@Fred__Duncan: There’s always a debate about ...

There’s always a debate about the effectiveness of drills…

My stance has always been this - coaching is teaching and drills are tools.

Unless a drill closely matches the bioenergetic, biodynamic, and biomotor demands of acceleration or max velocity sprinting, it’s not

going to have direct transfer. BUT…

That doesn’t mean it’s useless. It just means we need to be honest about what it’s doing.

It’s easy to look at a drill like this and list all the ways it’s not sprinting. So for this you can say,

- no bipedal interaction
- no horizontal

displacement
- no step to step coupling
- external support (holding wall)
- no real need to manage the COM

And if we’re being honest, most sprinting problems show up in the interaction with the ground. This drill doesn’t solve that.

That said, it can still be useful and

unless we know the coaches WHY, then we really can’t accurately judge it.

Here you’re getting velocity biased work for the hip flexors and hamstrings and exposure to a front side cycling position.

Sometimes the goal isn’t transfer, it’s teaching. Sometimes you just want an

athlete to feel a position so the brain understands what you’re asking for.

The execution here is impressive and you’d probably assume this athlete is fast. I agree.

But I wouldn’t say this drill is why he’s fast. I’d say he can do this drill well because he’s fast.

That distinction matters.

This is exactly why I wrote Speed Kills. If you understand the qualities that underpin speed, drills stop being confusing. You know what to use, when to use it, and what to expect from it and I lay out the details.

fredduncantraining.com/product/speed-…