This is the final post in my series on Running a Faster 40 yard dash. Following the transition to upright running mechanics, the athlete enters what is known as the maximal velocity portion of the forty yard dash. For some athletes, this may last only 10-15 yards. This portion of the race is characterized by an upright posture, vertical force application, and high knees.When the athlete finishes t [...]

Now that I’ve spent the first four parts of this series examining the setup, starting position, start, and initial steps of the 40 yard dash; let’s now take a look at what the athlete should do as they progress to top speed. For many athletes, this will be the most vital portion of their test race so it’s important to do everything possible correctly.Once the athlete has completed their init [...]

In the fourth installment on this blog series on running a fast forty yard dash, I’m going to address what you should do to start your run. Recent research (1) on the fastest runners in the world has indicated that the first two steps of an acceleration are distinctly different from the acceleration or ‘drive phase’ that occurs in the following steps. In the initial two steps, the athlete ac [...]

I used the first two installments of this series on running a faster forty yard dash to look at appropriate stance and starting position. While these positions are very important to establish what happens later in the test, they aren’t nearly as exciting as what happens on the first movement. So with that, let’s look at what you should do when you actually start your sprint.Before getting in t [...]

In the first part of this blog series on how to maximize your forty yard dash performance, I gave a brief overview of how to position your feet in the three point stance to give yourself the best opportunity for a fast start. In this installment, I’m going to go over the precise body positions that you want to achieve to ensure that your first couple steps are as explosive as possible and you ca [...]

“What’s your forty time?” This is a question that’s often heard among athletes in a variety of sports ranging from soccer to football. Whether you like it or not, it’s the measuring stick of choice for assessing an athlete’s speed. While many think that speed is an innate ability that you either have or don’t; the reality is that running fast has both technical and physical component [...]

I recently did an interview for Empowered Athlete and one of the questions looks at a topic that comes up often on ELITETRACK: the disconnect that often occurs between strength and speed. Here's the question and you can find the entire interview HERE...Boyle said, “Many athletes can squat large amounts of weight. Far fewer athletes seem to be able to run fast.” In your experience, what is the [...]

In December of 2011, I presented at the USTFCCCA National Convention on several topics. Here's a presentation I put together that examined how the current crop of short sprinters are running so fast and what we can learn and apply from their performances. Breaking Barriers to Sprint Performance View more presentations from Mike Young [...]

The small amount of centimeters of lift produced by sprinters is always talked about as an indicator of oscillation, something jump coaches like Boo Schexnayder talk about constantly during educational sessions. How much bounce is happening? Sometimes the video shows nothing or a still picture can fool the eye to make it look like feet. Does it really matter? Does anyone think that Coach Mills is [...]

No need for much of a title here for this blog post. Dr. Milan Čoh is an unheralded expert on kinematic and kinetic data of elite athletes. I am a huge fan of his work because he not only drills down to wonderful key points, but he actually tests elite athletes such as Cathy Freeman and Colin Jackson. Just go to Google Scholar and download his PDFs and you can see some interesting conclusions. Cu [...]