Guide to Sprinting/Running Properly

I just was looking at all the forum boards, and I saw this part of the UE section. I have been doing track since grade 4 in school, (in grade 9 now) and almost 3 years outside of school, so I'd think I'm pretty knowledgeable about the subject.

Now, lets get to the guide.

Guide to Sprint/Run Properly

This guide will focus on teaching you the form of running. Lots of people are fast runners, but they don't actually know how to run properly. If they did, they'd be a lot faster.

The most important thing to remember is that your HANDS AND ARMS CONTROL YOUR FEET AND LEGS!. If you ever try to run with your hands tied behind your back, you can run pretty fast, but if you ever try to jog while moving your hands and arms as fast as you can, your feet and legs will follow your hands and arms and speed up too. Why it does that? I don't know, but all I know is that's how your body works.

The Form:

When you run, you always want your hands in the same positions. One hand at the cheek of your face, one at the cheek of your butt. It may sound weird, but its a good way to remember it. You also always want your arms at a 90 degree angle.

If you were running, and your left foot was striding (going forward) than your right hand should be at the cheek of your face, and your left hand should be at the cheek of your butt, and vice versa. If your right foot was striding, then your left hand should be at the cheek of your face, and your right hand should be at the cheek of your butt.

How to run a proper sprint race:

When you're in the blocks before a race, get your blood pumping before you race. Jump up and down, hit your quads, hamstrings and calves, just do some kind of activity before you run. When the starter says 'Set' take in a breath. When the gun goes, let it out within a span of approximately 5 meters. While expelling that breath that you took in, keep your head down for 5-8 meters, and stay close to the ground. Once you hit around the 8 meter mark, gradually bring your head and upper body up, until you're running tall. Keep that position for the rest of the race, until the last meter, where you duck your head. You don't want to be leaning back, you want to use long strides, keeping your HEAD UP (one of the most important aspects of sprinting), and make sure you don't lean forward. That will increase your chances of falling, so you want to always be up straight. Leaning forward will also slow you down.

Re visiting the 'heads up' part, choose an object, whether it be a fence, a garbage can, a pole, whatever. Something straight ahead that you can look at throughout the race. That'll help make sure that your head stays up.

And, thats my guide. Thanks for reading, and I hope it helps some of you out.

-Mitchell
​

 

Very small guide and has been done on the forums before. You should add pictures to it. I give it a 3/10.

It's not very useful.

 

When running long distances, your running tips don't really help much as shaking your hands/moving them up to your face/butt would waste energy...for 800M runs (max) it might be helpful but for longer runs, keeping your hands around your chest area and having small movements would help alot.

As for sprinting, it would be helpful that while you wait in the tracks, you should put a map...as in, when I reach 5M point, I should be out of my initial strafe and at 30M I should push all my air out, etc (practicing this way would help heaps as it would give you jobs to do throughout the run instead of worrying about loosing, etc)

 

Appendices should be included to allow people to understand your guide.
2/5

 

As a 100m runner myself, at state level, I found this guide covered most of what I usually do before a 100m race. However, like Dingo stated, the form that it used to run 100m is very different to A 1k race and you should go to more detail about running properly. An extra tip for running 100m, you should always think about something in your head while you're running it, I usually think about my arms and how there moving.

5/10.

 

I think of moments where I got embarrassed :laugh:

 

Good start on guide writing I suppose. If you were a serious 100m runner this is nothing a coach wouldn't tell you If you added pictures to the guide that would also make it alot better!

 

Interesting topic, but I don't understand this, if you say hands arms control feet and legs why can you run faster with your hands tied behind your back? Other than that a pretty good guide, you explained everything pretty well and the concept may help alot of people. Thanks.