Elitetrack: Sport Training & Conditioning

dbandre—

So strange a guy 6’6” and running the same speed would take one less step than a guy 6’....? Let me guess, GRF is the sole determinant of stride length and guys of all heights run with the same # of steps… Get real.

After dominating people two meets in a row, going 9.92 easily and crushing the field, it is obvious the guy is legit. Whether he takes drugs or not, who knows, but repeating the performance (shutting it down in the 9.92 w/ no wind) shows that it is a real time.

If you look at the Caribbean coaching material.  Almost all work done for their sprinters is speed based.  They also work a lot on grass tracks.  It’s hard to say either way about Bolt’s training previously or now.  I would imagine it’s just an extended session of acceleration and maxV work rather than a complete change in training philosophy. 

Davan:

There are no studies I know of which relate leg length as a significant factor in step length.  Most Studies like Milah Coh’s studies relate step length mostly to speed and accelerative factors.  This makes since since step length increases till about 70m in a race, while step rate is maximized about 30m into a race and then regulated to a slightly lower rate than maximum to achieve maxV with ever increasing stride lengths (transition phase of acceleration).  Stride Length ends up being related to leg stiffness, ROM, and swing speed which regulates step rate at velocity.  Just focusing on speed work cannot explain a .23s drop in time and even a .11s drop in time from his previous PR is highly suspect for an athlete already capable moving that fast.

If you don’t care about doping as long you get out of this world results then you don’t care about athletics.  It no longer is about the best athlete, but the best scientist/pharmacologist who can put together the best doping cycle to achieve optimal results by altering the physiology of athlete through pharmacology and not training.  That is something you should be ashamed of.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=81-3fXceEZM

I didn’t say I didn’t care about doping, so maybe you should not try to be a jackass for the sake of it like you just did in your post. What I said was that purely the performance itself should not be suspect unless maybe you want to argue the wind should have been 2.1 or something else—whatever, mostly irrelevant. It happened against legit competition and a similar performance was repeated shortly after. Your argument that he took one less stride than a guy who is much shorter and ran a slower time is WEAK.

Bolt ran what, 2 or 3 100m races in the last 3-4 years (maybe even longer) before this season and with very good results (10.0x is pretty damn good for not working on it!).

Sure step length is related to speed, but to say height is a non-issue is idiocy. Bolt is well outside the normal height distribution of both the world population and the population of elite sprinters. To determine like you did that this has no effect is ridiculous.

Short, tall, average height.  It doesn’t matter, with longer legs he has longer moment arms.  The jump in performance is beyond reason even for previously caught dopers and those who have been suspect never had jumps like this from 10.03s.  Either he’s at a higher level of evolution or someone altered his physiology, I cannot offer praise to either circumstances when I definitely feel the reason is the latter.  That he dropped .23s for wind adjusted times off his PR’s is something you see in HS athletes who are still running at least .7-1s slower than he was and even then it takes the course of a whole season of racing 5-6 months to achieve those marks.

He’s raced a ton of 200m races in the timeframe you point out and while there are some differences between the 100m and 200m races nothing in those 200m races suggested he should run 9.76s for 100m.  In fact, most sprinters of his same ability for 200m had similar 100m PR’s, Spearmon and Carter come to mind first.  Spearmon only recently at the end of last season broke 10s for 100m and don’t believe Carter has yet.  Actually Gatlin ran the same time as Bolt in Doha and was busted not soon after.  I won’t be surprised if Bolt is caught in the same manner.

Step length has little to no correlation to leg length.  Sprinting is mainly unsupported between steps (2/3 of the time is spent in the air free of the ground), if this was walking then your argument is valid.  Idiocy is to suggest otherwise.

Okay, so you want to bitch about him taking drugs rather than the performance having not actually taken place. That is much different then bitching that because he took 1 less step than Gatlin, it couldn’t have actually happened (how many steps did Gatlin take versus Tim Montgomery??).

You have yet to prove that someone well outside of the normal height deviations is not going to have any different stride length as someone who is much shorter, but of the same speed. Without bringing out studies, which are likely with populations irrelevant to elite sprinters, just look at the first 10m to see how stride length/frequency patterns can vary based on height and limb lengths. If you’re 6’6” with relatively long legs even for your height, there is no way you’re going to have the same stride length for your first step out of the blocks as a guy who is 5’7” and runs the same speed. Simply getting full extension will result in vastly different stride length.

“Although leg length, which is largely determined by height, is a factor that does affect stride length, it is a relatively minor one. Stride length is primarily determined by rear leg drive and range of motion. The former (drive) is completely independent of leg length (height) and the latter (range) is only very slightly influenced by leg length….do the geometrical math.“

So we’re willing to accept that it plays a “relatively minor role”, but we can’t accept that a guy who is 6” taller than Gatlin may have a difference of just 1 stride (note it may be less than 1 complete stride) in a 100m race? This is without considering any race patterning, either!

While it may be insignificant over one stride, when you factor in 40+ strides into the equation at 1in difference, you are looking at 1m less to run.  We would need difference in leg length as opposed to actual height in order to truly know. Gatlin may have some high hips.