Running Article: Fun With Running - A Crucial Skill for So Many Sports

Since so many sports, including basketball, baseball, softball, soccer, gymnastics, and of course track and field, require good running technique, coaches must concentrate on teaching proper running technique.

Most people and often even athletes and coaches take for granted that if they can run, they are performing efficiently, but this is often not the case. Even with professional ball players, corrections can be made with running technique and\or speed. Running should be analyzed, broken down into smaller parts drills, and then taught correctly.

Foot alignment, knee lift, heel lift, arm swing, and even where the athlete is focusing should be trained individually, corrected, and practiced frequently. Perhaps during training, each portion of the run or the drills\techniques should be used as a warm up for training or for a more enjoyable experience, as relay races.

For a relay race each portion\movement of the run can be performed by a different teammate. Another idea is to have every participant in the race perform a certain portion or movement of the running technique.

A great contest idea for athletes is to use the arm swing for the run; once the correct elbow bend\angle and swing (alternate motion of forward and back) is learned, the number of arm swings per 30 seconds can be timed. Coaches must watch that the athletes keep their arms bent throughout the swing rather than bending and straightening with each swing. The "karate chop" motion is popular and may be a natural movement for some, but it is incorrect. The participant with the most correct arm swings can be the winner.

With the knee lift motion; once it is learned correctly without impact (marching in place and marching forward) and then with impact (running in place lifting knees and running forward lifting knees) the participants can race toward the finish using the knee lift motion. Of course, if the knees have not been lifted to at least hip height or even belly button height the knee lift was not performed correctly and that participant cannot be the winner, especially since the race was specifically designed in order to practice using the knee lift motion for correct running technique.

The same race can be performed using the heel lift or actually the heel to buttocks (kick butt) motion. This motion should be learned separately form the knee lift motion. Once learned correctly using a march\walk and

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