Wicket Drills are a staple part of our track and field program, as well as other athletes we work with. This will help athletes understand body awareness while sprinting at max velocity, acceleration and force production. Biggest bang for your buck here instead of throwing a million and one cues at your athletes. You can let the wickets be your coach.
The generalized rule we use with the wickets are 3″ apart every 3 wickets. So let’s say we started the first 3 wickets at 5′ the next 3 wickets would be spaced at 5’3″ and then the last 3 spaced out at 5’6″ and so on. How we determine the spacing has a lot to do on the athlete’s speed, capabilities, time of the year, how many wickets, what level the athlete is, if we have a big group, the list goes on.
How we would start the athlete would be 4-8 steps away from the first wicket. Again, this is based off of the athletes capabilities so as a coach you need to know your athletes. Use cones as markers for those acceleration steps. That last acceleration cone right before the athlete goes into the first wicket at 5′ let’s say, should be spaced out 5′ away, the athlete should hit dead center of the first 2 wickets. Now, as for spacing out the acceleration cones you will work backwards from that last cone decreasing by 3″ every cone. Once the toe lands in front of the knee during acceleration, you’re done. Re-evaluate and try again, remember no athlete is the same.
There are charts you can follow to help you with spacing determined on the level of the athlete. Altis has a great chart, Tony Holler, Eugenia Bradshaw, there are many resources to help.
Vince Anderson, the assistant track coach at Texas A&M University, describes the spacing of the first six steps: “Logic would dictate that the stride length over the first hurdle is exactly the same as the space between the first two hurdles, with ground contact dead in the middle of hurdles 1 and 2. Each run-in step, working back toward the origin, is reduced by 3 inches. Athletes should hit every piece of tape on the run-in and over the first hurdle.” (1)
We will start our novice sprinters anywhere from 6-10 wickets and as we progress and get stronger eventually we will increase to 16-20 wickets. There are many ways to utilize the wickets, for more complexity we will place a marker about 10-20m away from the last wicket they have to sprint to. This will ensure they maintain proper sprint form and comprehend the feeling. If your athlete has never used wickets before, start slow, with minimal wickets, you want to make them understand the feeling of proper sprint mechanics. The athletes start off sub-maximal speed because it allows them to experience the drill for the first time. It is much harder to coordinate if they are in an all out sprint. Coaches can play around with distance, this is totally dependent on the athlete!
Hope this helped, any question reach out and share this article with others, stay healthy everyone.
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