Professional Mens' 100m Sprinters and their Technical Styles

[DexterDanner]

A thread about 100m male sprinters, past and present, and their different technical styles.

"As sprinting always looks to the untrained eye, as if the gun goes off and you just start running as fast as you possibly can, and the first person to the finish line wins, but that's not what's happening in an athlete's mind. There's a strategy...," Michael Johnson.

So traditionally there's a start phase, drive phase, transition phase, maximum velocity phase, and maintenance of form phase in the 100m. Let's talk about how the great sprinters have used their unique, individual styles to run 100m.

[DexterDanner]

In my opinion, the most technically-proficient 100m sprinter ever is Justin Gatlin.

Like Maurice Greene and Asafa Powell, he can get out of the blocks with a lot of power, and stay low until somewhere between 30-40m, and let's not forget that at this point he's usually ahead of most of his competition. And Like Powell, he then he raises his head slowly while his body unwinds with him, and when he's drving to be upright or is entirley upright, his feet has that Donovan Bailey slapping motion. And then he finishes the race with those long Carl Lewis stirdes, and also Lewis' graceful arm and leg synchronization.

That's just my opinion.

[Marlow]

Re: Professional Mens' 100m Sprinters and their Technical St

So traditionally there's a start phase, drive phase, transition phase, maximum velocity phase, and maintenance of form phase in the 100m. Let's talk about how the great sprinters have used their unique, individual styles to run 100m.

Bob Hayes had one phase - go as fast a possible the whole way . . .
Every time I go to a coaching clinic and the clinician talks about breaking down the phases and 'transitioning' from one to the next, I think about Bob Hayes and the smile he would have had on his face. I'm not knocking technical training in the 100, and we do work on the things I've learned (mostly in the first 20m), but if there ever were a more intuitional activity than sprinting, it would have to be breathing.

[tandfman]

The fact that an activity is intuitional doesn't mean that it can't be technically analyzed. Pulmonologists analyze breathing professionally and there are a lot of emphysema victims who are glad that they do.

And then, of course, there's sex, which I believe more people do intuitionally than sprinting. There are zillions of books out there analyzing the subject in detail, many of them instructional in nature. And lots of people seem very eager to read these books, and some pay good money to consult professionals, in order to improve their performance, even though the activity is quite intuitional.

So why not analyze sprinting? Yes, it's intuitional. So what?

[Smoke]

Intuitional my arse. This is not high school.
At this level if you do not know what youa re doing out there you will lose way more than you win.

In our sport the hot sprinter gets duplicated. The interesting thing about this current phase is we have struck upon something that is universally successful. It is not a eureka moment as much as the evolution of things. Get it half way right and you will be far more consistent and in most cases faster.
What cannot be forgotten is it is a sprint. I have watched a lot of guys get caught up in trying to be right and forget to sprint.