Welcome to the first edition of “controversial sprint cues” (and what to do instead), where I’ll chat briefly regarding common coaching cues, and why they are not helpful (often the reverse) to sprint athletes and their performance.
The great Charlie Francis has been known to say that many older sprinters have flaws in their technique because, in their youth, some coach told them to run a particular way (which was completely wrong for them, and in the process of adapting that conscious technical “fix”, created a rigid aspect of their running that holds them back from their highest form).
For edition #1 of this series, we’ll start with one of my all time favorite cues that is probably the bane of most young (or old) athletes running down the track, because they have heard it so much:
“Get your knees up!”
Let’s talk about why coaches traditionally like to use this particular cue, and why (just like so many things in government) something that was well intentioned manages to backfire and hold back individuals to their highest potential.
Why use This Cue?
First of all, why cue “knees up”. Well, if you look at technically good sprinters, why yes, they all run with a decent balance of front and backside mechanics, and good knee lift. Check out the videos below. The winners have great frontside/backside mechanical balance.
Skip to :44 in the above video, and you’ll see a nice compilation of the top-speed mechanics of various runners. Guys like Bolt, Powell, and LeMaitre exhibit great knee drive, but this happens, not because their coach is harping on them about it, but because their strength and technical training model reflects this biomechanical product of their strength and overall technique.
Dafne Schippers demonstrates excellent knee lift, but this technical proficiency is largely a result of her trunk and hip strength. Notice the variation in knee lift between runners in this championship final.
Carmelita Jeter has a great knee drive, but this is also a function of her great position and power at touchdown. A weaker (or de-activated) athlete could not hit these sprint positions.
Having good frontside mechanics is important for a variety of reasons:
- Provides a balance of forces in gait
- Helps maximize the crossed extensor reflex action
- Gives an athlete room to produce more negative footspeed
- Gives an athlete room to have a better ground contact
The Problem with the Cue
The problem with the cue is simple. Using this cue alone to cure the frontside mechanic problem doesn’t work. (Knees up is probably the most ignored cue in all of sprinting ESPECIALLY when it is cued mid-race)
This is the beauty of having practices that are focused on measured maximal speed efforts, something that I’ve learned from coaches like Tony Holler and Chris Korfist (I’m now doing flying 10’s with my Freelap system at my youth track club, one of the best things you can possibly do for early development with a group of wily 8-14 year olds). In these practices, you don’t just cue and think “oh that looks a little better”, because you’ll notice that the effect the cue you just gave has on the stopwatch.
Give an athlete this cue in practice who struggles to maintain his or her speed, and you’ll quickly see them forget about it in the meet.
Athletes who run with good knee lift and frontside mechanics do so because their trunk/hip strength and function, as well as the rest of their running mechanics are in good working order. The nice knee lift is the icing on the cake of proper hip action, and it’s done in context of their technique without forcing it.
Tell an athlete who generally runs with initially poor front-side mechanics to “lift their knees more”, and it is often-times a guarantee that they will need to make a muscular or technical compensation to achieve this task. Examples are as follows:
- Cutting the power in the hip extension to more quickly/easily reposition the swing leg farther in front, but all this does is reduce an athlete’s vertical force production.
- Another compensation an athlete could do to lift/drive their knee more is increase their stride length beyond what they are ready for, or what is biomechanically optimal and in the process induce braking forces, and/or reduce their stride frequency to the point where they are overall, running slower (even though they might “look” better running).
- Many team sport athletes who are asked to consciously lift their knees in sprinting will run slower simply because this method isn’t how they are wired to run (many team sport athletes, such as football will instinctively run with a lower knee action to make quicker cuts on the field). These athletes need to be put in a place where they can use their athleticism to achieve the desired result, such as various wicket and cone-run drill scenarios.
Knee Drive and Race Distance
In addition, some coaches (and usually parents) don’t understand the mechanical differences between running something like a 60m dash, and a 400m dash. The longer the race, there is less need for a “knees up” style of running, and trying to emulate such a style will lead to poor times. I was just at a track meet this past weekend where I heard “get your knees up” yelled out at 400m sprinters (which for those kids was more like a 500m dash from a time/distance perspective).
The reason for this is the majority of energy requirements for human locomotion (80%) are spent on repositioning the limbs in space in running. The other 20% comes from the muscular effort needed to produce ground reaction forces to propel an athlete down the track, or across the field.
Since 80% of the energy cost comes from repositioning limbs, then it makes sense that the longer the race, the greater need there is to run with a conservative technique as far as energy is concerned. This means that the longer the race, the less the need for “high knees”.
Check out the video below of a top level distance runner, and you’ll see that the swinging of the thigh is lowered significantly to conserve energy, as the athlete bounces along the track.
What to do Instead of (or at the very least, in addition to) Cueing “Knees Up”
Since having a deficiency of front-side mechanics both looks ugly, and limits the performance ceiling of the athlete, it is important to understand how to “remedy” this situation.
First of all, realize that the level of knee lift is a “fluctuator” in sprint performance, meaning that its optimal level will differ from athlete to athlete. Not every sprinter is meant to run exactly like Asafa Powell or Carmelita Jeter. I’ve said this before, but our job as coaches isn’t to impose an exact technique on any athlete, but rather put them in a position where their brain and nervous system can eliminate potential errors and self-organize a better technical model.
Secondly, and with that in mind, put athletes in positions to let themselves self-organize better technique. Using things like:
- Wicket drills
- Primetime sprint races
- Bounding combinations (especially LLRR and single leg combinations)
- Single leg tuck jumps
- Power-skipping drills
- Overhead marches
- Stick stride drills
- Sprint-float-lift type combinations
- Sprints up a small incline
- Hip-hike and similar gluteus medius progressions
- Psoas and glute contractility work (activation)
- Improving the strength of the lateral chain
- Proper breathing and core strength exercise progressions
All of these exercises can all put athletes in a position to reduce sprint errors and adapt a more robust technical model. They can also build the strength to make better frontside mechanics more instinctual because the function is there to create the form.
Wicket drills are a great way to give athletes an environment to self-organize movement. I would recommend using hurdles from 4-8” high, depending on athlete’s ability level. It doesn’t take much to change stride mechanics
The Art of Cueing Frontside
Finally, you want to refine the way that athletes are being cued. Instead of focusing on the knee (the end product), look more at the hip (the center of movement). Coaching the knee, rather than hip projection, is kind of like trying to get a lion tamer to learn how to crack a whip by only coaching how the end of the whip operates, rather than how he moves the handle of the whip with his hand.
To this end, coaching athletes on the concept of elevating (hip hike) and projecting the hip forward will help a better end product yield than simply making statements about pieces farther down the kinetic chain.
Other helpful cues that are closer to the idea of lifting the knees, but are within the scope of actual sprint mechanics (handle vs. end of the whip) are cues such as “stepping over the knee”, or “sprinting through tall grass”.
In Context, It can be OK
Finally, I will say that there are a few cases where you can talk to an athlete about sprinting with a higher knee lift. This is often done well within “sprint-float”sprint” progressions, or when an athlete already has good hip mechanics and crossed-extensor performance (Athletes with poor crossed extension reflex power will exhibit some of the worst compensations when asked to sprint with greater knee lift), and using “knees up” an overcue may produce the desired technical element, or specific hip flexor strength means, for the scope of the training session.
The biggest danger of using the “knees up” cue, is largely when it is the sole method by which the coach is hoping to improve the technical proficiency of his or her runner. Remember, the athlete must be put in a “problem solving” environment if they are to truly achieve motor learning that will be applicable moving forward.
Overall progression is always better when the majority of efforts towards improving front-side mechanics revolve around everything else I’ve mentioned in this article, and not just a single cue.
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