When a coach yells to their athlete "open up your stride" is that bad advice?

I see you point but if you are a long way off elite you probably will not have the speed for 'the 180 foot steps a minute'

'What should I be telling my kids at the final half mile of the race?'

I would shout out 'only half a mile to go!'. They will be too knackered to listed to any pearls of wisdom

Opening up the stride is a function of increased force applied at toe off. So a coach who implores a runner to open his/her stride is actually asking for greater drive which will also increase the turnover rate. The effect is that the runner goes faster. It makes sense.

People that yell "open your stride" are idiots.

"Drive your knees"........what the hell does that mean?

At the point of total fatigue at the end of a race, a runner is relegated to whatever form they can muster and the only thing that is important is just moving fast. You can be relegated to running like an 80 year old....just run fast as an 80 yea rold.

The only thing I yell is this:

"quicker hands, quicker hands"

THe faster you move your hands, the faster you will move your legs. You cant control the legs but you sure can control the arms.

I recall running mid-pack as a middle schooler in a HS XC race and hearing a coach yell at the top of his lungs, "Nicholas, you f@$%ing pussy, get your f@$%ing ass up there you son of a B&$#@!!!!". The kid running beside me then motored to the front and destroyed the field to win the race. Not sure if this tactic is tollerated anymore more, but it was effective then.

awesome

ccrunner609 wrote:

People that yell "open your stride" are idiots.

"Drive your knees"........what the hell does that mean?

At the point of total fatigue at the end of a race, a runner is relegated to whatever form they can muster and the only thing that is important is just moving fast. You can be relegated to running like an 80 year old....just run fast as an 80 yea rold.

The only thing I yell is this:

"quicker hands, quicker hands"

THe faster you move your hands, the faster you will move your legs. You cant control the legs but you sure can control the arms.

Hilarious! "Quicker hands"! LOL!!

"Fast hands." Takes focus off trying to do it with legs. Legs adapt to what hands/arms are doing. This tidies up stride.

If head is back, "Chin Down!"

If trying to catch someone in final stages, "YOU CAN!"

you really think kenyans worry about this crap? you guys are exhausting.

mister scholarship winner wrote:

you really think kenyans worry about this crap? you guys are exhausting.

I'm sure that some Kenyan coach has yelled out, "Kufungua stride yako!" And the athlete thought to him- or herself, "Nini kuzimu gani kwamba hata maana?

The question is not specific enough....what distance is the race and what portion of the race are we talking about?

If it's a 10K race and towards the end, you definitely don't want to "open up" your stride...the poster who mentioned "quick hands" is pretty close. When lactic acid is increased and inhibiting muscular contraction, you actually want to shorten up both the upper and lower extremity. This means quick hands and a more efficient gait pattern (aka--shorter stride).

If you're running in the middle of 10K race and a coach wanted his athlete to "surge" then opening up the stride might be a legetimate command. This would probably be best communicated prior to starting a race, so the participating athletes knew exactly what you wanted. We go over this daily with all our athletes to ensure they understand what we're looking for in each part of the race and how to respond to any technical advice we might give.

Hilarious! "Quicker hands"! LOL!!

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You keep thinking that.

its a dumb thing to say...period.

It's only bad advice if that coach is Hank Dennis or Todd Lippin.

ccrunner609 wrote:

its a dumb thing to say...period.

almost as dumb as "fast hands" ... LOL!

Umm well opening my stride helps sometimes. Because 200 short stride vs 160 large ones isn't as effective. I woudl say that the turnover and the stride length need to be balanced, and over striding is definately a bad thing.

And a coach can yell "pick up the pace" "youve got this!" "come on!" "Up that hill(or over that bride etc, as long as its loud)" "Go for a time!" "youve done this in practice" "do what youre capable of!"

Theres tons of different things to say and some things work better for some kids. Some respond to "If you wanna make states you better be able to at least catch that kid!" And pretty much as long as its loud it helps.

I want Ventolin^3 to plug all of the comments, critiques and encouragements into his magical calculator and tell us what the effect is on a runner's race. I bet Steve Prefontains could have run 13:11 if somebody had yelled "quick hands" at him. Or maybe "jazz hands," I'm not sure which. If only Ventolin^3 would give me the definitive answer.

If a good young runner can maintain the same stride length over 10000m, as they do over 800, they would run under 27 minutes, just like those guys running sub 27 do.

Mr. Obvious wrote:

I want Ventolin^3 to plug all of the comments, critiques and encouragements into his magical calculator and tell us what the effect is on a runner's race. I bet Steve Prefontains could have run 13:11 if somebody had yelled "quick hands" at him. Or maybe "jazz hands," I'm not sure which. If only Ventolin^3 would give me the definitive answer.

Maybe some spirit fingers would have given him a shot at a sub 13?

I would just like to repeat, for anyone intelligent enough to consider this very important fact.

The best distance runners can hold their long stride over a range of distances.

Bekele always runs each track race with more or less the same 2 meter stride regardless of pace.

ANY INTELLIGENT POSTERS OUT THERE???????????????