Block Workouts for Track Sprinters
How to set up your blocks for track sprinters
So let's talk about actually getting in the blocks and again, with blocks there are so many things going on, we just have to make them simple and only take one step at a time.
Remember, with acceleration everything we're doing, athletes can only handle one basic thing at a time so we don't want to overload them with other different mechanical issues but even as a coach, let's not make things more complicated than they are. I always hear a lot of questions about getting set up in the blocks and this and that. It's really not that complicated. Let's start with one thing that people sometimes make complicated that is not and that's just setting up the blocks for your athletes in the first place.
The rules for getting set up in the blocks are pretty general. You're gonna have so many athletes with so many different body types and strength levels that everyone - every athlete you have in the blocks is going to look different.
So what are the general rules for getting set up in the blocks?
Well, the first thing that I do when setting up my blocks is I just like to measure one foot length. One foot length from the starting line to the block. To the front of the block. Front leg, for me my right leg is my front leg. My power leg. So we're usually gonna go about two step to the front block roughly. That's gonna be our starting point. So our back block, we're gonna go about two and a half steps to three steps to the back block. All right so I'm just gonna put my blocks right here. It's about two and a half steps. That's gonna be our starting point for the blocks. Okay. Every athlete is going to be different. Now, how do you determine which is your front leg? There's a couple different ways it can be done to determine what the front leg is. Now, there are no hard and fast rules when we talk about which leg to use but generally speaking here's some ways you can figure that out. First, generally left-handed people, I'm left-handed myself are gonna come out of the blocks gonna have the right leg forward in the block. Right-handed people are gonna have the left hand, left leg forward in the blocks. That's gonna be your general rule. I would probably start there.
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You want to the be a little more intricate, we've all seen this done before. You have someone come up behind you and push you. It's better when they're not paying attention. Don't go crazy and shove people but whatever leg comes out first on it's own naturally, that's called your quick side leg. That's the leg that wants to come out quick to stop you. That leg is gonna be your back leg in the blocks. Get pushed, leg that comes forward, back leg in the blocks. Another way to do it is I ask athletes okay, if you were gonna take a break away lay up in basketball, which side would you go off of? Which leg would you jump off of? Whatever leg they jump off of, that's gonna be their front leg in the blocks.
Again, I'm left‑handed so I'm gonna go to the right side, I'm gonna go to the left side of the basket, but I'm gonna rock my right leg, my right leg is gonna be in the blocks. Right-handed people generally are gonna go off their left leg and go up for the lay up. So the last way that we can talk about coming out of the blocks or figuring out which leg goes in the blocks is by crossing your arms. So have your athletes just cross their arms naturally. Whichever arm goes underneath, that's gonna be your quick side arm or your back leg. For me my left arm is going underneath. That's gonna be my back leg in the blocks. My quick side leg.
That's pretty uniform with all the ways I talked about doing it. If the right arm goes underneath, the right leg is going to be back in the blocks. So use those tools to establish which leg should go front or back in the blocks but generally it's gonna be the leg that athletes feel is most comfortable being explosive off of because we always have a quick side, a power side, a leg we feel more comfortable doing things with that oftentimes that's going to be the leg to use. So we've established how far back to go in the blocks. And again I'm not gonna go in the real technical side of things here because how I get set up here and those kind of terms I discussed. I just want to talk again about the practical application. We're gonna have athletes. We're gonna go through our whole routine.
Do our touch up jumps every time we come out of the blocks. The next thing we have to do the official says take your marks and go through your team. We're getting down ‑‑ next thing to do is just talk about the different positions of being in the blocks and what's going to happen. As an athlete I'm getting down, I'm going into my blocks. The first thing ‑‑ well, make sure when you have your blocks that both petals are all the way back so we want our toes to be dorsal flexed. We've down our touch jumps. We want to get as much of that explosiveness and that stretch reflex out of our ankles as possible so when we have the blocks petals up, that forces us to plant or flex our toes and point the toes down which is something we're trying to avoid; right? I'm going to be here. No loading here back here in this ankle. But when I put the blocks all the way down, then my foot is more dorsal flexed and I'm gonna be able to get a little bit more explosive.
Again, as you know in the sprints, every little hundred of a second counts and has a big impact so we want to do everything we can to take advantage of that fact. Now, we're in the blocks, we're getting set up in the blocks. Important thing to remember is that when the official is callings it that your athletes, the official is not supposed to call set until all the athletes have stopped moving. Oftentimes you're gonna have situations where athletes are not ready.
They're not focused, they're not ready to get down so what I have my athletes do when they're in this position is just before they're ready to go up is just rock back and forth. Good official will not call set if he sees athletes rocking back and forth while focused. Have your athletes rock back and forth until they're settled then when they're settled they can come down and be ready and the official will know.
Now, that being the case, don't go overboard with that fact because we're working at the high school and some collegiate level oftentimes officials are not paying attention, you're at a big invitational meet particularly when we're even indoors and out doors you have huge staggers and oftentimes the official won't be able to see the inside lanes or they'll be the time card there that's up at the finish line and all the automated computer systems and the full automatic timing stuff is in the way. So the official can't see all the athletes so athletes have to be prepared for the fact that they might get blocked. There have been times I've seen athletes and this has actually happened to me in competition as well even at the collegiate level where I'm still rocking back and forth and getting ready to go and going into my routine and the officials call set and I've got to come up and if I'm not prepared for that, that's gonna be a problem for me.
If you're athletes aren't prepared for that, that's gonna be a problem for them as well. So they have to remember they can rock back and forth but they also have to keep in mind that officials oftentimes at the high school level are just gonna call set and set the gun off to go crazy so keep that in mind.
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