Which is faster, the “false step” or “forward step”?

Observe a young athlete accelerate from a standing still position. In my experience, the vast majority of these athletes will “false step” to initiate the movement. The false step involves a quick step in the opposite direction of which they wish to accelerate before the first forward step. The false step takes advantage of the stretch-shortening cycle and allows for a strong ground reaction force to propel themselves in the desired direction. To the coach, this step is often considered “wasted movement” and is perceived to be slower than simply taking a forward step. In fact, most coaches will try and eliminate the false step in favor of a forward step. The logic being that a forward step is more efficient and thus results in great acceleration. However, a growing body of evidence appears to suggest that the false step may not be so harmful after all.

Cusick et al. (2014) tested three different starting techniques in 16 collegiate linebackers to determine which resulted in the fasted acceleration assessed over 2.5 and 5 meters. The three starting techniques were as follows;

1. Start from sprinter blocks
2. False Step
3. Forward Step

Each of the athletes has been taught to avoid the false step and to always forward step. Prior to the test administration, the athletes were familiarized with each of the starting techniques and were given three practice attempts at each following the warm-up. The testing protocol had each athlete perform each timed start technique three times in a random, cross-over fashion.

The start from sprinter blocks obviously produced the fasted acceleration times as it allows for more horizontal force production, the key element to acceleration. What may surprise you however, is that there were significant differences between the False step and the Forward step times. The results (means and standard deviations) are highlighted in the table below.

The researchers found that the False step significantly outperformed the Forward step in this group of collegiate football players who have been trained to avoid false stepping. Perhaps it is time to re-think our coaching strategies when we teach our athletes the proper technique for the first step. How do you coach your athletes to make their first step? Do the results of this study have you reconsidering? It may be worth setting up some speed gates and experimenting with your athletes.

Reference:

Cusick, J. et al. (2014) A comparison of three different start techniques on sprinting speed in collegiate linebackers. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, Ahead of Print.