The 3 P’s of Speed – What You Need to Know to Run Faster Today

The three key points I share today will give you a deeper understanding of how to improve the speed and running technique of yourself and your athletes. They apply to adults in senior athletics, children in little athletics and anyone who enjoys running or playing sports.

These three key points are the founding principles for how we develop our athletes and design their running programs. I call it the 3P System. The three P’s stand for:

P1: POSTURE

P2: POSITIONS

P3: POWER

We will expand upon each of these key points below.

POSTURE – “The most important aspect of sprinting is posture” Tom Tellez

We typically talk about posture in regards to our spine and the way we hold ourselves upright. Try these 3 tips to that assist with maintaining better running posture.

Firstly, we want to keep the torso straight. This will enable your body to better create and resist forces during acceleration and high-speed running. Now I don’t mean military posture with a stiff back and chest out. We want a relaxed standing posture where your spine is maintaining its natural curves.

Next, we want to feel our core muscles engaging to help stabilise the torso during running. We don’t want to try and squeeze or suck in our abs because this will make us tense up. The cue I like to use is think gently narrowing the waist to engage our deep core muscles.

The third tip to help our posture is about staying relaxed. Or more suitably, we could call it not tensing up. Therefore, we must understand that if we tense up during running we will be slower. This is why most of us will run faster at 90-95% effort and not at 100%. By combining the first two steps of maintaining a straight torso and gently activating the deep core, the rest of the body is less likely to tense up enabling you to run faster.

POSITIONS – “All I have to do is work on transitions and technique” Usain Bolt

Improving your running technique begins with your awareness of how your body parts are moving and what shapes they are currently making. Follow these cues to get you and your athletes into the right positions.

To get faster using an improved technique, we need to get our limbs into the right shapes, at the right angles and at the right times that create the best positions for the body to apply force.

By getting our limbs into better positions, we then create the opportunity to optimise the intention and direction of our foot placement into the ground. The right foot placement into the ground is crucial to maximising the force we produce to help us get faster.

The final tip for positions is about raising the torso angle during the acceleration phase. We don't want to stand up quickly, nor do we want to stay down too long. As we increase our running speed we want to get a little more upright every step. Try a few reps standing up quickly and a few reps staying down longer to feel when your body naturally wants to rise. For most children and recreational runners, you will be up and running tall within 20 metres of the start line.

Power – “I’m out here to be powerful, be aggressive, to be a force” Carmelita Jeter

Once we have improved our Posture and Positions we can progress to maximising our potential to produce force and become more powerful. A lot of words starting with P in that sentence!

To create more Power, we need to become very intentional with our movements. To help with this, I often use cues that include words like “strong”, “explosive”, “aggressive” and “powerful”. This gets the athletes to intensify their physical efforts to help them run faster.

We can also focus cues to specific body parts like the arms. With most athletes, the faster we can get the arms moving the faster we can get the legs moving and therefore run faster. We pay most attention to the back-swing motion of the arms, as this aligns with the legs contacting the ground.

With the addition of a more aggressive arm action, we can now look at how an athlete attacks the ground with their legs. Try thinking of each leg as a hammer and the ground as a nail. With this analogy you can create a very powerful downswing that can increase the force produced to help them get even faster.

The 3P System is a great starting point for learning and improving running technique. By following these 3 principles, you and your athletes can get faster in only a few sessions. Try them out today and let us know how you go. Have fun!

Nick Bennett

Packages	Sport Speed A	Sport Speed B
Session	up to 8 sessions	up to 4 sessions
Inlusion	personal programs, online portal, track-side therapy, priority competition coaching	squad programs, online portal, competition coaching
Discount	20% discount for 1-2-1, 10% sibling discount	0% discount for 1-2-1, 10% sibling discount
Price	$107/mth	$77/mth

PACKAGES	ATHLETICS GOLD	ATHLETICS SILVER	ATHLETICS BRONZE
Session	up to 12 sessions	up to 12 sessions	up to 4 sessions
Inclusion	personal programs, online portal, priority track-side therapy, priority competition coaching, 2x 45min massages	personal programs, online portal, track-side therapy, priority competition coaching	squad programs, online portal, competition coaching
Discount	30% discount for 1-2-1, 10% sibling discount	20% discount for 1-2-1, 10% sibling discount	10% discount for 1-2-1, 10% sibling discount
Price	$197/mth	$137/mth	$77/mth

The 3 P’s of Speed – What You Need to Know to Run Faster Today

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