[Mccabe]

Mccabe on February 5, 2011 at 11:00 pm #17368

I am about to do a undergrad paper on biomechanics and I came across a paper that said top sprinters are much more reliant on Stride length rather than stride frequency… can’t for the life of me remember where I read it and was wondering if any of you guys might know which paper it was. Chances are I may have found it by the time somebody replies 🙂

[Craig Pickering]

Craig Pickering on February 7, 2011 at 5:03 am #105289

Found it?

[Olli]

Olli on February 7, 2011 at 5:42 am #105292

I actually have one paper written by dr. Aki Salo et al in 2010: Elite Sprinting: Are Athletes Individually Step Frequency or Step Length Reliant?

Is this the paper you are searching? Here is the abstract.

ABSTRACT:
Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the step characteristics amongst the very best 100 m sprinters in the world in order to understand whether the elite athletes are individually more reliant on step frequency (SF) or step length (SL).

Methods: A total of 52 male elite level 100 m races were recorded from publicly available
television broadcasts with 11 analysed athletes performing in 10 or more races. For each run of each athlete, the average SF and SL over the whole 100 m distance was analysed. To
determine any SF or SL reliance for an individual athlete, the 90% confidence interval (CI) for the difference between the SF: time vs. SL: time relationships was derived using a criterion nonparametric bootstrapping technique.

Results: Athletes performed these races with various combinations of SF and SL reliance.
Athlete A10 yielded the highest positive 90% CI difference (SL reliance) with a value of 1.05 (CI range 0.50 to 1.53). The largest negative difference (SF reliance) occurred for athlete A11 as -0.60 with the CI range of -1.20 to 0.03.

Conclusion: Previous studies have generally identified only one of these variables to be the main reason for faster running velocities. However, this study showed that there is a large variation of performance patterns amongst the elite athletes, and overall, SF or SL reliance is a highly individual occurrence. It is proposed that athletes should take this reliance into account in their training with SF reliant athletes needing to keep their neural system ready for fast leg turnover and SL reliant athletes requiring more concentration on maintaining strength levels.

[Mccabe]

Mccabe on February 8, 2011 at 6:38 am #105318

That wasn’t the exact paper but it says what I need, I will have a skim through the reference list of that paper also. Cheers for your help, Dr. Salo is actually based pretty close to where I live.

[Craig Pickering]

Craig Pickering on February 8, 2011 at 7:19 am #105319

That wasn’t the exact paper but it says what I need, I will have a skim through the reference list of that paper also. Cheers for your help, Dr. Salo is actually based pretty close to where I live.

He used to be my lecturer at Bath, and I think Bezodis (the co-author) works at UWIC now?

[Mccabe]

Mccabe on February 8, 2011 at 7:38 am #105321

Aye, noticed that when I downloaded the full paper. He will probably end up being my diss tutor next year so its a good thing I came across that paper haha!

[Irish100m]

Irish100m on March 1, 2011 at 10:33 pm #106006

Was it one that showed the differences in stride lengths and stride frequency of Poweel and gay at Osaka 07?

[PJ Vazel]

PJ Vazel on March 20, 2011 at 8:45 am #106571

Irish100m : no, it was Akira Ito from JAAF for IAAF.
Callam Mccabe: the general trend is stride length increasing, ground contact time decreasing and air time no change (so only one aspect of the stride rate is changing).
But there are huge differences looking at individuals as some of the fastest men ever improved by increasing their SL while some others by improving their SR. Hoffmann of Poland was the first to publish a major statistic work on that subject in the mid ’60s. Letzelter has publish data on Olympic Games since 1972.