was pretty good to me, and I was able to hear what some collegiate level sprinters thought.

It takes just a minute to get used to it, which is always a good sign for natural mechanics. While using a high speed treadmill, you sometimes can notice that need to focus on quicker recovery but not necessarily force production into the ground. On the Force treadmill you become very aware of the need for force production.

One of the things I noticed was that I did have to focus on force into the ground as I accelerated along with feeling the need for quicker recovery. I would say the feel was somewhere in the middle of the those other two modalities. This may make some sense since the curve of the belt means that you will need to increase force into the ground as you hit up higher on the belt where there is a greater angle. The angle of the deck transfers some of the vertical forces into horizontal for you thus increasing the belt speed.

All in all my initial impression is this is a device with a lot of potential. It is going to be great for individual or group interval training without question. For an athlete that needs max velocity training I think it will probably be good as well. Not a replacement for over-ground running, but it could be a very effective supplement. As I learn more and study the kinematics/kinetics, we'll find out more.

Coaching Technique: Do It Well or Don't Do It

There are a lot of different training methods, drills, and exercises. You can use them in different ways and combinations to achieve the same goal. Here’s the key, whatever methods you choose, they need to be done right.

It’s frustrating to watch a coach use exercises that may be appropriate, but can’t coach their athletes to do it right. It does no good if the program looks good written on paper, if the actual training looks like crap.

I have seen a lot o reasons why this happens. They either don’t know what the proper movement should look like, they don’t know how to correct it, or they don’t care.

When it’s a case of not being able to recognize errors compared to a proper technical model, it’s fixable. You should watch the movement done properly. Live when possible, by video when needed. Watch, AGAIN and AGAIN! Then start watching movements and comparing them to the model and noting differences.

I’ve seen some coaches who I’m sure can see the difference between correct and incorrect movements, however they don’t fix it. I think they are concerned about their athletes, and they think doing the movements properly is important.

So why don’t they coach it? I suspect at one time they tried. They tried, but didn’t know enough to give the right cues, or discover the true problem. Instead they ended up frustrated that it didn’t improve and probably so did the athlete. So over time, they stopped trying to correct it. A lot less frustration for all.

This too is fixable. Learn from other coaches who can coach that movement. Learn to analyze, discover different fixes, and develop different cueing methods. It’s called COACHING.

Technique does matter, because if you don’t get it right, it’s ineffective or a waste of time at best, or detrimental and harmful at worst. In the last case the solution is easy. GET OUT OF COACHING. If you don’t care enough to help your athlete’s, then STOP!

The Elephant in the Room: Motor Control Theory

Biomechanics has been criticized at times by coaches and others because all too often, biomechanics research is done through a strict lens of observation. It’s describes for us what is happening, but not why. To many a coach and athlete, they want to know about the why so they can do something about it for a better result.

In sports performance training there are often arguments that go along the same lines, “that research only tells me what I already know, not how to get an athlete better.” Arguments over whether teaching technique matter and whether the focus is on kinetics or kinematics go on and on.

Some traditional strength coaches argue that all you need to do to get faster is increase strength & power, while the track coach argues back the focus should be technique. Then among different strength coaches we start seeing the arguments over whether you need heavy Olympic lifts and squats or “corrective” and “functional” exercises.

There’s an elephant in the room that no one seems to acknowledge. MOTOR CONTROL.

Athletics is very heavily dominated by movement skill. That means motor control plain and simple! Whether it’s speed and agility, or precision in throwing, catching or kicking. How we use our physical capacities and manage the dynamic movement challenges in a sport environment, are a question solved by motor control.

So why doesn’t anybody talk about it? It would provide the critical framework for many of these important discussions. It should be a lens through which much of our training methods are filtered.

It’s true that motor control is a much less developed field in many ways than physiology. Biomechanics is also more developed because we have a lot of methods to observe and describe movement. A bigger challenge is that the predominant approach to modern science has been through a reductionist point of view. In this view, we try to understand the whole, by learning about the parts. The complex interactions in human movement in a sporting environment do not always effectively lend themselves to this type of analysis.

I still would place some blame on our education system. Whenever I speak to strength or performance coaches, sports coaches, or trainers, I ask the group who has had even a single class in motor control. We only get about half. When asked who has had more than 1 class, it drops dramatically. If asked who has been introduced to something other than general motor program or schema theory or has heard of dynamical systems theory, its maybe 1 or 2 in the room.

That’s a problem. The very coaches, who are out there training MOVEMENT, have very little education in the theory of motor control.

Another problem is that we aren’t educating coaches any more. Coaches aren’t coming out with physical education degrees that included motor control and coaching pedagogy. Education has moved to kinesiology and exercise science as majors, and most strength and performance majors don’t learn motor control beyond the rudimentary basics.

I also have to blame the coaches. Why aren’t they demanding better answers? If you are out there coaching movement, be it speed, agility or sports skills, you should be thinking about motor control. How does it work? If you haven’t thought about this, WHAT ARE YOU DOING and WHY?

I had struggled with these questions through my graduate studies, because what I saw and did everyday coaching, didn’t match many of the motor control concepts I was being presented. When I discovered that there were other approaches to motor control, I saw how they nullified many of the silly debates in our field and gave a whole new perspective to others.

I am going to be writing more this month on motor control, but here are some places to start;
• Sport Sci.org review article
• Athletic Insight: Chaos Theory
• Progress in Motor Control

Mechanics

Communication. Most coaches you ask will tell it is they are critical.

Many are also terrible at it.

One of the places this shows up is in the terms we use to describe sport and training. Don’t believe it. Go look at many arguments in sports performance or coaching forums online and you’ll see there is a lot of mis-use and disagreement about terms.

A recent series of forum posts on EliteTrack.com helped point out a common one in coaching speed. Coaches readily jump into discussions and arguments about mechanics, but often, are not talking about the same thing and can’t give the same definition of mechanics.

MECHANICS DEFINED
Mechanics (Greek Μηχανική) is the branch of physics concerned with the behaviour of physical bodies when subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effect of the bodies on their environment.

me•chan•ics (m -k n ks) n.
1. (used with a sing. verb) The branch of physics that is concerned with the analysis of the action of forces on matter or material systems.

me•chan•ics
Pronunciation: \mi-ˈka-niks\ Function: noun plural but singular or plural in construction Date: 1612
1 : a branch of physical science that deals with energy and forces and their effect on bodies

One of the clear things from these definitions is the connections between forces and their effect on objects (in our case humans). It involves both the kinetics and the kinematics.

KINETICS and KINEMATICS
When a lot of coaches talk mechanics or technique, WHAT they are really focused on is kinematics. The positions and motions observable to their eyes. Its easy to see how this happens; after all, your eyes are the tool you always have with and use while coaching. Early on it was easy to start using still sequence photos to analyze “mechanics”, then film, and now access to video is instant and everywhere.

Don’t forget however, that there are forces acting that create the motion and motion that is creating forces. They are there, if you don't have a force plate with you. They go together and true “mechanics” involves both. If you are only thinking about one or the other, you’re only half coaching your athlete.

Harness Drills

A tool I like to employ like many other coaches is harness drills. As I was watching some coaches use these recently I was reminded of the importance of not losing sight of the forest for the trees.

We use various harness drills for acceleration such as marching, skips and runs. The harness is a great tool because the resistance can help teach body position, focus on the drive angle, and even work a little on ground reaction forces.

To effectively teach a good powerline with the body around a 45 degree angle, the partner holding the harness must apply enough force to hold the training athlete steady. Too little resistance and the athlete can't lean.

Unfortunately as I was watching the other day, the athletes were making a common mistake. They were all trying to prove how strong they were and resist when holding with all their might. This often leads to the in the harness trying to overpower them in return using long ground contact times to generate more force.

I also saw another problem whicvh was uneven force. Whether it was kids with arms bent (which causes the arms to straighten and lengthen as the athlete makes ground contact) or the holders were in bad body positions, the amount of resistance was uneven. This makes it very hard for the training athlete to get the right kinesthetic feedback or generate a consistent force pattern themselves.

These are common errors, but the real error was the coaches. Some were actually trying to encourage the resistance to gain a big force production. True, there was a lot of force applied. Unfortunately the rest of the technical model went out the window. The old adage of the 10% rule tries to emphasize the idea of not adding too muich resistance. I disagree with this for acceleration(that's another post), but regardless you can never compromise the basic technical model.



As a coach you have to make sure this is done right. The harness is great beacuse you can have differnet athletes easily focus on different aspects. Force production, contact time, body position, range of motion, direction of force application, etc... but no matter what you can't sacrifice technique for huge force overloads.

40 Yd Dash Training Tools

Over this coming week I'll be posting about how we prepare our guys for the 40yd dash at the Scouting Combine. I'll be in Indianapolis with our guys for 8 days so I should be able to find the time.

One of the greatest challenges of preparing athletes for the NFL Combine is that we have such a short time. We need to find those places where we can have the most impact and which drills will be most effective.

One of the areas we can impact the most is the start. We are going to try and build power and impart some basic technique. I say basic because most of the guys never ran track. The mechanics of acceleration in football are generally in contrast to those that are best for the 40yd dash.

One of the common movement strategies is to stay low and to take quick, choppy steps. Great if you are a running back hitting the hole, or a lineman who needs to apply leverage against another 300lb guy, but really ineffective if you need to go straight ahead as fast as possible.

Acceleration bounds are a great tool for these guys. It helps then develop specific leg power and rate of force development. It reinforces applying them in a proper direction and often can help improve the range of motion.

We actually progress those short. choppy step guys using some 3pt starts directly into an acceleration bound. Though its an exaggeration, it helps them learn about building a drive phase. We do this as a contrast drill and progress towards an optimal 3pt start and first ten yards.

Some guys struggle with achieving a technically proficient bound however from a motor control standpoint. This is especially true for many of our "big uglies", the 300 lb linemen.

We have the FORCE treadmill from Woodway and its a great tool to help this. As you can see in the video below, it takes away some of the challenges and lets the athlete focus on 3 of our 4 main points; Big Force, Proper Direction, and Optimal Range of Motion.


We can add a significant load if the athlete can handle it since the FORCE has adjustable resistance. To facilitate motor learning we use it in a contrast method, where we go and do 10 yard starts after a few reps, and repeat this several times.

I find it very effective. We see instant improvements in fewer steps over ten yards, faster times, and a better drive action in the initial 1-4 steps. Then we have to keep reinforcing it and make sure they do it when the pressure is on.

Does Sprint Technique Matter?

This was the topic of my presentation at the National Strength & Conditioning Associations Sport Specific Conference. Instead of a presentation that just gave coaches a bunch of speed drills, I looked at the path I have gone trough as a coach and how I view the importance and application of sprint technique to team sports. We have a number of different camps today although these are stereotypes we all have seen them (and I've been in all of them at one point)
1 - Pure Strength Coach - "technique doesn't matter wothout strength"
2 - Classic Track Coach - perfecting technique is essential.
3 - Sports Performance coach - do it. "the athlete will figure it out if you work them hard in the drills"
As I have grown through the years I can see there is some degree of truth in all of these. The key is what you take from each, and how you apply it. We'll get much more indepth in this in the February webinar, but lets focus on one question for now.

DOES SPRINT TECHNIQUE MATTER IN TEAM SPORTS?
Of Course It Does! If we want to really break it down, there is no coach out there who is going to same that an athlete take 15 steps to cover 10yds, who is up on a planter flexed ankle or on their heels, with a frontal plane arm action, is using the optimum technique. Now thats an extreme example, but haven't we all seen that athlete?

A better question would be, "Can We DO Anything About It?"

Can we change technique?
Of Course!In the video below we have a visually subtle difference, but one that makes a world of difference. This athlete is preparing for the NFL Combine and Draft. This was part of a Max velocity mechanics coaching session.

In the second part you can see the blocking angle of the leg in front is slightly higher and the angle between the lead and trail leg is also slightly greater. Whether this is good or bad is irrelevant for this discussion. Its changed. And it changed because of different cueing and focus by the athlete.

There are some that argue about whether technique changes matter or whether its just about ground reaction forces. Silly question because how do you seperate the two? This particular treadmill is self propelled and it measures both the vertical and horizontal forces produced.

So now we can quickly answer the question; did changing the technique change the forces into the ground?
YES!
This athletes forces changed a little vertically, but a lot horizontally. This in turn led to greater power output and higher top speed.

So YES, we can change technique and alter ground reaction forces, the the question becomes "Can We Make the Change Last?"

Acceleration bounds

I have always been a big fan of acceleration bounds. In this drill we get to help the athlete focus on developing a big force, emphasize driving in the proper direction, and can help reinforce the development of an optimal range of motion.



We did this today with our athletes getting ready for the NFL combine. This athlete is a defensive back and is very fast on his maximum velocity. However, since he is also so quick he often takes a lot of fast steps with no force production in his first 10. This drill is particulary good for him because it helps him reinforce an emphasis on power production instead of just fast. In this case he is doing a bound for a few strides and transitions into a sprint.



He actually does this drill in contrast with a 3pt stance start where he tries to carryover the longer stride and greater force production. Using it in contrast really helps to reinforce the focus into the applied motion.

Doing this helped him instantly drop his 10yd time by 0.11 seconds. He changed the entire rythmn of his first 10. Not only is this time better, its setting up a better progression through the entire 40. Now we just have to continue to train and reinforce so he does it at the NFL Combine when the pressure is on.

Technique problem?

Today we did initial evaluations for 6 new athletes in our NFL Draft prep program. Part of this process is the video analysis of their sprinting technique, which is coupled with the battery of screening and physiological tests.

In one case, Ihave a realtively powerful athlete, but his 10 yd split is slower than expected. As I look at the video analysis I can see he is not getting enough flexion in the hip to drive his thigh so that its atleast 90 degrees from the torso. Is this a technique problem? Maybe he has developed a very short choppy stride and thats his movement pattern.

Maybe, but on further review, I find his hip flexors are very tight along with his hamstrings. By getting hip extension when pushing back, he has tilted the pelvis forward because of the tight hip flexors. That with the lack of range in his hamstrings, along with only OK core stability, put us in a situation of an athlete who is not getting the stride length he should.

Having seen this many times before, I have prescribed so specific hip mobility and core stability drills. In this athletes case, this alone may improve his speed. Its a case where changing some of the physiological parameters, will impact the technique.