Heel walks or heel toe walks focus on the rolling from the heel through the little toe to the big toe as we get maximum extension in push off.
Our athlete wants to make sure that they have good balance and posture, keeping the eyes up, not looking down at their feet while they do this exercise. This will help to maximize the activity at the ankle and legs and not put extra force in other areas of the body. Although this exercise is not specific the way how we want athletes to move on the field, it does help to stretch the lower leg muscles while working on good push off the ground that we need for sprinting and jumping it during competition and practice.
Ankle flips—focusing on dorsiflexion, pulling the toe up and snapping the ground like snapping a towel. We want to get a little bit of bounce on this drill working on pushing the hips up in the air. This exercise precludes all exercises. We always wanted to be springy and bouncy putting force into the ground to move the body. We have very little flex at the knees and the hips focusing only on the ankle action of springing of the front part of the foot.
Ankle skips—now we are going to get the skipping action of one-two, one-two that focuses a little bit more specifically on holding that dorsiflexed action and then popping the ground by snapping the toes to the ground. Again, this works great extension at the ankle focusing on bouncing the body in lifting the hips.
Knee hugs—here we want to focus on triple extension of the push off leg while pulling the knee up to the chest working on a range of motion at the hip and lower back. Our posture here should be perfect. The chest should be up, the head should be up, focusing on good extension at the hip, push off the ground. While pulling the knee up toward the chest.
Butt kicks—emphasis here is on knee flexion. Keeping the knee down we slap the heel to the buttocks. We want to try to get the heel as close to the buttocks as possible. This helps to stretch the quadriceps muscles while at the same time working or knee flexion.
Heel-to-Hamstring—run is more specific than a high-knee run because we recover the heel up underneath the hamstring rather the back behind the body. Our athlete runs with good posture. This emphasizes the quadriceps and gluteal muscles that are used specifically for maximum sprinting type motion. We also want to match the arm swing to what we would normally have with an athletic movement for good balance and hold that foot in a dorsiflexed position.
Similar to the Heel-to-Hamstring, this is a Total-over Knee Run. We are emphasizing the cycling action at the hip. The heel is going to recover closer to the butt cheek as the leg cycles through its normal running motion—emphasis on dorsiflexion of the ankle, bouncing off the ground, swinging the arms and having a good balance.
Chicken walk—focusing at the hip and the hamstring muscles now, we want to recover heel-to-hamstring and then extend the heel out pointing the toe toward the sky. So we hold dorsiflexion with the ankle. Balance the body keeping the eyes up in good posture with the back, after each one would stay tall and try and focus on keeping the hips up in extension of the leg that pushes off the ground while extending out with the heel of the leg reaching forward.
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