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Sprinting Techniques: 6 Essential Drills

Les Spellman

18K subscribers • 7 videos on Filmroom

YouTube

47K views4 recommendations

SprintsWarm-ups and drillsAccelerationRunning form

Les Spellman demonstrates six essential A-series drills designed to build the foundational mechanics for the acceleration phase of sprinting.

Sprinting Techniques: 6 Essential Drills What's up #speecity! This week we are walking through each of the drills in our "A Series". These are the foundations for developing the mechanics for your acceleration phase. Drop a comment if you have any questions or like one of the drills. FREE PDF: How To Build A Speed Training System train.lesspellman.com/speedsystem I just released my NEW course "Art Of Acceleration: Coach's Guide To Programming For Speed"! The purpose of this course is to share my step-by-step speed development process to profile, study, analyze, program, and give feedback to your athletes. Check it out here: train.lesspellman.com/artofacceleration

Why it's here

4 people recommend this

What commenters say. Recommended as a great warm-up and coordination routine to improve leg-switching timing and teach proper acceleration mechanics.

@--buddhistboy--in r/trackandfield • Recommends

On “What does the drill part of my workout mean?”

Drills are exercises you can do that help you run faster, usually by helping you practice your form. There's a lot of different drills with the intention of different things, because there's a lot of ways to improve your running mechanics. One common series of drills is the a-march progression. Basically a series of drills done to teach your body to reach this position while running. Do a marches, slowly walking with your knees like that and forcefully pushing into the ground *under* your body. Then a-skips, you can look that up and find a million videos. Then some high knees. These are all varying intensities of the same movement. This is an example of the progression, also including a-…
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@UnlikelyDefiancein r/Sprinting • Recommends

On “If your arms move faster your legs move faster?”

Apologies. I think I forgot mid reply that you are new here. As and Bs are a ‘series’ of drills for warming up and coordination. They don’t have a high CNS load (Central Nervous System load) meaning they won’t fry you and put your recovery straight in the toilet. With getting faster you always want to maximise what you can do by optimising how well you can recover. Running fast is the most important thing to becoming faster. Meaning the quality and speed of each sprint session will actually impact how much speed you gain. For example, have been blessed to have experience as an athlete, as an academic and as a coach to see that the current thinking in speed-only sessions (ie we don’t care abo…
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@Kaiisking581in r/Sprinting • Recommends

On “rate my mechanics”

6/10 On some of your frames I noticed your knees were not together at touch down. This is usually a timing/force production issue. You can improve timing with this drill series to help you switch your legs at the proper time [video For force production you just have to sprint, life and rest well.
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@anonymous_anemone23in r/Sprinting • Recommends

Sprint workout Hello. I’m over 30 have a child and play rugby and touch rugby as well as gym and other sports. I want to add a bit more speed and acceleration but can’t commit to a huge sprinting workout due to life. I’ve recently been doing this video as a warm up link to this video and then doing 4 straight line sprints across the width two tennis courts followed by 4 sprints going criss cross across a tennis court to replicate acceleration deacceleration followed by acceleration. I’m looking for around a 25 min workout to get best bang for your buck. Am I on the right track or would you tweak to make more effective.
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@bottomhousevirginin r/Sprinting • Mentions

On “Looking for sprint form feedback. It’s my first time sprinting in spikes (post-femur fracture)”

…being returned. My recommendation to OP would be to work on striking drills and ankle stiffness to produce more vertical force. The knee drive and heels look fine to me. More vertical force would actually improve energy return, allowing the heel to come up faster _underneath_ the body for more efficient turnover. Some example striking drills: link to this video As well as B-skips…
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@adam_uchibrahin r/trackandfield • Mentions

On “I’m not sure if people remember but I posted a video asking for advice on my block starts”

Hey, so good work try to shoot out of the blocks. I can see you’re starting to think about that. Here’s a picture of a good block set up. Compare that to yours and see what the differences are. blocks In that post is also a video reviewing your start. The key takeaways should be to think about striking back behind your hip with that drive leg instead of straight down. Remember that the beginning of a sprint starts of with horizontal forces so you need to be pushing that way. The second thing is “switching” legs quickly and forcefully. You let your back leg hang back too long instead of hitting a drive position then switching legs. Here’s a good video that goes over the idea of switchin…
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@ctrevino96in r/Sprinting • Mentions

On “How to Get Faster at Home as a 400/200m Sprinter”

1. A-switch series (easy to do at home, you can modify it and do them like the wall drill too) link to this video 2. Plyometrics  (link to this video you can modify and do a lot of things at home. You can do these 3x a week at home. Or one of them on your sprint days 3. Your track day NEEDS to be a sprint workout. Not tempo, not speed endurance. If you only have access to a track 1x per week, use that day for sprinting.
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