The Simplest Method To Sprint Faster

so we're here with world renowned speed specialist Michael Dr the king of speed in Oklahoma I just made that title up and Michael is going to walk us through an entire session as though I'm a brand new client and I can be very slow at times now Michael's going to show us a couple things around Max velocity he's going to show us a few things around acceleration we're going to learn all about his system of training and you guys are going to have some clear takeaways that you can take from this video and then apply

into your own training today okay so Michael I walk in here and I I want to run let's just throw out like a 5sec 40 at the age of at the age of 40 now all right what would be the first thing that in like a short time frame what's the first thing that we would be hitting how I like to do it is you come in I want to take a look at your mechanics and so I'll do a quick quick warm-up and we'll get you on the track we'll film you and then from

there I want to teach them so I'm going to teach them what I'm looking for what I want to see and I usually go to the Whiteboard let's go to the Whiteboard okay okay so we're at the Whiteboard I've got one question yeah when you do the warmup are you are you giving them any drills to assist in their mechanics in the first session or is it more like just get their body temperature up just get them warmed up yeah I don't want to teach them anything I want to see them run as raw as

possible how they think speed happens which by the way you can see in all of your Instagram videos when you have those before and after so I freaking love that so do on that yeah so like what I what I'll teach them first is like okay like what moves you and I tell them I write down four Force most of them have heard that word before but I'm like force is what moves you I want to move forward I put Force backward I want to move up I put Force down so those words right there

kind of resonates it clicks with them that's step one number two I'll say ground contact time I was WR GCT it's like how long your foot's on the ground say we want to put as much force in the ground in the least amount of time real simple they get that and then I'll say the last one is I just write Direction but it's the direction I can't spell direction of that force and so this is where the mechanics come into play it's like you can put a lot of force in the ground really quickly but

if the foot's hitting the ground wrong or improperly it's going to slow you down and so from here I'll say I'll pull up their video of their their pre-run I'll show them and honestly it's like 90% of athletes that come in here at all levels they're usually um I call it in stuck and forth fourth gear kind of bent over posture and so I'll draw it I'll draw them so it's kind of like I'm going to exaggerate a little bit today and I'll tell them that their hip level is angled okay so if there's their

hip level their knees don't get quite as high they have early foot reaching out in front of them and what this causes is a butt kick so I draw this down for them and I explain when you are bent over at the hips so you can do this too kind of tilt your pelvis down if you think of your pelvis as a bucket of water they're dumping the water out the front and I'll tell them right now okay now do that and try to lift your knee up you kind of feel restricted right now not

try to straighten your leg what do you feel get tight yeah yeah hamstring that hamstring okay and so when we're stuck at Max velocity in these mechanics it makes it really hard to put force in the ground in the right direction so I'll explain this so we get this High butt kick now this is a little exaggerated for some but the foot will come up here sometimes the heel actually will hit hit the glute that're actually kicking their butt and the foot comes down and we kind of get this little strike down and it's usually

the landing on the heel so that foot is coming down in front of the center Mass so I'll draw here's foot contact here's your Center Mass and then you can kind of go like this this essentially is your ground contact time because that foot has to stay on the ground until that hip crosses over the center of the mass and even longer than that so I'm saying okay you might be putting a lot of force in the ground MH but it's not moving you in the right direction because that foot is it's it's kind of

like breaking you it's almost like it's it's hitting out in front Y and so what usually happens with athletes like this is since that foot's acting almost like a break they have to now push really hard behind them to keep that speed going so they push longer which even more elongates that so you can kind of get that so like they're hitting the ground out in front of them and now it's kind of like they're stuck here so now they got a really really pushed behind them and now we're really back here and it just

keeps that cycle going right okay and so this is what we do to fix this would be essenti more so at like top speed when they're running 20 yards think if you're running a 40 yard dash it's going to be the last 20 right okay you know essentially so what we do to fix that is and this is it feel I always tell my athletes like what I'm going to ask you to change today is going to feel extremely awkward it's like but just Just Go With It embrace it it's it's you're learning a new

skill and so I go we want to get you more upright okay we want our hips a little more neutral so now we're here hips are a little more neutral you can get that knee up now everybody's going to have a little bit different level but I try to get you know pretty high so we need space now between the foot and the ground what do you think determines the height of the knee depending who you ask okay I honestly think it it's it's a it's a conscious effort to lift the knee okay or you

can step over the knee another thought we'll go over that in a second if you step over the knee but it's that hip flexor muscle it's lifting it some people say you hit the ground harder pops the knee up I don't think that's possible okay and so um and I'll teach them you know to actually when can I ask you about whipping from the hip right now you're right on Q right on Q okay so when you get that foot off the ground this is the key for the athletes to learn how to move this

hip to The Hip Flex and then start moving that femur down and foot down this is your negative foot speed or negative thigh speed that allows that foot to gain momentum and it's going to strike closer to your Center Mass you hit the ground this way your body is going to go this way okay okay which is what we want like if you you're going to think about popping the ground down because we want a lot of vertical Force at Max velocity you don't need a lot of force to keep your momentum but we don't

Fighting Gravity right you got gravity pushing you down you want to move this way so we got to intersect the two or essentially we kind of moving that way every strike and so this is the key is we got to get the space between the foot and the ground so that foot can start coming back underneath us okay um and now our ground contact time is going to be a lot shorter okay and so what this looks like is you could have this athlete run a certain time on the flying 10 or hit a certain

mil hour and you change your mechanics and they might like be a little bit slower in the first day or they might hit the exact same speed but what this is doing is there this is way more efficient because they're getting their their tendons their Springs involved instead of pushing the ground so hard behind them we want that Achilles tendon to start working to Spring you off the ground quickly here that Achilles tendon is not really working very well and you adaptation might take it could take two to 4 weeks or something of them getting

sometimes longer ath yeah our goal is to change the force profile of that foot contact you know this person could be hitting now this is not going to be exact but you know here's Force here's time okay the foot hits the ground here and it might be like kind of like this right so their foot's on the ground for a long period of time but they're hitting a decent amount of force like our goal is to get that force in the ground Peak really quickly so now it can look more like like you know it

can look more like boom right away that's what we're trying to go for and that might happen instantaneous with some athletes that might take months and months to build that up and so but this is my goal is let's fix mechanics first and then let's build off of this so you know now there's so much that goes into this plan metrics all that kind of stuff learning how to um hit the ground harder but this is essentially what I teach them step one then we go practice it so what would be like a drill that

we could do yeah so the first thing I'll do is I'll get you on the wall so no so I like stay tall okay so just keep the chest up so we don't want to go too tall we don't want the ribs to flare out okay so yep right there's good and then I'll say okay we want this foot this heel to step over that knee and I'll actually grab their foot and do the motion for them so yeah bring it back down so we're going to go straight up right here and back down I

want that ankle flexed doors flexed up and I'll have them do five six reps there and we'll turn around so you actually think like get this heel over that knee yep if you do that you don't actually have to think too much about lifting the knee I see yeah yeah okay all you think about is getting the heel over and kind of gets from here I can feel it here too and the whip from the hips comes from here so lift it back up again okay so now we're here this hip is generating the movement

the the hip extension and we're snapping that foot down yep I don't cue that a lot early on because you start to get athletes that will reach out they kind of will kick and so but it's more just think here like I don't know if I'm doing this right but I still now try it try it with a little bit of a tilt now try like the wrong way yeah I feel like my knee can't I'm like I'm like yeah yeah here and so that's why it's like the first thing I'll do is I'll teach

hips and posture now a lot of people ask me what about my arm what about my arms if you would asked me 15 years ago 20 years ago when I first started my career that's the first thing I would have focused on I would done rep after rep of arms I don't even touch them anymore like I like if unless their arms are all over all over the place I'll kind of cue them hey relax you know run L like skinny hallway and that's enough sometimes to kind of get them to think about it right

right but usually for me I've noticed if you can kind of just focus on the lower body the arms kind of like they'll come in line come in line yeah yeah that makes sense yeah okay so if we would go that's a pretty simple that's a pretty simple velocity drill that somebody could do just as a warm-up where it's like hey get here get set and I can tell you right now I can feel this here and even dude it's actually sort of crazy cuz I'm sitting here and I'm going up I'm trying to think

walk over walk over my knee and when I bring it back down I could actually feel like this I guess it would be my glute me almost go here like I can feel it like I don't know if that's good or bad but I feel like in through here is clearly working more than it probably has yeah in a while so it's like queuing that and then having the athlete maybe do something afterwards and and would that be like you have them do a drill and then you might go do uh like I don't know

Skip for a distance or or a Sprint or do you do I go right into the run and so I'll have them do this I'll have them do the the step over and then depending on the athlete I mean a lot of them were coming in and they're heel striking right and I I blame the shoes like you got this big old fat cushion heel so they they they're just accustomed to hitting their heel and so I I'll tell them like stand on your heels bounce up and down for me yeah yeah bounce and they're

like I can't they I'm like there's no spring I was like you land on your heel I call it a dead foot okay there's no spring off the ground and so you want to hit now this is where you can go into a little more detail of how the foot should strike the ground but we want that Achilles tendon to loow and stretch and so you got to hit the heel off the ground it's like if we are planner flexing too soon that is a weak ankle joint and the force is not going to transfer

okay there's not going to be a response off the ground so we'll go from the board here apply it to the track okay and usually I mean a lot of these athletes within 5 10 minutes are they look completely different and it's it's not normal for them they have to like keep repetition of it and then all of a sudden week after week week after week all of a sudden like that's their new way of running and they they can't imagine even going back to their old way they they they feel different they feel less

fatigued while they're running more efficient more springy and so that's usually the feedback I get on that first run I was like did that feel weird like yes I like did it feel springy like yes it's like that's what we want right so right but from there the gets water then we go all right acceleration time let's hit the let's hit the the 1080 oh sick all right let's go so we have a a 1080 motion 10 the 1080 Sprint it's really hard to me to think of training without it now it is so intrical

to what I do right and not only is it like helping me as a trainer to see things differently but my athletes love it right instant feedback on every step every speed you'll see in a second how how it kind of works man just do some just do some skips and shuffles for now let's get moving tight huh can I brag about how far I ran this morning is this where I can do that you don't need to go full speed but just kind of get a feel put that on this thing goes up to

30 kg of resistance I'm going to have you just do a run on 10 basically it's you can use for a lot of things but it's resistance or resistance you can do over speed mostly I use it for resistance and so I'm going to have you go just to the orange or green cone so 15 yards and you don't need to go full speed but go ahead yep there you go dude my quad just from a little run yeah so I mean it's that wasn't full speed but you kind of get an idea it it

it tracks every single step so when your foot's on the ground you speed up when your foot's off the ground you slow down this is kind of what a stride looks like and see I don't like this though this means you you slow down you didn't finish through the line Dane but um no number I look at I I look at three things mostly my fastest stride yeah this is like gamifying everything for me oh my goodness so your fastest stride happened at 9.82 yards so right about here and it's going to kind of average

that stride out and give you a miles per hour so that's a speed I want that speed every rep we do to go faster and faster and faster and so then this is your time from start to finish so we want the time to go down obviously I thought that was my 40 time you wish ni um maybe one day in the pass but um and then our our our average power so the power from the whole run and so if your time's faster obviously the power is going to be higher so okay so maybe

let me redeem myself and I'll run the whole way through yeah you can do another one I guess the easy one is Dane run the whole way through like get to the we're going to time you to the green one but I want you to go hard to the orange maybe yeah is there anything else specifically what what I'll usually do is I usually don't put them on 10 kg right away I'll put them on I'll put them on one which is basically nothing and I just want to watch them that's like we did on

the track I want to watch them run and see how they take a first couple steps um and I'll film it and then we'll go to the Whiteboard again and I'll I'll kind of go through my mindset on acceleration in first step and then we'll load it up a little bit because it is easier to learn acceleration mechanics when you have something slowing you down yeah so you can start thinking okay I need to do this do this this to keep going yeah and so that's how I'll do it you want to do another run

though y all right so hold on let me get you out of your way here all right go ahead please be faster definitely a lot faster okay so this is my negative as an athlete I've always been I've always just gone yeah like as hard as possible but I was even trying to think about putting force in the ground more from my hip and I don't know if that's a good idea or not yeah we'll go over that in a minute absolutely for sure and so yeah you can see this is a much better run

um I also like to look at too is like your first step I can change the setting a little bit to to time so now time is on the bottom you know you hit almost 4 miles per hour in that first step and so it's really cool to see like how fast and ath can hit that first step first couple steps sometimes with an athlete I'll see a step kind of go really high and the next one is low high low and that's where you can see like an usually an old injury or sometimes a

mechanical thing but a lot of times it's like okay to me about that leg what happened oh man I like like broke my big toe two years ago and I have no range of motion in the big toe anymore okay so like you can see like okay that leg's not producing Force let's try to fix that you know how many runs would you put somebody through on this oh man so it depends it depends on like how heavy it is um what they've done in the previous couple days but my goal is not to fatigue

them my goal is to get fast times so we'll go two three sometimes 4 minute rest between each one and if it's heavy I'll do maybe four to six okay um and that might be it would you ever would you ever do in one session an over speed session and and like uh resisted or no if I had that athlete a couple times in that week no um if they're coming in just one session a week you know even then I'll kindy of like try not to do that but sometimes we like okay well we're

going to do a little bit over speed so so really fast Max velocity um and then we can do some resist resisted Sprints with that too I don't think it's ideal but um I have done that yes okay would you compare this like another question was like how do you compare this to to running with a sled dude I'm training in my backyard or I'm training on turf field locally all I can do is get a sled and put a 25 lb plate on it like yeah so a cool thing I had not mentioned about

this yet and it depends on the level of athlet I get but you can do a load velocity profile on them okay um basically what's that is saying is you know trying to find your max think like we're going to create a squat program for you we want to know what your max is so we can have percentages off of that same thing with this thing it's like I'll put you through maybe three or four runs all at different levels and it's going to spit out a number and it's like okay your max is this

and so what we do is we we can find exactly according to research a good first phase for developing acceleration power is a 50 to 65% drop in your velocity like well how do you find that it's like well there's ways to find that using a sled it's like I don't have those I don't know those formulas on me but a lot of trainers you know they have they give you access to how to find that with a sled so you know you can use your iPhone and video yeah exactly and so like but that

50 to 65% drop in velocity is a lot of a lot of weight that's one thing that this this thing really opened my eyes to is like they're pulling a lot of weight it's they slowing them down a lot but it's it's teaching you how to put force in the ground horizontally and so it can be like 50 plus% of their body weight in some cases yeah it's heavy like the athletes that do it for the first time they're like oh my like I feel like wasn't moving it felt heavier than a sled almost yeah

it's I think because the sled it's constant the sled's going getting a little bit of a pullback yeah they're good and so you know the run rocket is a great tool I used that for years that's that's a little more consistent the 1080 is is it's it's in its own class it's it's phenomenal so we learned all the foundational Keys around acceleration Max velocity and you guys even have some simple drills that you need to start working on hit those consistently over the next 3 to 6 months Michael where can people find you Instagram YouTube

at Dr performance D love to have you guys give me a follow what about your website Dr performance.com because remember freaks if you want to become a champion you've always got to cultivate your power peace