Have you seen this? New Training Strategy to Reduce Ground Contact Time.
Chase Jackson
??????(Top 35 under 35). I engineer high-performance tribes where the obsessed escape isolation, rewire their biology, and build World Class execution—because talent dies in the wrong environment.
In this article you will learn how to reduce ground contact time and reduce your likelihood of living a mediocre life.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
* The Importance of Reducing Ground Contact Time
* The Importance of Fighting Against Mediocrity
Do you want to Improve your Speed?
Then you want to improve your Ground Contact Time.
All world-class sprinters have ground contact times of close to 0.08 seconds … eight-hundredths of a second. This correlation makes sense because your body is able to move much farther through the air than it can on the ground. When your foot is grounded, the distance you travel forward is limited to the length of your actual foot as you roll off of it, as well as the flexibility of your hip flexors.
Check out this Video here to stretch out your hip flexors.
In the air, however, with a forceful push-off off the ground, you can launch your body forward and travel much farther with only gravity working against you. Again, having flexible hip flexors can also help you with your reach in the air.
You can think about it this way, visualize your foot absorbing ground impact on each step. When your foot hits the ground, your body experiences starts braking, which is the change in your horizontal velocity.
In other words, each step you take temporarily slows you down until you push off of your foot again to propel your body forward to pick speed back up.
Minimizing the amount of time spent on the ground on each step can help reduce your braking and help you improve your running speed.
How to reduce your Ground Contact Time? Your ability to reduce your ground contact time is largely determined by your ability to Generate Mondo amounts of Force, “Put simply, fast people hit the ground more forcefully than slow people, relative to their body weight.” -Dr. Peter Weyland
"Put Simply, Fast People Hit the Ground more Forcefully than Slow People." Share this article on Twitter.
Thinking about Force and Ground Contact Time this morning has me reminiscing about my late Uncle Terry.
Do you have that family member in your life who is/was always talking about what could have been?
That person on Thanksgiving who is always like, man I was this close to making a million dollars or if I didn’t catch a bad break, or if that person didn’t do me dirty then I would be where I want to be in life.
My Uncle Terry was like that. Every Holiday season he would show up, (In his same light blue Toyota Camry with the busted up taillight) in good spirits laughing and back-slapping. But then after a couple of drinks, you could see his mood change and he would start talking about what could have and should have been.
Uncle Terry’s favorite story to tell?
How he almost Won it Big on Wheel of Fortune. You remember that show right? It was a Game Show that was on forever in which the contestants solve word puzzles for cash by spinning a giant carnival wheel.
Man, every year Terry would get his drinks in him and start talking about that dang wheel and how the show producers did him dirty. One of the consistent things Terry talked about was how to spin the wheel. He said to maximize the wheel’s speed and get it going the fastest you just needed to give that wheel a good slap rather than a prolonged hold, grab and push.
Terry supposedly, I never actually found any proof, was a damn good athlete back in his day. He played multiple sports and was Supposedly Fast. Terry said he would have gone Pro if some coach had not done him dirty.
He said that he learned how to most effectively Spin the Wheel from his Sprinting Days.
The Fastest Athletes spend the least time pushing along the ground. I learned from Crazy Uncle Terry back in the Day the difference between running Fast and running FAST.
It’s like the spinning of a bicycle wheel; a sharp slap of the hand will impart more speed to the wheel than would a more forceful hold and grab.
It’s like the spinning of a bicycle wheel; a sharp slap of the hand will impart more speed to the wheel than would a more forceful hold and grab. Share this on Twitter.
Terry, 10 lbs overweight in that same blue flannel that he wore every year, glasses sliding down his face, drink in hand would start to pontificate about how the fastest athletes spend the least time pushing along the ground.
They Focus instead on moving their legs up and down and are barely conscious of how their Force is translated into Forward motion.
Terry said that all of that translated back to the Wheel of Fortune wheel. You didn’t hold, grab and spin, you just give that thing a hard slap and let it rip.
As a kid, we all heard stories of how strong and powerful Terry was back in the day.
Terry preached to us while standing on a chair about how he set the Wheel of Fortune Record for most spins off of one push.
Running Fast is just like Spinning that Wheel. The more Force Generated the less ground contact time, “the key to human speed is simple: applying large mass-specific forces to the ground quickly.” Peter Weyland
Unfortunately, Terry passed away last year, the story is some doctor gave him a misdiagnosis or something. But Terry’s passing had me thinking about how our days are finite.
One day, they will run out. As Terry used to say at Christmas, ‘You know, the death rate is hovering right around one hundred percent.’
Most people spend their entire life trying to avoid this fact. We live in a World of comfort, distraction, and mediocrity. And mediocrity doesn’t mean always mean underperforming –it’s a sliding scale and a state of mind. It means settling in and succumbing to stasis. Mediocrity comes from the Latin words medius, meaning middle, and ocris, meaning a rugged mountain.
Literally, it means to settle halfway to the summit of a difficult mountain. It’s a compromise of abilities and potential; a negotiation between the drive to excel and the biological urge to settle for the most comfortable option.
"It’s a compromise of abilities and potential; a negotiation between the drive to excel and the biological urge to settle for the most comfortable option." Share this on Twitter
I might be rambling here a little bit, I know I’m supposed to be writing about Ground Contact Time, but the only way you are going to reduce that ground contact time is by saying forgot this, I don’t want to be average, I don’t want to be mediocre. Reducing your ground contact time doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of intentional effort and consistent progress.
Check out this article here on to practice with intentional effort.
There are 3 kinds of Goals that help you grow.
* A step goal is a very short-arc goal (often daily) that helps you maintain forward progress, even if it’s small progress.
* A sprint goal is a medium-arc goal (a week or two weeks) that causes you to go beyond yourself for a season in order to increase your capacity,
* and a stretch goal is a long-arc goal that forces you to go far beyond your comfort zone.
Each of these three types of goals nest within one another. Step goals help you accomplish your sprint goals, and sprint goals help you accomplish your stretch goals. They don’t always have to co-exist, but it’s unwise to set the long-arc goals without having accompanying short-arc goals to help you get there.
For example, reducing your ground contact time today to 0.08 seconds is a great example of a stretch goal, but you would be foolish not to set corresponding sprint and step goals to help you work your way down to 0.08.
The stretch goal is the objective, but step and sprint goals are the building blocks.
We usually reach our end goal, but fail to consider the biomechanics, or the day-to-day logistics, of how we will actually get to where we want to be.
The bottom-line is you can’t chase comfort and count on emptying yourself to be the best you can possibly be. You cannot pursue greatness and distraction at the same time.
Commit today to stepping outside your comfort zone and setting some goals to help you get there.
As my late Uncle Terry would say, I just want one more shot to spin that fucking wheel baby. One more shot.
Do This Training Today to Reduce Your Ground Contact Time
Dynamic Warm Up
Hip Mobility: Fire Hydrants plus Glute Bridges
Hurdle Walk
Four 100 yard Sprints. Go 20 yards fast out of the blocks, then go easy for 60 yards focusing on cycling, then hard again for 20. Intensity is more important than volume.
Hip Flexor Stretch
Then head to the weight room and…
3x sets of 2 reps., Trap Bar Deadlifts @ 92% of your 1-Rep Max. Dropping the bar at the top of the movement. Immediately after the 2nd rep. do six depth jumps on an 18-inch box. Focus on minimizing ground contact time between the boxes.
Training to not be Mediocre
Write down your current step goals plus your current sprint goals plus your current long-term stretch goals.
Write down a set of step goals you are accomplishing today, which should be helping you accomplish a set of sprint goals over the next few weeks, which should be leading you toward a set of long-term stretch goals.
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Got your Back,
Coach Jack
??????Speed and Explosion Specialist
??????Fast Twitch Activation Coach