Many have made it their business to tell me (repeatedly) that there is no Holy Grail in sprinting.
I beg to differ!
Before addressing what is the Holy Grail, it might be a good idea to say what is not:
Deadlifting is not the Holy Grail
Weight training is not the Holy Grail
Technique training is not the Holy Grail
Running short fast sprints is not the Holy Grail
Ken Jakalski invited Dr. Peter Weyand to Lisle, Illinois in order to present and discuss his research into his 2000 JAP study on achieving faster running speed. Q and A sessions followed each of his presentations in order to give attending coaches an opportunity to ask Dr. Weyand additional questions regarding his research. The discussion was also intended to find ways in which to train athletes based on what Ken termed as the Holy Grail of faster running.
I had discovered Dr. Weyand’s research while perusing the Internet around the time that the Lisle presentation and discussions occurred. I had read the research several times before coming to my own personal breakthrough: This WAS the Holy Grail of faster running. Several months later I wrote an article for www.dragondoor.com in which I used the term the Holy Grail.
The Holy Grail of faster running is Mass-specific force.
M-sf is not relative strength. It is the amount of force relative to mass applied to the ground during ground contact time. A person able to lift 5 times bodyweight might apply less force to the ground, in relation to their mass, during ground contact than a person who can only lift 2.5 times bodyweight.
Some may argue that M-sf is important, but overstated on our part. Their contention lies in the contribution of the flexor muscles which can be inferred by high levels of EMG activation in the swing phase.
Weyand’s 2000 study addressed this point in its summation: “Although the activation of the flexor muscles and tendons that reposition the limb during the swing period is considerable at high speeds, this activation likely occurs to increase the storage and release of mechanical energy in the oscillating limb rather than to generate mechanical power chemically within these muscles.”
The study refers to the similarity between human and animal runners, “Similar patterns of flexor activation during high-speed running in other species suggest that rapid limb repositioning is achieved similarly and that minimum swing times limit the top speeds of running animals.”
It would be irresponsible to present this without addressing what some call swing “rate.” This differentiation in terms, swing time versus swing rate, implies that a runner’s performance could improve if the swing leg was in the “correct” position earlier in the cycle, i.e. if the heel was brought directly under the butt rather than behind the butt first, then underneath it.
While this sounds good, does it really matter?
Apparently not to the researchers who state, “Accordingly, we suggest that the mechanism by which faster muscle fibers confer faster top running speeds in terrestrial cursors is not by decreasing minimum swing times but by increasing the maximum rates at which force can be applied to the ground.
We conclude that human runners reach faster top speeds not by repositioning their limbs more rapidly in the air but by applying greater support forces to the ground.”
Why would greater support force supersede faster repositioning of the leg? Greater support force increases time in the air. Look at “the saga of 2 runners” on this blog or in our Resources area. One runner is traveling at a meter per second faster than the other yet both are landing at the same time. The faster runner is airborne longer because of M-sf.
Neither runner is an elite runner. Would the result be different if they were?
Hardly. In fact, the elite runner would have longer air time to complete repositioning.
During the Lisle presentation, it was mentioned that anatomical and functional variations among runners was not measured in the Weyand study. It would seem that these variations could have substantial impact on the running speed of the individual runner, yet the difference in swing time between the fastest and slowest runner was 0.03 seconds while the mean swing time was 0.373 seconds. The faster runner’s meters per second were nearly twice that of the slower runner, yet the variance in swing time was less than 10%.
Clearly what occurs in the air has little impact on what occurs on the ground. What does occur on the ground is a function of Mass-specific force…The Holy Grail of sprinting.
Barry Ross