Monday Minute #2: What’s Wrong with Traditional Running Form Drills?
The flaw is not in the act, but the philosophy.
The Genesis
For anyone that grew up performing in cross country, track and field, or most team sports for that matter, you likely experienced from a young age the ritualistic process of showing up to practice and making your way through a litany of the same exercises and drills each day you showed up. For most sports where running is not the primary focus, the goal of these drills is pretty straightforward and usually geared towards simply getting the muscles warmed up to lower the risk of injuries. However, when running is the primary focus as in the case of Cross Country, Track and Field, and post-collegiate recreational (or professional) running, the drills that we choose as part of the standard warmup are significant and have a larger impact than simply preparing us for the workout.
Form Drills: They improve my form, right?
Reflect back to a day of High School Track and Field or Soccer practice and recall what those warmup drills looked like. Above all, I’m sure you’ll find it hard to forget all of those repetitions of “High-Knees” and “Butt-kicks” that you did. In your mind you probably rationalize that High-Knees are helpful because they help me increase my stride frequency rate and force production that I generate with each stride, particularly when it comes to sprinting. Similarly, Butt-Kicks at least seem productive because when I push off with my foot, flex my hamstring, and bring it towards my butt, I’m reciprocating the force production and “pawing” action with my foot that I would emulate when sprinting. Well, if you’ve processed things through a similar thought pattern you would not be alone, but you would be wrong.
The problem with both of the following exercises is that they over exaggerate a movement pattern that does not naturally occur in a normal running gait. Let’s break these two examples down beginning with High-Knees. With High-Knee’s the athlete actively brings each of his or her knees up to their chest in a cyclical fashion as they progress forward in a linear fashion. The problem with this drill is not that it is a bad exercise in and of itself, as it is one of many drills you can perform to help increase muscle tension (which I will speak on later). The flaw lies in the fact that when you run, you don’t actively lift up the knee, regardless of the velocity you’re moving at. Rather, the lifting of your knee is a passive motion that you unconsciously perform and is a byproduct of what is actually happening with your hip. As your lower limb goes through the entire gait pattern and your big toe eventually pushes off the ground, your hip then extends into maximum extension. This hip extension creates a slingshot effect that produces elastic energy in your muscle tendons around the hip that is then released and causes your knee to cycle through and allow you to put your foot down once more. All of the following is done, and you didn’t have to force any of it, it was simply a passive response that was produced from the stretch reflex initiated by the tendons surrounding your hip.
With Butt-Kicks, similarly the runner is not (or at least should not be) actively kicking their feet backwards toward their butt. On the other hand, what we see is that as the runner toes off and his hip begins to extend and the thigh starts to cycle through, that same lower leg passively folds up on itself. As velocity increases this becomes increasingly more apparent, as you will see the lower leg fold up ever so sharply in high performing sprinters. When performing Butt-Kicks, the initial action that precipitates the folding back of the leg is generally a pushing off of the foot, or a “pawing” action. This is not something I will go in depth on, but is not something that should be attempted, as it only increases the ground contact time of the respective foot and as a result only makes the runner slower.
What Does the Ideal Warmup Routine Look Like?
To me the ideal warmup routine facilitates two goals for runners. The first goal is to create optimal muscle tension, which essentially means creating the right amount of “spring” or “pop” in the runner’s step for the level of activity they are preparing to engage in. This is another topic that would require a whole article by itself, but creating the optimal muscle tension is largely the basis of what I am pursuing with any warm-up routine on a day-to-day basis as well as in the grand scheme of the training plan leading up to a race. Drills like High-Knees or Butt-Kicks may not adequately reflect the active running form, but one could still argue for their place in their drill routine because of their role in increasing muscle tension.
The second goal for me is to finally perform a drill or set of drills that in fact DO replicate the active running form. There is no better running drill from a neuromuscular perspective to ingrain a reactive running form than Wickets. Look out for next week's Monday Minute for a further discussion on Wickets, Reactive Running form, and Running Velocity.
The Monday Minute is intended to be a short-form newsletter that is not intended to be fully comprehensive and all-consuming, but rather a gateway to further discussion. Want to chat more about any of the following topics? Reach out! Have questions or training ideas you would like addressed in future Minutes? Send them in! And last but not least, do you know anybody that would be interested in personalized running coaching? Spread the Word! Thanks for reading, and I hope you all have a great start to the week.
Subscribed. So excited to learn and update my own running warmup routines based on this information!