Asafa at Pre

Surprised that no one has commented on Powell’s run today. What is so shocking to me is that he is getting beat out of the blocks by guys he normally leaves 3m behind by 40-50m. I know that he is coming off of an injury and needs some races but something is obviously not right with his preparation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDsXP48PAwY

Its a decent run, it doesnt look like theres anything technically wrong but the power from each stride is lacking severly. If you compare that to his 9.74 in rieti totally different runs. But he ran through the line and is getting better. So lets hope for the world champs hell be ready.

Yea It looks like he wasnt trying to hard out of the blocks.

He’s coming off an ankle injury and apparently still can’t push properly during acceleration.

Dix almost fell on his face at the start. I think his hand placement is too wide for his strength levels. He has also changed his front foot from left to right, and his back foot is now much closer (probably even too close) to the start line than it used to be. His left foot used to be way back and his left leg almost straight in the set position, which I think greatly contributed to his relatively slow starts. He now seems to have gone to the opposite extreme, with his feet close together and much nearer to the line and his hand placement extremely wide.

Surely he would be better off resting and getting healthy?

Agreed on the hand spacing. There seems to be a trend of guys going with too wide of a spacing that does not, apparently, reflect their strength/power levels.

Maybe he needs the dollars…

Is it just me or does Asafa look much heavier, especially up top, than he was even in February of this year? Perhaps a reflection of the injury (maybe more serious than reported) causing him to miss a substantial portion of track time?

i think asafa looked pretty relaxed throughout, he will be ready by world champs time imo ! michael rodgers looked pretty good, does anyone have any info on him if the type of training has changed this year?

he may have run to try and get a confidence boost tht he can race on his ankle without any pain?
just a thoughtt

I heard he he has been doing more over distance type work this winter.

I had a lower leg injury last year and wasn’t able to sprint for 4-5 months once I was able to sprint it didn’t allow me to go all out in gpp/spp. I wasn’t able to sprint all out until the beginning of indoor, it took most of the indoor season for me to get going, Powell is probably going through something very similar with his injury.

IMO Asafa Powell transition and finish look fine or similar to past performances.

With the injury it makes sense that it would affect his acceleration capabilities the most because the contact times are the longest.

What is disturbing though in trying to interpret his performance or the MVP camp is Frater’s performance because they seem to be behind compared to other season at this time of the year. It still early in the season though so we soon see how this plays out.

Yes. Everyone didn’t sprain their ankle.

It’s the Nike meet and he’d be expected to show up.

But can he ever get fit this season if he doesn’t take the recovery time his body needs?

Obviously he is not faking it. The ankcl is not 100% and it is bothering him. He keeps saying the ankle’s fine (so he can get paid?) but it isn’t.

I’m not entirely sure Nike cares much at this point and I’m sure he’d be nervous to cross them. If he had been willing to he would have stayed out of the Penn Relays meet