bmarcho1
The running drills you are referring to are a specific breakdown of running itself.
What better way to work on running than to have a few simple and repeatable drills to build the muscles needed for running well which in turn should facilitate or allow you to run fast or faster. ( " should" = we all know drills don’t make you fast)
Just because you hate doing something does not render it unimportant and not having value.
Don’t you agree?
WE do them, but I usually use them for a warm up. I like the hurdle step overs better for range of motion. I think that helps a lot. I just don’t like A skips and B skips whereby theres an expectation that they will transfer. Most of my kids cant chew gum n walk, so rather than work on drills we just work on running while running. That in itself takes a lot.
bmarcho1
I see drills as an important component of the warm-up for number of reasons. 1) Coordination, it’s hard to imagine that you’ll try to do something fast with good efficiency without doing it correctly at slower motion. 2) Awareness, athletes are not robots therefore awareness of body parts is extremely important most of the youngsters are not aware of what’s going on while running at sub-max/max. You have said that “Most of my kids cant chew gum n walk” and for that reason I believe that you should spend more time to develop those two qualities above. Pfaff, Seagrave, Schexnayder , Ritzdorf etc… all are spending big amount of time on developing those qualities at the elite level doing basic drills/exercises, so to me it’s even a bigger deal to develop those two above at the beginner level! Charlie was stressing importance of coordination as a “The subtleties of max speed work”. I do agree that drills will not always transfer and they won’t transfer for as long as COGNITIVE approach is not applied effectively into the every training session. Basics first also, do it right otherwise don’t do it at all.
I have had greater efficient success teaching without drills… if it works for you , youre a better man than me…