This weeks training
Video Analysis: Establishing Your Running Baseline
Before we begin transforming your athletic abilities, we need to capture where you're starting from. A simple video analysis gives us crucial insights into your natural running style and will serve as a powerful comparison point when you see how far you've progressed by week 7.
Think of this assessment as your athletic "before" picture – something you'll look back on with amazement as your technique transforms over the coming weeks. Many athletes are surprised to discover patterns in their running they never noticed before, providing clear targets for improvement.
How to Record Your Assessment:
- Warm up thoroughly as you would before any sport practice
- Perform three build-up runs:
- 1×20 meters @65%
- 1×20 meters @75%
- 1×20 meters @85%
- Set up your camera:
- Position at hip height in landscape mode
- Place perpendicular to your running path
- Have someone record or use a tripod
- Record your sprint:
- Run the entire 20 meters at 90% intensity
- Ensure your full stride is captured
Analyzing Your Technique
This video shows what you should be looking for in your running technique. When reviewing your footage, focus on these four critical phases of running.
1. Initial Foot Strike: The Foundation of Speed
The moment your foot contacts the ground determines everything that follows. Elite athletes strike the ground on their mid-foot, positioning it just under or slightly ahead of their center of mass. This creates a perfect loading position that minimizes braking forces and maximizes forward momentum.
Many young athletes either over-reach with a heel strike (acting like a brake with each step) or land weakly on their toes with a floppy foot (failing to capture elastic energy). By identifying your natural tendency, you'll know exactly what to focus on during the coming weeks of training.
2. Peak Loading Phase: Building Your Spring
As your weight fully transfers to your support leg, your body briefly loads like a compressed spring. This moment is golden – it's where the potential for explosive movement is created. Your body should form a powerful, aligned position with your mid-foot directly under your center of mass, trail foot tucked high, and upper body tall and stable.
The world's fastest athletes excel at this phase, creating a perfect alignment that stores elastic energy throughout their tendons and muscles. If your analysis shows misalignment here, don't worry – the drills in this program are specifically designed to improve this crucial position.
3. Peak Knee Drive/Toe Off: Unleashing Power
This is where the magic happens – where stored energy converts to explosive forward motion. As one leg drives up with power, the other extends fully behind you, creating a coordinated push-off that propels you forward. Your arms work in opposition, with the back elbow driving powerfully to enhance the force generation.
Many young athletes cut this phase short, never reaching full extension or proper knee height. By identifying your patterns here, you'll better understand how to tap into your body's full power potential in the coming weeks.
4. Overall Movement Flow: The Efficiency Factor
Beyond the individual phases, how your body moves as a complete system determines your efficiency. Excess motion in any direction – bobbing head, swaying torso, bouncing hips – represents wasted energy that could be directed forward.
The most beautiful runners appear almost effortless because they've minimized these energy leaks. Your analysis might reveal areas where you're working harder than necessary – valuable information as we rebuild your running mechanics from the ground up.
Week 1 Training Components
This week introduces four training elements that will become the foundation of your athletic transformation:
Daily routine
Your warm-up isn't just about preventing injury – it's active preparation that enhances everything that follows, this routine is a quick and easy way to prime your body for peak performance. The foam rolling releases tension in tight muscles, allowing for better movement patterns. The static stretching improves mobility in key areas that directly impact running mechanics. And the glute activation wakes up the powerful engine that drives your speed and power.
Consistency with this routine creates compound benefits over time. Athletes who faithfully perform these seemingly simple movements often see the biggest transformations by program's end.
You will find the videos for foam rolling, the crouching three stretches and glute activation in the video library →
Drills & Skills: The Technical Foundation
The three drills introduced this week might seem basic, but they isolate fundamental movement patterns that translate directly to better running:
Arm swings
Develop the relaxed yet powerful upper body action that elite runners use to coordinate their stride. Many athletes underestimate how much arm mechanics influence speed – proper arm swing can add inches to your stride and milliseconds to your time without any additional effort.
Stationary Marching
Establishes the crucial timing connection between your arms and legs. This neural patterning exercise teaches your body the rhythm of efficient running before adding the complexity of forward motion.
Tall to Smalls
Introduces the body position that underlies both acceleration and jumping power. By learning to load your hips and knees while maintaining a strong core position, you're building the foundation for explosive movement in all directions.
Field Work: Applying Your Skills
This is where you integrate technical work into actual running. Each week's field work focuses on different aspects of athletic development, gradually building speed, power, and agility.
A Critical Note on Intensity: Understanding intensity levels is essential for this program's success. Many athletes make the mistake of either working too hard (burning out) or not hard enough (failing to trigger adaptation). Use this guide to nail your efforts:
- 50-60%: Easy, controlled movement – focus entirely on technique
- 70-80%: Moderate effort with powerful strides – you should be able to maintain perfect form
- 90%+: Near-maximal speed – reserve this for later in the program when technique is solid
Remember, if you were running from a tiger, that's 100% effort! Most of your work in the early weeks will be at 75-85% – fast enough to challenging but controlled enough to maintain technical focus.
The most common mistake is running "medium" (70%) – too slow to trigger speed development, or "all out" (95%) – too intense to keep good technique. Be disciplined with your intensities.
Postage stamp jumps
Building your landing skills is just as important as your jumping ability, this week we will work on the fundamentals of landing technique, with these small vertical jumps on two legs.
Strength Work: Building Your Engine
The strength exercises this week might seem simple, but they target the specific muscles that power efficient running. By continuing your isometric holds from your rehabilitation program while adding targeted glute, leg, and core work, you're building the foundation that will support explosive movement.
Think of this as constructing your athletic engine – each exercise strengthens a critical component that will work together to generate and transfer force when you run and jump.
You will find the videos for all the strength exercises in the video library →