Introduction
Most of the articles and videos you will see about running drills and running technique show distance runners doing all kinds of drills that are simply not necessary. While most of them are actually good drills, they are more suited for sprinters and wasted on distance runners. If you watch a distance runner (in slow motion), even the best in the world, they don’t run in the manner that the drills that are training them to do. Many of the drills that are done are a waste of time and potentially harmful as they could confuse the runner’s nervous system about the proper way to run.
The fact that you’re researching running drills tells me that you take running seriously. I want to honor that by giving you the best information possible. I have been a running coach for over 30 years. I’m a master’s degreed sports performance specialist and a level 2 coach with USA track and field. I have coached over a thousand runners and to date have coached 20 state champions. Along the way, I have learned a lot about training runners and I’m passing my knowledge on to help as many runners and coaches as I can.
Distance Running Drills
Here are the drills that are proper for distance runners. I will post a separate article about running drills for sprinters.
Arm Drill
Standing in place, swing your arms as if you were running. Things to focus on:
- Shoulders are down and relaxed.
- Hands are relaxed. Thumbs should press against the side of your index fingers.
- Arms should swing from your shoulders.
- While swing back and forth, your arms should move only slightly inward toward, but never cross the center line of your body.
Start swinging as when you are running easy and gradually increase your motion to simulate sprinting to the finish line. For each intensity, your arm swing will increase.
- Running easy: hands swing from lower chest to hip bone
- Running moderately fast: hands swing from upper chest to past hip bone
- Sprinting: face cheek to butt cheek
Jumping in Place
The concept behind these next three drills can be learned in my article How to Run In 3 Easy Steps. Jump up and down as if you are jumping rope but without the rope and the hand motions. If done properly, you should be landing on the balls of your feet, rather than your heels or toes. Your ankles will be flexing and heels might be coming down to lightly touch the ground, but not hard. Knees should flex a bit and so should the hip joints. Your spine should feel like it’s straight along with the neck and head.
Basically, everything is lined up. You should tighten your core muscles slightly to keep everything in place. Pay special attention to how your feet and ankles are moving and the sensation of them as you hit the ground and spring up. This is the same way that you should strike the ground and land when running.
Jog in Place
Using the same form as you did previously with two legged jumping, now transfer your weight from one leg to the other. Instead of lifting your knees as if marching, or letting them hinge behind you like the traditional butt kicking drill, you should lift your heels toward your butt from underneath. Raise your heels straight up to your butt just high enough to keep the rhythm going. You’ll notice that when you do this, you knees flex a bit and rise up, but not as much as a high knee drill. For your arms, you should let them swing back and forth as if hinged from your shoulders. Keep them relaxed.
While running in place, take analysis of your body:
- Foot strike against the ground
- Springy ankle, knee and hips
- Strong core locked into place
- Head and neck in neutral position
- Feel rising up towards your butt from underneath
- Arms swing back and forth
Fall Forward Drill
This drill is a sequel to jogging in place and requires assistance. While jogging in place, your partner should place their hand on your upper chest. Gradually fall forward while you lean into their hand. You should focus on maintaining the same form as while jogging place, but now at a slight tilt. It’s important that you fall forward from your toes and not from your waist. You should feel as though you are leading with your chest and hips.
Tall and In-Line Drill
You can learn more about the next two drills in my article How to Run Properly. This drill is actually, easy-paced running focusing on positioning of your spinal column. Head, spine and pelvis should all be aligned. Your head should not protrude forward or tilt in any direction. Your spine should be upright and tall rather than arched back or curved forward and your pelvis should be rotated backward (no booty sticking out). I teach my runners to run as tall as possible and try to scrape the tops of their heads against the sky.
Pelvic Bowl Drill
This drill is also easy-paced running focusing, but now focusing on the position of your pelvis. This is important because your pelvis needs to be in the proper position in order to move your legs easily. Imagine that your pelvis is a bowl that is filled with water. It is most common for an athlete to have the front of their pelvic bowl tilted so that their water would be spilling out of the front. Your focus during this drill is to tilt your pelvic bowl back so that it is level and water will not spill out. For this drill, tilt the bowl back, tighten the muscles that lock that in place and do easy sprints with this focus.
Butt Kick-Modified
This is not the traditional butt kicking drill where you keep your knees close together and let you lower leg swing in an arc that has your foot kick your butt from around the back. It’s also not the butt popping drill that sprinters do where their foot comes straight up from the ground toward their butt. For distance runners, because they do use more back side running than sprinters, this drill is somewhere in-between the two versions. While moving forward, once your foot strikes the ground, allow it to travel back a little and then bring it straight toward your butt. This is how a distance runner should sprint.
A skip
This is the only drill that distance runners and sprinters have in common. While maintaining the tall, aligned and rotated pelvis as mentioned above, you should skip while bringing their knee high and down quickly.
Why Do Running Drills
Simply put, some ways of running are better than others. This is because some styles waste energy and prevent your body from moving fast. When you run properly and with good running technique, you will be using less energy with each step and having a quicker, more efficient running stride. You can learn all about this in my article about proper running form. Running drills are done for the purpose of training your nervous system how to move properly. There are many running drills and each drill should be designed to focus on one aspect of proper running technique. The reason for this is because it is easier to learn one aspect of any coordinated movement in isolation. Once mastered, you can combine movements into more complicated drills and eventually transfer the new patterns into your running form.
When to Do Running Drills
Running drills should be part of every training session because all runners need to reinforce proper running form as your technique can slowly erode over time and you fall back to old patterns. As for when to do drills within the actual session, I have two times that I like to have my runners work on technique drills: at the beginning and the end of the session.
Because running drills can also serve as part of the warm up, I like to have my athletes do them at the beginning of the session. If you read my article on how to warm up for running, you’ll see that I recommend that they be done after isometrics, joint mobility circles and jogging, but before sprinting and the actual conditioning portion of the training session.
Another time I like to introduce running drills is at the end of the conditioning portion of the session. At this time, the drills can serve as a cool down as well as reinforcing good running technique while you are tired. This is important because as we fatigue during a race, our technique tends to get worse over time. Performing running drills at the end can help you learn to maintain proper running form at later stages of your races.
Conclusion
I hope you gained some insight from this article. If nothing else, hopefully you learned some differing ideas that will challenge you to think beyond doing traditional training just because that’s the way it’s always been done. Again, my goal is to pass on as much knowledge as I can from my 30 years of coaching runners. You can read as much as you can from my articles and videos, but if you’d rather skip the time and have me help you directly, check out how I can coach you. You might also check out some testimonials from other athletes that I have coached. Feel free to leave comments below.