Unlock the secret to sprinting faster with a no-frills approach in this quick guide. Ditch the overwhelm of endless tips and discover how to implement the most effective sprinting drills into your routine effortlessly. Whether you’re a seasoned sprinter or a coach looking to enhance your athletes’ speed, this post simplifies speed improvement, focusing on what truly works. Dive in to transform your sprinting technique with simplicity and precision. Ready, set, sprint smarter!

If you want to run faster, you’ve got a lot of video options to help you get there. The more sprinting videos you watch, the more technical elements you learn, and soon you’re hit with a new problem: “How do you actually use all of this advice?” Do you make a mental checklist of everything you need to do, then focus really hard, and then just blast off?

Trying to hold more than one or two technical cues in your head while sprinting will probably look a fiasco. And the reason why, it comes down to this simple fact: you can’t think your way through a sprint.

Technical speed development requires a series of sensations that establish correct motor pathways. In other words, you need to train your body to perform the correct movements without thinking. The way you do this is with high value sprinting drills that target specific aspects of sprinting technique, and directly translate into improving your form.

Coach Ken Harnden provides one of the simplest explanations on how to run faster, and how two drills directly improve these elements. A basic instruction is:

1. Get up your thigh.
2. Keep the shin angle tight.
3. Push the foot on the ground.
4. Pull the foot back.

So think about you´re doing an A-skip, and then you´re doing a tight butt kick. It’s not a traditional butt kick. It’s a tight butt kick. You´re pulling the foot up. So if you can put those two together and if you can be proficient at those two drills, then you can do things really well on the track. So if you told coach Harnden he could only do two drills, ever again, those would be the two he’d pick.

Ken Harnden

• 2 times Olympian
• NCAA D1 National Champion

Has coached:

• 25 NCAA D1 National Champions
• 7 Sub-10 100 M Sprinters
• 14 Olympians
• 160 All-American Honors

Obviously if you want to sprint faster, you have to sprint. However, attempting to learn all of the technical elements of sprinting while moving at top speed is like learning to drive at 90 mph. Slowing down and focusing on specific aspects of technique with sprinting drills is far more effective. You just need to learn how to do them correctly, and consistently perform them before each sprinting session. You’ll see a big difference in your speed. So let’s dive into the top three sprinting drills that will help you run faster.

DRILL #1: A-Skip

First drill that we have in our series is probably the most important drill that you’ll do in track and field. We’re looking for a couple of things as a coach. We want to be tall at the hip, in good positions. Chin up is not bent. Not sloppy in our posture. So we’re nice and tall. We want to keep the hands 90°. And most importantly, dorsiflex the foot and push it on the ground. So we’re looking at great arm contact, great foot contact, and dorsiflex the whole way.

Cues for the A-skip:

• Hips up.
• Chin up is not bent.
• Nice and tall posture, not sloppy.
• Keep the hands at 90º.
• Dorsiflex the foot.
• Push the foot on the ground.

DRILL #2: Butt Kick

Second drill is not the traditional butt kick. It’s not what we all grew up doing. So we’re not back, bent at the waist and flipping the foot up. We don’t want to promote backside mechanics. Backside mechanics are part of what we do, but they’ve got to be good backside mechanics. There a push and then a pull. So you’re going to work on pulling the foot to the butt rather than picking up the foot to the butt. Amazingly enough, it looks remarkably like a high knee. So it´s a similar drill to what we’re doing with the high knee, trying to keep the shin angle nice and tight. We’re just trying to pull the foot back right, and tuck that foot up underneath the butt.

DRILL #3: Straight Leg Run

When we´re doing a straight leg run, we’re working on picking the leg up in a straight fashion, keeping the foot dorsiflexed and pulling it back underneath the hip. So it’s a great drill to warm up with. It’s also a great drill to promote pulling the foot under the hip and lifting up. To do the drill well we have to make sure that we are landing on underneath the hip. So the hips on top, nice and tall with the posture and making sure that the hands are in a good position, so that we’re not getting long and letting the foot drift out in front of the hip. When it’s quiet like this, that’s an athlete that moves really light on their feet. You’ll hear different sounds with some of the athletes in terms of how they do their drill.

Cues for the straight leg run:

• Hands in good position.
• Tall posture.
• Foot lands under hip.

Bibliographic references:

• Outperform. (2024). The Simplest Way to Run Faster: Are You Missing It? [Video file]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/E9-VKyyxbBE?si=7w5acDeD4n9UfwPj