A-Skips and B-Skips
Ages 8 and up · Twenty yards of flat ground; no equipment
A-skips and B-skips are the sprint world's universal form drills: skipping patterns that exaggerate the shapes good running is made of (knee drive, tall posture, the foot striking under the body) at a rhythm slow enough to feel and fix. Every sprinter alive warms up with them, and every young athlete in any sport gets faster by owning them.
The A-skip is the entry (skip with an exaggerated knee drive, foot snapping back down under the hips); the B-skip adds the leg extension-and-pull (the knee drives, the lower leg reaches out, then PULLS back down and through, pawing the ground). They are rhythm songs for the legs, learned slow and kept forever.
How to run it
- March the A first: walking, drive one knee up to hip height (thigh parallel, toe pulled up), then snap the foot back down UNDER the body, alternating, arms swinging in running rhythm. Ten yards.
- Add the skip: the same shape with the skip's hop-rhythm ("skip-drive, skip-drive"), staying tall, foot striking under the hips, quick off the ground. Two trips of 15-20 yards.
- March the B: knee drives up, then the lower leg EXTENDS forward, then the whole leg pulls back down and through, the foot pawing the ground beneath. Slow, exaggerated. Ten yards.
- B-skips at rhythm: the full extend-and-paw inside the skip cadence. Two trips (this one takes weeks to smooth; that is normal).
- Finish with contrast: one relaxed 30-yard build-up sprint, feeling the drilled shapes inside real running. The drills live at the top of every sprint session forever.
What to say
Common faults and fixes
Leaning back or hunching through the skips.
The puppet-string image plus eyes on the horizon: posture is half the drill's value. Slow to the march until tall returns.
The foot landing out in front (a little brake every rep).
The under-you standard: the snap-down lands beneath the hips. Exaggerate with a "stomp under" round; over-striding drilled here becomes over-striding raced later.
B-skip mush (extension and pull blurring into a wobbly A).
Back to the B-march at slow motion: the three beats (drive, reach, paw) said aloud. The B is genuinely hard; weeks of marches are the honest path and completely normal.
Make it easier, make it harder
Marches only; wall-supported knee drives; shorter distances with big celebration.
Faster cadences with shape held; lateral A-skips; single-leg A runs (one leg cycling, the other supporting); the full sprint-drill menu (high knees, butt kicks, straight-leg bounds) built around them.
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