How Noah Lyles Has Great Turnover Speed

In this article, we’re going to be talking about turnover speed and how Noah Lyles has such great turnover speed comparing him to a novice sprinter and just showing some of the differences that Noah Lyles is able to achieve in his turnover, which makes it so he’s able to cover great distance per step, which is really the name of the game when it comes to improving your speed and where a lot of people can get significantly better within their own sprinting technique. With this article you’re going to have a better understanding of the turnover speed necessary to be able to run faster and what are some of the key things in your body position that ends up really making it or breaking it when it comes to having great turnover.

We could see Noah Lyles here on the right, then we have a novice athlete here on the left. And we’re going to start from this push off position. So it really stands out when watching Noah Lyles going through his sprint is as he’s pushing off what he does to the foot and the amount of range that he’s able to get through in the turnover. Part of the reason that he’s able to have such great turnover speed really comes from the push off. As his foot is leaving the ground, we see a great amount of action coming forward in his foot and also in the knee. So what we commonly see, as we can see on the left, we’ll see him push off and notice we’re not seeing nearly as much movement in the foot. See how his foot’s facing all the way back where his facing more down. And we also are seeing a lot different range in the legs, we can see with Noah Lyles, he’s getting into like a 90 position or his knee is right underneath his hip.

We can see a lot of height with that foot where it’s almost like his foot is almost behind his butt, where we can see here, we’re not seeing nearly that type of height. And again, what I was saying at the beginning is what happens with turnover speed is not necessarily how fast we’re turning the legs, if we watch to see this, and you can see at the bottom, when we look at the whole stride, we end up having the same foot contact times, and they’re both striking the ground at the same time. So from when novice athlete comes off the ground in comparison to when Noah Lyles comes off the ground, and then goes through that whole leg cycle such back on the ground, that is the same amount of time, even though we see at the toe off position.

How he does that has a lot to do with what he’s doing as the foot is coming off the ground. And I see a lot of people get coached where as soon as that foot comes off the ground, you want to immediately be coming upwards with the foot. While you do want to be able to get to that range, you also want to be able to fully maximize his push ups when no allows pushes off the ground, he’s getting full range out of that right there. That ends up making it so we can really propel himself forward at a very high level, we’re just not seeing nearly as strong of a push out, they’re not using as much of the hips as much as the hamstrings, but just not fully mastering the ability to push off of the ground and not getting the same type of extension out of the foot. So that is, I think, the first thing that you really want to understand.

Another thing that I think ends up being important is understanding the foot angle at push off. So as your foot comes off the ground, the more range you can get into. You can see right before we’re getting push off, we’re not seeing a very steep angle with the heel. We can see with Noah Lyles, a little bit more of a knee bend there, and he has more bend in that foot. So then as he’s getting that push off, there’s going to be more power there, right when you have the heel up higher and more range to that big toe. Now that push can be a stronger movement where here we have the heel further down. And therefore, as that foot comes off the ground, pushing off the ground, we’re not going to have as much power. So I think the foot angle ends up being a big part of the turnover as well. And then once this happens, so we’re seeing the foot come off the ground, we’re getting a really good knee bend. I think an important thing to be able to see within your own running is when is my foot at its peak, right? And as an example here, if we go and watch all these sprinters, they’re going to be pretty similar, you’re going to maybe take away a few degrees here and there. But there’s going to be a lot of similarities. This is what makes the great sprinters great sprinters, is because they’re able to get to this elite level of range of motion.

It’s more of like a rising motion there where I’ll see a lot of people when you end up having more of this position, they end up having to go outward a little bit more with the foot. So notice how he and the knee goes out the foot goes more outward as opposed to getting more of like an upward movement. So you’re pushing off bend that knee quickly. This is something that you want to be able to if you can’t do this naturally well, then you want to be able to kind of slow it down to work on it. And then from there, I usually cue people really try to squeeze with that hamstring to maintain the relationship with the calf and the thigh for as long as you can to then get that upward reach. We’ll see here that calf really never even gets to the thigh.

Now that ends up being a very overextending type of a movement with that left leg. Then the landing is a little bit more out in front of the body. We can see here how he’s landing as much as I like landing on the front part of the foot, it’s a lot different than if you’re landing with the foot a little bit more underneath you. The idea would be as close as you can, you’d want to be able to land with that foot underneath you. But we could also see that he’s landing and getting his weight back a little bit further, which then helps him in being able to transition more effectively off the main focus. What’s important to kind of finish off the concept here is getting that leg out in front and then really striking the ground so then we’re continuing to propel yourself forward. We don’t end up wanting to do too much of a downward motion. I think it helps to almost think like you’re propelling yourself forward or pushing yourself forward.

Like whenever I’m coaching, I’m always trying to tell people push, push, push – because I think that this ends up being super important. You’re trying to really get into that position. That’s going to be the most effective part when it comes to your turnover speed. You’re not necessarily trying to move your legs faster as much as that is important. A lot of times people are actually moving their legs fast already, they have about the same time period of turnover speed as elite sprinters, but are just not covering the range. And so it really becomes how can we continue to cycle the leg with that same speed while being able to maximize the range of motion that ends up being the key. What you want to be able to understand is in order to get to that position is a lot of times goes to how many steps are you taking. If you’re taking too many steps within a 20 meter range then that’s going to make it so you’re not going to run as fast as Noah Lyles who’s probably doing that somewhere between 8-9 steps I would estimate would be how long it takes him to run 20 meters.

Conclusion

If you’re struggling with getting your times down right running a great 20-meter or 30-meter, I would say the reason your times aren’t great is because you want to be able to understand how to maintain your stride frequency right or stride rate; how fast your legs are moving so you want to be able to get that time while also figuring out how you can get more distance. A big part of that’s going to be this pushing outward movement and what are we doing in our backside once that foot comes off the ground are we going too quick to come back forward and limiting the amount of range that we’re able to get through to that makes it so then we can’t get to that top speed or the other thing would be the front side are we making it so our front side is too short or not keeping that heel tight and then really extending that leg out. Your ability to cover distances you want to be able to really maximize that front side to make it so then we’re continuing to gain ground on each one of the steps so hopefully that gives some clarity when it comes to your turnover speed.