Speed & Mechanics

Oooo! Great questions, Sean. So much to cover! Okay - speed work. Why bring the heel in at all? In acceleration and max velocity, there is no heel/roll, right? As we covered at API - even though the motion is taught as ''heel reaching over the knee," it's all dorsiflexion and piston-like drive of the legs during acceleration, then there's a transition to the 'float' phase once max speed has been attained. The only component that needs more attention is the importance of arm drive; remember that the arms drive the legs, and that the athlete should be cued to drive the elbows, carrying the arms the direction of the sprint, with the hands closed but relaxed.

In deceleration, while the quads can certainly be used to slow the athlete, I generally have my athletes switch to heel-toe, primarily to save the knees the full impact of reducing speed. Likewise with linear lunges - front or back. As you state, in the form that we teach them, lunges are not very applicable to speed training. I can't speak for others, but I teach heel landings during linear training because so many athletes are so quadriceps-dominant that they need to learn more motor control to absorb and redirect force.

In lateral training, however, more of my cues are focused on the proper angle of the lower leg at plant/pushoff during a directional change. If I'm teaching a lateral lunge, I am cueing to land nearly flat-footed, keeping in mind that the foot should be (say it with me) dorsiflexed when landing.

So here's a question for you, Sean; on the plyo box jumps, is it that we're teaching the athlete to land heel-toe, or is it that we're teaching the athlete to dorsiflex the ankle whenever the foot leaves the ground during an athletic movement? When I teach an athlete to land, they're in dorsiflexion, which creates a nearly flat-footed landing, followed by a deceleration through the hips.

Re directional change: the outside leg is going to plant, absorb, then redirect force in the new direction. What happens next depends quite bit on the new direction. If the angle of change is small (as in coming close to a full reversal of direction) the knee of the outside leg will drive up and over the inside leg, as the inside leg opens. If the angle of change is shallow, the knee of the plant leg will not need to drive over the inside leg, and the inside leg will open as it begins its step in the new direction.

I know you asked more, but I hope that this will be enough to get the discussion going! Stay warm!

Andrew