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Mike
Mike is a currently a coach at DeFranco’s Gym in Wyckoff, NJ. He studied under Buddy Morris and James Smith while at the University of Pittsburgh and has also studied at various physical therapy practices. He has coached levels of athletes from Pro-Bowl, MLB, to pre-pubescent athletes and has also consulted for high caliber athletes worldwide.
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Mike has also written articles for various websites and is the founder of a website that provides free information in hopes of properly educating a mass of coaches and athletes around the world.
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Sprinting: How to get a Quicker First Step

by: Mike Guadango

I get a ton of questions and comments every week with people wondering how they can improve their first step. The problem with this is people don’t realize what their first step entails. In order to improve your first step, you first need to improve your ability to overcome your own bodyweight. The more efficient you are at that, the better your first step will be. In other words, you need to get stronger! Without strength, you’re literally going nowhere. Side note: When sprinting, your body is capable of producing forces up to 6 times its own weight for tenths of a second. That’s thousands of pounds loaded unilaterally during a sprint. You better make sure the athlete is ready to handle that kind of volume!

The better you are at handling your own bodyweight, the easier running will be for you. Think about this simply, if you can’t squat your own bodyweight for multiple reps, what makes you think you’re going to be able to handle your bodyweight efficiently on one foot in a dynamic fashion? It doesn’t work like that. Most Olympic sprinters can squat well over 500lbs. They may not have it in their programming, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do it. They just don’t need to work on it as much, they’ve gotten strong enough.

The problem with this is everyone thinks they need to squat to get stronger, and that’s just not the case at all. Many roads lead to Rome. My money says that the guy with the awful first step is probably going to have an awful squat too. So I’m not going to throw him into the mix right away, I’d do it unilaterally: Lunges, single leg squats, split squats, Bulgarian split squats, single leg hip thrusts, single leg RDL, single leg hip extension, etc… And I’ll be honest, I don’t feel the need to even change exercises as much as people like. I’ll keep guys doing lunges for months, I don’t care. It may be boring, but it works and it’s what they need. I will refuse to throw anyone into a bilateral movement before I feel they are ready to handle it. Loading a compromised structure will do nothing for their development.

If you feel the need to change exercises, typically with athletes that are weak, you don’t need to change exercises more than every 4 weeks. Typically if the athlete is strong, I’ll alternate unilateral and bilateral every 2-4 weeks pending on the athlete. It all depends on them and what they need.

Also, my guys all have different stances with bilateral movements (such as the squat). It all depends on their structure and what I feel works for their structure. Some guys will go wide, some will go narrow. I don’t concern myself in setting them in one way or another. All that matters is that they’re orthopedically sound and they’re getting stronger.

Next, they need to sprint! The only way to get better at a movement is to do the movement. Dan Pfaff says that he believes acceleration work is a skill and needs to be done year round. He works exclusively with track athletes, so who would know better, right? Not to mention, the strength gained from sprint work alone will get the first step better. Couple that with a properly designed resistance training program and you just improved your first step!





CATEGORY: Training