Sprint Training Drills
A-March Running Drill (Gerard Mach)
Here is one of the top sprint training drills that you can do - The A March. We got to talk really about the postural elements of these sprint drills. The first one is getting your chin up. When they're doing the drills, you want the chin up so that it's parallel to the ground. Get the chest up. Chest is out, making sure that the stomach is flat, lower back is flat, give ourselves good upright posture. This is critical toward good posture and getting the drills down, especially once you start running.
Toe up, meaning the toe is dorsiflexed. Toe is pulled up toward the shin. So pull this toe up toward the shin here. And the heel is up, meaning the heel is up over the opposite knee. If you can do that, you're in good shape.
Now this is just a sprint training drill that we do. It's called the A March. This is the first speed drill that you want to do. And all you're having your athletes do is bring their legs up and down like pistons. Okay? Bringing the legs up and down like pistons. Bringing the active leg up, recover it over the opposite knee, heel over the knee, drive the foot down to the ground landing on the ball of the foot.
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This is slowing it down a little bit. This is all you're going to do for your first drill and you will find that athletes are going to be able to do this fairly well as long as their hands are on the hips. Adding the arm action right away, too complicated. They're going to be going left arm, left leg, and you'll be actually amazed at how complicated it is to do with the arm action for a majority of kids because majority of kids are not going to college and get a scholarship.
So this is the first basic sprint training drill. You can take this drill, start doing it, practice it on your own, see what I'm doing. Chin up, chest up, toe up, knee up, heel up. Recover that leg driving the foot down into the ground. This is just a great sprint drill.
How we add the arm action. Wait till you see how much more complicated this is when you add the arm action. You're going to not have too many athletes looking like this. And, again, I apologize if this is just a little bit choppy on your particular computer. Again, we've had to make adjustments to make sure it plays on all types of computers all over the place.
But this is the motion you can see here. Now technically the athlete's toe should be a little bit – or I should say my toe should be a little bit more dorsiflexed than it is here pulling that toe up. But see how the feet land underneath the hips, right? Everything's taking place underneath the hips. It's not going crazy all over the place.
So that's a sprint drill that you can use in training, the first drill, introductory-level drill. Start with the arm hands on the hips. Then once athletes fairly get that down, then they can do the arm action. Teach this drill. This is a great drill to do. Again, it's created by Gerard Mach back in the day. I did not make this drill up nor am I taking credit for it, but I did make any variations.
Start with the hands on the hips. I think that's a much easier way to teach most athletes how to do it. Then you can progress to the arm action focusing on driving those elbows down and back, good arm action, etc. Of course, the specific slowed-down, very much more paced-out instructions for this video are obviously contained on the Complete Speed Training for Sprinters program.
