Hey guys for those of you that have the dvd, are the drills performed in the warm up on what appears to be a cricket pitch what everyone refers to as a and b skips and a running a drill?
If so I will have to post a video of how we do them as we just step over the knee in the b drill, whereas on the video the athlete really extends her leg out. Our a drill is similiar but for that we try to swap legs on the ground and never have two feet on the ground thought the drill.
comments?
Yes, those are the A and B drills. I’ll let Charlie address your technique questions.
can anyone answer my tech query?
Okay, I’ll take a crack at it.
I wouldn’t try to step over the knee during the B drills because the hip height and air time do not allow for proper foot recovery. In other words, it’s a forced movement. In addition, during sprinting most of the lift for the recovering foot should come from the ground reaction, which you don’t have during the B drill. The Mach drills are focused mostly on front side mechanics, not recovery, which is hard to practice at slow speed.
Your description of the A drill sound like an A run, rather than a skip. Both are variations on the same underlying drill.
thanks flash for your reply.
I thought the whole point of the b drill was teaching to step over the knee?
They way the girl does it in the dvd I am not sure what it is getting at.
I was doing b drills by just steping over my knee each time but in basically a running action…
I have changed my drills a few times to what I think people are talking about… then watching the dvd I see its different again :rolleyes:
What is the ticket price from Aus to Canada? I should just go over and get it straight once and for all 
The purpose of the A drill is to teach the up and down piston action of the legs during early acceleration. The B drill teaches the extension of the lower leg during upright running. However, the lower leg in the B drill is not deliberately kicked out. Rather, it is simply allowed to swing out naturally as the knee is brought down.
It looks like the girl in the dvd is extending her leg deliberately as it goes right out in front of her body?
Can someone post a vid of the drills so we can discuss the tech cues in each one???
While it is desireable to step over the support knee when sprinting, there isn’t enough air time to allow for this with the drills. The ideas you put forward are other peoples’ interpretation of Gerrard’s intent. I’m curious. do you find that your hips drop and that you paw the ground when you do the drills as you’ve been taught?
There are different levels of flexibility demonstrated with drills and range of motion can vary greatly even with the same level of force or swing.
What is your opinion of what you saw on the DVD?
Was that Ange demonstrating the drills? Her range of motion is probably greater than most people when they first learn the drill. The B drill requires quite a bit of dynamic flexibility in the hamstrings in order to get that nice relaxed swing out of the lower leg, which I think is one reason why people often have trouble learning the drill and tend to force the leg extension. However, I’ve found that dynamic flexibility and range of motion gradually increase with continued practice of the B drill, which I consider one of its main benefits.
That was Lindsay in the DVD.
I thought that B drills were only usefull for hurdlers. When your lower leg shoots out in front I thought it had more chance of causing the hip to drop(?).
During the B drill if you move forward too far during a skip, your hips might drop significantly before the leg reaches the ground. This is because the foot is traveling through an arc rather than straight down, like in the A skip. Therefore, put less emphasis on horizontal movement during the B drill.
Ok, well we changed our drills and stopped stepping over the knee to ensure we were not letting our hips drop and we would never have both feet on the ground at the same time to try and keep the hips up.
We have changed our drills a few times to try and work on triple extension with the a drill and stepping over on the b drill.
Everyone seems to do drills so differently over here and no one really knows what each is working on or when to prescribe a certain drill for a certain problem in the technique. So when are some of you guys coming to Australia to do a coaching course