Sprint form: how to move when you accelerate and at top speed

Form decides where your force goes

Your top speed depends on how much force you apply to the ground. How fast your legs swing through the air makes much less difference. Form is how you aim that force. In acceleration, faster sprinters keep more of their force pointing forward as they speed up. At top speed, mean vertical force is what separates faster runners, and keeping braking small matters more the closer you get to max speed.

Acceleration form (0 to about 30m)

• Lean forward in one straight line from ankle through hip to head, the way you would lean into pushing a car. Bending at the waist breaks that line.
• Push each step back into the ground with full extension through the hip, knee and ankle. Reaching forward for the ground with your foot slows you down.
• Keep your feet low and quick. Each foot lands behind your center of mass, and your steps get longer as you rise. One coaching cue for this is "trim the grass with your toes."
• In the first steps, your shins angle forward to roughly match your body lean.
• Let your torso rise a little with each step over the first 20–30m. If you pop up early, your force starts pointing upward too soon.
• Swing your arms long and hard to match the long, hard push of your legs.

The block start guide covers the first two steps in more detail.

Top-speed form

• Run tall with your hips high and a slight forward lean. Keep your hips from sinking back behind you.
• Bring each knee up in front and recover the foot high under your hip. Coaches call this front-side mechanics, and the opposite fault is a foot that swings out behind you.
• Strike down and back. The foot hits the ground hard, close under your hips, with a stiff ankle and a short contact.
• Keep your face and shoulders loose. Tension in the jaw and shoulders spreads down the body.
• Drive your arms straight forward and back with the elbows at roughly 90°. Your hands rise to somewhere between chin and shoulder height in front and pass the hip behind.

Staying relaxed at speed

Relaxed sprinting still means hitting the ground hard. What you are trying to drop is the tension that does nothing for the push. Three places give it away, so check one per rep:

• Your jaw hangs loose enough that your cheeks bounce on each step. Teeth apart, lips soft.
• Your hands stay loose, with the thumb resting lightly on the index finger instead of a clenched fist.
• Your shoulders stay down, away from your ears, and the arm swings from the shoulder joint.

Sprint-float-sprint runs give you a place to practice it. In the float section you hold speed while letting go of effort, and that feeling is what you try to carry into the next sprint section. Flying sprints work too, with a single relaxation cue for each rep.

Should your arms cross your body?

Some inward swing is normal. Each stride twists your hips one way, and your arms swing the opposite way to cancel it. A muscle-driven simulation of running found the arms add less than 1% to propulsion and support, but they counterbalance the legs' rotation around the body's vertical axis. A treadmill study reached a similar conclusion, describing the arms as dampers that reduce rotation of the torso and head. Neither study looked at sprinting, and a 2018 review called arm action in sprinting ambiguous and under investigated.

So a hand that drifts slightly in toward the middle of your chest on the forward swing is most likely the arms doing that job. Coaches step in when the hand swings past the midline and the shoulders start twisting with it. The fix in the list below, "cheek to cheek, forward and back," keeps the swing mostly forward and back while leaving room for that small inward path.

Holding form late in the race

You will slow down near the end of a long sprint, so the aim is to keep your posture while it happens. The instruction Sprint University repeats most is "finish each rep with posture," and it applies to easy tempo reps too. Once your hips drop and your feet start to sound heavy, the rep has stopped training speed.

Common form faults and fixes

Overstriding

Your foot reaches out in front of your body and lands as a brake. Wicket runs help, along with the cue "step over the opposite knee, strike under the hip."

Sitting back

Your hips sit low and behind you, and the foot cycles out the back. Use A-skips, straight-leg bounds and the cue "run tall, hips high."

Popping up out of the start

You are standing upright within two steps. Sled pushes, hill sprints and falling starts force a longer push.

Arms crossing the body

The rotation steals force from your legs. Do arm-action drills in place, then sprint with the cue "cheek to cheek, forward and back."

Tension

You clench your fists, lift your shoulders or grimace. Sprint-float-sprint runs teach you to hold speed while staying relaxed.

Heavy, long ground contacts

This usually comes from fatigue or a soft ankle. Pogo hops, ankling and hurdle hops build stiffness, and when you start to feel heavy, end the session.

Drills that build form

The program's warm-ups rehearse these positions. Acceleration days use A-marches, A-skips and wall drives before a sled pull, and top-speed days use straight-leg bounds, high knees and wicket runs. The sprint drills guide covers each one and how much to do. Most of your form still gets built by sprinting, and how to run faster shows how the drills and the sprints fit into one plan.