I have a runner who is a heel striker and basically shuffles his feet. he is the harderest worker ont he team but has a short stide. this kills his finish and limits his speed. I would like to turn him into a toe striker and open up his stide. I knwo about high knees and butt kicks but he needs more than that. He is also not very coodinated (took him a while to do bounding). any help?
drills are pretty much useless. To improve the running form you've got to work on just that, running. Get a videocamera. Have him change things until his form gets better. Make small changes, only changing one thing at a time.
First off learn what good running looks like. If your lazy go watch El Guerrouj or WIlson Kipketer frame by frame and have your kid try and emulate that.
by the way, you don't want him to be a "toe striker". Not even sprinters do that. You basically want him hitting flat with his whole foot under his knee.
I knwo what good form looks like for the most part. The problem i have is that the season is over and there is a transpotation issue. So the kid has to do alot on his own. he still wants to run crazy amounts but now is when i would like to change some bad habbits before track starts up.
Wrong, drills are not useless, drills help strengthen ligements, tendons, bones, and muscles to assist in proper posture during fatigue. When tiring during a race it is bad form can hender you but what is bad form a mental mindset. If you are running 1:43.4 and your arm is flinging out to the side is my form bad? If I'm a woman and my head bobs during my 2:15 marathon do I have bad form? If I run staight up like a robot but I just ran 19.32 in the 200m do I have bad form?
MLW- drills are useless for form. For improving form they are stupid.
Nice, you point out minor things of people. Yes there will be some exceptions. You focus on the negatives, MJ was straight up, but watch his legs work. Great, got right underneath him, landed right under his center of gravity, his push off was good to, good hip extension. Same can be said about the others.
Anyways, there are always exceptions. It's the same in training. The majority of elite marathoners for example run a ton of mileage. Yet sometimes you hear about some guy who did it on 70mpw or something. Does that mean that the other guys are wrong in running their high mileage? No, it simply means that one guy is an outlier.
Check out this page, got some nice videos of sprinting drills.
http://www.completetracktraining.com/x.pro/ModShow/ShowPage/2645/
The videolinks doesn't seem to work with new IE7, try firefox.
I would have to disagree with Bad connection, based on the notion that drills allow you to break down each component of running into smaller portions. By "perfecting" or at least making each portion more efficient you will improve your form thus making you a more efficient runner. Most likely if you are more efficient with your form you will be a faster runner.
hill workouts and can with the heel strike and turning him into a toe striker....have him lean forward on the hill while pushing off from the toe.
i do know one runner with similar mechanics to what you describe who improved his form (and times) on the flats by doing a few weeks of hills.
Try putting him in some shoes with less heel. His footstrike will naturally move forward along the foot.
I converted a heal-striker by having her run barefoot a couple times a week.
Some good replies here at the end - short sharp hills with high knees, some barefoot running on grass (ease into it) and even just some plain hard all-out 150s running like a sprinter, not a jogger in a hurry.