WAG Tips for lengthening stride

[rsm]

I was watching DD during vault practice last week, and her coach was telling her to run faster. So DD immediately increased her "turnover", but her stride gets shorter and shorter, the faster she tries to run. So, it's kinda like her legs are moving really fast, but she's going nowhere. Her arms also move faster, but they are very much by her side. So over the weekend I timed her running as "fast" as she could. Then I asked her to take longer steps and pump her arms (which the coach also said). And showed her that she actually faster with the latter. She says it feels strange to run like that. I'm wondering if there's anything else she can do to keep practicing, or if it's now just a matter of getting used to longer strides. I want to help reinforce the good habits. She said that she did better on Monday, so hopefully it helped. I figured if there's anything we can help with at home, this might be it

 

[iwannacoach]

Measure the distance she covers in 13 strides for six runs, time that 13 stride run with no mention of distance other than measuring distance over time. Next put an mark, cone, old shoe, or whatever next to the point of her average distance covered in 13 strides and ask her to make it at least that far on every run. Time and measure for six runs and see if the average distance increases with out increasing the time.

You can take this too far and end up with a run that has really long strides but doesn't produce the speed, so don't use distance as your only standard. Try giving her just a few tastes of what longer strides feel like, and then let the coaches work with the changes in the run.