Why Most Running Drills Are A Waste Of Time
THE ONLY THREE RUNNING DRILLS THAT MATTER
Most running drills are a waste of your time. Not because drills do not work, but because most runners do far too many of them, badly, at the wrong point in the session. Scroll through any running feed and you will find twenty variations of skipping, bounding, grapevines and high knees, each one sold as the missing piece in your running form. You try a few, you do them tired, and nothing changes.
You do not need a sea of exercises. You need a handful, done properly, done often enough to stick. For almost every runner I coach, that handful is three movements: A skips, butt kicks and strides. Those three cover the parts of your stride that matter most, which are how your knee drives forward, how your foot recovers under your hips, and how you hold good mechanics at a faster pace.
Narrowing your focus is the whole point. When you only have three drills to learn, you can actually get good at them, and a drill done well is what carries over into your running. A long list done carelessly just adds minutes to your warm-up and teaches your body nothing.
WHY RUNNING DRILLS ACTUALLY WORK
A running drill is a skill session. It takes one piece of your running stride, slows it down or exaggerates it, and lets you practise that piece on its own. Your running form is built from thousands of repeated steps, so the pattern you rehearse is the pattern your body falls back on when you are running for real.
That is why drills work when they are done well, and why they do nothing when they are done badly. If you rush through A skips with a flat foot and your chest folded forward, you are rehearsing the exact habits you are trying to get rid of. The drill is only as good as the quality of each rep.
It also explains why fewer drills beat more. Every new drill is a new pattern to learn. Three movements practised twice a week give you enough repetition to own them within a few weeks. Ten movements practised occasionally never get past the awkward stage. You are better off being very good at three drills than average at a dozen.
A SKIPS, BUTT KICKS AND STRIDES
A skips train your knee drive and your foot strike. Drive one knee up to roughly hip height, keep your foot flexed with the toes pulled up, and bring it back down so it lands under your hips rather than out in front. Stay tall, keep your arms working in rhythm with your legs, and make each contact with the ground light and quick.
Butt kicks train the recovery phase of your stride, the part where your heel comes up behind you and your leg swings back through. Keep them short and quick, with your heel travelling up towards your backside underneath you, not kicking out behind. Stay on the balls of your feet and keep your body upright.
Strides pull it all together. After the two drills, run 4 to 6 relaxed efforts of around 80 to 100 metres, building smoothly to a fast but controlled pace and easing off before the end. Think tall, quick and relaxed. Strides let you practise good mechanics at speed without the fatigue of a hard session, and that is where the form you rehearsed in the drills starts showing up in your running.
THE MISTAKE THAT WASTES YOUR DRILLS
The timing of your drills matters as much as the drills themselves. The most common mistake is saving them for the end of a run, when your legs are already tired. At that point you cannot hold good positions, so you practise sloppy form and call it technique work.
Drills belong in your warm-up, while your legs are still fresh. Jog easily for 10 minutes, do two or three sets of A skips and butt kicks over 20 to 30 metres, then run your strides, and go straight into the rest of your session. The whole routine adds about ten minutes and it sets up every run that follows it.
Do this twice a week. That is enough repetition for the patterns to stick, and it fits into any training week without taking time away from the running that actually builds your fitness. Twice a week, done fresh and done well, is far more effective than a cluttered schedule full of technique exercises that give you very little back.
On your next run, try it: easy jog, A skips, butt kicks, strides, then your planned session. If you want someone to look at your running form and tell you exactly what to work on, run form and technique coaching and personalised coaching with Run The Race are built for exactly that. You can also send a question through Ask The Coach.