I was always a fan of athletics, particularly the sprint events. I learned a lot about sprinters and the nature of sprinting in general. They are arguably the most powerful athletes next to weight lifters, power lifters come in second here, these guys primarily focus on brute strength. Where do i start? For one we know they are fast, but not everyone is aware of the nature of how they train, and what happens during the sprint race, or most importantly how they all got so fast anyways, they obviously had to be training, but lets be a little specific about this.
Sprinters do not necessarily have to look like ripped athletes like Usain bolt and Tyson Gay, sure they all an exceptional physique that one would expect at the world stage but their body types were more or less like that since their younger years. Some sprinters have average levels of body fat or higher, but a sprinter can be anyone (especially if you are gifted with a lot of fast twitch). Walter Dix is a good example of an elite sprinter with a high body fat unusual in the typical sprinter.
British sprinters like Craig Pickering also have average levels of body fat. The training itself is more important, the appearance of muscles have their importance but its secondary to the training itself. As you get faster you can always have the potential to look like some guy sculpted by Michelangelo. With the nature of sprinting, one would have less body fat in tropical warmer climates then in winter ones, because one can train outdoors more frequently enabling the loss of more body fat. Also in warmer climates nobody is stuck in the house either, it is to hot outside everyone is out walking around doing something with friends and family.
Lets get back to the topic of training. Training for Track and Field is very finicky because most the events are pure performance sports, meaning they are on mostly pure physical capabilities, so the nature of these sports is hard on the body. Techniques are employed but limited to limit these risks, and perform better it is no different then other team sports like basketball or football, American football, and fighting like boxing, or mixed martial arts technique is important, there is an element of skill in the sport. These team sports i listed as examples employ a versatile element of techniques that give many variables to tactics and strategies to win. In Track and Field especially sprinting strategies are very limited, i mean you only run for a few seconds in a straight line or bend or run the whole track. The strategies are mostly done through the training itself, and there is tacics in sprinting the longer events like the 400m. Also you are trying to improve your body to perform beyond the limits of what its comfortable doing, allowing it adapt over time to perform at speeds rarely achieved by humans. Not everyone sprints their hardest everywhere they go, we usually walk or jog because that is more efficient form of physical locomotion. For that reason alone, since sprinters try to reach the limits of what their body is capable of doing, they are more likely to get injured. So things have to be considered to prevent injury, strategy of training programs are very important, so the body can adjust and handle the stress of the violent forces it will be under. The programs of a sprinter are very extensive and the is a viewed more of an annual progression rather then a few months, you would typically see in a weight training program.
When sprinting everyone ACCELERATES eventually they reach top speed for about a few seconds and after that they slow down. The longer ones acceleration is the later they would hit the top speed, but if you accelerate further you are also traveling faster so you also directly affect your top speed, which will make you even faster. It does not end there though, if you have bad cardio or in poor condition, you will slow down rapidly due to a lack of speed endurance. You will see younger kids in high school during track meets stay ahead of everyone for 50 meters then fade away as everyone passes them. What that means is the person is fast, but has poor conditioning, they are unable at the moment to maintain their speeds and slow down faster then everyone else, who is also slowing down. YOU CANNOT maintain your top speed throughout the whole race, not even cheetahs can do this, you can only SLOW DOWN your deceleration. So in the end of a race, when the racer is slowly passing everyone in the final 30 meters, all it means is he slowed down the least compared to his competitors, essentially he has better SPEED ENDURANCE then his rivals and is more likely in better shape, he may also be lighter in weight but still powerful for his weight. This is an illusion to those who see others sprint. They assume the individual is simply finding a new gear and accelerating past everyone, which is clearly not the case.
Another way of looking at it is that we have Kid A, and Kid B who are on the blocks getting ready to race against each other. ON YOUR MAKRS GET SET......GO. Kid A explodes off the blocks, Kid B is a little slow to coming off the blocks. Kid A accelerates to 30 meters, but Kid B is catching up around the 45 meter mark. Around the 60 meter mark Kid A has reached Kid B who has already started to slow down. Kid A starts to fade away even more now. Kid B passe Kid A and wins the race, this race illustrates Kid B having better speed endurance, and Kid A being good off the blocks and having good acceleration. Kid A can beat Kid B if he were to train more speed endurance. There is a possibility that those who do well later in the race have more elastic power, and are better at bounding so they do well as far as speed endurance is involved, but because they lack strength they have a hard time getting off the blocks, you usually see this with jumpers who also make good sprinters. Jumpers have really good top speed because of the nature of the movement when you have reached that point in a sprint, their training of jumps and bounds is one of the ways to improve this point in a race.
Some people are naturally stronger then others, the heavy more sturdy strong individuals with good reflexes, are amazing off the blocks and have very good acceleration because of their strength, they can generate so much power off the blocks and start moving their bodies quickly to top speed, they make good indoor specialists running events like the 55m, 60m dash events. However since they are very heavy, their top speed suffers somewhat, or they have a hard time generating that kind of power in the later portion of the race, some peoples mechanics are like that. This is not always the rule though, if you are powerful(combination of speed and strength) and have a developed a good vertical jump, you can generate good forces at top speed, and effectively have good top end speed, which would make you EVEN FASTER. Even with poor speed endurance you will still prevail in some cases. Lighter people who are very strong and powerful are the optimal sprinters because they can generate so much power relative to their body-weight, they easily overcome the forces necessary to move their own bodies from static position and accelerate and achieve great TOP SPEED. Speed endurance is easy for them to train because of their lighter weight. However for everyones sake SPEED ENDURANCE takes slight precedence over acceleration training, mostly because many people are not conditioned properly for the later end of the race. Also why shave tenth or hundredths of a second of the first part of the race when you can shave of seconds in the later end of the race? Acceleration work is important for those who are not naturally strong, The element of skill for accelerating off the blocks can be taught quicker then achieving good speed endurance and top speed anyways.
I will go over more on acceleration, top speed, and speed endurance later on. However next time i would like to go over weight training for sprinters and other power athletes. I will say this top speed is the limiting factor to many people being fast, it is the the hardest thing to improve in track training. The difficulty of improving top speed, is the same as improving your vertical jump to try and dunk a basketball.
to be continued... Part 2
