Take A Deep Breath Lee! OK, I'm Back

I must have blacked out for a couple days. I got so worked up over the poor state of our nutrition in this country that it caused me to see stars and become dizzy.

If you read my last blog, then you realized I was very upset. Believe me, this wasn't the first time and it certainly won't be the last. I just had my fill of watching kids destroy their bodies with JUNK, GARBAGE, POISON, and I wonder why no one else sees this as bad. I know this story will continue for years and years...

Today I am writing about KNEE DRIVE. Wow! What a change of direction. One minute it's junk food and the next it's knee drive??? Welcome to the mind of the "Speed Guy".

Acceleration and Knee Drive

In a training session the other day, I had thee athletes all working on short burst acceleration. The goal was to get up to speed as quickly as possible in as short a distance as possible. Because I am currently training out of my home facility the distance is real short- but it works great.

My goal with these three young athletes was to have them drive out with their knee in order to cover more distance while making sure the step was not over-reaching/over-striding. When the lead knee drives aggressively and the upper body is in a forward lean (from the ankle through the head is straight) the force of the knee drive causes a more powerful push off from the back leg (this is the law of action reaction). And, if the arm drive is aggressive, tight, and long, then action reaction forces help once again. My goal is to eliminate an athlete from taking short choppy steps for acceleration and replace them with big powerful driving steps. Here is how I progressed these athletes in the workout:

1. Wall Runs- the first thing I had to do is make sure the athletes understood body lean and how to drive the knee forward and punch it down and back during the drive phase. I used the good old numbered wall runs. Here the athlete gets in a forward lean with the arms straight out from shoulder level. The head is neutral and eyes focused between hands. The right leg is up at 90 degrees but not parallel (being parallel would mean the knee is higher than 90 degrees and this can hurt the support leg/hip extension ability). The ankle should be dorsi-flexed. When I say "One", the athlete snaps down and back with the lead leg and fires the opposite knee up and holds. I do not want posture form head to toe to break. I will call out a series of numbers- "One", "Two", "Two", One", "Three", and so on. The athlete will switch the legs that many times. I don't have them perform the drill for too many second because I don't want poor form to creep in. Great drill to get them focused on posture, knee drive, punch down and back, and aggressiveness.

2. We then moved to light tubing resisted short accelerations. I had the athletes start in a staggered stance. On "go" they accelerated hard for 4-5 steps. I want aggressive arm swing, knee drive out, punch down and back, and great acceleration posture. The tubing resisted was used to slow them down at the end and to add a stimulus at the start to get them to drive and lean. It is important to remember that the lean is a by-product of how hard and fast you accelerate. The lean can't come first. They performed approximately 5 reps of this routine with a lot of coaching to clean up bad habits.

3. Then I moved them into 1/2 kneeling starts. This drill brings in the element of strength and power of the hips to get up and out of the 1/2 kneeling position. The athlete must also learn to drive down and back hard to get into a positive lean without breaking at the waist and dropping the head. This is the tendency at first. Once the athletes learned to be super aggressive with the push off (arm drive was aggressive), keep the head neutral and eyes looking forward, they were able to drive themselves through the start. This is a great strength builder for young athletes. We perform 4 starts on each leg for 3-5 hard steps.

By the time we finished this last exercise the athletes had a pretty good understanding how to drive out and punch down and back while maintaining posture.

One of the three athletes likes to take short little choppy steps when accelerating and it hurts his initial speed. He now is understanding what he needs to do. It will simply take time to re-program the computer (his brain) to develop a new motor pathway so it becomes normal for him to drive his knees more. Plus, he needs more strength and this will come as he gets develops.

Give these three exercises a try and see if you can get more extension with the driving leg down and back into the ground. This can only occur if the lead knee is aggressive and gets out in front. Don't ever let the athlete over-stride and land on the heels. Let me know what you think.

Yours in Speed,

Lee

PS: I recently filmed a short video that outlines the importance of aggressive leg and knee drive in a lateral drill. This movement is SO MIS-UNDERSTOOD. You really should learn how to teach it properly to make your athletes faster. To access this video and many others, go to http://www.speedinsiders.com/ for a FREE test drive.