At his Plex facility in Houston, Danny Arnold has trained numerous NFL All-Pros, Hall of Famers, and First-Round Draft Picks, including Charles Woodson, Julius Peppers, Casey Hampton, Wes Welker, and Jadeveon Clowney. Widely recognized as the world's leading expert in NFL Combine preparation, Danny has generously agreed to share his training tips for The D10's Combine-style events with our community. 

There is no perfect 40 stance across the board. Everyone's hips, knees, balance, power - everything you can say about human anatomy - is different. Everyone's 40 start has to be customized, in terms of leverage, momentum and overall mechanics. 

Though it's impossible to explain the perfect 40 without looking at a particular individual, here are some of the rules that we apply at Plex, before we start making individual tweaks. 

Keep Your Eyes Down
You can keep accelerating to 18-20 yards, but those first ten yards are crucial. 
Keeping your eyes down off the line creates an angle where you can shoot out, instead of shooting up. 
You have to train this way. Your body won't learn it in one day. 

Burn Carpet
For many athletes, their arm movement is not as aggressive as it should be - especially the hand on the ground. 

For your back leg to go forward, that hand has to go backward. It's physics. 
Nine times out of ten, you watch somebody who hasn't properly trained, and their hand on the ground is going to go up, or forward, rather than backward. 

We call this "burning carpet." That hand you have on the ground, it needs to be thrown backwards with enough force that you feel like you're burning it. 

Don't Crouch to the Line
This is one of the most asinine things I've ever seen. Your body's comfort zone is more important than shaving an inch or two off the run. If humping the line is truly your best stance, you go for it, but I've personally never met someone who was helped by crowding the line. 

Videotape yourself, and make sure you're not clenching your fists.
Make sure you don't see the veins in your neck popping out.

This goes for any sprint: as a runner, you need to be able to focus on something ahead of you. If that object of focus is shaking while you run, you're too tense in the head and the arms. 

If you really want to improve your 40, dissect it.

Work on your first and second step ten times. Get that down. 
Work on the drive phase. 
Then work on just your finishes. Jog up to the last ten yards and then focus on executing the finish ten times. 

If you just keep running the whole dash over and over, you're just going to practice more bad habits. 
You have to break it down, then slowly put it back together. 

Registered D10 athletes in the San Francisco Bay Area and Houston can put Danny's training tips to work right away when they attend complimentary workouts with our premier track coaches, Michael Granville and Terrence Wakefield.