ange or whoever else wants to comment-
stepping over. if anyone can simplify this clue!?
personally when I think of stepping over it firstly gives me the idea of having to lift my knee to step over which is not what you want to do as knee lift is a natural occurance when force is applied correctly through the ground. opposite reaction
thoughts or comments??
I think that “stepping over” can be helpful in teaching proper recovery mechanics. So instead of kicking the heel back toward the butt and swinging the thigh through in a two-part recovery action, sometimes if you think of stepping over, then the recovery may happen more directly underneath you rather than behind you, and become more of a one motion action. I think it helps in maximizing frontside mechanics vs. backside.
ok if you are fully extended aka triple extension then the leg will automatically come through so “put the foot down” would be a better cue right!? when the hip extensors are fully extended they have a stretch reflex action like an elastic band
Forget about your legs. Cock the foot and step down. The leg will follow the foot. It won’t really feel like you’re running. It will feel like you’re stamping your feet. The cyclic action, recovery, horizontal displacement, etc. will happen so fast you won’t really feel it. If you do, it means you’re exaggerating the motion.
To the extent you’re aware of the recovery leg it will be from cocking the foot for the next landing. It will probably feel more like you’re stepping over the support ankle rather than the support knee.
If I were coaching a hurdle drill I might say step over the hurdle. I might hope that was obvious so I probably would not say that cue.
If I were coaching someone and watching their warm up strides I would say very little. I might ask the question to the athlete “how did that feel?”
I don’t think I would say much except ask more questions to the athlete and try and learn more.
Relaxation is often an issue so I might say " do you feel relaxed?". Try the next run and see if you can repeat what you just did with more relaxation.
To cock the foot is a que that for me is understandable because I used to point my toes as a gymnast and got used to pointing my toes in all the drills. The drills are where the primary instruction needs to happen to tell the athlete to cock the foot. Once the drill improves , it should over time translate in the runs.
In my view, it’s all relative to each individual sprinter/athlete as to what mechanics, potential inefficiency, they represent. For example, if someone is “kicking out the back” we know that a variety of things may be at fault; however, the end game question is ‘what will most efficiently resolve the issue’.
I fully agree with Charlie’s position on finding a drill/form of movement that may serve to solve the issue and in this way, by first requiring the athlete to be conscious of stepping over in a power speed drill, which then transitions to more of a running drill, we may see that the intentional thought of stepping over (literally- stepping over the knee of the support leg) will eventually shift to the subconscious level and- problem solved.
I keep coming across the term “power speed”, but I’m not 100% sure what it’s referring to and how it is different from power and speed. is it kind of like learning how to apply power at speed? kind of a transition between pure power and pure speed??
They’re referring to the drills like A and B skips, etc.
Does anyone have a source of the A, B, and C’s drills as described by Mach himself. Images and video. I do own a few of CF’s products, and maybe in those but looking giving them to my athletes and be able to show them at training
I am looking to video tape these on you tube for references as I think it’s something many people would benefit from.
[b]
I need to outline how the drills will be preformed and how to progressively add into the drills variations that can be used to teach the feeling of getting the hips to roll over and what it feels like to develop the strength to hold your hips up. I am thinking of one drill in particular that I have mentioned on more than one occasion. It was very difficult to do, let alone do it correctly and I have no name for this drill. ( Isn’t this helpful information? 
Everyone needs to think of training in terms of all the pieces of the puzzle and how each piece may or may not fit into the speed the best possible way.
Over time , when the training is sound and all variables are attended to, eventually piece by piece the progression of training will come together.
In general I think what happens to many people is they tend to focus too much on one thing there by excluding other necessary training components.
I see this happen OFTEN at the track.
People skip the warm up.
They only get as far as the strides.
They spend too much time stretching but they have yet to complete a real or proper warm up. [/b]
hey ange…could you explain on utube and paste the link here on stepping over? great explanation flash
Agreed, it’s almost perplexing to observe how naive the modern era coach can be considering the work, and its accessibility, that has been done by those with advanced knowledge. Then I remind myself that heliocentric observations were made as early as 300B.C. yet Galieo was still persecuted and placed in house arrest in the 1600s by the church who, despite Galileo’s advancement of the telescope which allowed for clear observation of the facts, punished him for contesting the small minded establishment.
A different view of warming up here, where you will see progressively faster stride-throughs, but you will not see any stretch being held and you will not see any standard A-B-C track drills, and the fellow demonstrating this (Asafa) held the wold record at the time this video series was made:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13ZpOZdJaaQ
I’m not at all opposed to drills, particularly early to teach movement patterns, but “modern era advanced knowledge” didn’t end 25 years ago. What bothers me is that when I see various NCAA sprint groups training, I see athletes just stretching before the scheduled workout for longer than Asafa takes for the whole warmup, and I see tons of drills (often written down by the coach as a script and it sometimes goes on for pages). But when I stick my head in the track shed, there aren’t any sleds, and there might be much in the way of plyo boxes either.
The Jamaicans have been winning for more than 10 years, and I don’t see why it should take an MIT engineer to figure out that you might want to pay attention to how they got that way (and of course, Charlie did pay attention).
I remember that video and you raise good points in that I should have stated knowledgeable as opposed to modern era. It should also be stated that warming up requires a lot less activity then what “pretraining” may effectively consist of; in which all of the drill options and so forth become useful for a host of reasons.
Regarding the B skip, some coaches believe that this drill should not be taught because it can lead to incorrect mechanics of slapping or clawing of the ground when sprinting and therefore increase the risk of hamstring injuries.
Thoughts?
It’s a difficult drill to teach and do. We stopped doing it towards the end as Charlie was not happy with how I was doing it.
Especially when you aren’t sure how to do it yourself. I have introduced it in my program, and to be honest I am not sure if it is correct or whether it is a B or just an A with extension.
I think it is helping strengthen the hamstrings.
Back in University, I worked closely with Marvin Nash who had worked with Gerard Mach during his time running with the Canadian National team in the 70s. Marvin’s interpretation of the Mach drills were SIGNIFICANTLY different when compared to the way I was originally taught. The first time he watched us warm up as a group and saw the way we did our A and B drills, he almost fell over laughing!
I believe he was able to explain how to properly do the A movement to everyone, but only a few of us managed to approximate what he was looking for out of a B, so it was used much more sparingly. To this day, that experience has always struck a chord with me, because up until that point, I’m not sure if I ever truly analyzed why I was doing a thing a particular way. I just did them because that’s how I did them.
Oh to have another shot at being (athletically) 22 again! ; )