Most Useless Drills?

probably doing them wrong wrote:

Most people do butt kicks wrong. If you do them correctly, they look almost exactly like high knees. You should be driving your knee upward, but just putting a little bit more emphasis on snapping your heal up toward your butt during the process.

No, you're wrong.

The stupid alternating step run sideways thing that every football team on earth does, which made its way to track and XC because most coaches are idiots.

It seems that a lot of posters have been doing drills wrong. I do drills before every run, but I do them as a dynamic stretch to help warm the muscles up and move them through an exaggerated range of motion so they'll be loose and warm when moving through the normal running motion.

I don't do them hard. I don't do them until I get tired. I start easy and finish a tiny bit harder. If I feel especially tight... doing lunges, for example... I'll do a second set at the end of the drill session.

In short, drills should be a moving stretch, starting easy and progressing a little as you do them. If you're tired at the end, you're doing them wrong.

That can be achieved without removing hip flexion.

Traditional butt flicks reinforce rear side mechanics when really we want the thigh moving forward as soon you toe-off.

If the butt flicks are done such that the action occurs more underneath the hip you can still move your knee through the range of motion needed, but reinforce the hip-flexion happening at the same time. It ends up looking halfway between butt flicks and high knees.

Too many drills are done without any real understanding or objective behind them, rather being done because “we’ve always done it that way”.

The Mandrill is pretty useless.

https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/grooming-time-for-two-mandrills-jim-fitzpatrick.jpg