In this instructional video, coaches explain the concept of frontside and backside sprinting mechanics, emphasizing that frontside mechanics—movement in front of the hips—are essential for generating horizontal force and speed. They describe how losing frontside mechanics leads to inefficient backside mechanics, characterized by a reverse crescent‑moon foot path and wasted vertical motion. The coaches then present a series of targeted drills designed to develop and reinforce frontside mechanics: the U‑Drill, 2‑Point Drill, low‑heel recovery, wicket drills, a wall drill that stresses hip‑flexor strength and dorsiflexion, and A‑skip/B‑skip progressions performed with a medicine ball to build hip‑girdle/core strength while maintaining proper ankle‑knee‑hip angles. Throughout, they stress the importance of postural integrity, strong hip girdle, and correct foot strike (ball of the foot, dorsiflexed) for efficient sprinting, linking each drill to the biomechanical goal of maximizing ground force and minimizing time in the air.
Chapters
If you want to run faster, you have to apply more force down to the ground. And one of the best ways to maximize your force production is to develop great frontside mechanics. So what are frontside mechanics? How are they different from backside mechanics? Can you gain one and lose another? Which one do I want? You've heard these terms thrown around a lot. He's got great frontside mechanics, or I need to work on my backside mechanics, or this drill helps. Clean up your frontside mechanics. But what does that all mean and how does it relate to speed? So what we wanted to do with this video is give a good overview of what frontside and backside mechanics are, why they're important. Then we're going to give you some really great drills that you can do to develop your frontside mechanics.
Frontside mechanics are everything that happens in front of the hips, and it's, it's where we generate power. So two things happen when, when we lose frontside mechanics. And the only way we can lose it is to gain backside mechanics. So in our frontside mechanics, we drive the knee forward, which creates movement horizontally. We push the foot back into the ground, which then creates power and more horizontal movement. The reality is that the better that foot comes off the ground, the quicker the, the, the time in the air, the less time on the ground. But it's also how much power you're creating. When an athlete finds backside mechanics and everything starts to what we say go out the back, there's a reverse crescent moon. So the athlete's bringing the foot back through here, bringing it there, and putting it down. And ultimately, when they do that, they create a much longer movement through the air. And correspondingly, if this foot's in the air, this foot has to be on the ground. So something has to be keeping me up. So if this foot is back here and it's going through this whole loop, this foot's— my left foot's on the ground. It's got to wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Now it can come off the ground. So it's, it's a vicious circle. We are trying to maintain postural integrity, and the better you maintain these positions, this triple extension, the less you will find backside mechanics. So with your athlete, the drills like the U-Drill, the 2-Point Drill, low heel recovery drill. Those kinds of drills are all going to enhance your ability to find frontside mechanics. We will move into wickets in the next phase of our race. Again, a great way to teach frontside mechanics. The athlete is forced to lift the foot up in the front in a max velocity state in order to, to get over the top of the wicket, and that then will promote that frontside mechanics. Ultimately, what makes an athlete good to great or great to wonderful or whatever that is, whatever the step is, the core, the hip girdle has to be strong enough to balance all of the upper body and, and the weight of your head and your arms with what's happening down below. So everything we do— hurdle walkovers, core work, med ball tosses— all of those things, the weight room stuff has to be focused in some part in, in this hip girdle area. So as you go to the weight room and we're doing cleans and snatches, they can't be, all right, I'm doing a clean and I'm landing here. It has to be focused on that core. The form has to be correct in order for us to be efficient and successful. So Moose is going to come over real quick. He's going to demonstrate backside mechanics, and when, when he's demonstrating pay close attention to where the foot is landing on the ground. All right, so go ahead, Moose, just— yep, just, just run through from a two-point and just find some backside for me. All right, so what you'll notice is as his foot comes up and gets through, it's landing in front of his center of mass. And if it lands in front of the center of the mass, the only way I can go is straight up. And I've lost my ability to push down the track. So he's gonna now show you frontside mechanics, and one of the things I want you to pay attention on this one is not just where the foot strikes, but how low the heel recovery is. Go ahead, just find frontside. Alright, so notice when he does that, the foot comes off the ground and immediately pulls forward to there. There's no wasted motion going up in here, right? We used to call it butt kicks, okay? And when I was growing up, we used to, we used to practice butt kicks. We'd be over there in the warm-up practicing butt kicks, right? Put our hands here and touch them. We will never ever teach that again, right? Because we want frontside mechanics, we want the ability to create power. And as a coach and as an athlete, the most simple way to understand that is if I stand up Okay, and I want to create power from this position. The easiest way to do it is push in the ground. Okay, I cannot create power from here. This is not a powerful position. You take your athlete, lean them up against the fence and say, okay, how do you create power from here? They can't because they've disengaged all the major muscle groups. We're gonna take Moose. He's gonna stand up here. In a 2-point position. He's going to do our U drill, put the Miami sign up, so he's sitting like this. He's going to keep his head up looking through the U, and he's going to do a 2-point start. So go ahead, Moose, push. And what that drill does is it forces him to keep the chin up, forces him to keep the chest up, lift up here. And a follow-on to it is because his center of mass is, is in a great position, and he doesn't use the arms for, for balance and power, he's forced to a frontside position. He cannot come out the back. It's not possible from this position. So it's a great drill. Alright, so we're going to talk real quick about a wall drill here. It's a great drill to work on frontside mechanics for an athlete. We know that Most athletes are pretty weak in the hip flexor. It's a small muscle group. It's a group that's, that's hard to target. So what we do is we take the athlete and put them in our running position, our acceleration position, up against a wall to allow for them to hold that position a little bit longer and do the drill. So Moose is going to get in here. He's going to lean up against the wall. We don't want him too low. We don't want him too high. We want a nice straight line, about 45 degrees. We want to make sure we maintain postural integrity at the hip, and Moose is going to do a walking drill with Frontside Mechanics. So pull the foot up. Notice that foot stays dorsiflexed the whole time. It's pushing back into the ground and landing on the ball of the foot, not the toe. Ball of the foot is where you get strength. So Moose is going to do that. He'll stop real quick. Notice a couple of things. His eyes are looking straight forward at the wall here. He's got a straight line through his body. And his eyes are 90 degrees to that body line. Okay, so he's looking right here. He's going to now do it a little bit faster, go at speed. Perfect. Okay, so we're, we're going to add to our A-skip and B-skip, our basic drills here, and we're going to employ a med ball. Uh, and the med ball is going to allow us to change the center of mass slightly move it forward a little bit, force the athlete to hold that, that position while under stress and strain. Uh, it's a great drill just for general strength. It's a great drill to work on the hip girdle, which we know is super important. And it's a great drill to take the arms out of the equation and force the, the lower body to do just a little bit more work. So CJ is going to show it to us. Our goals here again are 90-degree angles ankle, knee, and hip, and the ability to stay tall at the hip, keep that postural integrity, hold the body up, stay on your toes, and be up here in a great position even under the stress of having an 8-pound med ball. So go ahead, CJ. CJ does a great job with this. He's going to turn around and come right back at us and do a B skip version of this. Same thing, just working on those angles and those positions, driving that foot into the ground, holding on to our, our dorsiflexion, and allowing that foot contact to be right underneath the hip, even holding a med ball. So when we're doing this, everything's about our hip girdle. This is that, that center layer of the cake. It's what holds the whole thing together. It's what allows us to be in a great position to sprint in. So anything we can do to, to improve that, to make it stronger. And it's not, not the, the pretty abs that you go to the beach with. These, these are the ones underneath that actually hold you in position. This is the lower back, it's the upper glutes. And there's a ton of exercises you can do just with a med ball, whether it's med ball tosses against a wall, throws for height, things like that. Anything you can do that involves some explosiveness, using the core to make you stronger and allow you to sprint in a better position, is going to make you better every day.
