Minimalist SprintAthlete Drills

One of my favorite aspects of fitness development is the development of speed. More specifically I am referring to sprinting speed. You see, I have this theory, (which I feel is based on a pretty solid platform of both anecdotal and scientific evidence) that maintaining your ability to lift heavy objects, perform explosive movements, and even sprint, that's right sprint, will maintain the body in a much superior way than those methods which focus on endurance type of activities (i.e. slow jogging or "plodding" marathons, etc...).

Yet, it seems as people age, that is exactly what they are drawn to: slow, long-distance type of activities such as marathons and triathlons. Now don't get me wrong here, if you are one of the people that just love endurance type of activities I wouldn't try to take that away from you; I'm just not convinced that it's healthier than more brief, explosive type of activities such as sprinting. As a master's sprinter myself (I'm biased of course!), I find that performing regular sprints and conditioning work called "tempo" training, along with heavy and explosive free-weight exercises, keeps me pretty fit and strangely enough, allows me to perform endurance type of activities quite well without having to train for these activities specifically.

My theory is that the better you get at repeating high-intensity bouts of exercise, the easier it become to do activities that are relatively lower on the intensity scale by comparison. Indeed it is not uncommon for elite level endurance athletes to possess some pretty decent strength and speed due to the increased amounts of speed and power work that are being done these days.

In order to perform speed work though, you must have a basic clue of the proper running mechanics. To help learn and feel the proper technique involved with faster running, it is often helpful to perform sprint drills to help learn and rehearse the mechanics of proper sprinting form. The following video demonstrates, via the help of my Friend and colleague Patrick Ward, the basic "minimalist" drills that one could do prior to a sprinting or even just a running training session:


Enjoy! They'll be many more videos coming soon about my thoughts on this most important topic.

Keats