Running Drills

Athletes and sportsmen have to be on their toes all the time. They cannot compromise on their strength and stamina. For the same reason, they are required to undergo vigorous training and conditioning sessions. These are predominantly meant to improve their endurance, stamina, and polish the skills which help in improving their performance on field.

Running drills, especially for track and field athletes, and some other sports like soccer, football, and a few others, are an important part of such conditioning. These are an opportunity for the athletes to get insights during speed training.

This is a drill which involves climbing up a hill. This will serve a lot of purposes. One of them is that, it aids in acceleration development, and the other is that, if there are any faults in the posture of the athlete's running or jogging technique, it can be corrected. The best part is that, all this can be achieved without any equipment!

Again, jog easy for the first 100 meters, and do the sprint-like action again. This way steadily increase the speed over the complete distance.

Running backwards is a universal drill for almost all the sports, isn't it? Nevertheless, let's check what it is all about. An advantage of this drill is that it can restore a balance of the body with its movement, which counters the movement involved in running forward.

This drills involves running forward, which leads to some muscles being over developed. Running backwards is great to strengthen hamstrings and loosening lower back and knees. Start this by running in place and then moving backwards. Run with a straight back, head up, shoulders back and looking straight ahead. A slight bend in your knees is perfect.

Begin with skipping lightly. Step from one foot to another using a long stride. Concentrate on elongating the action of your arms and legs in a heightened and exaggerated manner during the skipping.

Bend your arms at 90 degree angles at your sides and rise on your toes. Let the knees be locked and run or rather sprint as fast as you can. The strides will automatically and naturally be short, but you need to do this for at least 100 yards. This can work well for distance runners.

Stand on a spot and take as many steps as you can in let's say 20 seconds. Keeping the feet low to the ground, move them up and down lightly and quickly. Lean a bit forward. In addition to this, move your arms in sync with your feet movement and say 'fast feet, fast feet' to yourself. At the end of 20 seconds you will be breathing real hard.

The objective of this drill is to attain quicker leg turn over. Have a good warm up and then run as fast as possible for 17 strides. One stride is counted every time your foot touches the ground. Count 17 such strides and then stop the watch.

Focus and aim towards running these strides as fast as you can. Try exploding from the beginning and lift your legs up and down in a good speed.