In today's article I'm going to talk about 3 ways to improve the foot strike depending upon at what level you're.

There are various different stages for improving your technique and performance.

Many people fail because they are completely new to speed training and try to copy elite athletes technique they see online in the videos or whatever.

Instead, of talking the various different stages of improving foot strike. I'm specially focused more on the mentioned below 3 ways of improving, So far so good now look at the ways :

1) Over-Striding

2) Negative Foot Speed

3)Leg Stiffness

ok so let's dive in.

Over-Striding

Over-striding is when you land far ahead of the body, most of you reading this are fully aware of that and you might also be aware that when someone is over-striding, it takes longer to get the body over the foot in order to push and this is time wasted.

Mentioned below are 3 exercise that can be used to fix over-striding:

leg Switches

Running Marches

Wickets

I prefer the first 2 exercises but even then how do use these effectively to fix over-striding?

You can have a chef's list of ingredients but depending on how you put it together you will create a drastically different result.

I suggest progressing stress testing yourself or your athlete over 10m, 20m, 30m and so forth to see where their technique falls apart.

It's easy to have good technique over 20m or 30m, but what happens between 50-60m or 60-70m will reveal so much more.

Once you are able to fix over-striding, then you can begin to maximize your negative foot speed.

Negative Foot Speed

Research shows that elite sprinters achieve higher top speed, not only applying more forces but doing so in less time.

Researchers suggest that 1 method for achieving this is through negative foot speed, which helps to reduce braking forces.

Negative foot speed is when the foot travels backward in space (negative) for a split second before making contact with ground.

As a result, the foot gets closer to the hips and makes contact almost directly with the body's center of gravity.

Based on physics we know that for every action there is a reaction, therefore if the foot crashes forward into the ground, the result is forces in other direction which slow us down.

According to science we cannot completely eliminate this, however, it can be reduced through negative foot speed.

1way to approach this would be to focus on striking directly down, rather than trying to reach and "pull" the ground.

If the sprinter were able to improve their negative foot speed, they would likely reduce the braking forces of each ground contact and essentially run faster.

Once you are able to achieve negative foot speed, then you can begin working on leg stiffness.

Leg Stiffness

Leg stiffness is when you make contact with the ground with a nearly leg straight leg, without too much bend at the hips or knee.

The benefit of having a taller position with more extension is that it allows you to put more force into the ground.

As well as drop your ground contact times and increase your frequency.

however, its not easy to do.

Because this requires a sprinter to get more distance between the ground and hips so that there is time and space to extend the leg.

1 way to approach this would be to work on getting stronger hip extension , and ankle stiffness so that more force can be put into the ground and create more space.

It's a positive cycle that builds on itself.

The stronger your hip extension
The more force you put into the ground
The more space you create between the floor and the hips.
The more time you have to fully extend the leg
The more you can contact with stiff legs
The stronger your hip extension

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