100m and vertical jump

Sprinting is very technical indeed and the advice to find a good T&F coach to learn how to is sound. Upper body work, coordination, balance and relaxation are as important as explosive power.

Even explosive power is over rated compared to the ability to apply force at speed.

I don't think you can learn/teach how to sprint properly on internet; hands on direct feedback is necessary.

Fred

FredInChina said:

Sprinting is very technical indeed and the advice to find a good T&F coach to learn how to is sound. Upper body work, coordination, balance and relaxation are as important as explosive power.

Even explosive power is over rated compared to the ability to apply force at speed.

I don't think you can learn/teach how to sprint properly on internet; hands on direct feedback is necessary.

Fred

Sure. That might be true but a lot of people can go outside and do hill sprinting, and its very safe. The movement is pretty much as natural as it gets. Besides, it is 100% possible to build leg strength without squats.

Deadlifts however... Well that's really 1 of the only movements I truly miss from going to the gym.

I agree MH87, everyone can run as fast as they can uphill... the same way that everyone can take their cars and drive as fast as they can; that doesn't make them pilots, just fast drivers.

When I was 18, I was walking by the track and got into a p!ssing contest & did a good showing against the T&F guys.

Long story short, the coach talked me into joining; then his assistant spent the best of the next 8 months working one on one correcting my horrible stance, mechanics and body position to teach me how to run properly.

Maybe it is because I am getting old, but I think that if you are going to do something (anything) seriously, you've got to do it right.

Finding a T&F coach to spend 3x10 min with you to trim down the worst of your running & give you a point of reference is surely time well spent. You'll learn something useful.

Fred

FredInChina said:

I agree MH87, everyone can run as fast as they can uphill... the same way that everyone can take their cars and drive as fast as they can; that doesn't make them pilots, just fast drivers.

When I was 18, I was walking by the track and got into a p!ssing contest & did a good showing against the T&F guys.

Long story short, the coach talked me into joining; then his assistant spent the best of the next 8 months working one on one correcting my horrible stance, mechanics and body position to teach me how to run properly.

Maybe it is because I am getting old, but I think that if you are going to do something (anything) seriously, you've got to do it right.

Finding a T&F coach to spend 3x10 min with you to trim down the worst of your running & give you a point of reference is surely time well spent. You'll learn something useful.

Fred

I agree, Fred. I thought "running is easy. Why would people actually coach this." Then one day, I got coaching. Not only is running faster now but it's more efficient. Couldn't imagine sprinting without it.

Sprinting is very technical (maybe not as technical as advanced gymnastics skills) and form/technique is very important to maximize speed and results. The start phase with blocks are very technical and there are various methods like Jamaican sprinters Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell having their front foot drag on the ground as opposed to American sprinters like Tyson Gay having that foot fly in the air. By the way, do any of you guys here know your time in the 100m, 200m, 400m, etc.?

B1214N said:

Sprinting is very technical (maybe not as technical as advanced gymnastics skills) and form/technique is very important to maximize speed and results. The start phase with blocks are very technical and there are various methods like Jamaican sprinters Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell having their front foot drag on the ground as opposed to American sprinters like Tyson Gay having that foot fly in the air. By the way, do any of you guys here know your time in the 100m, 200m, 400m, etc.?

I ran a slightly sub 12 with 3-4 lb boots on my feet when I was 20. Don't know anything anymore. Timing method was hit start, start sprinting (a slight delay, just like a real sprint), hit stop after my body passed the 100m line. If anything, the time is a few tenths longer than the actual sprint as would be timed by race methods. I have no way to substantiate that beyond my buddy Bryan having been there. When I was on my ship I could sprint as fast as the fastest guys, but I don't know what the time was. I could keep up with Davis (the 5'9 specimen I've talked about from time to time), so I know it was pretty fast.

Joshua Naterman said:

B1214N said:

Sprinting is very technical (maybe not as technical as advanced gymnastics skills) and form/technique is very important to maximize speed and results. The start phase with blocks are very technical and there are various methods like Jamaican sprinters Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell having their front foot drag on the ground as opposed to American sprinters like Tyson Gay having that foot fly in the air. By the way, do any of you guys here know your time in the 100m, 200m, 400m, etc.?

I ran a slightly sub 12 with 3-4 lb boots on my feet when I was 20. Don't know anything anymore. Timing method was hit start, start sprinting (a slight delay, just like a real sprint), hit stop after my body passed the 100m line. If anything, the time is a few tenths longer than the actual sprint as would be timed by race methods. I have no way to substantiate that beyond my buddy Bryan having been there. When I was on my ship I could sprint as fast as the fastest guys, but I don't know what the time was. I could keep up with Davis (the 5'9 specimen I've talked about from time to time), so I know it was pretty fast.

Oh, that's nice. I know in official races, the clock starts once the gun fires and gets the time for each athlete after their torso passes the finish line. I heard with hand timing, the actual time could actually be +/- up to .2 seconds due to human error.

These days I am pretty sure it's the first part of the body that crosses the finish (excluding arms, I believe) which is why you always see the head dip in near ties and if that head crosses before any part of the other guy, even if the head dipper's torso is behind the other guy's torso, the head dipper will win. Personally I think that's stupid and that it should be about pelvis crossing, but I'm not in charge.

Joshua Naterman said:

(...) I ran a slightly sub 12 with 3-4 lb boots (...)

That's a pretty good time there!

Not accounting for the boots :shock: :?:, anything sub 12 by a non specialist can certainly be brought close to 11 or even high 10 under a year, with cleaner technique and specific training 8)

I am impressed!

Fred

I'm pretty sure it is only the torso (excluding head, neck, arms, and legs) that counts if I remember correctly. So they dip their thorax or chest forward to get an edge.

I think sub 12 is pretty good for an untrained sprinter especially with heavy boots on. What type of lower body strength and conditioning did you do prior? I think the average untrained non-obese male usually run the 100m within 13-14 second, but I heard from a forum member in a track forum that he heard news of an untrained 14 year old in Jamaica run 10.4 in the 100m :shock:. That is basically 10.4 ability from the womb. I wonder what times the elites like Usain Bolt, Tyson Gay, Asafa Powell, Donovan Bailey, etc. ran when they first started out without training.

As for me, I have never been fully automatically timed (FAT) in the 100m. I have competed once in the 100m and once in the 4x100m relay before in track meets and during that one race, I sort of stumbled at the start and lost precious time and speed and they gave me 13 seconds in the end just to enter a time in. My hand timed record for the 100m is a 12 flat or very low 12 and I placed second in that race and the first place finisher and training partner who was about 3 ft ahead of me at the end got somewhere in 11.9x.

Him and I were the fastest and most explosive sprinters in our high school track team at the time and we didn't have much specific sprint training and had some sub-par and detrimental training for the sprints. We did exhausting bodyweight lunge walks and stair runs as our leg strength and conditioning and long distance endurance runs. We couldn't do heavy lifting, O-lifts, and plyometrics because our school's weight room was mostly used by the football team and weightlifting team. As for why we did long distance runs, it was partly because there was no track nearby and 90% of the athletes in the track team were distance runners and because the coach made us and everyone do the same workout. I'm almost 20 now in university and just starting to do some lower body heavy lifting and recently able to squat 260 lbs to parallel for 4 reps at 120 lb bw on the Hammer Strength squat machine (I know it's weak ). I haven't done any barbell squats yet because I couldn't find any friends who go the gym and work out with me to spot me and so I'm afraid I would fall and injure myself. To give you some of my strength levels, I don't think I can back squat 135 lbs even to parallel, but I can do at least 10 reps of pistols ATG for each leg.

So would I be considered pretty fast for someone to run a 12 flat or low under those circumstances and poor training? I have always considered myself to be very fast when I was very young. I used to race with my peers in the streets or sidewalk up to 60m many times and I always won by a big margin even if they had a head start and I was one of the hardest to catch in a game of tag back in the days. I plan to train seriously for the sprints (mainly 100m and maybe 60m) sometime soon when I find a good track club or coach to see if I can excel at the sport and merely as a hobby if I don't excel competitively. I hope to run sub 10 in the 100m (of course without PEDs and implants) in the future even though it may only be just a dream .

B1214N said:

(...) I hope to run sub 10 in the 100m (of course without PEDs and implants) in the future even though it may only be just a dream .

Pretty fast eh?

W/O PEDs, I think you'll be the first 8)

Looking forward to cheering you up all the way to your dream

Fred

FredInChina said:

B1214N said:

(...) I hope to run sub 10 in the 100m (of course without PEDs and implants) in the future even though it may only be just a dream .

Pretty fast eh?

W/O PEDs, I think you'll be the first 8)

Looking forward to cheering you up all the way to your dream

Fred

Thanks! I will use the legal PEDs if there are any and I would be quite happy with myself even if I could just run sub 10.3 in the 100m. I know most men should be able to run high 10s if they train hard enough and my past youth history of never losing an unofficial sprint race gives me motivation to try and break 10 seconds and some hope that I might be successful.

So you don't think any of the sub 10 sprinters are clean? I personally wouldn't be completely surprised if all of them were doping seeing as how crazy it is to run sub 10 in the 100m, but I think some of them are really legit and clean and just natural superhumans or beasts. The ones that improved their PRs drastically within a short amount of time are the more suspicious ones sort of like Usain Bolt, but I also heard some crazy times he has ran since he was a young teenager like running sub 46 in the 400m at 15 or 16 years of age which is a year or two before 400m elites like Lashawn Merritt who ran sub 46 at age 17 and Usain Bolt hitting times in the 200m and 400m years before Michael Johnson registers those times at age 20+. Which leads me to believe that he is just some freak of nature at the sprints.

B1214N said:

FredInChina said:

B1214N said:

(...) I hope to run sub 10 in the 100m (of course without PEDs and implants) in the future even though it may only be just a dream .

Pretty fast eh?

W/O PEDs, I think you'll be the first 8)

Looking forward to cheering you up all the way to your dream

Fred

Thanks! I will use the legal PEDs if there are any and I would be quite happy with myself even if I could just run sub 10.3 in the 100m. I know most men should be able to run high 10s if they train hard enough and my past youth history of never losing an unofficial sprint race gives me motivation to try and break 10 seconds and some hope that I might be successful.

So you don't think any of the sub 10 sprinters are clean? I personally wouldn't be completely surprised if all of them were doping seeing as how crazy it is to run sub 10 in the 100m, but I think some of them are really legit and clean and just natural superhumans or beasts. The ones that improved their PRs drastically within a short amount of time are the more suspicious ones sort of like Usain Bolt, but I also heard some crazy times he has ran since he was a young teenager like running sub 46 in the 400m at 15 or 16 years of age which is a year or two before 400m elites like Lashawn Merritt who ran sub 46 at age 17 and Usain Bolt hitting times in the 200m and 400m years before Michael Johnson registers those times at age 20+. Which leads me to believe that he is just some freak of nature at the sprints.

Bolt certainly has excellent mechanical advantage for the sprints in terms of leg length, both upper and lower.

As for you, your squat vs pistol performance shows a drastic gap between your structural muscles (which are very good) and your prime movers (which are way, way behind). Don't worry about weight with squats, just learn to squat ATG with an empty bar, and focus more on deadlifts. Your first goal should be a 2x bw deadlift at current BW, and 120 lbs on front squat for 10 reps with 2s up, 2s down per rep. Start with an empty bar and learn form, then add a few lbs at a time and master the weight to where perfect form is not a struggle to maintain during the sets before increasing again. It doesn't matter how long that takes.

Your best performance enhancing drugs are lots of clean food with 60-65% of calories coming from carbs (shoudl be nearly all clean, whole food sources), good sleep, and plenty of water. Seriously. You do that and train properly, and you WILL see your performance skyrocket. Nutritiming will help you.

Bolt certainly has excellent mechanical advantage for the sprints in terms of leg length, both upper and lower.

As for you, your squat vs pistol performance shows a drastic gap between your structural muscles (which are very good) and your prime movers (which are way, way behind). Don't worry about weight with squats, just learn to squat ATG with an empty bar, and focus more on deadlifts. Your first goal should be a 2x bw deadlift at current BW, and 120 lbs on front squat for 10 reps with 2s up, 2s down per rep. Start with an empty bar and learn form, then add a few lbs at a time and master the weight to where perfect form is not a struggle to maintain during the sets before increasing again. It doesn't matter how long that takes.

Your best performance enhancing drugs are lots of clean food with 60-65% of calories coming from carbs (shoudl be nearly all clean, whole food sources), good sleep, and plenty of water. Seriously. You do that and train properly, and you WILL see your performance skyrocket. Nutritiming will help you.

I heard that Bolt's height of 6'5" is supposedly bad for sprinting, but I think that was only meant that it was harder for him to get out of the blocks.

Thanks a lot for the advice, I would certainly look into that, but how come you advise 10 reps for 2s up and down? Shouldn't it supposed to be a few reps and lift as fast as possible? Is this actually just for me to get used to the movement first so I don't injure myself and for structural integrity?

I think the guys at the elitetrack forums stand by squats as the primary exercise and regard deadlifts as secondary if I remember correctly. Oh yeah, I just tested out my max back squat today at the gym and I could do 1 rep of 135lbs to parallel and I guess it was with bad form since I leaned forward more than I should and used more lower back to help lift it up in the end.

B1214N said:

Bolt certainly has excellent mechanical advantage for the sprints in terms of leg length, both upper and lower.

As for you, your squat vs pistol performance shows a drastic gap between your structural muscles (which are very good) and your prime movers (which are way, way behind). Don't worry about weight with squats, just learn to squat ATG with an empty bar, and focus more on deadlifts. Your first goal should be a 2x bw deadlift at current BW, and 120 lbs on front squat for 10 reps with 2s up, 2s down per rep. Start with an empty bar and learn form, then add a few lbs at a time and master the weight to where perfect form is not a struggle to maintain during the sets before increasing again. It doesn't matter how long that takes.

Your best performance enhancing drugs are lots of clean food with 60-65% of calories coming from carbs (shoudl be nearly all clean, whole food sources), good sleep, and plenty of water. Seriously. You do that and train properly, and you WILL see your performance skyrocket. Nutritiming will help you.

I heard that Bolt's height of 6'5" is supposedly bad for sprinting, but I think that was only meant that it was harder for him to get out of the blocks.

Thanks a lot for the advice, I would certainly look into that, but how come you advise 10 reps for 2s up and down? Shouldn't it supposed to be a few reps and lift as fast as possible? Is this actually just for me to get used to the movement first so I don't injure myself and for structural integrity?

I think the guys at the elitetrack forums stand by squats as the primary exercise and regard deadlifts as secondary if I remember correctly. Oh yeah, I just tested out my max back squat today at the gym and I could do 1 rep of 135lbs to parallel and I guess it was with bad form since I leaned forward more than I should and used more lower back to help lift it up in the end.

I advise this because your first goal is to build a body that is capable of more productive training. You cannot hope for best success if you don't build a structure that can handle the more serious training. If you do this, your progress will be much faster and safer, and you will go further in the long run.

Well, as for the squats and DL most sprinters lose a lot of time off the blocks and Romanian DL is excellent for getting you off the blocks faster. Squats are immensely important as well, I would say they are equals and that it is a mistake to prioritize them.

Personally, I'd say you should employ a similar approach with both lifts, mastering basics and maintaining current deadlift strength until your foundational work gets to a point where it is a good idea to start working on strength again. Make no mistake, you WILL be getting stronger, but don't think about upping the weight right now. I have a more complete system for this but it is part of the integration of GB and weightlifting and will be the subject of another book, most likely.

You are correct, the idea is to teach your body how to move properly with a reasonably fast tempo squat. You will probably want to start out as slow as you have to, and only speed up when you have mastered a slower tempo. Anyhow, once you master that 2s down, 2s up tempo (perfect movement on all reps of all sets, minimal fatigue) it will be time to phase you into slowly finding your best weight for 4-5 reps. That will be the heaviest weight that allows the same quality of movement. It is very important that everything feels the same... you have to remember that lifting with 200 lbs is a different exercise than lifting with 120 lbs, as an example. You need to take the time to master each new weight, because it is a different and unique exercise. Different neural patterns form because you're recruiting more motor units, and the new ones have to be taught what to do. After a while it gets easier, everything is synchronized and you add a little more weight. Standing up in 2s during an ATG squat with heavy weight is pretty serious business. You keep this up for your entire athletic career.

I would suggest doing this with deadlifts as well, but deadlift is nowhere near as complicated as a squat. Still, I am seeing a lot of benefits from starting over at the beginning in a similar fashion.

Joshua, I understand the importance of working up from slow but perfect form to faster perfect form. I'm working on that with my front squat and deadlift in the same way that you just wrote about. Generally, slow movement tends to make one slow (right?). I don't want to get slower because I practice martial arts and I have two small tourneys in July and August in which I want to wipe out my competition. I practice martial arts a lot, do you think that I will get much/any slower despite all the explosive martial arts?

Patrick, I believe your body will maintain the speed of your kicks even through a cycle of slow squats especially since you practice kicking fast so much. If all you were practicing was slow squats for a month and then came back, maybe it would be a different story.

I have a question. I read everywhere that the PC is needed for jumping high and running fast. But Joshua emphasises the quads a lot more. Is it because most people are imbalanced or do the quads play a larger role than most people think?

Power = speed times strength. The PC is a power exercise (so speed), but to a certain level, working strength will do wonders for power production.

Rik de Kort said:

Power = speed times strength. The PC is a power exercise (so speed), but to a certain level, working strength will do wonders for power production.

I'm sorry I meant posterior chain not power clean.

Patrick Smith said:

Joshua, I understand the importance of working up from slow but perfect form to faster perfect form. I'm working on that with my front squat and deadlift in the same way that you just wrote about. Generally, slow movement tends to make one slow (right?). I don't want to get slower because I practice martial arts and I have two small tourneys in July and August in which I want to wipe out my competition. I practice martial arts a lot, do you think that I will get much/any slower despite all the explosive martial arts?

No. Exclusive practice of slow movements makes you slow. Slow movements as a part of overall training will simply enhance joint stability and allow the explosive movements to become more powerful, as long as you still practice them.

The slow movements we have talked about in PMs are never meant to be done with maximal weight, and they can't BE done with maximal weight because of the endurance nature of the exercise.

Something that everyone forgets is that slow twitch fibers are still pretty quick, and that you can't get rid of them. You NEED to train them as well, and when you have postural muscles that are primarily slow twitch in nature you simply must train them accordingly. Our muscles require a wide range of work because they are all made of a wide range of fibers and motor groups. It is a common mistake to not structure training around the inherent properties of our muscles. This applies regardless of what your sport requires in terms of competitive performance. To say it does not would mean that no one benefits from external rotation work since virtually nothing in life involves active external rotation, or that it's not important to perform strength work when one is an endurance athlete. We know better than that, both on a practical level when proper training is applied and from a fairly extensive body of research.

Alex Chubb said:

Patrick, I believe your body will maintain the speed of your kicks even through a cycle of slow squats especially since you practice kicking fast so much. If all you were practicing was slow squats for a month and then came back, maybe it would be a different story.

I have a question. I read everywhere that the PC is needed for jumping high and running fast. But Joshua emphasises the quads a lot more. Is it because most people are imbalanced or do the quads play a larger role than most people think?

Where did I emphasize quads? You need equal emphasis. For injury prevention, you need to have a minimum of a .6:1 hamstring to quad strength ratio. If you can do a single leg extension with 100 lbs, you NEED to be able to do a single leg curl with 60 lbs, as an absolute minimum. Hamstrings having 80% of quad strength is more ideal, but extremely rare.

You need quads for deceleration in running, and you need them for straight vertical jumping as well as running jumps, also because they work eccentrically and concentrically to help absorb the horizontal force and redirect it into a vertical force.

ATG squats are a much more well-rounded exercise since they use the hip musculature (glutes and inner hip muscles) to a much, much greater extent than parallel squats or above. They also appear to work VMO heavily, which is also necessary for performance and injury prevention.

I am big on deadlifts, in several varieties, and equally big on ATG front squats. Together, if anything, that is a slight bias towards posterior chain.

Edit: For many people this will mean that for a while they need to focus more on posterior chain work, until the desired ratios of strength are reached.

Joshua Naterman said:

Alex Chubb said:

Patrick, I believe your body will maintain the speed of your kicks even through a cycle of slow squats especially since you practice kicking fast so much. If all you were practicing was slow squats for a month and then came back, maybe it would be a different story.

I have a question. I read everywhere that the PC is needed for jumping high and running fast. But Joshua emphasises the quads a lot more. Is it because most people are imbalanced or do the quads play a larger role than most people think?

Where did I emphasize quads? You need equal emphasis. For injury prevention, you need to have a minimum of a .6:1 hamstring to quad strength ratio. If you can do a single leg extension with 100 lbs, you NEED to be able to do a single leg curl with 60 lbs, as an absolute minimum. Hamstrings having 80% of quad strength is more ideal, but extremely rare.

You need quads for deceleration in running, and you need them for straight vertical jumping as well as running jumps, also because they work eccentrically and concentrically to help absorb the horizontal force and redirect it into a vertical force.

ATG squats are a much more well-rounded exercise since they use the hip musculature (glutes and inner hip muscles) to a much, much greater extent than parallel squats or above. They also appear to work VMO heavily, which is also necessary for performance and injury prevention.

I am big on deadlifts, in several varieties, and equally big on ATG front squats. Together, if anything, that is a slight bias towards posterior chain.

Edit: For many people this will mean that for a while they need to focus more on posterior chain work, until the desired ratios of strength are reached.

Thank you! That makes sense. It was different it seemed like you recommend front squats more than the typical "Increase your back squat to jump higher" people. But you are advising for balance with deadlifts. Makes perfect sense.

No problem. I do back squats as well, but I don't worry about them too much. They are kind of like an accessory exercise... my focus is always front squats because you can literally feel the difference when you sprint up stairs after front squats vs back squats. Immensely more power after front squats, assuming you didn't just work to failure.

I noticed that, but I couldn't figure out why. I will continue to work it then! I may get straps for it though. Ring work has made my biceps kind of an obstacle in holding the bar. (Olympic style)

I advise this because your first goal is to build a body that is capable of more productive training. You cannot hope for best success if you don't build a structure that can handle the more serious training. If you do this, your progress will be much faster and safer, and you will go further in the long run.

Well, as for the squats and DL most sprinters lose a lot of time off the blocks and Romanian DL is excellent for getting you off the blocks faster. Squats are immensely important as well, I would say they are equals and that it is a mistake to prioritize them.

Personally, I'd say you should employ a similar approach with both lifts, mastering basics and maintaining current deadlift strength until your foundational work gets to a point where it is a good idea to start working on strength again. Make no mistake, you WILL be getting stronger, but don't think about upping the weight right now. I have a more complete system for this but it is part of the integration of GB and weightlifting and will be the subject of another book, most likely.

You are correct, the idea is to teach your body how to move properly with a reasonably fast tempo squat. You will probably want to start out as slow as you have to, and only speed up when you have mastered a slower tempo. Anyhow, once you master that 2s down, 2s up tempo (perfect movement on all reps of all sets, minimal fatigue) it will be time to phase you into slowly finding your best weight for 4-5 reps. That will be the heaviest weight that allows the same quality of movement. It is very important that everything feels the same... you have to remember that lifting with 200 lbs is a different exercise than lifting with 120 lbs, as an example. You need to take the time to master each new weight, because it is a different and unique exercise. Different neural patterns form because you're recruiting more motor units, and the new ones have to be taught what to do. After a while it gets easier, everything is synchronized and you add a little more weight. Standing up in 2s during an ATG squat with heavy weight is pretty serious business. You keep this up for your entire athletic career.

I would suggest doing this with deadlifts as well, but deadlift is nowhere near as complicated as a squat. Still, I am seeing a lot of benefits from starting over at the beginning in a similar fashion.

Thanks for the helpful explanation.

Something that everyone forgets is that slow twitch fibers are still pretty quick, and that you can't get rid of them. You NEED to train them as well, and when you have postural muscles that are primarily slow twitch in nature you simply must train them accordingly. Our muscles require a wide range of work because they are all made of a wide range of fibers and motor groups. It is a common mistake to not structure training around the inherent properties of our muscles. This applies regardless of what your sport requires in terms of competitive performance. To say it does not would mean that no one benefits from external rotation work since virtually nothing in life involves active external rotation, or that it's not important to perform strength work when one is an endurance athlete. We know better than that, both on a practical level when proper training is applied and from a fairly extensive body of research.

I heard that training your movements/muscles to be fast would also make slow twitch muscle fibers to become faster than they otherwise would if they were trained slow and vice versa for the fast twitch fiber type IIx. I have also heard that the fast twitch type IIa fibers can gradually become either slow twitch type I or fast twitch type IIx depending on the type of training demands. What do you think about these? Is it true?