Critique my sprint form

Training/Competition Videos
1

Ok firstly just a bit of background.

The last time I did any sprinting was almost a year ago. All I have been doing since then is weights - squats, deadlifts, pulls, olylifts, jumpsquats, lots of jumping, some upper body stuff, although no benching recently just overhead presses and some rows.

I’m 5’9" , 210lbs some 20lbs heavier when I last did any sprinting. Yes I am overweight, I could lose 20lbs of fat right now :slight_smile:
Subjectively I feel faster than I did a year ago. I have no formal sprint training, and I have been sitting on my bum doing nothing for the last 2.5 weeks - a layoff if you will from the gym.

Today I worked up to 3 full accleration sprints and 3 agility runs.
Didn’t feel like I lost much despite not doing any sprints whatsoever from almost a year ago. I feel much stronger though.

clips aren’t great quality (digicam) and a bit zoomed out, I need a tripod.

Ouch my calves, VMO, erectors and gluteus minor are feeling it. My pecs were surpisingly pumped up after the third sprint…my hamstrings didn’t feel much, no pulls :slight_smile:

Please right click on each movie and save them before watching or else you may get errors etc
I will keep them online for a short period of time

Side +zoomed slo mo
http://www.members.optushome.com.au/coolcolj2/Movies/CCJ_SprintForm_side_16Oct2003.mpg

front quarter
http://www.members.optushome.com.au/coolcolj2/Movies/CCJ_SprintForm_FrontQuarter_16Oct2003.mpg

Zig Zag 360 agility run
http://www.members.optushome.com.au/coolcolj2/Movies/CCJ_Agility_ZigZag360_16Oct2003.mpg

2

Just reading off the timer, it looks like my Stride frequency when acclerating is 4 strides per second?

I feel like my stride is too short and not fully extending?

3

My 2 cents…

Your turn over is OK. But it looks like you are not very relaxed (just what it looks like maybe you are) and as we all know once you relax the speed will flow. You have to get more hip extension and higher knee lift. Your body lean and leg recovery and foot strike look ok.

Check out this website of Ato Boldon (It doesn’t look like him though) running 4x100m relay leg. He looks like he is doing a running bound. But yet he looks relaxed but focused.

http://www.advantageathletics.com/sprints/boldon.html

I ran your clips next to Ato. Your hips look a little lower than his. Ato has more leg seperation and higher knee lift. Are you doing oly power lifts
and are you getting enough stretching? What sort of sprint drills are you doing now?

Anyone else?

4

[QUOTE=nycjay01 I ran your clips next to Ato. Your hips look a little lower than his. QUOTE]

I wonder why…

5

It seem to be Coby Miller in the pictures. He is not such a good example mechanics-wise. Atleast not in the upper-body.

Let’s hope some big-hitters comment on coolcolj’s running soon. I don’t have the eyes myself.

6

I know something does’t look right, and as you say it’s my hip extension and knee height.

Also I noticed that guy’s shins extend forward with the reaching leg. Mine doesn’t do that, my shins stay vertical on each stride before passing under. Is this a bad thing?

Yes I am doing plenty of oly lifts as I mentioned. I do plenty of stretching as well.
But as this is the first sprinting I have done in a year, and I have never been coached before I don’t know and where my body should go.
Slightly rusty you can say :slight_smile:

I basicly just ran as naturally as I could without forcing anything to establish a baseline form.

7

Nice little intro’s on your video’s…

Although your stride frequency may be good, your stride length appears to be very very short. You arent getting any extension on your stride. For example, if most guys run 100m, they get between about 42 and 45 strides or so, i believe you would have a lot more.

You may have a great deal of tightness around the gluts, back, hamstring which may be restricting your stride.
You may be lacking strength in the hip flexor and lower ab area.

There seems to be some strength problem in the hips as they dont seem to be very high, you can work on lower abs as well as drills, such as high knees, a skip etc

Lengthening of the stride will need to be a conscious thing at first, also try some bounding, you can also try putting tape or something similar on the ground, but this takes a lot more work.

Also, try and relax your upper back/shoulder area, you appear to be stooping over a bit and this could be adding to your ‘chopping’ of your stride as you arent in an upright relaxed state.

Your stride is longer in your agility run, clearly you are more relaxed, but running slower. You would need to, while getting fit, do maybe 100m run throughs at say 70% with maybe 2-3mins recovery, practising staying relaxed and lengthening the stride. This will help your fitness as well as your technique. As you get tired, your form will start to faulter, this is when you have to be more conscious of it. At first it will be difficult, but as you know the more you practise it the easier it will be.
When you have mastered it at a slower pace you can gradually increase.
Remember to do your drills as this will just generally improve your technique - if done properly, go through the lot of them.

8

Thanks Los, very helpful

Well I did a lot of hanging leg raises, explosive ones as well, but I kinda slacked off these over the last 3 months :slight_smile:

generally my flexibility is quite good.
I think it just maybe a case of learning how. It is the first time I’ve seen myself run from a third person perspective :smiley:

What do you people mean by hip height?

9

Cue: dcw23 :slight_smile:

10

low hip height - your ass sticks out is one way of putting it, you want to make sure you are pulling your belly button up when you are running (i know, rather simplistic), rather than having your hips down and bum out the back. This will cause a kind of sweeping motion with the legs and put a lot of pressure on the hamstrings.

Look at Christine Aaron’s hips in the WC relay final and you will see a high position of the hips and a nice flowing stride, in comparison, your hips are down and your stride is choppy (short).

Try doing some step ups and lunges, as well as maybe using a hip/glut machine if you have one to directly target your hip flexor area.

11

Ok the opposite of what you do when you squat? :slight_smile:

Yeah does feel choppy, and probbaly why my erectors get hammered as well.

12

Until I can see a better video you look just like Buster Keaton being chased by the Keystone Kops. :stuck_out_tongue:

I think that was filmed in about 5fps as well.

13

15 fps
Well it’s hard to set up a camera and try and guess where you will be in the shot, plus I had the camera on the grass, which doesn’t help.
But I at least have some ideas on where to go at least :slight_smile:

30 fps would be better but this is only a digicam.

14

Your could try doing some ins and outs (ex. 30m sprint/3om stride/30m sprint) 50m flys so you can learn to run fast and relaxed. And maybe some hill work (not too steep) and 50m flys with a light harness (I read somewhere that 8% of your body wieght is good)for hip extension. Just remember to keep your hips high and and lean from your feet not your waist. I know you’ve heard that a zillion times but… this will be a zillion and one :slight_smile:

One workout I used to do for my form was, just walk 100m cocentrating on my form (arms and legs) relaxation, body lean, head position, hips high, foot strike and then do some 100m build ups thinking of all the things my body did in the walks. Followed up by some double leg hops single leg hops over 40m (just like 3-4 reps) and finish it off with some sprint drills. Not the best work out set up but, it was the most improvment I saw in my performances ever. It was a no frills simple workout but it seemed to work for me. I did this on the tempo days.

15

cool i checked out your side view with slow mo.your errors are normal and nothing to get up-set about.

firstly you are tense.as the guys above said you can’t reach top unless you can relax.secondly i think your elasticity needs work which with proper sessions will increase true time.your flexibility maybe good but if your tense then it will have the adverse effect on your running.

you are not getting full extension either in the legs or arms but it will improve with proper addressal work.learn to push more off the ground and also most importantly learn to run in harmony which may take weeks or months but will improve with practice.

as i said these are common errors which happen to all athletes whom have taken large breaks,it will get better and the only way is up!!

good luck and post again in 6weeks time,we’ll all see the difference then

16

First props on putting up the vid, takes a lot of guts :slight_smile:

Second,

things I notice:

Upper body lean and tightness around the shoulders. Shoulders looked rolled forward slightly, arms need to cross the centerline and then come back. When you get into the top speed phase you should just feel your arms sort of flying down. (Hard to explain exactly what I am talking about)

Low hips and short stride length

One thing I think will help you a lot especially where your strength on the right side of the curve is pretty good is more plyos. In particular sprint bounds, depth jumps and tuck jumps, hurdle hops.

Drills such as running A’s, running A tows with partner and weighted accels/sled accels.

I had an elasticity problem for a while and really concentrated on those areas over the past two months.

Film yourself on the track or pavement/asphalt and not grass. You will slip on grass and not be able to exert max force through the ground. This will limit your mechanics for sure. you can REALLY feel the difference when you can dig in and really explode through the posterior chain.

Hope this helps, I am going to throw up a vid of myself in the next few days as well.

Cheers,
Chris

17

Hey thanks guys

I will see how I go over the next few weeks and post some new clips

I’m running in spikes so not much slip I can detect
My shoulder tightness is probbaly due to bad nueral patterns from what I do during the day, stooped over in front of a computer :slight_smile:
But that usually goes away somewhat when I start doing olylifts, but since I haven’t done any during my 2-3 week layoff I get tighter again.

I’m also running right on my toes, I find the spikes I wear just make me run like that anyway.

WHy do the arms need to go in front towards the centre?

18

No Sisel Fit anymore? I found it very hard to keep with as well.

BTW, what I meant with cue: Dcw23 was that if he wanted to he could probably have an “I told you so” in regards to LI core work. Of course you ddin’t have a need for it when doing heavy weights, but that could be part of the problem with the sprinting (see Scarface “referring to CFTS thread”).

19

My core felt fine actually :slight_smile:
In fact much stronger than last year.
Core isn’t taxed as much in straight sprinting I’ve found compared to all the changes of direction and in air acrobatics I do when I play bball or agility work. Damn anytime I decide to play BBall again, my midsection, front and back is sore for days. So far I find with sprinting my ankle and foot muscles are what get hit that hardest, followed by my erectors and calves.

I still use the “SitFit” device, but it sure overloads my glutes, and legs, but doesn’t stop you from stooping over since my table height isn’t optimal. The glute tensing causes other neural motor problems, so it’s best to alternate I guess. But it has helped me stop tensing my lower back from years of sitting etc

20

Haha, yes I saw this. There’s not a lot of point though is there. Let’s wait a year :wink:

To tell you the truth, I don’t think Col should be sprinting. If I was his coach he would be on at least an 8 week tempo and conditioning program. But as we all know, Col likes to do things his way, though to give him some props, his way does change with experience, hence my wait a year comment. All in fun Col, you are certainly one of the list’s characters! :stuck_out_tongue:

Please be careful though, injuries are not fun. Good luck!