For a flying 20m/30m… run, is there a difference between hand and electric timing?
Given the difference in absolute accuracy in the laser start/finish for the electric, could the hand time indicate a similar accuracy?? Either timed off the video or in real life.
I ask because I can’t see any difference. If there is any, why?
Big difference. I own an FAT machine! I have never been closer then .2 to what the actual electronic time was in practice. The time I was off by just .20 the guy I was timing had a false start of -.20… I would say Im off by .4 usually but I agree with Charlies conversions of .65, even at closer distances it is usually way off. It IS also a lot different then the hand timing you would get in meets because there is no gun smoke in practice! Keep this in mind also, unless you use a gun in practice. The guns smoke gives timers a huge advantage on recording more accurate hand times. Even with this advantage they are still wrong! Plus you have to take into consideration the wind that day. And also whether you are coming out of a three point stance or a block start. I’ll say it a thousand times!!! You run much faster in a competition then you run in practice. I hate to burst everyones bubble but anyone who thinks there they are running or coaching someone running 6.30e in practice for 60m is probably wrong. At least in this current day and age!
Out of interest, what is that machine called and how much did you pay for it?
Finishlynx React Time unit. If you have ever seen the sensor and the speaker they use in the Olympics this the one they use. I payed 1200 for it! It gives reaction time along with a hypothetical unit of power you pushed off the blocks with. Mine was usually off the scale along with a very fast reaction. It wasn’t uncommon to be under .13-.14 and in the 100,000’s for power. That was in my glory days though. The main thing this product does though is it has an FAT timer which connects to the starter and goes off the bang, so you get a real FAT time. Not something like the speedtrap system that doesn’t account for reaction. For the FAT extension you have to buy the cable though which can be expensive. It takes a while to set up also. I can set it up in about 5-10 minutes which is pretty fast.
Go to products, then finishlynx, then react time, then product overview.
I appreciate your response, however I’m not sure my question was answered.
For the flying 20m run, you start the watch as the runner hits the mark, then stop it as they cross the final mark.
There is no gun or smoke.
Aside from the laser beam accuracy, how is the electronic time going to be different to the hand time?
Human error! Plus your talking flying 20’s. Different bunch of apples.
Think of flying 20’s or 30’s as relays splits. Your already getting a run up. I remember when I was in college we did flying 40yds and almost everyone hit under 4.2. Even the slow guys. I have no idea what a flying 20 FAT would be or how to even convert that from hand time. How much run up are you getting? Maybe if you elaborate I could throw out a number. What was your time?
Cheers.
I have an idea that the human error still can’t be that far out. 0.1sec is a lot but at flying speed it is more than 1m in distance…
Form others experiences, how much slower would the next run have to be, compared to the one or two before, before you would stop them from doing another?
The run up is variable between the athletes, 35-45m. The run up is not an all out powerful accelaration, but a progress up to very fast at the marker.
About 5m before the marker my instructions are to make sure you exerting alot of force on the arm swing downwards, stay relaxed in the shoulders and tick the legs under the body very fast.
At best, my boys range from 1.8’s to 2.1’s for the 20m. We would always run with the direction of the wind on Mondo.
I suppose it is the constant that is of most value- the stopwatch in the same persons hand (me), the conditions in which we run and the value of my eye to access the performance alongside the value of a reading from the watch.
I dont know.
I am a HS official/timer. Almost every meet there would be a time that did not make sense. For instance the third place kid would have 11.2 but the second place kid would be at 11.3. Almost every meet this happened. Thankfully it never happened to the guy I was timing. I’m sure it will though.
Hand times are very unrealiable. If your trying to convert a flying 20 and you don’t know what percentage they were running when they hit the cone then why bother. Its got to be pretty fast. A 1.8 for a 20m cone is very fast, especially if they weren’t at top speed. I’m not doubting that they could do this but its very, very fast. Put it this way, I dont know if my corolla sitting outside could do that. What do they run from blocks anyways, just out of curiousity.
And don’t worry about the times. Your boys will be fine.
I like to time to monitor the fatigue during the session. My eye is really good but just incase I miss something the watch backs it up. It also gives me practise on the watch for the confidence in the accuracy of the real time trials and testing pre-competition.
Over a period of time the watch gives a guide on the improvement. One of the boys has improved from a regular 2.25-30 down to a consistent 2.10’s. Over 12 months this is a measured improvement.
I’m curious about a conversion, however the knowledge that the runner is improving is evidence enough that training is working.
We do some evaluations where a cone is set up every 10m (5/6) and a timed horn goes off for every x.x seconds. Similar to some degree to what Hart does with his tempo work. We like to think that this activity places the athlete in a position to react to external stimulus…short of a racing environment.
Gimmickry, yes. However, when we combine with our timing system, we do get a measure of capability that appears reliable in competition.
Handtiming flying 20’s is going to be basically worthless without some video footage to replay back a few times (which could give you more electronic like splits anyway). The error on those is too great. The timer has to react to the person crossing the first marker and then react to them crossing the second, neither of which they will see head on and lots of guessing on both.
TMSSF what type of timing system do you use. I think you said you had the brower system before.
We did cones at 50% the first 20m then 100% the last 20 meters. This was done as an acceleration drill. It seemed to work wonders for acceleration.
We also did cones to focus more on top speed. The first 20m was used to accelerate up to top speed followed by last 20 meters at 100%…Sometimes in the fashion off in and outs.
There are many ways to set this drill up. I never saw the need to use a very long run up. It seemed to make the drill pointless. If we are gonna use a 35-40m run up why not just do a 60m sprint.
dr.sprint:
Though we use the Brower Timing System occasionally, we use the KMS 4 Gate System for the work session mentioned.
One session we had last week was with some football players attempting to evaluate their 40y ability after 7-8 weeks of specific training. Initially the system was setup with 2 gates at 20 and 40y, respectively. We subsequently added cones at 10y and 30y and set the Chronomix to sound off at half the projected time for each measured segment. The resultant gate times dropped substantially, as was expected. In this setup, you control the stimulus.
Davan:
Concur with your assessment. Whenever we use the Brower system, videotaping must be part of the process. Especially with the short work. Otherwise, we toss the numbers.
TMSSF:
Wow you guys got a lot of goodies out there!
Hand times in practice brings back some good memories though!
I was out training in Virginia once, in the middle of nowhere. Im about to time a world ranked 60m runner. He was hoping to hit 6.4 in this particular practice. I get the time…6.98. He looks up at me, so what was it? Im like uhhhh, my other friend grabs the watch, erases the time, it was a 6.3!!! The world ranked kid jumps about three feet in the air “alright thats what im talking about, dinner’s on me tonight, lets party!” Moral of the story: Sometimes what they don’t know can’t hurt them.
As you know, dr. Sprint, one does as one must to get things rolling! We don’t implement that configuration often. And the athletes must demonstrate during prior sessions, the ability to hold up during instantaneous short speed changes. In addition, the monitoring of fluid and relaxed accelerations is key, as you gentlemen have noted.
I’ve fudged hand times before as well. Particularly on days when the athlete appeared flat. As Charlie stated, “the day you schedule to do something special it could go into the toilet”, or to that effect. However, when the system is setup as mentioned and programmed for 1.1/10y recognition, for example, well they know where they’re at each marker.
The fun occurs when you begin dialing down without their prior knowledge. I’ve witnessed many an out-of-body experience doing this! Talk about summoning up the reserves!
Just to see the forums response, I have been using a “homemade timer” for flying 20’s as I am a one man band of considerable vintage and wanted elec times to establish what my flying 20 times were and also to monitor any improvement as a consequence of training.
My system was simple and inexpensive and arguably accurate.
It consisted of two sets of gates 20m apart across each was stretched a piece of cotton which held closed reed switches to which was connected some telephone cable back to a Dick Smith stop watch . The stop/start buttons of the watch were bridged out so that gate 1 started the watch and gate 2 stopped it
In operation I used a 20m run up trying to achieve near top speed at gate 1 and then trying to achieve max velocity and hold it to gate 2. The only flaw was whether the first cotton
was cut with hand or chest but cotton on 2 was broken by a lunge with the chest.
cost. reed switches $ 4
watch $12
gates $10
cable & reel $20
----
$46 approx(aust)
I usually only did two reps and found the times on each run were always very similar and did show improvement.
Any comments?
I usually only did two reps and found the times on each run were always very similar and did show improvement.
The hand times seem to improve with each run while the FAT times seem to be almost exactly the same. The improvements were in thousandths of a second, within a given practice, not tenths. Week to week, it varied by a tenth. The hand times NEVER showed this as they always improved, week to week, run to run.
Went back and had a look at some old times and they confirm what you say.eg…day one two flying 20’s .032 and .031 day2 six days later .031 and .031.
I suppose the only real benefit of elec timing for flys is that you at least know that you are training at a consistant high intensity and concentrating on improving relaxation at that level and hopefully increasing the distance that you can maintain that speed — thereby improving your speed endurance.As you say any improvement in actual speed will be very marginal.
This being the case hand timing to monitor speed improvment for flying 20’s would seem to be useless and probably only serve to roughly monitor athlete consistancy of effort.