009 Sprinting

And what we'll do in the future is dive down into the more kind of interesting rabbit holes about various different biomechanical issues, straight shortening cycle and that kind of thing. Uh but we're gonna give the really kind of a basic version of sprinting today. So my section on physiology and and biomechanics of sprinting is gonna be relatively short and then we'll discuss a little bit about the strength training programs once I've finished that. So starting at the beginning.

Like we talked about with vertical jumping. So if you've not listened to the vertical jumping uh podcast, it'd be great if you went back and did that now because uh a lot of what I'm about to say might not make as much sense if you haven't already listened to that. So like with vertical jumping, we can relatively easily determine the biomechanical um kind of um

factor that's most important for sprinting, with vertical jumping we want to get off the ground. So basically the um vertical impulse relative to body weight is going to determine how much jump height we get. With sprinting, it's basically the same kind of thing but horizontally. So we're now talking about the horizontal impulse in the direction that you want to go.

Um, so ultimately, uh, like with vertical jumping, we can actually boil sprinting down to something relatively straightforward. So how do we create that horizontal force? Well essentially or impulse rather, sorry. Uh how do we create that uh horizontal impulse? Well obviously it's going to happen as the gate cycle uh kind of uh occurs and we produce um force into the ground and direct ourselves horizontally in the uh kind of um direction that we want to go.

Now, in order to achieve that, we're essentially going to perform a sequence of joint actions and it actually follows a proximal to distal sequence exactly the same way as vertical jumping does. And throwing does, or throwing and all of the derivatives like punching as well.

So essentially, when we look at the sprinting gate cycle, we're trying to create a horizontal impulse, and we're doing that with a sequence of joint actions that is actually following a proximal to distal sequence that we can relatively easily map out. Now that proximal distal sequence is pretty much the same thing as we see with vertical jumping. It starts at the hip, moves down to the knee and finishes at the ankle.

In the case of uh sprinting, we have actually quite a balanced hip movement where we've got balanced force and velocity. And then by the time we get to the knee and the ankle, everything is just velocity, which means that it's very, very difficult to add any more kinetic energy onto the actual uh kind of movement once we've left the hip joint.

What that tells us is that the hip is essentially producing all of the kinetic energy that we can actually uh you know input into the sprinting gate cycle and is responsible for that horizontal impulse that I started this description with. So essentially what we've just done there very quickly is identify that the hip is the power, the engine uh of the movement. And essentially what we're gonna need to do is produce large amounts of um power output both in uh in flexion and also in extension.

uh by means of having a high level of strength and also a high level of speed. So that tells us pretty much what the engine is behind the sprinting gate cycle. And then just to kind of finish it off, finish this analysis off, we just have to remember that every gate cycle um progresses.

into the next one. And that's different from the other movements that we've talked about before. The other movements we talked about before are essentially single shot movements. They're just kind of like a vertical jump or a throw. It's one and done. Whereas in the case of sprinting, every single gate cycle transitions into the next one.

What that means is that as we reach the end for example, if we reach what's called terminal swing, as the uh leg is or the hip is flexing forwards, the knee is actually also um extending at that point. And what that means is but the hamstrings are going to have to resist that flexion of the knee of the of the hip and that extension of the knee by flexing the producing a flexion torque at the knee at the same time as an extension torque at the hip.

And that means that the hamstrings produce an enormous amount of eccentric um force in order to make that pair of joint actions happen. The exact opposite happens when you get to the opposite end of the gate cycle. So when the knee when the when the hip is behind the body, you've d extended the hip. Now you've got to try and flex it again, but at the same time the knee

is actually flexing and you want to extend it. So you're producing a knee extension force at the same time as you're producing a um a hip flexion force or torque rather. And because you're actually breaking forces initially to create that uh to to uh to slow the original movement and bring yourself back to the movement that you want to perform, you're actually doing those eccentrically. So you get a really, really big uh recfem ecentric force production in that end of the gate cycle as well.

So that really then leaves us with one final thing to mention, which is that we obviously are impacting on the ground and that means that the ankle is again going to have an eccentric force absorption um phase. So plantar flexion is going to have to do um Well the plantar flexors are gonna have to do some kind of eccentric force production there every time we bring the foot into contact with the ground. So essentially there's a little bit more going on with sprinting because of its gait cycle.

and the impacts that we're experiencing that make it a little bit more complicated than the throwing and the vertical jumping movements that we talked about before, but ultimately not that much more complicated because essentially we just have these two separate things to think about. We have what Essentially the engine of the hip, which we've got to think about both in terms of extension and flexion. A lot of people ignore the flexion part, but we've got both flexion and extension.

And then separately we've then got these force absorption uh situations, uh, with the recfem, the hamstrings and the and the and the calf muscles. as a separate issue that adds on top of the kind of basic proximal to distal sequence analysis that we started with. So that's basically it. That's how I break down sprinting in the simplest possible way.

uh working as I say from the very beginning of what we actually need to make the movement happen, looking at the joint sequences, looking at proximal to distal sequence, looking at the eccentric uh elements of the movement. And that gives us I think pretty much almost everything we would need to know, if not everything we would need to know in order to uh write strength training programs and even some sports specific training activities as well.

So with that, I want to ask Rob, Rob, what are you doing at the moment in your strength training programmes when you're working with people who need to? Whether they're athletes who actually are track sprinters or whether they're athletes who just sprint as part of their sport, what are you currently programming?

So the big focus, like Chris just said, is going to be on the hip. So if we're going to start with maybe hip extension, since that's going to be kind of the primary one, really like to focus on exercises that are going to be very, very high force. I'm at least if we're working from that end of things and corresponding to a bit shorter fiber lengths. So I'm generally not doing things like, you know, very long range Romanian deadlifts and stuff like that as much.

A lot more focused on for the glutes, hip thrust. Um for the glutes and hamstrings, something like a more top or maybe mid range stiff like deadlift, uh from pins or blocks, something like that. Um hip thrust probably being my primary one for the hip extensors. You do get a little bit of quads out of it as well. You get a little bit of adopter magnus in that. So it works really, really nice. And it's just not too much quad. I don't think Chris mentioned it but

Quad hypertrophy generally not correlated super well with improving sprint speed, whereas glute hypertrophy definitely is hamstrings as well. So much, much more of a focus on those.

terms of stuff I'm doing for uh the knee joint, like you said, definitely much more uh balanced, not really as much that you can do there. I definitely do a mix of things. Honestly, um a bit of heavy squat work sometimes. Sometimes more single leg stuff, you know, step ups. Um I do like short range step ups, barbell step ups, things like that.

Um in all of those keeping the rep ranges low, keeping far from failure, and again not placing like a huge emphasis on growing quads or anything like that. Um, for the ankle joint. It's really simple. Try to keep it as fast as I can. So it's usually just something something super easy, like a calf hop. Um, have people do some like Quick switching drills that are gonna be coming off the ground really fast and also bringing the hips up in the hip flexion very quickly.

And then I guess moving on to the hip flexion portion of things. So people definitely neglect it a ton. And if you watch a lot of elite sprinters training that You can see the exercises they're doing and they're usually really simple and I don't tend to depart too much either. If I'm thinking of stuff that's gonna train kind of all of the hip flexors, so maybe recfem and psoas, major iliacus, all those things.

You know, something like a cable hip flexion starting with the leg behind the body is gonna be nice. You can also do that with bands. Um depending if someone's a little bit weaker maybe, they haven't really strength trained before, I might do it more for uh strength and more for a little bit of hypertrophy in the beginning and then go to something faster whether doing it maybe against Just a light band or even just a drill with a bringing the leg up as fast as possible.

I know for hip flexion, we also mentioned on one of the prior podcasts doing some hip flexion isometrics. I like those as well. So just kind of bent over on a bench. Stabilizing with your hands and that. And then there's driving your knee into the bottom of the bench. Um, you can do that in different degrees of hip flexion. If you want to target a little bit more rect fang versus a little bit more psoas major, iliacus, those things. And then we mentioned that eccentric loading aspect.

you've kind of uh got our favorite exercise in there, the hip thrust. Um yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, a c a couple of other, you know, hip extension exercises'cause obviously the hip is going to be extending, um you know, in situations where the knee is not also extending. So, you know, we're not in a situation where the hamstrings are gonna be switched off in sprinting. So we can we can look at

Hip extension uh I mean a variety of hip extension exercises would actually be appropriate here. I mean I think really people can run the whole kind of range if they really wanted to.

you know. Um, so we kind of would probably want the glute to be focused. And I think that's the right starting point. Um, but we've also got to remember the hip is extending from, you know, a relatively flexed position to start with. So, you know, it does go through a reasonable uh range of angles and it's not just about the glute. We are have got to rec you know, recognize that the adductor magnets in the

And the hamstrings are going to be doing some hip extension at some point as well. So I think honestly I'm not going to argue with anybody who wants to run a bunch of different hip extension exercises in there. I just think you're right, as as you would do, I would always start with the hip first, I think it's It's probably the the the really valuable one there. In terms of the the hip flexion one.

You know, I I think this is worth really drilling into for people to understand the the challenges here because this is the same problem that we've had with the with the throwing rotation, with torso rotation. Because ultimately we don't have very many good hip flexion exercises in the gym that we can just throw people at. And I think one of the big challenges is the stability is generally pretty poor. Um I mean like where y where you're using a cable for example at the opposite end of your leg.

And you've got the other leg on the ground. I mean, straight away I'm like, No, this is not gonna be ideal.

with different joint angles.'Cause I think this is super important, a lot of people don't realise that we have a really big switch over in terms of hip flexion where the the starting point is definitely very, very recfem and after you leave that kind of first sort of fifty to sixty degrees, we kind of really do s move away from the recfem and towards the other hip flexors instead. So I think there's a really, really nice, uh, kind of balanced programme would have two very different

um kind of hip hip angles, I mean sort of you know, close to full hip extension and then much further away from full hip hip extension. You know, and I think those two will give a really nice uh kind of uh sort of balance of of hip flexion movements. You know, and as as you know, I I I think you know, you and I know this already, but I'll just repeat this for people who maybe are hearing this for the first time. There is nothing wrong with doing isometrics for hypertrophy.

or waving moderate loads around. You know, it actually the same issue applies to the hip flexion strengthening. It's like we need to go take this really seriously the same way that we're we've taken hip extension strength training seriously for sprinting, the exact uh mirror image needs to happen for hip flexion. If I went in a gym and I looked at what most team sports and other kind of athletes are doing who sprint, I can guarantee that they would be doing a really

quite decent hip extension strength training programme. I might disagree with a couple of the exercise selections, but more m more or less it's gonna be pretty good. Uh if I looked at what they're doing for hip flexion, I'm gonna be really disappointed.

Uh look at your program and see have you got some decent hip flexion strength training in or are you kind of just, you know, including something with a p elastic button somewhere that isn't really gonna do the job. So Uh I think that's really, really cool that, you know, you're you've kind of got that um that that simple basic option for people who don't have a really fancy set of equipment.

uh to do hip flexion strength training dynamically. So cool you've got that uh option for them isometrically. So cool. Then you were just about to go on to the eccentric stuff. So let's let's hear that now.

but not like an ultra slow tempo. So I usually like anywhere from maybe three to a maximum about five seconds. It's not some super extended eccentric that's very slow. Cause really I think I mentioned on one of the other podcasts You do something that you can control for like eight to ten seconds, it's m probably something you can actually lift at that point. And so it's not really doing the job. So yeah, just making sure it's actually heavy enough.

And it tends to work really, really well. And, you know, almost any gym again is gonna have a decent enough like extension machine. So it doesn't require any fancy setup. Certainly not doing like an overloaded uh back squat supermax or something like that. Um just fatigue the hell out of yourself and not get anything extra out of it anyway and not get the rest of it.

You know, it's literally just, as you say, using two legs to do the concentric phase and then one leg for the eccentric phase in what would be a fairly standard gym machine, um, for the leg curl and the knee extension. I think that's really, really cool. Um So have you I mean, I guess it it depends on the um I guess it depends on the machine how easy that is to to achieve. I can visualize it in the gyms that I go to. I can see in certain situations it would be

Uh so you can't do, you know, sort of uh two two legs concentric phase, one leg eccentric phase. Then there is the alternative version which is of course the Nordic and the reverse Nordic. And we can weight those if you've got people who, you know, are capable of doing, you know, um

a concentric version of those exercises. So, you know and again with reverse nautics, people complain a lot about those. It's just I found the important thing is to make sure you've got something behind you that is acting as a safety uh kind of bench.

to stop you when you get to your mobility limit. Otherwise you you're going to be focusing too much on the control of the exercise rather than actually producing the effort that you need to c to create the eccentric uh kind of uh or the level of recruitment in that eccentric phase. Cool. So, um...

I re I remembering that I didn't ask you the key question that um I keep asking you every week for the so let's do it now for both of these. Um sets, reps, frequencies, volumes, all that kind of stuff for both the heavy concentric stuff and also the eccentric.

low to moderate reps. Usually on the lower end for those, you know, worried about producing as much force as possible and then f leaving, you know, very likely two, three or so reps in reserve. Um again avoiding like to failure, avoiding those fiber type shifts you're not gonna want, stuff like that. For the quad work, you know, whether it's a step up, squat variation, same thing, usually anywhere from one to three sets.

Quads aren't as you know important of course, and you don't really want a ton of hypertrophy in the quads necessarily, so keep the volumes even lower. Um low to moderate rep. Again, two reps out failure. For the hip flexion stuff, it's you know generally important. And most people either are not currently doing it or haven't done it in a long time, so it tends to need a lot of work. So I usually keep uh a few sets, a few times a week for those, two to three sets.

Two times a week. Um usually don't have people training lower body, you know, more often than two and maybe at a maximum three. So something like that. Two different sets of effects.

This is literally me describing my personal experience. Do not uh hopefully, you know, if if you're listening to this, don't take this seriously. This is just me sharing how it felt. I found isometrics to be really mentally tough. So I would do yeah. So I would do a couple of maybe I was I mean I've uh again, maybe I was kind of starting out doing something that was probably a bit silly because um I was doing a a pulling isometric.

Uh and that's probably not a good idea because uh obviously my my kind of one arm chin background means that I do tend to kinda have quite a strong uh kind of pull. So my my kind of bottom tree activation is really high and I can probably get to a very, very high level of motivat um in that muscle compared to many of the other muscles in my body that's in the side.

So and maybe I kind of just went in a bit hard, but like doing a couple of reps, max effort, and I'm even my second rep, I can't get close to what it feels like on the first rep. Maybe that's just I haven't got the mental kind of sort of you know, capacity anymore at my age, but you know, it just feels brutal. And I think that

is not anything obviously related to the uh kind of uh peripheral two mechanisms. It just feels really, really difficult. So I think uh it's really interesting if if in the future There's kind of like we get some better more accessible isometric uh kind of load cell type devices. that actually measures some of these forces. Because it would be so cool t for me, especially, if I could literally just get a standard kind of idea of what my

pulling force is when it's absolutely maximal and then I could play around with like ninety percent of that or ninety five percent. That would be absolutely brilliant because that would just bring me down to the level where it's not I don't feel like my cerebral cortex is

a warm up because they're kind of you know, fairly low fatigue for that point of view, not describing what I was doing a minute ago. But, you know, just like the kind of high effort isometric, not trying to kind of rip the machine apart. Um But essentially I think um again, you know, if we were if you were programming that hypertrophy, I guess you would probably, you know, kinda want to up the the number of of of of efforts in that particular situation.

Exactly and you'll do some for the SOAS major in that. So you can just change that up a little bit.

you know, th it's probably gonna be a weakness of theirs. The hip flexors are probably gonna be on the smaller side. So, you know, and if if the equipment is limited and there isn't a good dynamic machine, then they are gonna be essentially limited to doing, you know, some kind of isometric training for that. So I think it's gonna be one of those things that people have to feel their way through a little bit but You know, definitely if I think really if people go

You know, a strength training set to failure is approximately fifteen seconds of concentric activity related to, you know, high levels of recruitment. So if you want to break that down to three, five second isometrics or five, three second isometrics, that's probably gonna be a decent set.

Now given that most of the time in dynamics we're leaving a repertoire in reserve anyway, it probably is gonna be about two sets is gonna be about sort of three five second isometrics or five three second isometrics. So I'd say that's probably ballpark territory. Does that sound about right?

Cool. And in terms of the eccentric stuff, I'm guessing obviously, you know, positioning this at the end of the workout and being aware, of course, of the other stuff the athlete has to do in the week. Um how many kind of sets and reps are you doing for this? I'm actually really interested to hear what you're doing at the moment.

One for the quads, Recfem. And it um I mean I've seen at least that it seems to make a good bit of difference. Um, you know, generally people aren't getting hip string injuries and stuff like that. Generally they're feeling good sprinting. And then I didn't mention but for a kind of a maintenance volume for hip extension work as well when people are playing a lot. I don't think I said just like one set of a couple reps.

twice a week. And uh I think you mentioned not here, but when you and I were just chatting that a lot of people Then lose sprint speed and Um, pretty quickly, but a lot of times it's'cause they just stop training. Anything that's gonna maintain size and the hip extensors and hip flexors.

And they just kinda go about playing games and stuff like that and remove heavy strength training entirely, thinking it's gonna be just too fatiguing and that if you keep it low rep and you keep it farther from failure. Really I've never seen anyone having issues with twice a week strength work.

athletes uh for eccentric training exercises and he said that that was working really, really well. I think it's really interesting, you know, because just for people who maybe aren't um aware of how the stimulating rep model works with eccentric Uh in super maximal eccentric efforts. Where you're lowering a weight that you can't lift, which is all of what this eccentric training is about.

The stimulating rep model works backwards, not forwards. So your first rep is your most stimulating.'Cause that's when you've got the highest level of motine recruitment, you've got no fatine mechanisms and you get the maximum level of mechanical tension and and recruitment simultaneously.

So ultimately, um that first rep is the most valuable rep. Anything after that is pretty much uh downhill from there. And it's just such a far cry from if you go back five, ten years and look at the early Nordic curl literature And you've got people doing kind of five sets of twelve reps and you kind of look Oh you know, if I'd done five sets of twelve reps of Nordics at some point in my life I'd probably still not be recovered. I'd be I'd be traumatized.

So yeah, I think uh we've come a long way since then. But yeah, absolutely, you know, I think you can absolutely get away with a really, really tiny volume of uh reps of these super maximally centric efforts. I think

realistically, I think one rep sets are really cool because they are the most valuable rep. So I would probably say rather than doing And if somebody said to me, Well, can I do three reps in a Sabby, honestly I'd rather you did three separate singles rather than the kind of the three uh kind of reps because everything just tapers down to a a worse stimulus as you go on and on and on in an eccentric set. So I'd rather have um two singles or three singles if people really want to do more.

um rather than have multiple uh kind of reps in in inside of set. But again, in that scenario I I think, you know, three, four, five is probably getting to the top end of what I would ever do. Oh my gosh, really.

And one to three repetitions, probably with rest between those reps. So they're gonna look like more like, you know, kind of single uh rep sets. Um three individual singles up to three individual singles. Um but again, you know What Rob is describing here is that he is currently mainly programming single repetitions.

rather than pushing it all the way up to three. So it absolutely is doable with those singles. It doesn't have to be three. I'm just kind of giving people a little bit of leeway if they really feel like they need to do A few more reps, but I mean once you start hitting five, I think it's really top end. I would never really want to go much higher than that.

Oh yeah. I mean that'd be again it'd be much better to do that as like, you know, sort of two or three doubles or something like that. But again, um i I think We've we've changed a lot how we think about eccentric training in the last kind of ten years. And again at the beginning it was like, you know, just treat it like normal strength training and now we're like respecting it a little bit more.

And the same thing applies to e-centric training. In fact, I would argue it actually happens even faster. There's some re there's some really interesting data showing the you know, fascica lengths especially go back to um baseline up and this yeah, Nordic curl strength training programs of six weeks.

And then within two weeks of not doing Nordics is all gone. Um you know, sometimes I joke that you know, the benefits of Nordics are gone by the time you get home from the gym. I mean, they really do disappear. really fast. So we've got to kind of keep them in the programme. So again, like and I know I kind of criticize team sports um quite a lot for the way that they run things, but I've seen a lot of team sports

strength training programs where they do a load of eccentric work in the off season and as soon as the athletes hit season they just take it all out of the programme. I'm like all that hard work you put your athletes through two weeks later it's all gone.

off season and then even if they take out the eccentrics, the volume of everything in season is just crazy. And they'll have guys training like five days a week, tons of lifting. And I I had her ask me about a Few people the other day that she's working with as well and their coaches having them lift I think it was like five or six times in a week on top of sports training.

When your week is gonna be tanked. Like anything after that is not gonna be as productive. Whereas you can do two sessions and then all of a sudden you need one or two sets and you're fine.

even if you're actually in season training and playing and all of the other stuff, you can probably make some very slow, gradual progress on on some stuff. And and also not worry about losing stuff that you've worked hard to gain in the off season. Two is a really magical number in that respect. I re I recommend two times a week for pretty much every athletic situation all the time.

Um, but I would stick with two legs, even though that um, you know, some people go, Well, you wanna do single leg because it's more specific. Uh yeah, but force velocity relationship Kind of pushes you to a really forced dominant situation if you're using, you know, kind of single uh leg versions rather than two leg versions.

Um I've never seen anyone play around with assistance on horizontal jumps. I'd be really nervous about it'cause it's kind of like you'd have the risk of like catapulting someone into the next state if you've got

Generally speaking, I think as you say, sprinting is gonna be the main source of high velocity stimulus for the sprinting action. You know, we're just trying to provide strength training in a targeted way that does useful stuff rather than not so useful stuff. So, um...

Probably not a lot of time to go through uh silly things that you've seen people doing regarding sprint training, but just give us one or two examples to finish today's episode.

Um stuff that's not gonna work. It's not anywhere near close to the proximal to distal sequencing you're gonna see in a sprint or anything athletic. And you're just you're just kinda moving around, twisting Moving, not doing anything. Um I've seen people really try hard to program. Again, I mentioned it with jumping and that. There's a weird idea that doing just like deep deep range split uh split squats and things like that is gonna be some magical exercise for improving running because it's

single leg and all these things. Um again, nothing, you know, really close to the the muscle lengths and the joint angles and that that you need. You know, yeah you get some like adductors, you get a lot more quad than you'd probably want. You get some blue. So it's it's not like it's the worst thing in the world to possibly do, but it's not very good either at the same time.

Um yeah, like really just like lung stits, driving their knee over their toe, stuff like that. I've seen everyone talk about training the low back to improve jumping and spring. I see that all the time. And I think people still think the low back is a muscle.

Which is is a funny one to me. They're like they just talk about just, you know, th use this to build your low back. Use this to train the low back. And it's like it's more y you know, more often than not just like a back extension or something. And I'm like, yeah, you're training your hamstrings, training your glutes, your adductors. I mean, yeah, you're getting some spot adductors, but it's not like you're not just training your quote unquote lower back with that.

And I've seen a lot of people mention that that is, you know, some key to athletic performance and like I'm never gonna say you don't need a strong back, but you're also just not gonna just train the lower back in a As like its own thing. So it's a very, very silly one.

Um, but the one that I think is worth mentioning from my perspective is pretty much the same as the one that you mentioned regarding throwing, because essentially it's isometrics for the calf muscle.

The calf muscle is producing big forces in thing out. It's like yes. The energy's come f all the way from the hip, all the way down approximately sequence, you're again, you're training the opposite end of the proximal to distinct sequence in that situation. It's not doing what you think it's doing.

uh uh kind of history where people thought that the stiffness that was kind of being exhibited by athletes in polyometric activities that was being created by a tendon being really stiff and it's not. It's a centric muscle force that's doing that. And the same thing, the sprinter has the high eccentric force capacity at the plantar flexor. It's not the tendon that's doing that. The tendon actually is pretty much the same as a normal person's a normal person.

An untrained person. You know, it's just like an untrained person is gonna have a similar tendency, stiffness. And you know, people will kind of listen to me say that and go, No, no, no, Chris has completely lost the plot. Okay, go look at the literature and and and and report back because I guarantee I guarantee you'll find that I'm right. So um that's uh that's a really interesting one. But yeah, I think uh car

Isometrics, calf, uh dynamic heavy strength training, really, really overrated for sprinting. I wouldn't do that for a number of reasons but

So let's stop there and uh call it today. As I say, we will do future episodes on sprinting'cause there's a lot more we can say. We've just tried to give a a fairly simple overview today. Even now we've overrun by about ten minutes beyond what we normally do, but Um, that is because printing is complicated and as I say we'll come back to it and do more again in the future. Um so uh with that leave it for today and we will be back with another episode next week.