When lecturing, I encounter a lot of ideas and concepts that are often taken for granted by a large part of the audience without any critical thinking about what is written or said.
\nIn the form of a few blog posts I will try to clarify some of these sprinting and speed training myths.<\/p>\n
Sprinters are born (?)
\nYes, but so is everybody else. Were you born to be a coach, a therapist, a personal trainer? I doubt it. Elite sprinters look suspiciously like the average human being, at least from the outside, they don\u2019t have three legs and when not in track clothes, you can\u2019t distinguish them from the average Joe Doe.
\nOne often hears the average person to be compared to a \u201cdonkey\u201d and the elite sprinter to a \u201crace horse\u201d. But I hope one can see the difference between those from a distance! Elite sprinters belong to the same species as people who run 100 meters in 15 seconds: Homo sapiens.<\/p>\n
Besides that, it is not very interesting, because looking at racing: donkeys seldom race against race horses. It\u2019s donkeys against donkeys and race horses against race horses. Yes, and among racehorses there are faster ones and slower ones, just as there are fast and slow donkeys.<\/p>\n
Sprinting speed is a quality consisting of many different components and processes. Some work against sprinting fast, and some promote fast sprinting. And I bet that Usain Bolt has more components to his advantage than you and I have. But whereas some components are not subject to change e.g. height or leg length, others can be trained or modified in the direction of higher sprinting speed, stride length, muscle fiber composition, body weight, reaction time, or technique.
\nHowever nobody will tell you this is an easy task (and if they did, they lied to you). If you take a fast 17 year old football player, he might run the 100 meters for the first time in 11.00 secs. After 10 years of training he might run 10.00 secs, quite good, still. But this is 10% improvement over 10 years, so basically we are looking at 1% improvement a year, if you are lucky. For this you might need 250-300 workouts a year. So the gain to be made in each workout is in average only 0.3% of 1%, that\u2019s not a lot.<\/p>\n
We are looking at marginal gains only. A careful tinkering with all the components and factors involved, and not too much room for useless exercises or concepts. In other words don\u2019t waste your time with thoughtless exercises. There is no linear thinking involved here: an improvement in some factors involved might not directly translate into an improved sprinting performance!<\/p>\n
Bottom line: of course, sprinters are born and genetic predisposition definitely helps. But I have seen very gifted sprinters fail to fulfill their potential, and much less gifted (read born) sprinters go a long way and beating them or sprinting faster, just due to proper coaching. Smart coaching still makes a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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