the left and really here on the left it's more of you know just when he's starting off with the the
sprint and so um he's not in top speed he doesn't have bad form when he gets into a stop speed
but we do want to see you know what happens where you end up struggling with getting as much knee
height as you needed and so the big thing is and obviously i want to say you know the athlete here
on the left is about six foot maybe six foot one um and i think six foot maybe actually somewhere
between five eleven and six foot one um and then we have usain bolt at six five and the point being
is you could see how much further back behind him his foot's kind of putting pushing off the ground
right in comparison to the rest of the body where you can see you say bully 6'5 how his foot
is really close to his body and the main thing too has to do and this is going to be more with
what's going to translate over to getting a better knee drive right how to get your knees
higher up because what typically happens when you're not able to get your knees up
is one your foot is initially pushing off the ground in a position that is just too far back
behind the hips right so you're allowing that foot to get to and the reason that'll happen
is just because of a lack of range of motion within the the foot so you could see how high
usain bolt's heels getting here as he's about to push off right so you want to get to the
point where you could really you know get great range of motion within the foot within the toes
to make it so now as you're you're coming on to you know that press off phase you're able to get
all the way up onto the toe so now when you're pushing off you're able to push much more upwards
rather than when you struggle with getting the knee drive what ends up happening is you don't
get that that heel is high during the push off so then you end up pushing slightly backwards
there and it just takes a little bit more time for that knee to be able to come through the next big
thing is that as the legs coming up there's just not a great spine angle right so you can see here
spine's a little bit more leaned over in comparison to being more upright and that
will also cause the knee not to be able to get all the way up into the necessary position that
you know you'd want it to and then the last thing that i would say is as you're coming up just in
this again this is the very beginning here so it's not as big of a you know it's not as good of an
example but the last thing would be just getting the heel too far up behind you as you're coming
up and actually john ross does that who you know runs for two in in the 40s so he's actually really
fast he just has a really really fast turnover he doesn't really have necessarily a great knee drive
can turn the the legs over really quickly and has very strong posterior train very strong
hamstrings very strong glutes very strong calves and that's why he's able to run as fast he does
because essentially when you're not getting that that knee drive all the way up you are relying
much more on that push off in order to get you going so that would be the last one and i see guys
that are pretty fast that do get their their heels really high up back behind them um and again they
just really work on that turnover and that ends up being the big thing all right the next thing we're
going to talk about how to get more distance per step right and so what ends up happening
when you're struggling with getting more distance per step or or you know being able to get as much
possible range of motion on each one of the steps as possible is you know first just how your foot
ends up impacting the ground so what's critical in both these guys i should do a pretty good job with
this is when you're critical when you're hitting the ground you want to be hitting it coming back
right so what you want to be able to do in order to pick up more distance is not necessarily get
the knee drive right a lot of people talk about you know oh if you're not getting as much distance
then you know you have to get your knees up more but that's not the case what ends up being the
case is being able to translate because as your foot comes back and pulling back underneath you
what it's doing is creating a horizontal force into the ground so it's pulling from
you know having the foot out in front pulling back underneath so that's more of
a horizontal force right we're going that way okay and then what you have to do is you have to
translate that horizontal force into a vertical force as you're pressing up right and so what
happens is that if you're struggling with picking up very much distance per step you're not doing
a very good job of translating that horizontal force into a vertical force so or you might not
even be creating a horizontal force at all so there's a lot of guys that will see that will
not be getting this extension with that leg out in front there and pulling back underneath okay so
see how he does a great job of getting that foot all the way out straightening that leg pulls that
leg back underneath now that allows him to be able to very very quickly push right back up and create
that vertical force now he's going to be you know you know from the horizontal force he initially
hit the ground with and then translating that into the vertical will make it so he's going to
be the most efficient on being in the air so then he's able to pick up more time more distance
right so right now he's airborne right and so he's picking up a lot of distance because he's
able to get you very airborne there okay another reason why you might be struggling with picking
up very much distance per step is again the posture being able to keep everything upright
being able to maintain when you're pushing off a spine that is upright so i'll commonly see
people and even we can see this a little bit here on the left is when you're hitting the ground kind
of leaning forward a good amount so now as you're pushing off you're not getting as vertical it
doesn't do a bad job there but you can see you're saying both does a great job of being very very
vertical on that push off in the posture and again that makes it so it's easy for him to be able to
get a very strong vertical push okay the last thing is going to be the contact time so what ends
up happening if you are not taking and picking up as much distance per set is you're a lot of
times spending too much time on the ground right and the reason that is is well there's a lot of
reasons you could be spending too much time on the ground one could be not having the right type of
ankle stability it could be landing in the wrong position um you know there's a long there's a lot
of range of things that would make it so you may end up not having an effective effective contact
time right but in order to pick up more distance what you have to be able to do is you have to be
able to land and very efficiently translate you know like i talked about the horizontal force
into that vertical force but that has to just be very very quick so once you allow that foot to be
on the ground for too long it gets too far back behind you and this is where
it actually does lead to also a um not getting as much knee drive so when that foot gets too
far back behind you before you actually end up pushing off now you're not going to be able to
drive that leg all the way back through and you you won't have the time to be able to get this
critical kind of front side mechanics where you get that knee drive all the way up and get that
extension is really the big thing right and so if you allow that foot to get too far back behind you
you know when before that that push-off happens then you won't be able to get to this
stage where you're able to then extend that leg and then pull you know that stage right so you
want to get to here and then extend and then pull in order to make it so now you're able to pick up
all the distance that you possibly can so this this critical part here is where the u-sample is
able to pick up a ton just yeah he has super long legs but he also is so efficient in his
front side mechanics that that makes him one of the best sprinters ever i mean he's good with
his backside mechanics as well definitely not bad there he gets that heel a little bit too high but
his front side mechanics are flawless which allows him to pick up so much distance per step and be
so fast when his foot hits the ground so now when his foot is the ground he's basically
straight so now he can right away push right back off the ground i know he doesn't even get into
triple accenture with that leg right he doesn't need to get in trouble accentuate the leg because
he's so light on his feet his posture is so good he's making up so much distance per step
that he doesn't have to rely a lot on being able to push off the ground he's just trying to cycle
his legs especially once he gets up to his top speed he's just trying to maintain that cycle at a
very very high level so um yeah i give you guys a little bit of understanding of both how to ensure
that you're able to get plenty of knee drives some of the mistakes that may end up impacting your d
drive and then also go into some of the mistakes that are going to be impacting your uh ability
to pick up the most amount of distance per step and then how those kind of intertwine and how in