Why doesn't my sprinter's heel come up on recovery?
A heel that never comes up behind the athlete is swinging a longer lever than it needs to, and it costs speed before the foot ever lands.
Coaches watch the front of the stride, the knee driving up and the foot reaching for the ground, because that is the part facing the person watching from the side of the track. The recovery, the heel coming up behind the athlete after the foot leaves the ground, gets far less attention and is just as easy to get wrong.
What a good recovery is actually doing
After the foot leaves the track, the lower leg is supposed to fold quickly, bringing the heel up toward the glutes before the knee drives forward again. A tight fold shortens the lever swinging through, which is what lets the leg come around fast without extra effort. A heel that stays low behind the athlete is swinging a longer lever the whole way round, which takes more time and more energy to do the same job.
What it looks like when it is missing
- The recovering foot stays close to the ground for what looks like an extra beat, rather than snapping up and through.
- The athlete works hard with the arms and shoulders to compensate for legs that are not cycling as quickly as the effort suggests they should.
- Cadence looks fine on a watch, but the stride looks laboured on video, because the count is right and the mechanism producing it is not.
This tends to show up more at the end of a race than at the start, because a tired athlete's fastest way to keep the legs moving is to shorten the recovery arc by cutting the fold short, not to stop moving them altogether.
What the Film Room reports
The sprint setting tracks knee fold and extension alongside trunk lean, elbow angle, overstride, ground contact time, flight time and cadence, all from one side-on clip. It does not hand out a named drill for the fold itself the way it does for overstride or trunk lean, because there is no single threshold that separates a genuine fault from a body simply built with a different natural stride. What the clip gives you is the shape of the fold through a whole rep, which is enough to see whether it is tightening up or opening out as the athlete tires.
The usual fixes for a lazy recovery, A-skips and heel-to-glute drills run as part of a normal warm-up, work whether or not anyone films them. What film adds is watching the fold change, or fail to, over the course of a season, rather than trusting an impression from the side of the track at full speed.
Time your next meet with the phones you already have
Timing, the Film Room and the speed gates are free forever. Publishing results to your own page starts at $59 a month.
Related
Why doesn't my sprinter's knee come up in recovery?
A trailing recovery leg is a longer lever that takes longer to swing through, and the cause is rarely the knee itself.
Read →How far forward should a sprinter lean?
A lot out of the blocks, very little at top speed, and never by bending at the waist, which is the version that gets taught by accident.
Read →Is heel striking actually bad?
Where the foot lands matters enormously. Which part of it touches down first matters far less than the internet suggests.
Read →Try it: Sprint timer app: 40-yard dash and flying sprints with one phone