heres full extension
Quick as in time! Of course, you might be saying the same thing.I
Interesting pic X-Man. I thought maybe it is a Marion Jones thing so i tried to find some more pictures on her the net. The best i could manage are at Advantage Atheltics. They are not the best pictures on that site but having viewed them i have noticed a trend. Obviously the No. of samples is low but from viewing all the sequences:
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The male 100m sprinters seem to lift short of full extension (Coby Miller seems to be the major exception).
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The Female sprinters seem to reach full extension.
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Both male and female athletes seem to reach full extension in the longer sprints (400m).
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In the cases where the athletes reach full extension the knee lift is significantly lower.
Some points to discuss:
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Is the greater extension making up for a lack of hamstring/hip-extension strength? Women seem to have this weakness and in the case of the 400m runners does the make up of the hamstrings (more fast twitch) mean they fatigue earlier than the knee extensors putting 400m runners in a quad dominant situation?
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Is speed the determining factor?
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In the 400m cases is it more efficient to distribute the force over longer ground contacts? More than likely i would have said as a large portion of the stride is recovery and the 400m is all about efficient use of energy. A higher % of each stride that is spent putting force into the ground would seem more efficient.
Alan.
You have to remember that the pics and videos are not from high resolution cameras and don’t have a great number of frames per second.