How to Run Faster: Jeff Moyer on Mechanics and Dosage

Based on Episode 56 of the Just Fly Performance Podcast with Jeff Moyer, hosted by Joel Smith.

How to run faster is, for Jeff Moyer, less about adding work and more about removing it. Moyer, the owner of Dynamic Correspondence Sports Training, builds speed for team-sport athletes, and he is blunt about his bias: he chases the smallest amount of training that still moves the number he cares about, then spends his real attention on how the athlete actually runs. His answer to getting faster is not a longer program. It is better mechanics, less volume, and a few specific fixes that most athletes never make.

Key Takeaways

• Assess the running mechanics first. Moyer films every athlete and works backward from how they move before writing a program.
• More is not better; better is better. He judges every session against the speed number he is trying to improve and removes anything that does not serve it.
• Cap sprint work at three or four reps. If the third rep is not faster than the first two, the session is over.
• Heel striking is the brake. Moyer ties it directly to injury and slower times, and fixes it before adding speed work.
• Train the hip flexors where they fire. The psoas drives the thigh from behind the body, which is why he avoids pick-up-the-knee drills.

Start with your running mechanics

Before Moyer prescribes a single drill, he watches the athlete run. He films a video analysis and works backward to decide whether a limiter is physical, a motor-control issue, or a restriction, and he weighs injury history because the biggest predictor of a future injury is a previous one. Most team-sport athletes, he says plainly, are poor runners, and the fastest route to speed is usually cleaning up that movement rather than piling on training. He tests in short sprints (10, 20, and 30 yards on a timing system) and lets those numbers decide what to add or cut. The practical first step for anyone asking how to run faster: get video of yourself sprinting and find the limiter before you chase a program.

The minimum effective dose: do less to run faster

The core of Moyer’s method is restraint. He describes a girls’ soccer group that took two tenths off their 10-yard time and close to four tenths off their 30-yard time in six weeks on almost nothing: one set of squats, one set of calf raises, one set of glute-ham raises, plus targeted single-joint work. When an athlete asks to do more, his first question is whether they are already improving, and if they are, he refuses to add to it.

Once you’ve seen how little you can do and get away with it, everything else is just too much.

His checklist when speed stalls starts the same way every time: are we doing too much? Treat added volume as a cost, not a default. Moyer would rather change an exercise to create novelty than push intensity, because more does not guarantee faster results and it can undo the progress already banked.

How many sprint reps? Three or four, and know when to stop

That philosophy gets specific with speed training drills. Moyer caps sprint reps at three or four and uses a simple rule.

If your third one isn’t better than your first two, then you’re done.

He is chasing improvement per rep, not accumulated capacity, so a session that is not getting faster is a session to end. He compares it to poker: when you are up, take the win and walk away, because forcing another rep usually buys frustration and a worse recovery for the next day. He even cuts athletes off at a personal best rather than let them chase one more. The discipline of leaving athletes wanting more keeps every rep fast and protects tomorrow’s training.

Take the brakes off: heel striking and speed

When Moyer assesses sprinting, his first question is whether anything looks likely to cause injury, and the pattern he sees most is heel striking. He makes a strong claim from a decade of work: he has never assessed an athlete with patellar tendonitis who did not strike on the heel. To make it tangible, he has athletes jump three times on their heels, then three on the balls of their feet, and feel the difference. Then he hands them the analogy that does the teaching.

If I’m the mechanic and you’re the car, the front of your foot is the gas and your heel is the brake. You’re driving with your brakes on.

Until the contact changes, he keeps everything at the motor-learning level rather than running speed work on a faulty pattern, and he is skeptical of heavily cushioned shoes for the same reason. If you want to run faster, treat ground contact as a gate: fix how the foot meets the ground before loading speed on top of it.

Train the hip flexors where they actually fire

Moyer’s most technical point is about the hip flexors, and it follows the principle of accentuation from Vladimir Zatsiorsky’s work: train a muscle where it contracts most powerfully for the sport. In sprinting, that is not in front of the body.

The hip flexors and the psoas contract behind the body to drive the thigh forward, not up.

That is why he dismisses pick-up-the-knee and hip-lock drills, which load a position the hip flexors do not use during a stride. He leans on reverse crunches to strengthen the lower abdominals that posteriorly tilt the pelvis and help drive the thigh, and uses the image of a kick (you cock the leg behind you before it comes through) to cue the right sequence. Audit your “hip flexor” work against the actual stride: if the drill only lifts the knee in front, it is training a position the sprint never uses.

Frequently asked questions

How can I run faster?
Jeff Moyer’s answer is to fix your running mechanics first, do the smallest amount of high-quality work that keeps your sprint times improving, and address the specifics that slow most athletes down, especially heel striking and weak hip-flexor mechanics. More training is not the same as more speed.

How many sprint reps should I do?
Moyer caps speed work at three or four reps. If the third rep is not faster than the first two, the session is finished. He chases quality per rep, not accumulated volume.

Is heel striking bad for speed?
He treats the heel like a brake. Striking the ground on the heel sends impact up the body, tracks with overuse injuries like patellar tendonitis in his experience, and slows acceleration. He fixes the contact before adding sprint volume.

Does lifting weights make you faster?
It can, but Moyer keeps it minimal and specific. He has gotten large speed gains from very little lifting, and he prioritizes the movement quality and the sprinting itself over chasing bigger weight-room numbers.

About the guest and host

Jeff Moyer owns Dynamic Correspondence Sports Training, where he develops speed in team-sport athletes using video assessment, the 1×20 method, and the principle of dynamic correspondence drawn from Dr. Michael Yessis and the Soviet training literature.

Joel Smith hosts the Just Fly Performance Podcast and runs Just Fly Sports, where he explores speed, power, and the craft of coaching. Listen to the full conversation with Jeff Moyer on Just Fly Sports.