How To Run Faster: Get Ups Drill

Learn how to start runs from a sitting or laying down position.

Get-ups—now let us focus on working from a non-athletic position with good posture to a full sprint. Emphasis is on pushing the hips, not reaching with the feet. So we still want to emphasize all of our good sprinting principles. She is going to push up and run out of this position in one motion. Ready? Go. Ready? Go. Ready? Go. Now is to get up from a backward position. Sit facing back with feet flat, hands on the ground. Either on the coach’s command or on your own, explosively get and back pedal for five yards. Emphasis should be on trying to push your toes through the end of your shoes pushing your hips back, not reaching back with the heel trying to pull the body through, but push the body mass. Now let us do a lateral slide—get up to lateral slide. Push away from the direction we want to go, staying on the front of the foot. Make sure that we work both directions with our five yard distance. Again, this could be on a couch’s command or just with an athlete responding to them self. Explode and go trough perfect tactical movements. Now let us make the side-slide one step with a crossover to a sprint. Emphasis is really explosive movement from the knee and hip coming across the body turning the hips to the direction we want to sprint. Do not think about using the feet to crossover, think about emphasizing the knee and the hip. Explode form the knee and the hip. Now let us work on multiple directions. We sprint forward to a lateral slide or let us go sprint forward to back pedal. Next, let us go from a lateral slide to explode, crossover and sprint back to where she started from. We can mix any direction change with this drill getting great acceleration and sprint mechanics put together.