- In my humble opinion, running drills should be part
of every triathlete's programme.
They'll not only gonna make you faster and stronger,
but they're also gonna help with injury prevention.
So these are what I call the fantastic four.
So we're gonna go through four running drills,
four hurdle drills, and then four strides.
Let's get into it.
(calm, upbeat music)
So for each one of these drills,
we're gonna go from the yellow line to the cone,
so about 20 or 30 metres of track,
and then do a walk back recovery to keep it nice and active.
And we're gonna go through each drill twice.
So the first drill we got is high knees.
This is an old-school favourite.
We've all done it at some point.
So with high knees, the focus is on driving that knee up,
keeping the toe up, and the leg at 90 degrees,
and a nice, fast cadence.
So after you've done one,
you can do a walk or jog back recovery,
and then repeat again.
And maybe for the last two, you can get halfway,
and really pick it up and really open the thrall.
So after you've done those twice through,
you can go on to the next drill, heel flicks,
or butt kicks to our American viewers.
For this one, you need to flick your heel
to your backside and keeping a nice, shallow knee.
So keeping the knee down,
and driving that leg up towards your bum.
And you also wanna be driving your arms,
and keeping your head looking forward.
So the next drill is high skips,
and with high skips, it's a very plyometric-oriented drill,
meaning there's quite a lot of strength involved.
And this is really good to translate over to the bike,
'cause it's really focusing in on that leg strength.
On this drill, you need to focus
on all those key elements again, so the posture,
and you're really gonna be driving up
through that stationary leg.
But then on the landing, you want a nice, soft landing
that's quite reactive as well,
which is then gonna propel you into your next skip.
And remember, it's opposite arm, opposite leg.
So the final drill is a variation on a side skip,
and this takes a little bit more coordination,
so don't worry if you don't get it first time.
So to walk you through it,
basically you're gonna take your right leg
and it's gonna come over the front,
and then it's gonna go 'round the back,
and then over the front again.
But then, to do it at pace,
you have to put a bit of a skip in there.
The next phase of the fantastic four is four hurdle drills.
Hurdles might seem a bit daunting at first,
but they're really not.
They're great for core control, and coordination.
We're not gonna do these at speed,
we're gonna do them all pretty much at walking pace.
First thing's first, you wanna get it to the right height,
so if you've not used hurdles before,
I suggest putting it onto the bottom row...
To make sure you can actually get over it.
You'll probably notice the common trend in all these drills,
and the same applies to the hurdles, posture is everything.
So on the first drill in the hurdles,
we're gonna do a step over drill.
So basically, keeping up nice and tall,
and you lead in with your left leg to start with,
and keeping that toe up,
and then bringing the trail leg through from the side,
and then standing down, and then repeating it.
Focus on keeping the arms,
opposite arm, opposite leg, and the head up.
So this is just like the drill we've just done,
the step overs, but this is gonna be step overs
with a bounce, just to make it a little bit more dynamic,
so you're gonna put a little skip in between each hurdle,
and it's just gonna give you that element of coordination,
and a bit more strength.
It's easy at that.
So next, we've got side steps.
This is similar to the side skips drill
'cause you're opening your hips up laterally,
which as I said, is really, really important for triathlon.
So on this drill, you're gonna push out
with your outside leg to drive up and over the hurdle,
and then bring your other leg over to follow.
Again, keeping nice and tall, and you can see,
I'm pushing off the ball of my foot
so it's nice and strong action.
So the final hurdle drill is the over under drill.
So you're gonna step over the first hurdle
and then go under every alternate hurdle.
To give yourself a little bit of a challenge,
you wanna put that second hurdle up a few notches
just so you can get under it.
So you're gonna step under it with a nice, flat back,
and then go over the next one,
and then under the final one.
When you get to the end, you can go back the other way.
So the final part of the fantastic four
are four running strides.
And running strides, you do to put all those elements
of the running drills we've done together
to put into one perfect running form.
I do these three times a week, before every run session,
and before races and it just reminds your body
how to run correctly and really make sure it's warmed up,
ready for the activity.
So for the strides, you need about a hundred metres
of space and you probably wanna do these
about 90, 95% of your maximum,
but don't worry, you don't need to do it on a track per se,
you could do it on a field, on a pavement,
or in a car park, you can do it anywhere really.
So there are my fantastic four running drills
that you can do any time, any place.
You can rattle through those in about 20 minutes,
and for me, it's the best 20 minutes
you can spend on improving your running.
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