Speed Factory

"Toe up" while recovering the leg forwards..

Coaches - one cue that might help you to have better recovery mechanics of your athletes..

All the sprint fans would have some or the other day thought how to correct Michael Johnson's running mechanics, dint you??

Well, body posture definitely is one area to work on (I'll discus more on it in the upcoming posts).

Second important area where we can work on is through "cues" and like I said the best cue for it is "Toe-up"..

Now, let us understand what is happening with Michael Johnson's Toes..
You can see in the photo clearly that his Toe is facing down which indicates that he has pushed the ground for longer than required. Now, when you keep pushing the ground post your mid-support phase, it will be difficult for you to turn the switch off of your glutes and hammies, and turn on the switch of your flexors..

When the athlete strikes the ground and gets closer to his mid-support phase, this is the ideal time to shift our brain to "toe-up" and turn the switch on for your flexors..

By doing this, you would see more front side mechanics in your athletes.

Try it for your athletes and share your feedback in the comments section below..

Too often we as coaches get engaged a lot in "producing force" kind of training not understanding the fact that even if we produce a lot of force but if that force is exerted at the wrong place, it might have an adverse effect too. For example, if an athlete produces 100N force but lands 50cm ahead of his/her hips, what do you think will happen? Yes, you guessed it correct!! The high force in the wrong direction will stop you from moving forwards.

** It's important to teach where to apply force before trying to produce big forces and in lesser time. **

Memorable days of my life!! ❤️🇮🇳👍

I got a mail few days back from office saying that I am representing them as a Kids Athletics Lead. As rightly said, you get things when you least expect them and so was the case for me. But I literally feel thankful, privileged and honoured to have represented them and I hope I get enough opportunities and power now to work in the newly constructed and well structured Kids Athletics Program. and you guys were just fantastic in developing and teaching this and I assure that I would make my best efforts to tranfer this knowledge to the rest of India..

In addition to this, it was amazing to meet some new friends, most of them highly experienced and a few very young and extremely intelligent. Hope to unite everyone and work together to build a better world - not just a country!

Let's talk about an important concept of max velocity today.

I've seen a lot of athletes who tend to over-push the ground just with a hope that they would cover more distance ahead. But what does that actually do is that it flattens your center of mass curve and when the curve gets flatted, you won't get enough time to maintain the key positions required for max velocity.

Change the striking mechanics and you'll definitely see a big change in flight curve.

See you all..

Hey coaches and athletes!
Hope you're all having a good time.

Here is a task for you to find the faults and give necessary feedback/drills to correct him..

Enjoy 😇