Elitetrack: Sport Training & Conditioning

Hey what do you guys think a good time for a 10m start would be for a guy looking to run 11 flat in the 100m?

beau_zo_brehm - 20 September 2008 06:19 PM

Hey what do you guys think a good time for a 10m start would be for a guy looking to run 11 flat in the 100m?

How are you timing and what’s the start method. Are you from blocks, 3-point, rolling, standing, etc?

Right now I’m using a SPARQ timer, starting with a 3-point stance, and it starts on my movement. My best time so far is 1.97 seconds.

Movement of the hand, foot, torso? For distances as short as 10m it makes a big difference. Hand pressure timing is the only way I’ve found to get a consistent split under 15m.

Oh…also found using a 1m fly works well. So you run 11m but time 1-11m.

As for time, I suspect that something is wrong because that time is on the slow side for a 10m split of someone hoping to break 11.

1.97 for 10m. Linford Christie did 1.95s to run 10.14 but this includes reaction time. Ahsford and Dreschler (1988 womens 100m final)recorded just over 2s over 10m with reaction time and ran 10.83, 10.85 respectively. It can be done. Better if you also knew your 20 and 30m splits. Ahsford and Dreschler did 3.13, 3.12 and 4.15, 4.14 respectively. If you do 30m in 4.2 then you stand a chance of getting under 11. Refer to Development of Maximum Sprinting Speed by Frank W. Dick.

I prefer hand pressure although my colleagues prefer foot pressure. Hand pressure (i.e. release) reflects a time more closely after reaction from a gun.

Christie’s 1.97 includes both reaction time AND movement time. Movement time is the time between initial force application and actual movement of the body. When you do it with a beam in the way that is described above it doesn’t accurately reflect movement time which is where the HUGE discrepancy comes in.

...or maybe I just have a bunch of guys who are faster than Linford

Mike Young - 20 September 2008 10:20 PM

Christie’s 1.97 includes both reaction time AND movement time. Movement time is the time between initial force application and actual movement of the body. When you do it with a beam in the way that is described above it doesn’t accurately reflect movement time which is where the HUGE discrepancy comes in.

...or maybe I just have a bunch of guys who are faster than Linford

And you’re gonna have some guys longer than Edwards and Powell soon too!

10m split time correlates to 100m time about as well as my yelling at the TV correlates to LSU’s performance against Auburn.

In fact I have found that a mega-awesome 10m often results in a non-mega-awesome 100m.

Mike Young - 20 September 2008 08:34 PM

Movement of the hand, foot, torso? For distances as short as 10m it makes a big difference. Hand pressure timing is the only way I’ve found to get a consistent split under 15m.

It starts when any part of my body crosses the infrared beam. I would say most of the time my head breaks the beam right as I start.

I understand that a 10m time isn’t one of those that you can plug into a calculator and get an accurate 100m time, but I’m sure there’s at least a standard of some sort. A guy can’t run 10m in 3 seconds and expect to run a good 100m time.

beau_zo_brehm - 21 September 2008 01:20 AM

It starts when any part of my body crosses the infrared beam. I would say most of the time my head breaks the beam right as I start.

I understand that but there’s still a time lag between the force applied to the ground and the movement that triggers the beam. If you timed a 10m sprint using pressure sensitive starting blocks (like they use in IAAF) this would add the movement time on to your 10m time. The way you do it, reaction time AND movement time are subtracted from the total time.

beau_zo_brehm - 21 September 2008 01:21 AM

I understand that a 10m time isn’t one of those that you can plug into a calculator and get an accurate 100m time, but I’m sure there’s at least a standard of some sort. A guy can’t run 10m in 3 seconds and expect to run a good 100m time.

I won’t speak for Mort but I know I’ve had some GREAT guys over 10m who couldn’t even make the travel squad for 100m. Come to think of it, when my wife was at her best she could run 10m with many <10.8 men but obviously she was no where close to being able to run that over 100m. I actually stopped timing 10m years ago because I wasn’t able to get any valuable data from it. The test is so short that even the smallest variance can lead to ‘off’ performances.

If you start it the same way then you can at least see if your improving your time over the ten meters, but i think it would almost be impossible to predict a 100m time off just the first 10m.  If you keep seeing an improvement in your time then you will know your doing something right with the training.

A couple of things

1. 10m testing times are useful when applied to other testing criteria such as 30m, 60m, SLJ, STJ, etc…  Ask yourself why are you measuring 10m times and its application to training and improvements in training and performance.  Obviously in track and field it’s application is a sprint start and more specifically initial acceleration.  If someone’s 10m time drops, but his 30m and 60m test scores don’t then it’s likely his 100m or 200m times won’t be significantly different than before.  Meaning you are likely, but not certainly spending way too much time in the blocks or first 4 steps of acceleration in training.  A 10m time with corresponding 5m segment times in a 30m test is a better evaluation of initial acceleration anyways (10-15-20-25-30) and a 30m time has a better correlation to predicting 100m times.

2. It’s best measured from the initial movement to initiate action (hand pressure, block pressure, etc..) as Mike stated, however keep the mechanism to start timing the same.

Mike Young - 21 September 2008 01:26 AM

beau_zo_brehm - 21 September 2008 01:21 AM

I understand that a 10m time isn’t one of those that you can plug into a calculator and get an accurate 100m time, but I’m sure there’s at least a standard of some sort. A guy can’t run 10m in 3 seconds and expect to run a good 100m time.

I won’t speak for Mort but I know I’ve had some GREAT guys over 10m who couldn’t even make the travel squad for 100m. Come to think of it, when my wife was at her best she could run 10m with many <10.8 men but obviously she was no where close to being able to run that over 100m. I actually stopped timing 10m years ago because I wasn’t able to get any valuable data from it. The test is so short that even the smallest variance can lead to ‘off’ performances.

I have a guy that runs a devastating 10m and beat a 6.8x/10.61 guy by a good margin at 10.  With my great coaching he ran like 11.8 losing by 1.2 in the 100 despite being up by over a meter at 10.