Acceleration

What drills and cues would you suggest with an athlete that overstrides during early acceleration (0-10)? Thanks.

Get your heels off the ground and keep the knees bent.

a great drill for almost any person is the clap drill. One position is for them to lay flat, face down on the ground ( one or more lay together on a line, invisible or otherwise) and you clap and they scramble to the 10 or 15 meter mark. It is also a great start drill to help people learn the proper mechanics needed to start from blocks. ( there are variations as well).
the drill is fantastic as there is little if any instruction and difficult to do wrong.

Also hill sprints should work.

The great thing about the clap drill is that the movements are such a chaotic scramble to get to your feet you really can’t think about your technique, the body just instinctively does what it needs to to get moving without your conscious mind getting in the way. I find it very effective even without someone doing the clap for me.

If you want a specific cue, the best one I’ve found is to simply cock the foot and strep straight down, as opposed to trying to drive the knee, drive back, etc.

Try Seagrave accel series:

1: Push up start
2: Clap start (Different from Coon)
3:Mule Kicks
4: Face down
ETC ETC

Can you describe them?

getting pretty tired of credit for other peoples drills going to Seagrave here. Do a little research on these drills sometime going back all the years.

When I attanded a Lauren Seagrave clinic in Lake Macquarie 20 years ago there was no mention of the start. Whan asked about the start Lauren conceded to Bob Gulliver (now deceased pro running coach) that his stuff is aimed at the last 30m in a 100m race.

What I remember most was at the conference (talk in the Macquarie Shores Academy room)were Lauren said no one has been capable of teaching him how to wabble his ears and knowing all the fancy drills and being able to do something yourself will not make you a coach.

Maybe you should go spend more time with Seagrave. BTW, who is Lauren??

lol, Lauren Seagrave

Someone needs to grow up. Just like Charlie, Seagrave has a nice long resume- weather you like it or not.

Once was enough, thank’s for the offer. I have a video taken at the clinic when Loren Seagrave was in Aust, if you get over here I will play it for you. If I need a refresher I will watch it again in private.

I will not make a copy or post it anywhere. The reason I will not post is because it is some one else’s intellect. The reason for offering to play it in private is to piont out the athletes that were used as examples in the clinic because they did not have difficulty picking up the new drills both trained with me (up until the week of the clinic) and both won National titles prior to the clinic.

From my experiences in the country I call home, good recruitment always looks good on a bit of paper

  1. Try keeping head over knee (straight back)
  2. with knees driven towards chest
  3. Look at the ground and make sure your toes do not kick out past your eye line of site to the ground.

Loren (correct spelling right here) is a good guy, would give you the shirt off his back. Always interesting to talk to about the coaching game and the money caper. I know he’s not real popular on this forum, but you don’t have to slag the guy. Charlie has his ways and he has correctly picked out a fault here and there in Loren’s ideas - most notably the down-and-rake-backwards action at contact. Tellez isn’t Charlie’s cup of tea either, but they both agree on the simpl up-down function for the best contact. Loren was keen to meet Charlie and learn off him. I facilitated the meeting at Charlie’s home when Loren was working with BJ on Ben’s comeback. Charlie was the perfect host, but nothing much more came of it…other than I think I’m still repeating from the Mexican pizza. Loren’s work with Ben came to nothing, but it was always going to be a losing proposition for anyone to match up to Charlie as coach to Ben.

I guess what I’m trying to get across here is you (the generic “you”, not specifically sady) can disagree with someone without going to the point of hating them. Loren has always had a huge respect for Charlie’s knowledge and I’ve never heard him put shit on CF although he well could have (1988 and all that).

Do you mean the “clawing” action?

yes… clawing seems to be the effect we saw as a consequence of good downward contact and forward momentum of the body as a whole

Rb, could you descirbe the differences in the 4 drills you previously listed?

Wasnt laughing at seagrave, was laughing at you for not knowing his name. I like Loren’s stuff.

Although I realize now that it may have been a mispelling of his name that resulted in the confusion.