How to Train: Varied Spacing

[Music Playing] Now we are going to open up our spacing. For this drill, we have been working at four feet, now we are at eight feet, double our spacing. You will have to vary this for your athletes in their competent level. But, what we are looking for is to keep the leg straight so we project the hips forward as we run with the inside leg stepping over the hurdles like we have been working with the up-down drills. [Music Playing] Now let us put our skills together and work right down the center of the hurdles. We teach single leg, we come back and we reinforce and put the two together as we go down the center of the hurdles. Start with the two step run. So in this case, it is going to be right, left, right left, right, left, coming back, it would be left, right, left, right. So the same leg is leading as step over the hurdle. Other leg is trailing behind. Now, do not let the back leg kick back but it got to recover back to the front side of the body. [Music Playing] Next, let us vary the stimuli, three step run. So we are going to go over the hurdle and we are going to go right, left, right, step over with the left, right, left, step over with the right. So we are going to vary each side of the body. Vary the stimulus to get the neural firing pattern to explode through the motion. [Music Playing] Now let us go a one step run. We have closed the gap here to about half of what we were before about two feet to start with. We are going to challenge the athletes by moving knees and varying these spaces as our ability improves. As their technique allows, you will increase the space so they can maintain perfect technique while increasing their speed and ability to maintain than stride as they go. [Music Playing] Now that we have the drills with the hurdles, we got to come out of the hurdle and we got to contrast. We got to do the actual skill of running. We do not want to improve our skill running over hurdles, we want to improve the skill of sprint speed. So we come out of the hurdles and actually do a perfect run and then followed by a contrast sprint. So here, what we want to do is look at recovering mechanics, forced application. That is what we have been working on in the hurdles, now let us apply it to the normal skill. You come out, you go back to a perfect run. This is perfect technique as the athlete and Coach understand it. So, tall, Dorsey flex, knee up, heel up, toe up, good posture, elbow back, try to put all the elements together. [Music Playing] Now, go to a sprint. Take off and turn your speed loose. Technique, forced application make things happen. [Music Playing]