I’m slipping , I missed it too -
are there drills for this
personally i believe there is no substitute for great training, i now teach athletes to accelerate for 30-40 meters then maintain in the 200, i have found this to allow them to run smooth as well as relax through the entire race.
dazs,
interesting … what are you athletes pr’s?
mr magoo
If you’re running the bend as fast as possible, how can you “lift your hips on the straight to increase stride length while maintaining the same cadence.”?
Personally i find running the whole race all out, effort wise, pointless, if run correctly the bend can be close to flat out whilst not hitting maximal effort. The same goes for being shot out of the bend, it’s really a matter simple physics rather than increased effort. Infact in most of the split breakdowns ive seen for 200m, athletes who increase their effort out of the turn will generally slow up in the 90-110m bracket.
They do okay but I do believe in training the athletes to maintain a good 200
So you have your athletes run flat out for quarters as well?
All the top athletes i have spoken to use some kind of race plan for a 200, which yes does go beyond running on a bend for 110m then in a straight line for 90. It’s simply needed – it’s not 100m so why run it like 100m?
You enter a different set of energy systems at the end of a 200m and just by looking at data you can see how important the final 20m is-- there is often a larger dicrepancy between top athletes and the slower ones here than at any point in the race.
It’s a very subtle race which hasn’t been analysed nearly as much as the 100m or 400m so there and when its toyed around with one can find out some really interesting things …
of course there are strategies for the 400 and i have since revisited my thoughts on strategies for the 200 and think accelerating to 30-40 meters then maintaining is the best way.
Charlie, that’s a fair point, but i’m only going on what im told. I’m not entirely sure what the theory is behind it. So what would you suggest when coming off the curve??
Dazs,
I think the athletes who think too much during the race don’t practice enough. Thats what practice is for. It’s too late to try to worry about certain things once the race has started.
So on that note I do think that a race strategy is in order for the 200m. Lets see we can only sprint at top speed for a little while. But the 200 is longer than a little while. If you waste all your energy trying to run a pr on the curve, you’ll have a hard time maintaining on the straight. Dazed brought up a good point. Which should be an obvious one. You don’t have to go 100% to reach near max. And since you can’t reach your max speed on the curve in the first place, it becomes a waste of energy if you try. Thats where practice comes in. How much energy do I have to expend to run as fast as the curve will let me? If you can run 10.1 in the open, how much energy do you have to use to run, lets say 10.3 - 10.4, in the 1st 100m?
Originally posted by dazs
Of course there are strategies for the 400m, but i don’t think there is much strategy in the 200, i have never used strategy, except leaning into the turn and running inside, but as for slowing down or speeding up at certain, never have i planned it. In the indoor 200 maybe because the turns are tight and can throw you outside. I have toyed around with ways to run the 200 and i have run my best times when running it all out.
I agree that the workouts play a huge role, but I still think a strategy is needed. I don’t think any of the strategies should include slowing down at any point though. The one thing I don’t agree with is the leaning. Well at least a concious effort at leaning. I think your body will lean as much as it needs too, and it’ll do it when it needs to. I’m not sayin you do this or teach it, but i’ve seen guys and girls come out the blocks and right away they start leaning.:o How fast are we goin in the first 20-30m to be leaning in the first place?
By the way my pr is 19.32:D
You must be smooth in the 200m! (One of the guys making the point here is a National Champ) Someone asked, why not accelerate further- out to 45m? It’s unlikely that most sprinters would NOT have reached their max speed limit on the curve before they’d accelerated that far. the block start is relaxed but maximal out to about 35 m for the best and a relaxed run with good speed maintenance will result in a very fast time indeed.
Think back to experiences you’ve seen or heard about- how someone ran a smooth first 200 on the way through to the 400 and ran a PB at 200m. Happens all the time, yet the athlete goes back into the 200 event and can’t even equal the split time because he struggles on the turn and then dies on the straight. How about the 200m in the 1992 Olympics. In the Semi, the eventual winner (name escapes me) ran smooth until the final 20m and shut down- and barely missed the world record! In the final he decided he’d really kill it- and was shocked when he ran well over 20 sec.
wow how things change once you learn more about the sport, attend clinics, and read, thanks everyone.
And it’s in the same place in the 100m and the 400m so no matter how fast you accellerate the fastest 50 is going to be here, what is at stake is how well the drop off in the final 100m is managed. MJ and in todays world Kenteris achieve their times by maximum efficiency. I can’t think of too many athletes who have blasted the curve and run 19 point.
i wouldn’t say mj blasted the curve but i would say he ran out of the blocks hard then maintained.
Michael Johnsons first 100m was in 10.11, yet it was extremely smooth (and slightly below his maximum capability or he could never have finished at almost the same rate for the whole run).
Originally posted by Charlie Francis
How about the 200m in the 1992 Olympics. In the Semi, the eventual winner (name escapes me) ran smooth until the final 20m and shut down- and barely missed the world record! In the final he decided he’d really kill it- and was shocked when he ran well over 20 sec.
Mike Marsh was the guy. Charlie, I heard it the other way around. The semi felt so smooth and easy that he tried to get the same relax feeling in the finals and screwed things up.
That was a great 200m run by Marsh, one of my favourites.
wow. he could have easily went 19.5!
Originally posted by dazs
Treble… your pr is 19.32… well well…Sorry Mr. Johnson i wasn’t aware you posted on charliefrancis.com, i stand, corrected, whatever the gentleman who ran 19.32 says is correct.
I do agree you shouldn’t make a conscious effort to lean into the turn, but during practice you can do drills, such as, “playing the fiddle” and etc to help you lean into the turn. I disagree that if you don’t lean into the turn the centrifugal force will take you out, therefore your body will not naturally lean into the turn enough, especially on indoor surfaces like reno.
Not to dispute anything michael johnson says but this is actually science.
I wasn’t takin anything from the horses mouth. If he said any of the same stuff, it’s just coincedence.
But on the leaning subject, I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t lean at all. I’m saying as you build more speed, your body will start to lean as much as it needs too. Like if you tripped and fell, you’ll put your hands out to break the fall. You didn’t think about it. It’s just a reaction. When your in a car and you go around a corner real fast, you’ll automatically lean the other way so you can stay upright. Kinda like that hind brain stuff that charlie talks about sometimes. If you wanna keep going around the curve your body will lean automatically. Other wise you’d just end up going straight, or just real slow. Leaning more than you have to is another form of energy being wasted. The faster you go the more you’ll lean.