Below are a range of drills that can be done
as a warm up, either prior to more running specific drills or a running
session. Some people will also perform drills prior to a circuits or
weights session. Whatever exercise you are doing after drills, it is
normally advisable that you do skills exercises when you are relatively
fresh.
Unfortunately, the images of Tom are a little
jerky at the moment - we are working to improve them and better
versions should be released shortly. We have included many of these
drills as video clips, which although not 100% clear, make it easier
to see what you are meant to be doing. Each one will take about
45secs to a minute to download and can be viewed through standard
viewers.
Heel Flicks
Although this can be performed as an event specific drill, most coaches use this as part
of the warm up. To perform it, simply run slowly forwards, taking short strides and flicking
your bum with your heels. Your upper leg should remain perpendicular to the floor in this
drill and as with skipping you should aim to make as little noise on the track as possible.
When performing this as a specific running drill, also try to concentrate on lifting your foot
so that the angle between the front of your leg and foot is as small as possible, just after
lifting your foot off the floor.
Why?
We use high knees for two purposes. Firstly, and obviously, to learn to lift our knees
up when we are running - many people when running reduce their stride length simply by not doing this.
Secondly, it is important when running to try to remain as light on your feet as possible, as
this reduces the amount of time spent in contact with the track.
During the high knees drill we concentrate on both of these things. As can be seen from
the video, the aim is to lift your knees high and "bounce" gently off the track with each
stride. Try to ensure that the upper half of your body is leaning slightly forward (attained
by bending at the hips and not crouching over) as there is a tendancy to lean back when trying
to lift your knees high - this is counter-productive to a good running technique.
As you will see, there is no emphasis here on speed of movement, simply running tall and
light and getting a good range of movement.
Skipping
(see below)
This is a perfect example of a warm up exercise,
which involves a little bit of co-ordination.
By skipping you raise your temperature and therefore muscles, use your legs (particularly
your calf muscles) and develop co-ordination.
The essential part of skipping is that you take off and land with one foot before repeating
the action with the other leg. In other words, skipping is effectively alternating between
a hop and a step, before repeating again.
To warm up you should do fairly short strides, trying to
remain light on your feet, ie. making as little noise on the track as you can. This is
particularly true of the "hop" part of the skip as your foot will only move about 30-40cm if
you are performing the exercise gently.
A variation of this would be to use skipping as a strength exercise where you aim to go
as far (and high) on each stride as possible. To do this you will need to drive your knee up,
whilst maintain good body shape (ie remaining in control, not flapping your arms etc).
It is advisable to do this kind of exercise on a soft surface, eg grass, and only ever do it
once a full warm up routine has been completed.
Co-ordination Skips
These are a little difficult to explain. Basically you are aiming to skip down the track
- one foot will contact with the ground on each stride, whilst the other one remains in the air
as you lift your knee. On the step where both feet are on the ground they should land simultaneously.
On each alternate knee lift pull your foot across your body and touch it with the opposite hand.
This may not be all that clear - hopefully it will be made more so by viewing the video.
Because this is more complicated we have include one view from the side and another from the
front
Again with this drill, try to remain light on your feet.
Often athletes find this a complicated drill to grasp straight away. It can be broken into
3 steps - firstly take away the pulling of the foot across the body on alternate steps. If
this is still difficult, try "hopscotching" down the track - alternating having one foot on the
ground and then two. Once the rythmn of this has been accomplished you can start to build
up the other elements of the drill.
If you have an opinion about which of the above formats (animation or video) is better
for viewing the drills please mail us
as we always like to know what our users think of the site.
We will add other drills to this section in the future. These will include high knees,
walk throughs, variations on skipping and side runs.
