Running Drills

Running drills are exercises that help you improve your running performance,

there are many benefits from doing drills, elite athletes will be doing them on a regular basis, so maybe they’ll help us too.

Why Do Running Drills?

Drills have many benefits:

1 Improve running technique

2 Enhanced awareness of body movement

3 Postural & muscular control through range of movement

4 Co-ordination during run-related movement patterns

5 Improve the fatigue resistance of the muscles that maintain good posture – in particular hip and pelvis stability.

6 Improve strength and impact tolerance of the foot and lower leg.

These need to be done regularly but they can be included into your warm up before a training session or as part of a conditioning-specific session.

Perform the drills on a good surface – either a running track, gym-type floor or grass that is firm and smooth.

Concentrate on maintaining good, relaxed posture throughout all the drills. Keep your chest up, your back straight and engage your abdominal muscles to keep your hips stable. You want your hips to stay facing forwards and not move up and down on each side as your legs move.

Drills improve your ability to maintain proprioceptive control of the foot and lower limb as well developing achilles tendon strength. They also help reduce injury risk by building up your tolerance of impact in preparation for faster running or increased mileage. They also help maximise the utilisation of elastic energy during running.

Also build up the number of foot contacts gradually so that your lower legs and feet have time to adapt and strengthen. You can also gradually build up how ‘explosively’ you do these drills.

Start off doing two repeats of each drill per session over about 20 metres and work your way up to doing four repeats of each drill over a slightly longer distance (up to about 40 metres).