Hip height: Drills, strength etc

Alright board, heres one for you… What do you think are some good drills for working on keeping your posture ‘tall’ while running? How about strength training, anything specific that you have seen work? I ask this for two reasons; 1) Saw a kid today get anxious in practice and try and run faster, sat down, leaned back, and ended up limping thru the line. 2) I am just getting back from injury (dropped my hips) and also from 800m work, and I am going down to the 400, I feel that my hips are low when I am sprinting now. I appreciate the help!

Just focus on your posture while doing your drills. Make sure your low back is tight but do not consciously flex it. Exercises geared toward developing low back strength will help along with stepping over when your sprinting which will keep your hips up.

how about Strength Endurance “running A’s a la Gerard Mach”?

start with 2 x 30m(approx), and QUIT when the form deteriorates!

could you go into what ‘running A’s’ are??? Are you talking A Skips??? thanks

If the drills fjlee’s talking about are the ones I think the are, then yes he is talking about A skips.

Running A’s are not equal to A Skips

Do the drills but do them properly. There are sites that illustrate proper drill form, do a search. I am so tired of seeing kids do drills wrong, not only are they not learning proper form, they are actually learning incorrect form, if you are not going to do the drills correctly, it much better to not do them at all. Also, stay away from some of the old school drills that no one can explain how they aid in good mechanics, some coaches have kids do drills just to have them doing something, but drills should always be monitored until athletes do them correctly.