Sprinting form check

- Your sprint technique is sound.

- Your ankle stiffness is good.

- You should use a video camera with a more linear lens, ditch the fish eye it isn't helpful.

- My first impression is you seemed a bit fatigued in that sprint you look more like a middle distance runner you don't look explosive but your sprint technique is good. When doing sprint workouts take a full rest between reps and stop the workout when you start to slow down from fatigue (you can still do some stretching and a very light jog if you want). 2:00 minutes of rest for every 10 meters of the sprint is a standard "rule of thumb" except when doing longer reps of 150m-300m where the goal is to train the lactic metabolism. In short sprint (60m - 100m) training it is critical that you sprint with the highest possible quality of movement and as fast as possible ("to get fast you have to sprint fast"). In early season if you are not in good condition then do "sprint tempos" where you sprint slower but concentrate on technique. If you sprint fast before your body is ready the risk of injury is great ("Speed has to be respected"). The main goals of doing weight work in the gym is not to improve power, but rather to condition the tendons and muscles so they stay healthy and weight work can also improve the nervous system (muscle recruitment) which will improve power but power is not the primary goal.

- Stretching is more important than weight work. Dynamic stretching is preferred over static stretching.

- You mention tips about "cadence", "ground contact time". Those are things you always want to improve. Very tiny improvements in those things translate to big gains in performance. For example, if you take 50 strides to cover 100m and can improve turnover ("cadence" is a distance running term) by 0.01 strides per second then that tiny improvement will result in a 0.50 second improvement in your 100m time. Elite sprinters have ground contact times between 0.08 - 0.12 seconds.

I misstated the last tip: if you can improve the time it takes to take a stride by 0.01 seconds, while keeping the same stride length, your 100m time will improve by 0.50 seconds (and the number of strides you take to cover 100m will also decrease in that case.)

The point is elite sprinters spend most of their careers working to improve those parameters.

- You have a bit too much "frontside action" when your leading foot touches down the knee on your trailing leg (which is moving forward) is positioned behind the knee of your touchdown leg. This is a common cause of hamstring pulls. This flaw in technique happens when you overstride. Sprinting is not about "reaching out" it is about "propulsion".

Anyone asking for sprinting advice on here, we need to know how many reps, 225 lbs. free weight squat.

Sub-1:44 800m guys have posted here. F.a.t. sub-10.1 guy has posted here. Sub-2:10 Marathoners post here. Matt Centrowitz has posted here. Any of them can tell you plyometrics, downhill sprints, (30 & 50)m sprints, etc. Others will say the same thing.

Not good enough. We need to know free weight squat results. You can give us leg press results if you like.

I love the detail, I'm very grateful. To clarify, you mean if I'm going to be running 200's I would need 40 minutes of rest per rep? Or was that meant to be a 2:00 for every 100m?

RE injury: I'm currently doing fairly heavy weight work, is this something that will increase my injury risk in the short term?

To repeat myself...

"... 2:00 minutes of rest for every 10 meters of the sprint is a standard
"rule of thumb" except when doing longer reps of 150m-300m where the
goal is to train the lactic metabolism. ..."

When doing 200 repeats, take as long as possible within whatever time limit you find reasonable. If you are training for the 400m event then you will do 200m - 300m repeats with much shorter rest because then you are trying to improve your stamina and long range speed endurance.

Did you expect to receive any meaningful information without going into detail?

Get yourself a couple of good books or sprint training videos.

And if I was looking for the title of a very good book, I'd be going to amazon and buying a copy of...

Now that I think about it, the books and videos that were good for me will most likely not be good for you because none of them explained precisely what is needed to bootstrap yourself into achieving your sprint potential. The older material, even from the top coaches, contain too many misconceptions. There have been a number of breakthroughs in sprint training in recent years, a result of lots of research spurred in large part by professional sports. There are only a handful of practitioners who understand enough of it to have put together outstanding comprehensive programs and almost all of them are keeping it a "trade secret". They can earn much more from their training groups than they can from selling books and videos. The only coach I know of who is selling comprehensive training material based on the latest sprint science, is Jonas Dodoo of Speedworks Training (website is speedworks.training). His material is pricey compared to the cost of a book but is a pittance when considering how long it would take to accumulate that knowledge on your own by synthesizing information from older sources while making mistakes, getting injured then making adjustments on your own. I have no affiliation with Jonas nor his company other than having spoken with him a few times. The ALTIS center is also a knowledgeable source but in my opinion they are more geared towards continuing education of coaches but check them out also they have great material (Jonas was a mentee of Dan Pfaff). Speedworks Training is also oriented more towards coaches but they seem to offer more material for individual athletes and if you simply browse their website and check out their Twitter account you will pick up useful drills and information (look for the "Switching" drill).

You are moving well enough and are doing strength training that you are beyond the beginning phase.

- Tip: One high-intensity workout per week (or even 8-9 days) is all you need. Make high intensity sprinting like a treat that you can't wait to do. Technique is the most important thing. Without proper technique a sprinter is just spinning their wheels.

- Many "top" coaches overemphasize either muscular power, lactic tolerance, or both. Avoid such coaches.

This all makes sense. Based on the quality issues with coaches, if I get coaching from a low-tier athletic club am I likely to benefit from that or should I reach out to an olympic coach I'm familiar with and see if I can have him design programming? Or should I just stick with the sprintworks?

Given that I've only been sprinting for a few weeks I feel like there may be some low-hanging fruit I'm missing, but I guess intro programming doesn't exist for sprinting in the same way it does for other sports.

Exactly, there is a lack of really good "intro programming" for sprinters. There is a lot of intro programming videos and books but virtually all of them present outdated concepts. By the way, your turnover in that video is ~3.53 strides/second which isn't going to cut it in any serious competition Masters or otherwise. If you can run like that for 800m you can be elite and even for 400m you will perform well. If you can turnover at 4.3/s or above you have a chance in the short sprints. Turnover ability is 100% genetic with some small amount of trainability. Don't let that turn you away from sprinting because if you enjoy it then go ahead and do it for the enjoyment and it is always good to stay in great shape as we get older. Gym work is also important for longevity and it is known that any type of HIIT is also very beneficial to living a long and healthy life. Your turnover should improve a bit when you learn to "ride the bicycle" better and get rid of that frontside action. Try "shortening" your strides a little and see if that helps.

Many people prefer to join local sprint groups for the "camraderie" but in my experience such camraderie is mostly a myth though you can expect to form some cordial relations. There are undoubtedly excellent sprint coaches out there who are unknown at a national level so who knows how to find them.

This is not to say the available training material is all bad, they contain many critical concepts - the important fundamentals don't change over time. But if you do 5 things correctly and 1 thing incorrectly that 1 incorrect drill/exercise/workout frequency/etc will stunt your development and may even get you injured.