It’s amazing how many sprinters loose speed through external rotation. Learn some quick fixes for one of the most common speed killers out there. When sprinting, you want to line up your forces and hit it as hard as you can. Any external rotation will cause your speed to drop. Something as simple as a slight head movement can carry over into the hands and the feet, causing wasted movement and slower times. On top of all of that, if you’re in a competition and step out of your lane, you can get disqualified.

Coach Harnden emphasizes the importance of avoiding external rotation, and in this post, I teach why it´s that way. I also provide some practical sprinting tips and drills coach Ken Harnden uses with his athletes to work on keeping things lined up. Remember, the fastest way to get from point A to point B is a straight line.

Our goal when sprinting is to line up our forces and hit it as hard as we can, to drive the body in a straight line. Obviously, we want to do that under control, but we always want to keep a linear motion as often as possible. Any external rotation allows for movement that’s left and right, that’s not taking us to our ultimate destination. We know that the fastest way from point A to point B is a straight line.

• Oftentimes, on the track we´ll have our athletes use the lane line to run down instead of running in the lane. This allows them to feel the drift when they’re running.
• We oftentimes do a seated running drill to try to keep the hands in a linear motion and not allow across the body motion.

Tip: Use lane line to check drift

When we do that, it allows for a chain reaction. The hands dictate what the legs do. So if you can get your hands going straight up and down and straight forward, then you get the whole body moving in that straight line.

So ultimately we want linear motion as often as possible and zero external rotation. For most athletes, that external rotation will start in the head and it’ll start in the hands. Anytime you let the hands go across the midline of the body, you’re going to get a drift at the feet level as well.

Focus points:

1. Keep head straight → External rotation often starts with head
2. Hands move in linear motion → Avoid any movement across the body
3. Feet tend to follow hands → Use lane line to check drift

Bibliographic references:

• Outperform. (2021). Maximize Your Speed and Avoid This Common Speed Killer [Video file]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/oV4cMaOy3Eo?si=HBAiJ5hIDa-W3XQI