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Hear me out: Mass Specific Force. You can look into it and find a lot of details. But basically, in order to sprint* faster, one must be able to put enough force into the ground to offset gravity. How gravity affects each individual is relative to their own specific mass. This means sprinters should be as strong as possible, while also remaining as lean as possible (relative to their own unique build). This is done in the gym. Sprinters should strength train, as opposed to training like body builders: Use low reps. The sprinter should avoid eccentric movements in exercises like the deadlift, because lowering the weight causes fatigue and therefore hypertrophy, where the muscle grows. Focusing only on the concentric movement allows the athlete to gain strength and recruit more fast twitch fibers, and avoid muscle growth. A sprinter's ground contact time and stride length are the result of putting more force into the ground. The gym becomes useless for sprinters when the focus is on hypertrophy and growth as opposed to strength. BUT strength is crucial to running fast. If you can't put force into the ground, you can't offset gravity, you can’t* run fast

Former collegiate sprinter here, my fastest ever (in 60m, 200m, 400m) was at my strongest and heaviest weight.

Just my humble opinion. As a senior sprinter who competes regularly in the Senior Olympics at the National level and has been sprinting probably longer than most of you are old, I can tell you one thing for certain: You get fast on the track, not in the gym. Use the gym to supplement your track workouts with such things as strength training; plyometrics, core work; medicine ball work and resistance band work. You need the gym for overall strength, so your body is ready for what sprinting is going to put it through. Sprinting is controlled chaos and the gym work helps control that chaos. Lifting weights is a small portion of all the training you need to sprint well. It's all about good form, force production and who slows down the least. BOTTOM LINE: To run fast, you have to run fast! JMHO.

People fail at understanding the knowledge that goes into speed and what it means to be “Fast”. It is truly a combination of genetics, work ethic and all around mental health of an athlete. To be a top tier Athlete, you must be strong in all areas, not just one. I seen more talent fall off because there wasn’t a balance between these areas.

I haven’t read all the comments but I’m impressed. Nobody’s insulting anybody else! When does that ever happen on the internet? “This is my experience, here’s my reasoning, here’s the physics to back me up.” The rest of us can think how everybody’s experiences can apply to our own training: In the offseason maybe I’ll experiment in this or that way. Y’all give me hope.

The weight room DEFINITELY helped me it really depends on ur body composition and how it will work for you Remember everyone is different What may work for one may not work for the other

Im 5'9"... At my peak I had a 39" vertical jump, but I was not very strong in Squats or deadlifts and very rarely did them... I mostly just jumped for hours everyday playing volleyball... Im older now so I do lift regularly to keep up overall general strength and avoid injury when doing sports or sprints. Good video

thankyou so very much for making this video, the description is very helpful.

As a sprint coach myself, it’s good to see another coach that understands this. Now that I’m over 40, I’ve started training for an ultramarathon. But I still sprint regularly too. I dropped my gym membership and dropped the static stretching. My only strength work now is mostly just isometric stuff, low volume. I feel like my legs have a much more springy type of feeling now, more responsive to impact. I trained a few decent sprinters without the emphasis on weights and it has been rather successful. Crazy thing is, I’ve gained muscle mass this past year.

This is crazy because I really thought if I could squat 500 I would automatically jump 7 feet or higher in hj. Obviously that isn't true and I kept researching to find out strength is useless without a solid base in-between muscles. Tendons and joints can be strengthened and loading all parts of the body is much more powerful than strengthening your body in one dimension. Different planes and movement speeds. Isometric and plyometric exercises are super good for explosive athletes but also still training your compound lifts with a more speed intent through the movements will really make the difference. Lift heavy weight fast, as apposed to lifting heavier weight slow. You want to dominate weight explosively, then move the weight up. Lastly knees over toes guy and atg essentials are the way to staying healthy while you put your body through the rigorous and forceful training track requires. Gn happy new year

everyones body is diffrenet some need to lift some dont just need to find what works for you as an athlete through exspitementation and trial and error , gotta listen to yourself before any coach

I’m a thrower so the weight room is more of a factor but I agree with this take. Best advice I ever got was from Dan John “Throwers throw, sprinters sprint, hurdlers hurdle.” In throwing when generally know what levels of strength are necessary and generally more number based rather than x body weight since being too small hurts performance. It makes perfect sense to me to use more body weight measures of strength values for sprinting. In my opinion 315 conventional deadlift and a 275lbs squat to full depth would be plenty of strength for a sprinter. I wouldn’t see a 500lb deadlift helping a sprinter like it would a thrower. I would add in short hill sprints to the list of exercises you mentioned too.

Sprinting is about power output. Increasing 1 rep max (moving slower with higher resistance) is very highly correlated to increasing power output more so than training to move faster with less resistance. (BIG) BUTTTTT! the farther you move away from the specific force and speed range i.e. slow grinding reps, you lose a lot of neurological ability to fire muscle quickly. Try things like post activation potentiation which is 1 or 2 reps heavier than 85% 1 rep max into body weight plyometrics (not competition sprinting, because you never want to alter your sprint form) and power snatches of around bodyweight on the bar. Moving 2x bodyweight can be usefull but you know what's more useful, moving 2x bodyweight fast, so never slow down weights in order to move more weight. It's hard to check the ego sometimes.

Great content! Also has a lot to do with neurological recruitment of different types of muscle fibers. Mark Asanovich talks about this with different types of athletes as it relates to sport specific skills.

I agree. Strength is important, but what’s also equally important is power and explosiveness , and to develop power you need to do things like Plyometrics . Strength is good but many people put an over emphasis on strength and neglect other aspects of

I personally think it's all about your best power:weight ratio for your specific body, just like how low BHP but lightweight cars can compete with high BHP heavy cars in acceleration and top speed.

The concept of strength training is often misinterpreted. By lifting heavy weights, you enhance your maximum strength limit, which in turn increases your capacity to generate more power. Speed isn’t trained in the gym; instead, it’s developed through maximum speed movements without load, such as sprinting. There aren’t any “transfer” exercises that are worthwhile. It’s as straightforward as that.

Very interesting breakdown. It sounds like in that breakout year in high school you may have accidentally periodized your training. From what we were taught, strength training is important but its for the off season. Plyometrics for in-season and more sprinting the closer you get to comp.

When hit the weights, that is when I got faster. At first, I slowed, but at peak I would always be faster. It is about timing.. When I started, I ran 12.98 and in one year of lifting, that dropped to 11.3 and progressed over the years to get faster...

This reminds me of a study I read about isometric vs. dynamic exercise, and recent knowledge about the force-velocity curve. Basically twitch speed and maximum force production don't increase significantly unless trained for specifically, and dynamic explosive exercises aid the former more, while slow/static exercises aid the latter more.

Great video and refreshing ideas!

My whole life I've trained with sprints and it wasn't till I joined a touch football league at age 37 did I realize how important it was to train exclusively with sprints. All the bulky muscle I had was more of a hindrance as those muscles require more oxygen and it slowed me down. The following year I only trained sprints with minimal other lifting and I became turbo fast. I say train for whatever you want your body to perform well and you will achieve that feet. If you want to get better at living super heavy things train for lifting heavy but if you want to be a turbo fast athlete train sprints!

Thanks for the tips. I like all your explanations.

Kettlebell stuff has improved my speed over middle distance running a lot. Swings are the bread and butter. Now I just get PB after PB

I agree. I noticed the same thing back in my day. I got faster times when i stopped lifting. Although i cared more about size than speed due to football being my main sport and track being second

Quick question! What are some exercises that would be ideal for improving elasticity at the hip/groin specifically?

Its not just lifting weights. In order to train and compete effectively, a sprinter will lift primarily, but not solely, in the offseason because recovery times will greatly affect the nature and quality of time done in the season sprinting. Also, time spent lifting will also include smart recovery methods, including lots of ice baths, stretching, proper nutrition, quality shut eye, and massage.

I respect the educational info. It’s the internet age and weather you are right, people will always try to have a comment to look smarter and what not. If people had better info I think they should talk about it on a camera. I mean that’s what KZfaq is about now a days. But good content 👍🏼. Thanks

I totally agree with this premise

dude the weight room is key for people who dont have natural speed. the fastest sprinters ever barely touched a weight room because they are genetic freaks, most of us are not and need to strengthen the fast twitch muscle fibers in the correct manor in order to acheive this

There is nothing wrong with doing weights. The purpose of the weights is not to lift the most weight but to do it with good and explosive form. I don’t lift the most but I’m strong pound for pound and adding weights to my sprinting has definitely helped. Obviously just weights aren’t going to make you faster, you need a good combination of both.

At 15 I weighed 130 pounds and I ran a 4.81 40-yard dash. I'd never done a single deadlift, and I'd only squatted maybe 4 times in my life.

I always thought of myself as a dragster: most power in the lightest body that I could be. Also, I never " maxed" so my heaviest squat- 395, came at a body weight of 165, for 3 reps. It worked, there is more to the story, but, I totally understand your point.

This has always been up for different opinions. I was a sprinter and a running back in 1968-70 when we ran yards. In football we backs would always run toward the big guys because they couldn't run fast or far. Speed is something you are born with either you have it or you don't, it was called muscle retraction if I recall, my brother two years younger had it also. Other than practicing your start there was no training for the 100, it was just wide open for 9.9 seconds. We trained for the 220 and practiced the relays which our team set a FHSAA record. The long distance runners always looked worn down to me and the big boys were in the bleachers. The other thing I wouldn't do was stretch, it seemed to me a lot of those guys would pull up lame especially after about 110 yards. Matthew Boling is no joke, that Dude is fast. Good video subject.

Thanks for the post! I've been thinking about this for a few years now. Can you explain the compensations and negative feedback that you briefly mentioned while talking about lifting numbers versus bodyweight?

Strength≠speed. Power=speed. Lifting weights 110% helps. If you are training fast squats, box squats, jump squats, power cleans you’ll get faster. It’s training power. Time on the track and practicing sprinting is extremely important but so is lifting weights. If I can squat 400lbs at 1.2m/sec then I can move myself at .6 m/sec. It’s all about power and force you bring back into the track. Go into any SEC gym and they’re doing exactly these movements because these build power and strength in the hips and lower body. And I can speak from experience

Plyos are important but squats, hanging leg raises, and RDLs with straight legs are important to prevent injury.

If I could make a suggestion, look into John Evans and his vertical jump training. Of course, it's a different movement entirely, but the goal of the training is the same as with sprinting: improving power output in a short ground contact time. He doesn't focus much on deadlifts and squats, but there is a high level of focus on hang cleans and power cleans.

Strongly agree with you bro. I usually have a 8-10 weeks of pure strength workouts (when I am at the gym) during the very beginning of the season, always working on my technique on the track with so many drills, to then pass to 1 strength sesh to the gym, in which I try to execute quick movements, preferring lots of plyo workouts, having an important force structure done before. In my humble and personal opinion, I think in way too many cases, both strength and plyos are overused, I think this is due to lack of knowledge by many coaches (you can't do high volume plyo exs at the very beginning of the season, nor doing only max strength sesh at the gym all the times).

At my best (only ever recreational, not a competitor) i felt everything you said and did most of what you said to get there. The proprioception training, the 1.5-2x bw lifts (I was doing 2x), due to previous injuries i was focused on a lot of rehab stuff and those things made me way more elastic and tendon strong. Running was like cutting through the wind, pure mechanics and it was like i can change gears - start and stop, cut an angle at will. Beat running shape i ever been. Unfortunately i atarted sprinting a lot for fun haha like warmups and such, eventually one day i just got injured again and i havent been the same since. i was also been a bit lazy to go do the rehab work.... but i am now, and cant wait to be super agile again.

This video is super helpful thanks

I knew lots of kids in high-school who were fast. Of course form matters but still all the fastest people I knew had always been the fastest people since we were small children. Some people just naturally can run.

The problem with the 2Xs BW is the priority of the pursuit of it (especially when not programming phases) and the lack of knowledge in lifting. How one lifts is more important than how much.

Sprinting is an equation of force and rate of force output. Lifting weights will increase your max force output as long as you stick to low rep, explosive movements. The weight room is half the battle if you know what you’re doing.

Another element is doing enough strength training to stay health or recover from injury vs increasing strength. Many NFL teams have moved in this direction. The body can only take so much and the goal is to stay healthy so you can maximize your sprint/track or football training. This is exactly why Tom Brady told JJ McCarthy at Michigan. Tom told him to stop or drop greatly reduce the strength training especially during the season and focus on the on the field or in this case on the track training.

One thing as well that confuses people is the size of some of these elite sprinters. Asafa Powell, Donovan Bailey, Linford Christie etc... are massive. But it's because they are genetically gifted and respond very well to strength training from a hypertrophy point of view. They didn't put on that much mass for speed, they just happened to be jacked dudes. Look at guys like Lyles, Christophe Lemaitre or even Andre De Grasse, they look like twigs but are as fast. And then you have guys like Harry Aikines, built like a silverback, front squatting 200kg but still can't break a sub 10 sec. Ultimately, mass will slow you down, that's just physics. You need to find a right balance specific to your body type.

Great Video bro👌🏽

As a college and pro coach I’ll say this…the best sprinters are extremely strong and lift tons of weights…

posterior chain lifting helps, but wont help with hip flexor (turnover) or a clean foot strike (top speed). lifting is a good recommendation for improvement because most people just dont naturally have a good foot strike and there isnt much room to improve what you have naturally in terms of stride mechanics. you can always keep pushing up your squat and power clean numbers.

So idk what happened but one day I was doing broad jumps and I felt like I tweaked my back, ever since then it’s been hard for me to even deadlift 135 but before I used to do much more do you have any suggestions?

I was big into weightlifting, strongest kid in school yet one of the slowest.. I could never understand how I can be so strong yet so slow for such a jacked body.. now I understand that I was working those slow twitch heavy muscles. They were great for working in construction for 8 hours a day but not for sports that required explosiveness.

"weights" as in Olympic lifting and squats CAN give BOLING NEW LIFE. Kim Collins didn't lift until 34 years old at the urging of his wife and his times dropped for the next 4 years. He was running 6.5 60m before and 6.4 60m after and consistent sub 10.00 seconds. It was at the urging of his wife who insisted he use great technique. Using tools to get new gains will get you new confidence.

The problem with lifting is how much fatigue it produces. As a rock climber I care both about strength and power but for now I took most of the pure strength work out because after doing 3 heavy sets of cable rows on Monday, my technique training on Tuesday was shot and while it did make me stronger it did not cause enough specific adaptation to justify the fatigue

Hey, thanks for the video, but i wanted to ask you some more questions specific to my case...i have a 38in running vert but a 25 standing and my 100m pr is only 12.96"(yes i wrote right) althougth im pretty good at bounds and shit, do you think in my case strength work could be beneficial or should i focus more on the speed side? Thanks

Mass Specific Force is a concept that relates to sprinting and how an individual's mass affects their ability to generate enough force to overcome gravity. In order to sprint faster, sprinters need to be strong and lean, relative to their own unique build. This is achieved through strength training rather than bodybuilding. When training for sprinting, it is recommended to use low reps and avoid eccentric movements in exercises like the deadlift. Eccentric movements, where the weight is lowered, can cause fatigue and muscle hypertrophy (growth). By focusing on the concentric movement, sprinters can gain strength and recruit more fast-twitch muscle fibers, without promoting muscle growth. The ability to put more force into the ground is crucial for sprinters to improve their ground contact time and stride length. By focusing on strength training and avoiding excessive muscle growth, sprinters can optimize their ability to generate force and offset gravity, ultimately allowing them to run faster.

Extremely True. Weight lifting killed my 100 time. Better in football but hurt my track speed.

Would being able to do 10 pistol squats (full ROM) be a suitable standard should you not have access to a gym?

This greatly depends on what the needs, limitations and deficiencies are of the athlete. If an athlete is already fast and has been most of their life most likely due to a genetic disposition then that is totally different from an athlete who is limited. If an athlete is deficient in power, speed and/or body composition then you can have them sprint all day and they will not be fast. You must have a foundation or develop it or you will only get so far. Most athletes overtrain in the weight room and do a lot of body builder type exercises. Deadlift and pull ups are directly correlated with top sprinters. These two exercises are great indicators of posture chain and core strength. Another thing is in order to get faster you must train and sprint at full recovery. Most do the opposite.

As a Jamaican let me clear this up, speed is genetics you either got it or you don’t.no amount of weight training or trying to run fast will help. But if you’re naturally fast then work ethic will make a big difference. 🇯🇲

Squats work for bike racing strength, but for sprinting, I would choose heavy sled pushing and pulling over squats any day.

Everyone train for different things, if you want to be strong lift heavy if you want to be fast do explosive workouts it's really that simple. And those top athletes you mentioned have insane genetics so hance why they are able to run faster. Obviously worked hard in the gym as well

The best exercise for sprinting is sprinting. Who would have thought.

It’s not about flat out strength it’s about explosive strength. That’s why when you’re a sprinter in the weight room it should be geared towards “functional strength training”. Rather than just squatting a lot of weight, do quick explosive safety bar split squats. Explosive Nordic hamstring curls. Things like that

I know I’m kinda late but athletes should be lifting to strengthen their muscles when running, it’s a difference between athletic training and bodybuilding training. Athletes train and workout for an athletic build, for instance DK Metcalf. The more force you implement into the ground the faster you move like the harder you move your arm (with the right form) the more force goes into the ground. Now their should be plyometrics involved to help with jumping, stretching to help loosen muscles, and running to help with building stamina and agility.

Coach Tony Holler - Feed the Cats. As a distance runner I think the guy speaks some huge truths. Holler is not against weight training at all but states it should not be the first priority. I am changing my training routine based on his insights and am curious to see how it works out.

What does a split look like when trying to get a leg lift in while also running 5-6 days a week

In my youth I had just finished reading Charlie Francis' book "Coaching Sprint Speed (title could be wrong) as a result I added the reverse leg press on the Universal Machine to my regular workouts, got up to 515 pounds with one leg (weight indicated on the right side of the stack) to train the hammies. I never really monitored my sprint speed, never sprinted, just pushed the numbers up, well, at a family reunion an opportunity arose to test my training, I never in my life moved as fast, it was exhilarating! Weight training correctly done most definitely increases sprint speed, you don't need as much as many people think though.

If by strength training you mean become a powerlifter or a bodybuilder then of course you will get slower. But speed is a consequence of peak impulse expressed in short ground contact times. That means rapid force production. Either olympic lifts or combine heavy (1-3 rep) squats with plyo.

Hey, thanks for the video, do you have other fun proprioception challenges like the one you show in the video for the balance of the foot ? Thank you

I agree with you here. In my 20's (I'm 35 now) I was a professional boxer and if you can please forgive me talking about myself, I was a hard puncher, and explosive. The only other training I did before boxing was gymnastics (4 years) and my boxing coach told me I had good body control which he felt was the main reason for my power. I began to lift weights somewhat and even though I got stronger it didn't really help my punching, and in fact I was probably the weakest one in the gym for my weight. But now when I talk to kids at the gym I tell them to learn how to relax and to "flow" when they throw a punch. I know it sounds ridiculous but it works, and think about it, who teaches a cheetah how to run? They don't do anything but run.

Rate of force development is whats key. You need to train strength and speed strength.

There's at least one study claiming full squats are bad for sprinting, but squating above parallel (closer to 1/3 to 1/4 squats) were very effective.

Usain Bolt practices weight training in his regimen. He is literally the fastest sprinter in the world.

I think it’s a fine line. Strength does help but only if it’s not over done. I notice crazy increase in power after doing barbel training in boxing. But they was after years of boxing only training, years in the gym. But the moment I put boxing second I noticed I slowed down and would get hit nore

when I started squating my vertical jump went up but years later when i started doing hip thrusts i noticed that I got faster. Glutes push you forward horizontally and quads push you vertically. Walking on a treadmill works your glutes more than a stairmaster does

What about power sled? Seems it would be a great way to improve acceleration.

"Knees Over Toes Guy" teaches something like this. He's very flexible, especially in his legs, and he doubled his vertical jump in his 40s without putting on much mass. It's definitely a power-to-weight ratio and range-of-motion thing, as well as neural-capacitive speed AKA mind-muscle connection. Training for strength isn't a downfall, but carrying more mass that your increased output doesn't offset IS. After all, force, mass, and acceleration are all related. If you can reduce mass and maintain the same force, you increase acceleration. If you increase mass and require the same acceleration, you need more force. The flexibility training so you can retain your range of motion helps reduce wasted energy by making your joints and ligaments less resistant. They also allow you to produce power over a broader range of motion/longer time per stride or jump.

Strength to speed correlation is not linear yet. Law of Diminishing returns. Strength can be a limiting factor to your power. Power= Strength x Speed. If your chase for strength lowers your velocity Power decreases. Use a lot of what he saying to find the balance of these 2 along with all the other bodily systems.

Weight lifting builds slow mass moving muscles while calisthenics builds fast twitching muscles. Its pretty obvious what sprinters would benefit from

I agree in Highschool they taught me that you must lift heavy weight and get bigger to run faster which I believe it’s a myth now I used to believe that but what I believed hindered me in 9th grade I was running like 12.3 and then my sophomore year I dipped down to like an 11.2 without lifting weights or anything junior year when I started lifting weights I was running I was still running an 11.2 I was probably like like top 15-10 in my class of runners senior year I was running 10.90-11.00 early in the season but in states I was running much slower I burnt myself out from lifting heavy weights and over training with sprints I probably lifted more weights than I ran no plyometric work or technique so by the time states came I was running 11.30-11.40 coming in last place in the 100 and 200 while everyone else improved so much and I wondered why I didn’t improve I was telling myself “I work hard” why didn’t I improve” I wish I was trained properly I’m 29 years old now and I’ve been off the weights for the past 4 years almost and I’ve been doing more plyometrics and hiit I timed myself recently I’m running a 10.7-10.9 hand timed now looking to get back into competition this conformed it! 💯💯

For me I'm really skinny and can only get up to about 1x my bodyweight in the major lifts, though I am really reactive and get 50 cm or higher easily doing pogo jumps. Off a step approach I can get about 85 cm. In my case I definitely need to get stronger.

Lyles is running faster now than when he was leaner, especially in the 100

How well versed are you in the ACTN3 gene?

I posted this in response to a comment but i thought I should share it with the whole group. I want to add a slight technical perspective to this conversation. So far the conversation has been very good but a bit misleading. Certainly results could be generated taking advice from the comments and from the author of the video. As far as i can tell he is saying allot of the same things that I have heard from other college sprinters. The comments below on occasion disagree and could also produce results. I want to highlight a few undisclosed items that will show that the author and the dissenting opinions can both be mostly accurate. The key point of the video is strength (a direct measure of Work) is not an input parameter that is used to calculate speed. The dissenting point is that mass specific force results in acceleration. This is true and is known in physics as Newton's second law of motion. The difficulty is people are not inert blocks with external forces applied to them. The determination of speed is largely dependent on 3 input parameters. Impulse Mass Balance These seem pretty similar to other claims but I would be willing to bet if we took a random stratified sample and controlled against the technical aspect of coaching there would be little difference across virtually all metrics. That is because the teaching techniques mentioned will work well for different types of athletes and not with others. When grouped I expect that the data will show some high performers from each group that offset the other. Here is a slightly more detailed and technical examination of how the running process works on a physical level. First, let's address maximizing impulse. This is the goal of strength training but it is largely dependent on skeletal geometry and muscle fiber. Different fuel sources provide different amounts of power when used so the type of muscle fibers that are dominant in a part of a muscular system are important. For every body motion we produce it results in an output power curve. The goal of strength training should be to optimize the power output curve with a skeletal torque curve to optimize impulse throughout the duration of the race you are running. In the conversations I have had with professors and performance training professionals this is not really an understood topic. It is very complex in practice and only a few people really have working models for it. They are all in the field of robotic walking motion. Cal Tech has a good program on this. Back to the point though, this addresses the very true counter example the author of the video made. Some power lifters can squat 4X there body weight and they are not going to win a 100m Olympic medal anytime soon. That is because they maximized those curves to produce mass specific work. When running ground contact time is on the order of hundredths of a second and there body yields a lower impulse value because they need longer contact with the ground to exert force, the only way to increase contact time and increase speed is by changing their skeletal geometry. In particular increasing leg length. In this circumstance we are talking about altering the skeletal torque curve. Secondly, mass is directly proportional to acceleration but not significantly related to top speed. Outside of its effects on the impulse curve. Being lighter is always a good idea in sprinting assuming you don't lose a bunch of power generation (i.e keep the highest ratio of active power generating tissue to non active tissue, such as organs and bones). This is the point brought up in the dissenting opinion in the comments, that mass specific force is important. I am only modifying this statement slightly in that it is the impulse that is important not the force, sense force available does not correlate to force transferred. Last balance, is what is talked about in starts by a lot of coaches. I can't speak to the techniques used in describing that, since I am a scientist not a couch, but the important thing to recognize is that we are essentially range projectiles rapidly moving down a track. The orientation of your center of gravity changes the direction of the impulse normal vector and outputs either running down the track or us jumping in the air. I'm sure this is all common sense and implementing this in a predictive model to optimize sprint speed is a challenge perhaps harder than any single scientist can develop but it does lead to some intuition that can be helpful to train. First maximize power output not force for sprinting. Extremely explosive exercises and likely not at extreme high weights. Secondly, don't be fat. It's hard to be fat and fast. Third, listen to your coach, film your starts and pay close attention to how your times and the feel of balance relate to eachother. Use that information to decide how that impacted by your body lean coming out the blocks and if you need to change anything.

Young man is correct ‘ you only have to do a small percentage of weight training ‘ if you want to be a runner ‘ or sprinter’ as he attested to ‘over doing with weights hurt his performance

I’m guessing doing body weight exercises would be a lot more beneficial than weights in relation to sprinting. Push ups, dips, pull ups etc.

There was a study done on trained athletes and there 40 yard dash time that showed those who deadlifted and squatted regularly decreased their times significantly more than the control group. It’s thought that hip hinge movements stabilize the sacrum more and allows for more explosive controlled movements.

Great topic. Old guy here and not an expert, but this subject interests me. The SAID principal seems to always be at play. The meatheads seem to have had way too much influence over sports training for decades. Looking forward to more content.

It's a combination of strength and coordination.

Did you ever think that you might have run faster just because of development? Going from 16 to 17 years old a lot can change.

So what am I supposed to do because im 5’10 190 and my times are fast but my coach thinks its from bad form as well my dad thinks it is from not doing core work.

Great points. Look at big cats, cheetah, wiry & stretchy Vs lion, powerful & muscle bound. Over a short distance it’s not even close.

i understand that training entirely like a bodybuilder is not good for being a track/ football athlete, however i doubt most people will get "too big" to where you'll get slower. if you have speed you have speed, and yes you can always get faster.

The fastest sprinters in the world do not “barely touch” weights. Usain Bolt benches 300+lbs and most of the other guys bench more. Ben Johnson benched 450

The more force you put through into the ground with ewch step, along with fast strides, equals speed. More strength and power equals more speed

Lifting quickly without fatigue helps maintain type IIa or IIax fibers. Regular lifting transitions to type IIa. There's a review paper on this.

I think being stronger means you're less likely to get hurt

How do I get into track and field can I ask because I do events for my school sometimes but I would like to do actual track and field more

Similarly many distance runners try to lengthen their stride. What they actually need to do is increase their turnover even if their stride is slightly shortened.