I'm definitely no expert, but I've learned a few things over the past season and a half which have helped my sprint tremendously.

Practice, practice, practice. As a member of xXx Racing-AthletiCo, we are fortunate enough to have a coach, Randy Warren, who puts on several clinics a year, one of which is a sprint clinic. At the clinic, we do all of our sprints in the drops (surprisingly, not everyone is comfortable with this), out of the saddle and against other riders.

Practice form sprints: starting from almost a dead stop, do several jumps in your 39x23 for 50 meters. This will help your spin (cadence) and your weight distribution. Too far back over the pedals and you'll lift your front wheel off the ground; too far forward and your back wheel will lift off the ground. Rock the bike from side to side, but control your movements. This may be the key for you as you learn to rock the bike without lifting the front wheel.

Practice big ring sprints: When you're comfortable with the above exercise, move on to big ring sprints. Starting from almost a dead stop, jump in your 53x19 for 100 meters. Concentrate on form and weight distribution. If you still lift your front wheel, shift your weight around.

Practice shifting: Do the above exercise again, but lengthen your sprints to 150, 200 and 250 meters and shift during your sprint. This not only helps you learn to lengthen your sprint and shift during them, but it also teaches you when to shift and how long you can actually sprint.

For me, the key was learning weight distribution over the bars/pedals, cadence and shifting.

Practice with a partner or two and be competitive. I hope I've helped without being too specific and that I've actually answered your question.

Watch these videos to see proper sprint form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkkTSVVrPYk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji_XcHvJvac

Two thoughts to start:

1. All that hopping makes me think you need to smooth out your pedal stroke and apply force all the way through it: make sure you're pulling up the back and over the top of the stroke instead of just mashing down.

2. I started practicing sprints by doing this workout, which could help with bike control:

Find a safe 300m of straight road. In a 53X17, roll up to the start and almost stop, then wind it up as fast as you can. At the beginning you'll be way overgeared and have to pull hard up the back and over the top of the stroke to get going. Don't shift during the sprint. By the end of the 300m you'll be way undergeared and it will be difficult to control the bike. The point of the drill is to work on keeping as smooth as possible even when the gearing is too hard or too easy.

Roll around a bit to recover and repeat 6 more times. Once you get the bike under control you should be able to put in a lot more effort--see how high you can get your heart rate over the 300m. Done properly, you should be pretty wiped out after 7 sprints.

I'd say you're mashing too big a gear, causing your bike to hop all over the road.

In races I put cadence on the big display of my computer (instead of speed) so I can see it easily.

Coming into the last 400 meters I'll do a quick glance to make sure I'm in a gear that has me spinning at about 95 rpm.

Spinning at 95 rpm while I'm still in the draft gives me a gear big enough to not spin out in the sprint, but is also small enough that I can easily get on top of it and smoothly spin up to 125+ rpm.

Other than lots of practice one thing that is essential to having a good sprint is composure. Too often we see riders crash themselves out or cause wrecks in the final sprint because they are simply all over the road fighting their bikes. A good sprinter is calm and in control, head up looking ahead and not desperately thrashing about.

Consider too that lest you're outputting 28w/kg or in a downhill sprint the odds that you need that 11 tooth cog are slim to nill. An interestig excercize that will demonstrate the futility of sprinting in your 11 and show you the importance of explosive power are form sprints.

Start in your 18 or 17 tooth cog while in the drops. Bring your speed up to roughly 20-22mph and then sprint. Stay in your 18/17 until you are on top of the gear; that means stay in that cog until you are spun out and no longer accelerating. Then shift down once and sit and hammer while seated until you can no longer hammer. You'll find that your power output is significantly higher in the 18/17 than if you started in a lower cog.

Keep doing this. Eventually you will start in you 16, then 15, then 14 tooth cogs all the while bringing your starting speed up.

Next time in a race or on a training ride coming up to a sprint while in the leadout check your gearing (no, not by looking); if you're not spinning and are already in a hard gear you are most likely overgeared. Shift up a few times and try that on for size...

Thanks for the great suggestions. I'll remind Jason and others that the best way to practice race scenarios is going to the Tuesday night practice criteriums in Matteson. Three chances each night to practice your final sprint, plus any number of chances to practice accelerating out of a corner.

The sprint clinic Jeffery Watt mentions above happened to be my very first day on the team, way back in April of this year. It was also my very first sprint ever, and I too did a wheelie and nearly crashed into two of my teammates. The first piece of advice I got was to simply stay lower and find the center of gravity. Everyone above has the spin and gear elements covered, so I'll offer up this bit of Zen: as I am winding up, I stay as low as I can, and keeping my arms bent and loose. My mind is emptied of everything except a visual of myself as flat, low, mean, and spinning/moving forward faster and faster...and yes, I'm going to practice it tonight in Matteson...keep your fingers crossed on the weather, everyone.

I want to know how rocking the bike side to side helps with the sprints? It's unnecessary. Does it look cool? You shouldn't concentrate on rocking the bike, concentrate on transferring the power to the pedals. Just like the videos show.

Rockin' is racing. And totally necessary.

How is it necessary?

As I warned in the original post, I'm the last person to consult for sprinting advice, but I think Jante has a point: Once you are on top of your gear, won't you go faster by settling down, getting aero and devoting all energy to the forward direction?

A sprint is all about power. A slight rock while standing allows you to put your weight and muscle into the pedal during a sprint.

I think everyone agrees that sitting in the saddle with hands on the tops of the bars is the most efficient way to climb. Yet when you hit a steep part, you get out of the saddle and rock the bike. Why? More power.

Luke: in my opinion, if you are seated you are no longer sprinting. In an ideal sprint, you are accelerating the whole time to the finish line. I don't think videos of track sprinters (on fixed gears) is wholly applicable to your typical amateur sprint in a midwestern criterium.

Maybe "necessary" is the wrong thing to say about rocking while sprinting, but I can't remember a time I've seen anyone win a bunch sprint sitting down. Like I said before...if you're sitting you're not accelerating, and you misjudged your maximum sprint distance.

I agree with the sprinting and not being in the saddle. I just think that the rocking of the bike is a natural occurence when sprinting, not something to be concentrated on, it just happens when you have a firm grip on the handle bars and you are tweaking your body to try and get all the power you can out of it.

Robbie McEwen's bike is almost perfectly still side to side except for when he is steering around somebody in his sprints. His upper body is moving quite a bit but not the bike.

Absolutely, the objective is to put power into the pedals. At the initiation of a sprint (not the end/finish line) you'll see every good sprinter rock their bike to get cranked up quickly. Here's a video of Robbie himself doing it.

As I've been taught, rocking the bike does two things that put more power into the pedals:

1. It puts your body weight and your pedal stroke in a direct line of power to the pedal.

2. It incorporates your uppper body by pulling up on the bars, in opposition to the pedals.

Rocking side to side is intentional, for a good reason, and should be practiced. Initiating a sprint without the motion is simply not as effective or as efficient.

wow! didn't expect to get that much response, thanks for all the advice! matthew's explanation of the natural rocking motion makes the most sense to me.

it's apparent that i need to re-phrase my question to get the answer that i want. two major types of sprints are discussed here.

1) bunch sprint to the finish line

2) attempt to start a break-away kinda jump

i think, the out of saddle then sit low and spin like crazy fits more to the breakaway style, while out of saddle all the way is for the last 200m to the finish.

in our midwestern crits, it's very typical for riders to setup for the final corner and jump as hard as they can whether to start a lead out for team mates (tom boonen's team is a great example) or just going straight for the line.

so! when going out of the saddle all the way to the finish, what am i doing wrong when my front end starts hopping around as i pull on the drops and push on the cranks?

jeffrey mentioned about weight distribution, which i'm still experimenting with, but i noticed that when i'm already standing out of the saddle, the most obvious way to change weight distribution is elbow bend since i'm already leaning alot to the front (maybe i need a better bike fit?), but the more i bent my elbow the bike seemed to rock more to the sides, i ended up losing focus and wasting energy to control the bike's motion than transferring energy to the pedals naturally and efficiently... any more suggestions for me to try?