So at practice the other day, a couple of coaches from other teams are trying to tell me how my arms are bursting out with a lot of power but just by watching me, it looks as if my legs arent keeping up. Someone on my relay team last year told me the exact same thing. My lower body strength is very good (2.2x body weight squat/2x bw deadlift) and im 15 years old.
What could the problem be? Any drills or anything to help fix this?
Couple coaches plus others think my feet arent keeping up, what could be the problem?
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Participant
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Participant
I’m not sure I actually understand what you mean by this. If your feet aren’t keeping up with your body then you usually fall over.
I’m assuming it means you are lacking in knee drive, which makes it look like you are always about ready to fall over/barely able to get your feet back under you?
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Participant
It would help us more if you had some video.
From what you are describing, it sounds as though you are spinning the wheels but going nowhere. You are probably taking incomplete strides. Do you allow the elbow joint to open and close when you run? How is the flexibility in your hip flexors?
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Participant
I dont know exactlyy what they mean, seems like they’re talking like my leg turnover speed looks slow and my arms look like they’re going rapidly. My arms are fine technique wise, my flexibility in the hips is questionable…
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Participant
I dont know exactlyy what they mean, seems like they’re talking like my leg turnover speed looks slow and my arms look like they’re going rapidly. My arms are fine technique wise, my flexibility in the hips is questionable…
What I presume Chad and Scoots want to know, is do you try run with a fixed 90 degree angle with your arms? If so then the arms are wrong and it will be impossible to tell what’s really wrong. If your arm at the elbow opens and closes naturally and you don’t have limited mobility at the shoulder then the legs will move the arms or rather the forces acting upon the hips and torso at ground contact will. I don’t mind coaches looking at the arms because it’s a good starting point to backtrack from, but saying the arms are ok should imply the rest of the mechanical system is ok too.
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Participant
Like I said, it would really help to see some video and then you can get even more feedback. Dbandre and I can only make semi-educated guesses to what is the issue. It could be your ground mechanics, torso positioning, any number of things that will effect the ability of your legs to recover.
Ever watch baseball? Take a look at some video of Pete Rose running. The world claims he is a “hard-worker” and fights for every step. That is just the announcer being nice, in other words, his mechanics were poor and he was slooooooowwwwwwww. His upper body was always moving like crazy, but if you look at the legs, he ran like he was going to fall on his face most of the time. I am not saying you are like Pete Rose, but it could be something similar.
And I would suggest to start working on your questionable hip flexiblity . . .
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Participant
I will try and get a video up some time soon, perhaps Sunday, not sure if it’ll be definitely possible though but I’ll try. Although I do have a OLD video but it is just very short sprints on grass and coaches were commenting on my max velocity running…not my drive phase, so I dont think that video will do any good.
So what was Pete Rose’s problem then?
And hip mobility…hurdle stuff (step overs, skips, etc.), leg swings, scorpion kicks and etc. all enough for hip mobility? Plus the static stretching component.And on the elbow angle, I’m pretty sure its good and not at 90 degrees the entire time…
One thing however that comes to my mind is what APPEARS to me to be partial excessive knee lift during the drive phase which does partially lead onto the max velocity phase. -
KeymasterWhat could the problem be?
Your coaches don’t know what they’re talking about.
Just kidding (kinda). It’s possible for anyone’s arm swing to outpace their leg turnover but it’s really rare to actually see it happen. I suspect that there is some other mechanical issue that might be either causing the illusion of this to appear or is making you use the arms excessively to bring stability to the system. Video would definitely be necessary for an accurate assessment.
ELITETRACK Founder
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