Elitetrack: Sport Training & Conditioning

Mike Young - 25 September 2008 02:09 AM

I agree with 99% of what you said here but I think I’d add the caveat that you have to be doing an intra-athlete comparison and it won’t necessarily work comparing one athlete to another. For example, if you took a 9.77 by Powell, Gay, Greene, and Bolt, they’d likely all have differences in touchdowns over the course of the race with Bolt obviously having the fewest. A lot of the variability is simply due to their acceleration mechanics though so I suspect it might be more relevant to look at strides taken from 50m-100m. I would guess that this would more closely correlate with 100m performance.

I agree with your caveat about the touchdowns in the acceleration phase causing the differences between different runners that run about the same times.  However an elite 100m sprinter should be taking 46 steps or less in a race to run 10.1x or less.  I have to believe Pickering will be the first caucasian to run under 10.00s for 100m if he takes 45-46 steps in a race.  Still when you look at all the Europeans who have run the 100m over the last 3 decades you find they have regressed or stagnated in terms of sprint development.  I think they have had 6 or 7 on the Continent as whole who have run under 10s and a couple of those guys are ones who changed nationalities and didn’t officially run under a national coach or national HP program.  The European programs seemed to be geared heavily on stride rate improvement which I think comes from their track cycling backgrounds which pedal rate and for good reasons is a major factor for speed in track cycling events because they can only use 1 gear.  The giants in Sport Science in Western Europe come from the British, the Dutch, the Italians, and the Fins.  A ton of old Eastern European literature exists now, but they are no longer what they used to be with exception to Coh.

Mike Young - 25 September 2008 01:59 AM

Jeremy Richmond - 24 September 2008 02:55 AM

Well if the professor thinks so then I may have to stop plugging Gatlin. Perhaps he was only good at one other thing, generation of force with the leg almost fully extended at impact. Who is this Mann man? Best make himself available for us to ask him questions.

Dr. Ralph Mann, Silver medal in 72 Olympics in 400m Hurdles and the USATF biomechanist for the sprint events. He’s not published his data (at least not in peer-reviewed journals) for about 20 years but it is available.

Gatlin’s major flaw was that he made contact too far in front of his COM.

Shame there is no biomechanical data and lack of pictures on Flo-Jo.

Mann has plenty. On an interesting note, he told me that she was an elite technical model before she was the 10.58 100m queen that we know her today. He said in 88 (when she ran like she had a rocket on her back) her mechanics didn’t significantly change but her power output did.

My sense of humour might not be apparent in this method of communication but I do know of Ralph Mann and have a great deal of respect for him and the many other researchers of athletics. The bit about contact too far in front of COM troubles me a bit though. Traditionally, sprinters may not have exploited the area in front of COM for propulsion but given that some of the force produced in this zone may be wasted, the sprinter may still benefit. For sure that Gatlin did not have the technical skill that Flo-Jo had in the same region, it would be great to compare sprinters of the modern era to those of the not so distant past especially their force production ahead of the COM.

And Flo-Jo was brilliant. I find it hard to believe that the reported but not recorded wind reading in the Olympic final just happened to blow in her lane exclusively. She was miles ahead of her compatriots. The fact that her mechanics did not change significantly relative to her power output leads me to think that she may have found the right compromise in internal fuel expenditure with a smooth acceleration and/or she may have found the natural frequency of the different springs (musculotendinous complexes) of her propulsive limbs.

Further, since we are originally discussing the 10-m correlate to 100-m performance with a good deal of humour, I have seen a report from the Swedish Olympic committee where it reported the ground contact time of an Australian sprinter, which when compared to that of one of the Olypmpic champions studied showed similar patterns of ground contact time up until the 10-m mark. After this mark, the Australian sprinters contact time did not continue to shorten as considerably which can be seen to a limited extent in my article as well when comparing a current European sprinter.

Jeremy Richmond - 25 September 2008 11:44 AM

Further, since we are originally discussing the 10-m correlate to 100-m performance with a good deal of humour, I have seen a report from the Swedish Olympic committee where it reported the ground contact time of an Australian sprinter, which when compared to that of one of the Olypmpic champions studied showed similar patterns of ground contact time up until the 10-m mark. After this mark, the Australian sprinters contact time did not continue to shorten as considerably which can be seen to a limited extent in my article as well when comparing a current European sprinter.

I think this further underscores the differences between European/Australian Sprinters and why their research driven approach based on a flawed bias towards stride rate has produced many Europeans who compete favorably up until 60m or so in a world class race, but tend to fall off as the race progresses.  There is not enough specific elastic training involved which helps improve stride length and regulate stride rate.

One of the common denominators of those who were really fast to 10 in the past (and to some extent even now) is that they stood up much quicker. Check out FloJo, Cason, Ben and you’ll notice they look like they’re almost upright at 15m. Compare that to today’s runners who display much better 10m splits in the latter half of the race but come up much slower.

Mike Young - 26 September 2008 12:00 AM

One of the common denominators of those who were really fast to 10 in the past (and to some extent even now) is that they stood up much quicker. Check out FloJo, Cason, Ben and you’ll notice they look like they’re almost upright at 15m. Compare that to today’s runners who display much better 10m splits in the latter half of the race but come up much slower.

So Mike, does this all come back to preserving energy and / or the hamstrings for later in the race?

beau_zo_brehm - 26 September 2008 12:29 AM

So Mike, does this all come back to preserving energy and / or the hamstrings for later in the race?

I think both…and they’re also highly related too.

Mike Young - 26 September 2008 12:43 AM

beau_zo_brehm - 26 September 2008 12:29 AM

So Mike, does this all come back to preserving energy and / or the hamstrings for later in the race?

I think both…and they’re also highly related too.

So do you encourage your athletes to come up slowly, or just “naturally”?

I have them come up naturally. I don’t really believe in a ‘drive phase’ as most understand it. Most of the time it’s just an athlete putting their chin in their chest. Better athletes can handle lower initial departure angles which will naturally put them lower during the acceleration.