Sprint mechanics in children: Progression and skill acquisition
- sjbl61
- Sep 30, 2014
- 2 min read
As of a change in my role within BFC, I now also work with a range of youth players from the U9's to the scholars or U18's. This Blog post is related to a chat I had with fellow coaches over sprint mechanics and how to teach acceleration patterns to children.
The main themes of the conversation were that one method of coaching the U9's in particuar would be adopting a "forward lean" or "falling foward" approach. After much discussion of personal opinions, it was raised that the merit of coaching in this fashion is that working with children (who perhaps have poor motor control), this style of acceleration is less demanding on the body in terms of physical tension/stress.
Another rationale for applying the "falling forward" approach is that it gives an athlete a chance to intrinsically feel the point where the torso is at 45 degrees to the floor and understand centre of mass and its change through acceleration to maximum velocity.
However in my opinion, I would coach sprinting from a lying prone position, along with leg drive exercises against a wall. The main reasons for driving off the floor are; you would expect a higher impulse due to the planting of the rear foot due to contributions from the Stretch shortening cycle, you have the benefits of athletes being predisposed to the mechanics of the movement - 45 degree torso lean whilst working on postural elements, balance between COM and foot position and it offers a regression of the three point stance/other sprinting drills.
In terms of the wall drives*, these are great for develping unilateral control, hip disassociation, high knee drive, torso lean and glute activation.
*(At 45 Degrees to the floor) Between reps, just for a second, I like to coach the "stick" so whilst the leg on the planted foot is extended, I am looking for the other leg to be fully flexed at the knee with a dosiflexed foot to encourage this pattern when progressing the movement.
To summarise, in my opinion I wouldn't adopt the "forward lean" approach due to; athletes misinterpreting the pattern and possibly inhibiting the acquisition of the backwards step, decreasing force production through the lower limb and consequently higher up the kinetic chain and that I believe there are other methods such as those above which elicit better results.
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