Ron Grigg’s ‘Complete Program Design for 400/600/800m Athletes’
Becoming ‘trilingual’ is crucial to your ability to plan effective training for your combo 400/800 runners.
Your first step is to understand athlete and event characteristics in order to provide a framework for training.
To better speak ‘distance coach’, I showed you why 10k pace reps are critical to developing stamina and pacing.
Today, we’re talking about my all time favorite drill for developing top speed and top end speed (maximum velocity) mechanics:
The Wicket Drill
Ask my athletes what their favorite ‘workout’ is and I can guarantee you 98% will say ‘wicket drills!!!!’
Photo courtesy of Boston University’s Gabe Sanders, a man who communicates almost entirely by texting memes.
I first learned about this piece of magic from Texas A&M’s Vince Anderson in the summer of 2011 and nothing has done more to improve, refine and hardwire respectable top end speed mechanics in my sprinters, hurdlers and jumpers than the wicket drill. Once you start using the wicket drill you will face palm yourself for living so long without it.
As an athlete I was a classic over-strider and had chronic hamstring issues. If this existed in my world that would not have happened.
Short story long, in the above video, Coach Grigg covers the benefits of developing top speed and top speed mechanics using the wicket drill.