If you are dissatisfied with your progress despite following a training plan, incorporating running drills can efficiently enhance your speed and refine your running technique. Running drills are an effective method for achieving this objective.
Our chosen running drills have been designed to elevate your running speed and refine your running abilities. These drills bolster your running efficiency, fortify the key muscles to augment your running strength, and enhance your muscle retention for superior outcomes.
Benefits Of Running Drills
There are numerous advantages to practicing running drills. When you witness their positive impact on your running abilities, you will be stimulated and eager to experience these benefits firsthand.
Your body becomes better at producing oxygen during running, resulting in increased efficiency where you use less effort from your muscles, similar to your own mileage per gallon.
By practicing drills, your muscles and joints become stronger, enabling you to effectively engage the appropriate muscles required for particular tasks. This demands sturdy hip flexors, quadriceps, hamstrings, and a powerful core.
Enhancing balance and coordination, also referred to as neuromuscular effectiveness, has positive impacts. Balance plays a crucial role in upgrading the receptors located mainly in the legs and feet. This helps to prepare for abrupt alterations and results in a more fluid, quicker, and injury-free running experience.
As you continue running, your movements become more instinctive, resulting in enhanced technique and greater efficiency in your motion.
Enhancing your running cadence through drills can significantly contribute to both injury prevention and performance.
Your muscle memory will be enhanced. It’s important to note that your muscles don’t actually possess memory. Rather, the repeated actions of your muscles leave a lasting impression in your brain, which allows you to replicate the actions consistently.
Your cardiovascular health can be enhanced by practicing running drills, leading to increased oxygen production and improved fitness. This, in turn, will enable you to combat fatigue and prevent hitting the wall or running out of stamina.
Done in a slightly different way, drills can even be used as a warm-up, keeping your runs that much more simple.
How To Incorporate Running Drills Into Your Training Plan
Having learned about the advantages of practicing form and speed drills, it is important to understand the most effective means of incorporating them into your workout routine.
When to Do Running Drills
The timing for performing your running drills can be adjusted according to your convenience. The following choices are available:
- Before you run, after your warmup
- In the middle or end of your run
Saving the exercise drills until the end of your run might lead to insufficient results due to excessive exhaustion.
For a brief run, we advise completing them after a brief warm-up but before you start running.
It is best to perform them as a cross-training exercise rather than saving them for a long run day, as you may end up depleting your energy from the run and utilizing it during the drills.
Where to Do Running Drills
Although possible to perform in various locations, the most ideal places for it are on supple surfaces such as dirt trails, grassy areas, or a running track made of rubber material, and not on concrete.
How Often to Do Running Drills
You should perform running drills once or twice a week to enhance the long-term effects of doing them consistently.
To ensure your body performs at its best, it is recommended to dedicate time to other forms of crosstraining, such as intervals or strength training.
How Long to Do Running Drills
The primary concept is to challenge yourself to go a bit farther or quicker with every attempt.
As you won’t require performing them on a daily basis, you’ll have sufficient time to recuperate in between, allowing you to enhance each time.
Begin by using 20 meters (approximately 65 feet) as your measuring point. Make sure to perform the movements correctly before increasing your speed to the maximum.
Top 4 Exercise Drills To Improve Running Form
1. High Knees
By emphasizing the running stance, this traditional exercise strengthens your calves, hamstrings, and glutes, which ultimately increases your running ability and speed.
High Knees are an excellent exercise for improving both form and speed, as they assist in agility and allow for a quicker turnover.
2. Butt Kicks
Butt kicks predominantly target your hamstrings, accelerating their contraction.
This plyometric exercise enhances endurance and cardiovascular health while simultaneously targeting the glutes and stretching the quads due to its explosive nature.
3. Straight Leg Run
The Straight Leg exercise targets not only the hamstrings, but also emphasizes the positioning of your ankles and toes during both the landing and lifting phases of the movement.
They have the ability to assist in achieving a proper mid-foot strike and enhancing overall coordination.
4. Carioca
Even though mastering Carioca drills may require some effort, they can substantially enhance the flexibility of your hips as well as the coordination between your arms and legs.
Top 4 Exercise Drills To Improve Running Speed
1. A-Skip
A-Skips promote a more efficient foot strike while also strengthening the lower legs.
2. B-Skip
Your hip and ankle movements’ range of motion, grip on running surfaces, and coordination can all be improved by performing B-Skips.
3. Single Leg Step Up
Sprinters frequently utilize the Step Up, as it enhances one’s lower body explosiveness and emulates the movement involved in sprinting.
4. Side Shuffle
The Side Shuffle, also called the lateral shuffle, is an agility exercise that enhances your ability to move laterally and quickly. This is essential as it enables you to accelerate and decelerate swiftly while maintaining stability while running at a high speed.
6 Running Form Tips
Before we dive into a specific drill video, here are our top running form tips for cultivating excellent running form:
1. Keep Your Shoulders Down
Avoid slouching and make sure to keep your shoulders down and not close to your ears. Bring your shoulders backward, as if you are holding a pen between your shoulder blades; this will also aid in building endurance.
2. Get Your Head Straight
Set your gaze straight ahead of you, looking around 20 to 30 meters out. Don’t look at your feet unless you’re doing a short drill (more about that later in this post).
Maintaining a relaxed neck and jaw is important for proper running form, and looking downwards can result in tension in these areas. Additionally, it is advised to ensure that your ears are aligned with your shoulders and avoid protruding your head too far forward.
3. Relax Those Hands
Some people find it easier to do this than others. As for me, I tend to clench my hands into a fist when I run, so I need to consciously make an effort to loosen them up. Otherwise, it can cause tension in my shoulders and back.
4. Go for a Mid-Foot Strike
Although every runner possesses an inherent foot strike, it is optimal to cultivate a mid-foot landing. Although heel and forefoot strikes are prevalent, it is advisable to prioritize frequently landing on the center of the foot.
5. Control Your Knee Lift
Running with excessively raised knees will result in a bouncy running style and greater impact absorption with each stride. In order to minimize the impact of training on hard surfaces, maintain a slight bend in your knee while running.
While high knee action is appropriate for running drills, when running, it is recommended to keep it low and lift your knees forward rather than upward.
6. Lean Forward Slightly
Avoid leaning backwards or standing upright while running. Instead, slightly lean forward, with the hips as the pivot point.
Thankfully, there are many uncomplicated running drills that can educate you on how to run properly and prevent injuries, allowing you to relish every run.
5-Minute Running Form Fix
Learning proper running involves treating all the individual components like an orchestra, where we merge elements such as maintaining an upright posture, correct hip rotation and extension, sturdy core muscles, and stability.
Frequently, during the initial phase of a run, our posture is superb. Nevertheless, as we continue to cover distance and tire out, it’s possible for our posture to deteriorate unless we make a conscious effort to rectify it.
With this quick and easy five-minute form solution, we can learn how to enhance our stability and adjust our rotation, preventing the body from compensating excessively in weak areas as we begin to tire.
Do you want to improve your running speed? If yes, then refer to this article and video where you can find seven effective running drills that can assist you in achieving your next PR quickly.
Focus on Your Arms
Running naturally emphasizes the legs as they perform a great deal of work. Nonetheless, having a suitable arm swing is equally crucial as it assists in maintaining balance and ensures that your shoulders and hips stay neutral and steady throughout each step.
As fatigue sets in during a run, the shoulders become tense and the arm swing diminishes. Consequently, the upper body compensates excessively and twists from side to side.
If you twist too much, things can quickly take a turn for the worse. You will disconnect from your pelvis, your hips will sink with every step, and you will observe that you scrape your calves every few strides. I have certainly observed how unclean my calves can become after a lengthy run!
The Stable Arm Drill
What is the solution to avoiding the loss of a proper arm swing when fatigue sets in? The stable arm drill can help. By removing arm swing, this exercise concentrates on stability and rotation, which safeguards the hips. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
- Jog lightly in place. Notice how your arms naturally assume a contralateral movement–they move the opposite direction of your legs.
- This will feel silly, but it helps. Run with your arms out straight (imagine Frankenstein running) for 20 meters or about 15-20 seconds.
- You’ll notice that your upper body starts to twist because your arms aren’t moving. Now, your goal is to minimize as much twisting as possible.
- Stabilize your core and make sure you’re running tall. Keep it tight!
- Repeat this exercise three times.
- We’re not through with this one yet! Do three more rounds–but this time, put your hands together in front of you. It makes it even more challenging to keep your upper body from twisting, but it’s great practice.
Upon resuming the motion of allowing your arms to sway, you will promptly realize its importance. Rehearse this exercise a few times each week to refresh your memory on proper running form for when weariness strikes.
Focus From the Bottom Up
Having developed an understanding of how a good arm swing can benefit your posture, let’s shift our attention to starting from the bottom to prevent what is known as “tightroping”. This occurs when you over-rotate, causing your legs to appear as if you are walking on a narrow tightrope. At times, I have even stumbled after completing a long run due to tightroping.
Simply find a line to track beside while driving on the road, but be sure to avoid using a double yellow line.
The White Line Drill
- Choose a course that has a line on the side to use as a marker for your feet.
- When you stand naturally, your feet are usually about hip-width apart. When you’re running, your feet should land with a bit of space between them.
- Use the line to make sure you’re feet are straddling the line with each stride. This helps prevent over-rotation–which causes that “tightroping” stride.
- Don’t go too wide–you know the stride is too wide if you feel like you’ve just gotten off a horse!
- Straddle the line for 30-60 seconds. Repeat for three to five rounds.
Incorporate these two simple drills into your running schedule every week to encourage proper form and mobility. Looking for running form tips for beginner runners? Check out this article for the best advice.
