Block Starts

by Jeff White, Head Coach, Alton H.S.

The genesis of this article is some great back and forth conversation with Derek DeBarr, the coach from Pleasant Plains. I first met Coach DeBarr at the Class A Illinois Top Times meet around 2012. We’ve stayed in contact over the years and continue to bounce ideas off each other. Most of this article comes from various emails and texts we sent each other. Most of our conversations seem to involve blocks and acceleration (and speed in general).

In a small world, both Alton (where I now coach at) and Pleasant Plains both won Jacksonville Indoor Invitational at Illinois College in our respective classes in 2018. Some of my emails/texts to Coach DeBarr are in italics.

We had a huge accomplishment at the 2018 Jacksonville Indoor Invitational. It may go down as one of my favorite moments in coaching. While I do love to win (who doesn’t?), what I really do enjoy is seeing athletes set personal records and improve. Maybe that sounds like coach hyperbole, but it is great feeling to watch freshmen and track noobies progress during high school.

At Jacksonville, Earlie Brown (7.26 previous pr) and Deonte McGoy (7.40 previous pr) ran 7.20 and 7.18 in the 60m Prelims. They were seeded first and second for finals. Much trash talking ensued on who would win the 60m final. I was just happy they had decent and greatly improved starts with both setting personal records. As they crossed the line, McGoy’s name popped up first on the board, 7.09! Then came Brown’s, also 7.09! The team about lost it. After all the talk, they ran the same time (Their actual times were 7.083 and 7.088).

How did we improve so much in two weeks from the Triad Invitational? We started by comparing practice times and meet results.

Coach Debarr has written a great article, The Case for Speed Endurance, 10m fly vs. speed endurance as a performance indicators.

But how else would I know  junior track “rookie” Deonte McGoy was capable of running 7.09? Most people would have been happy if he had just run that initial 7.40 and maybe a little happier if he got closer to 7.30. But he was CONSISTENTLY under 1.00 in the 10-fly. If you can run sub 1.00 in the 10-fly, you are capable of sub 7.00 in the 60m. So I knew I had a problem when he ran 7.40. Something was seriously wrong and needed fixed. Without the fly-10, maybe I’m happy with 7.40.

Contrast that to the other kid that ran 7.09, Earlie Brown. Underachiever at practice. Rarely runs great fly times (Brown is the kid who will run say, 195 meters in the first rep of the 23 second drill and then 205 in the second rep). His fly and practice times didn’t indicate 7.09. But he runs well at meets. In his case he has a tradition of god-awful starts, so we were just fixing his start. Earlie’s setup and exit was terrible.

I completely agree with Derek DeBarr’s article. I do believe the best indicator of performance is the sprinter’s best time compared to their average time. In fact, the season average might be the best performance indicator. However, we could also have issues with practice motivation, effort, and consistency in accelerating up to the fly zone.

I had two different athletes. One who sprints well in practice, but didn’t “cash-in” at meets. The other sprints mediocre in practice, but performs inconsistently well in meets.

Since we are focused on the 60m during indoor season, we narrowed down our issues to fixing their blocks starts. Any other issues we can address once we start the 100 meter dash outdoors.

One of the few things I feel we as coaches can control is basic technique and fundamentals. Generally, I feel my teams have had pretty decent starts, even down to the freshmen/sophomore levels.

Are we always perfect? Heck no! But what’s important is that athletes know what they should be doing. They can coach each other. You can show them a video and they can tell you what is right and wrong. These are positive signs.

 

Block Set Up

First determine front leg and back leg. I like the “push test”. Push the athlete from behind, the leg that shoots out to catch the fall is the back leg.

So we use the standard “1-2-3” setup. Not super original. Rail one step behind the line, front foot 2 steps behind, back (quick) foot 3 steps behind. You can adjust from there as needed.

In this position we will check for a few angles. First we make sure the hands are under the shoulders and not placed wide out to edge of their lane. Check because some athletes will do this.

We will check the angle of the knees (about 90 for the front and 120 for the back).

I will also cue “chin to chest”. This is to stop any bend in the neck.

I also mention to them that the balance of their weight should be 50/50. This isn’t a hard rule. But early on you’ll typically see one of two things. Either they will lean forward so they are “front loaded” (which will technically break the rule of hands under shoulders) or lean back to put for weight on the pedals (also breaks the rule). Saying “50/50” just simplifies this. We don’t need to get into 40/60 other distributions. I’m not for sure they would understand 40/60, but 50/50 will make more sense.

 

Block Exit

I want to use natural reflexes. This is what I stole from Charlie Francis. I found a post by him on his internet forum where he was describing the stumble reflex in relationship to the blocks. When you fall two things happen. The quick leg will apply force and quickly fire out under your center of mass to attempt to stabilize yourself. The “strong leg” will apply force down to try and steady you. It will naturally stiffen and get tight and straight.

Only one cue in the blocks when the gun fires: violently split and rip. That’s all I want. I have sometimes cued to only rip the arm going forward and to “leave behind” the backwards arm. McGoy practiced this cue leading up to his personal record.

After I read about this from Charlie Francis (the forward arm shooting out quickly is also mentioned in regards to Ben Johnson in the book Speed Trap), I found this video from Bud Winter, another legendary track coach. At about 3:25 into this short video you can see the sprinters practicing this action, including one part where they try to grab the coach’s hat.

If you do this, you shouldn’t have to cue “boom-boom” or pushing off the blocks. The reflexes will take care of that. Both feet will apply force on the pedals before they move.

When you violently split and rip from the set block position, you basically start falling. Your brain won’t be a fan of this. So when you fall you go into the stumble reflex. As long as you setup correctly in the blocks, this will lead to a great start.

When I use slow-mo video, I admit that the triple extension picture looks cool, but that’s not what my main focus is on. I like to check the first foot contact. When that quick leg makes first contact with the ground, what I look for is where the strong leg knee is. It should be about even with the first step’s knee. If it is not, back to the start and try and fix something.

Some will say to focus on whether the first step lands under the hips lands in front of the body. Obviously, the first step landing in under the hips is ideal. However, I’ve yet to see someone who steps out (over-strides) and has their trail leg knee about even with the first. So I suppose I am really checking for two things.

Also on first foot contact, we check the angle of the shin to the angle of the torso. They should be the same angle.

What We Did In Practice

Besides working on simple block setup, our big workout of the week of Jacksonville was doing PAP (post-activation potentiation) training with the Exer-Genie (which is similar to using a sled but does not use weight plates).

We simply did two Exer-Genie drags then a block-20m with the 10-20m portion timed with Freelap. Then they cycled through several times.

With the Freelap timing system going, automatically their brain will think speed. Sometimes we do 10-20m starts. But I’m not a big fan of the touch pad start. The touch pad is great for older/advanced athletes that are comfortable with blocks. I find with young athletes, the touch pad adds an extra “worry factor” to setting up. Instead, I might place the Freelap cones at 10 and 20 meters (or 20-30m). We placed the Freelap cones this particular week at the 10-20m zone of their block start. I believe this helps them understand that the start isn’t separate from the rest of the race.

Sled drags are not the same because they are “slow” as opposed to say, tempo running. The objective of tempo running is to move slower. With sled drags, the intention is not to move slow. So to me, that’s a very important difference.

The INTENT never changes, it’s still to move as fast as possible. So if someone does heavy sled drags, they still move as fast as possible, but because of the weight, they won’t technically move that fast. 

 

Block Start & Acceleration Themed Workout

1A: 2x25m Exer-Genie Drag Starts

1B: 1x20m Block Start (Freelap timed 10-20m portion)

We used auto-regulation to determine the number of sets, using a 3-4% dropoff.

The point of this article is sharing how going back to the basics-in this case the block start-drastically improved my athletes’ performance. We improved quality, not quantity. Recently I put down $15 and bought the Brian Fitzgerald presentation from TFC on starts. Most of it fit into what I’m presently doing. Some of the presentation reminded me of thing concepts I’ve moved away from. The presentation made me think and reevaluate. I don’t think I’ll ever be done trying to learn new ways to teach block starts. I’ll always be looking for a better way or a simpler way.

 

 

Jeff White is the head coach for boys track at Alton High School and former track coach at Madison High School. He has previously written for SimpliFaster and ITCCCA.