If we rewind the clock to a time before the training was all over the Internet and before the rise of social media, and we land in Tampa, Florida circa 2001-2004, you will find a young John Welbourn training with a young Raphael Ruiz. The training was focused and translated well to speed and power. The daily focus was to get faster, more explosive, and dominate come August on the football field. That required speed and not wasting time hammering the wrong movements. We focused on what made us faster: hip extension. For those you not in the known, hip extension is a key fundamental of sprinting. It’s what powers your ability to drive off the ground and move forward with maximum force. If you’re not training hip extension properly, you’re leaving speed and performance in the locker room come game day.

When I talk about hip extension, we’re talking about the movement where your thigh moves behind your body, driven by the glutes and hamstrings. Your knee passes behind your glute as you push off the ground. The more violent your hip extension, the more force you generate with each stride, which directly translates to speed.

Bilateral hip hinging movements like squats, deadlifts, cleans or kettlebell swings are great for building strength and developing GPP but they don’t put your knee behind the glute. Which means they’re not training the mechanics we need to sprint fast. True hip extension only happens when the knee is behind the glute. Movements like Bulgarian split squats, lunges, and step-ups when done with the knee behind the glute are training hip extension and mimic the position we need to be strong in.

When you sprint, speed doesn’t come from how fast you can move your legs, it comes from how much force you can drive into the ground. Every time your foot strikes the ground, it’s that drive from the whole kinetic chain that powers your body forward. The stronger your hip extension, the more violent the push, and the faster you’ll sprint.

Sprinting requires a balance between stride frequency and stride length. If you’re focusing too much on one or the other, you’re not maximizing your speed potential. Athletes who are fast understand this balance and execute it efficiently. They are violent when extending the hip, driving the foot into the ground, and quick to pull the foot back up to reduce contact time.

Here are the movements you should done with frequency and perfection executing in your training.

Bulgarian Split Squats: My go to movement for building hip extension and killing people on Jacked Street. I By getting into a single-leg stance with your back leg elevated, you’re training the exact mechanics of sprinting. The key here is keeping the knee behind the glute throughout the movement, while driving off the front leg with a positive shin angle. It might feel awkward at first, but this is how we do Bulgarian split squats at Power Athlete, because it works.

Lunges (Forward): Lunges are another great way to train hip extension as long as you take a long enough stride – short dicking the lunge won’t place the knee behind the glute. Therefore, when you step forward, you must take a long enough stride that the trailing leg keeps the knee behind the glute. Keep your trunk tight, drive through the mid-foot on the lead leg while  pressing your big toe into the ground – simple.

Step-Ups: Step-ups are clutch for mimicking knee drive while maintaining hip extension. As you drive up through your mid-foot, fully extend your hip at the top. On the way back down, push the off leg back behind the glute, forcing hip extension.

Jumps/Bounding: Plyometric exercises that force hip extension are key. Jumps and bounding drills are as close to sprint mechanics as you can get without actually sprinting. Each jump or bound trains your body to generate power through hip extension and explode off the ground.

Power Athlete training builds strong glutes, hamstrings, and lower back, because these are the muscles that power every stride and keep you stable as you move through space. When you have powerful hip extension, you’re able to generate speed and maintain power over the entire sprint.

If you’re serious about your training and sprinting faster, you need to focus on it. Squats and deadlifts have their place, but they won’t give you the movement pattern needed to drive your sprint performance. The key is knee behind your glute to build speed and power when and where it counts.

If you’re serious about becoming an absolute beast, check out our Speed Kills program. It’s the blueprint for anyone ready to max out their speed potential and crush their goals.

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