It is important that you have trained your stride to be efficient before you add the resistance of a parachute. Any imbalance in your hips that affects your stride will be intensified by adding the parachute to your run. Remember Law 3, that the body is designed to respond to stimulus according to the natural strength progression. Well, parachute runs are higher in the strength progression than simply running, so it requires a more efficient muscular system to do correctly and there will be greater potential for muscular compensations. That being said, there are ways to incorporate it into your training as long as you know how to neutralize the negative effects it may have on your body. In our sprint training programs, we will provide the proper exercises that will ensure a high level of muscular efficiency by neutralizing these negatives.

One important factor that you need to consider when doing parachute runs is wind. You do not want to do parachute runs on a windy day, because of the unwanted lateral demand it can have on your stride as you run. Many times the parachute will be pulling your body all over the lane from side to side if it is windy. This will affect your ability to train your stride, as your body will have to try to balance itself out and compensate for the lateral stress of the parachute. Use parachutes on days with little to no wind.

Here is a link to some good parachutes if you are looking to buy one and begin to incorporate it into your sprinting.

Loren Sheets

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But what really is the cause of this tightness and fatigue? Is it simply a lack of endurance? Why can some people seem to just run without losing their form while others can go from a dead sprint to nearly collapsing in a matter of seconds? The question we all should be asking is how do we train our bodies to overcome this sudden loss of power and fluidity?

The sudden loss of form known as the wall can be attributed to a muscular compensation somewhere in our bodies. An efficient stride is dependent upon all the muscles of the body working together doing their job, but because of many forms of isolated muscle training and inactive lifestyles, our muscular systems develop compensations. Certain muscles learn to compensate and take over the jobs of other weaker and underused muscles.

The result is the overall efficiency of the entire muscular system becomes very low. The muscles that have to compensate fatigue very quickly due to inefficient movement of the skeletal system, and when this happens, such as near the end of a race or in the 4th quarter, your form falls apart and you “hit the wall.” Most athletes believe that they simply need to increase their endurance, but usually all they are doing is increasing the muscular endurance of the muscles that are already compensating for the rest of their weak, undertrained muscles. This is not a very effective strategy in comparison to getting rid of the muscular compensations altogether.

Our programs are built on the 4 Laws of Training. With these 4 Laws, you can train your body to become much more efficient, and get rid of any compensation that may exist in your body that is causing you to tighten up and lose your running form. You can never teach your body to relax and run with more fluidity, like most trainers and coaches try to do, when your muscular system itself is limited by its own compensations and weaknesses. By retraining your muscular system and getting rid of muscular compensations, your running stride will naturally increase in power and fluidity.

Loren Sheets

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Studies show a correlation between speed and ground contact time. As speed increases, the time the foot spends in contact with the ground decreases. The idea behind training a dorsiflexed ankle position is so that the ankle keeps the foot in the best position to make contact with the ground and quickly “rebound” resulting in less time of the foot in contact with the ground. A fast runner needs to be able to plant their foot in a dorsiflexed position so they can get it off the ground as quickly as possible as to not slow themselves down. Many “specialists” suggest that training your foot to spend less time on the ground is the best way to improve your overall speed.

The idea of dorsiflexion sounds good, and it is in fact one of the biggest training standards for running technique in the modern speed training world. But, there is a flaw in this logic. Again, we are not saying that dorsiflexion itself is a bad idea in that it is essential to an efficient runners stride. The flaw comes in how practically all training programs approach teaching dorsiflexion. It is true that there is a definite correlation between foot contact time and speed. But, one of the biggest misconceptions, not just here but in many fields of study is that correlation equals causality.

Just because less foot-ground contact time correlates with greater speed doesn’t mean that training the foot to pop quickly off the ground will equate to greater speed. Less time the foot spends on the ground is not the reason sprinters run faster, it is the effect of running faster. It is simply a byproduct of your body moving faster. The faster you run, the shorter your foot will be in contact with the ground. Correlation, but not causality. Greater speed is attained by a greater amount of force applied to the ground to propel your body forward. This power is primarily generated at the hip joint, not at the ankle. A dorsiflexed ankle helps to transfer this force into the ground and therefore is a component of speed, but if you do not focus on increasing power from the hip, then all the dorsiflexion in the world will only make you so much faster. It is true that ankle dorsiflexion at the point of ground contact is the most efficient position for transferring the power generated in your hip into the ground and back to your body, but you will still only be able to run as fast as your body will allow depending on the efficiency and power of your stride.

Dorsiflexion should be naturally occurring movement as a result of an efficient stride. Stride efficiency begins at the hip, not the foot. When you train your stride to be powerful and efficient originating from the hip, then as you pull your foot through by driving your knee forward, dorsiflexion will occur as a natural movement of the ankle as you bring your foot down to make contact with the ground. The focus of you training should not be to try and shorten the time your foot remains on the ground by forcing a dorsiflexed position. This should occur naturally as your build an efficient stride from the hips down causing your speed to increase.

The focus of training programs should be on increasing hip power and efficiency. In the future we will be building programs that you can purchase that take your body through a progression that follows the 4 laws of training we have described that will totally redesign your muscular system starting at the hips, following the strength progression, as to fill in any gaps in strength and efficiency. Your hip strength, range of motion, and overall power will increase as a result, giving you the necessary tools to run with the most powerful stride possible.

Loren Sheets

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In a nutshell, the muscles around the hip joint become atrophied and imbalanced during the course of our lives due to the inactivity and lack of proper stimulus to those muscles. Muscles become weak, other muscles become tight, and strength imbalances between the muscles develop. Eventually, our body compensates by changing the angle of the pelvis to allow different muscles to take over for tight and underused muscles. The compromised position of the pelvis affects the angle of the spine above it and the femurs below it, which affects the position of the back and shoulders, as well as the knees and ankles. Ultimately, you can see that you get a very poorly aligned skeletal system. We begin to lose functional range of motion in our hip joint as its alignment is further compromised. In the end, our stride length is shortened because of the body’s incapacity to generate its maximum power, as hip alignment is compromised and full articulation of the hip joint becomes impossible.

The question that everything really has been boiling down to is simply this: How do you train for efficiency? We have developed a system of training that allows the body to become extremely efficient. It is based on several principles of the human body, and focuses on 4 Laws that we have developed that provide a framework for all of our training.

The next few posts will really unwrap more about how our bodies tend to lose their efficiency, and how our unique training system specifically combats these inefficiencies in our musculoskeletal system, leading to greater power, longer strides, and faster running.

Loren Sheets

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This is when I started to realize that maybe it was not the athletes fault but rather that they had a muscular system that responded differently to the stimulus or training that the trainer was using. Perhaps it was not all about the drills but rather the specific needs of the body you were working with that should determine the drills and techniques you used. From there I met a trainer who used a great tool called body typing that enabled him to understand how different muscular systems might respond to various types of demands such as strength training and speed training. He categorized people based on various styles of muscular systems and this allowed him to give each individual the right type of training for their muscular systems to respond with maximum results.

I adopted a similar style of my own for understanding how people’s muscular systems would respond to the type of training we were doing. The other component that I felt many trainers struggled with was that they lacked a reliable system for training. There are some tremendous training systems out there. Velocity Sports uses some advanced training techniques that are able to provide some good results just to name one. However I feel all training systems miss the mark on what is the most important aspect of all. Your choices for exercises must be based solely on the body you are working with, not the exercises you feel are the “best” exercise for speed, or strength, or whatever else you are training for.

Through years of research and trial and error with an emphasis on error, I came up with 4 consistent laws regarding the human body that I feel are the cornerstone for our training system. I will cover each of these laws with you in upcoming posts in this category so you have an understanding of how we approach our training and how we feel it is the key to maximizing your results.

Scott Olson

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