I was just wondering how much technique affects sprint performance, of instance if athlete A is a natural power sprinter but has an awful technique and athlete B is not so talented but has a perfect technique, who would win?
depends by how much for each. Fastest high school sprinter ever had pretty poor technique (J-Mee Samuels, 10.08). No WR sprint form is awful though.
form and technique are very important they allow the individual to fully express their available motor pool. without good technique or form a person will never realize their full potential as motor ability will be wasted or not used at all. its better to ask how great could someone be with improved technique? a person can be fast with bad technique but they will never reach their peak performance without good technique and i dont know about all of you but im intrested in the very best that i can do or the very best that someone else can do not waht they could do with a half assed malformed athletic development.
Technique affects even the rawest form of force development
very true well stated.
The basic fundamentals of good sprint mechanics have to be there to sprint fast. As Charlie states in CFTS, everyone may have their own little idiosyncrasies, but the fundamentals of posture, hip height etc have to be present.
…and force development affects technique ie. triple extention being a specific strength, a technical skill & a product of force application, knee lift as an elastic response to ground contact, etc.
Exactly. It’s a two way street.
…but how much does technique affect performance? Say athlete A improves his technique dramatically and gets it as close to perfect as possible, how much will he improve, 1/10, 2/10, 5/10, 1s?
Obviously technique and increased running economy helps a lot. Problem is it isn’t purely a coordination issue it is also an issue of strength and CNS development. So you have to develop all qualities at the same time to truely reach a high level of technical mastery!
bro with the athlete A thing it would depend on how much is wrong with the technique.
Lets say worst case scenario, poor step over, low knee lift, poor arm leg coordination and flat foot plant. I’m talking about someone who is genetically gifted in terms of muscles and what ever else makes a great sprinter but lacks the technical skill.
“talent” is relative, so is “technical skill”, therefore any improvements made will be relative to the athlete, i.e it is impossible to determine.
your asking a very open ended question, think about it is it answerable? if a great baseball player only had one eye what would there batting average be? samething to many factors to consider, maybe with the help of some advance physics and some chaos theory you could figure it out but then if you could do that you could predict the future.
Fair enough! I thought maybe there was some kind of a study done on the subject.
no but dont be afraid of asking questions. im sorry if i came off sharp, it was a perfectly valid question.
improvements of up 2 1 second have been observed in some cases bt it must b said that technical improvements go hand in hand with strength improvements, for instance a stronger hamstring will help a better stepover or a stronger tensor faciae latae and rectus femoris will help lift the knee higher.
bottom line: ur technique will improve as u get stronger, provided u learn the correct motor program.
Another way to answer your question is thus;
Say an athlete has an energy encelope that they can expand in a 10 to 11 second period.
If however, their firing rates of various muscles is out of timming it will both hinder their speed and their improvement of speed and strength developement from sprinting. for example, some runners have a very forced knee lift whilst others have a relaxed knee lift. If the knee lift is too forced it effects the next action of the stride negatively and sets of a negative rythm, which leads to slower sprint speed and less chance of improvement from the training.
Another person with equall c.n.s power, but with better timming of contractions (think kienesology, spelling?) will more likely improve from the training and go o the next leval in all aspects, energy envelope, c.n.s power, strength etcc… and most of all speed.
I think the differance can be very significant, easily up to 1 second in the 100m , once kienesology timming is improved (both immediate improvement of several tenths of a second) and subsequent improvements in training results leading to 1 second or there-abouts. Typing this felt long winded to me becuase it’s a 2 way street and you’ll go round in circles with the explanation.
Whoever is faster! 
Technique and power are not independent quantities. As a matter of fact, one could argue that technique is simply whatever enables a sprinter to maximally express their power on the track.
There have been plenty of really fast sprinters that had “terrible” technique. Take a look at Bob Hayes. Or Michael Johnson’s low knee lift. On the other hand, if they run fast, is the technique actually terrible? It works for them!
Was their technique poor or was it appropriate for them? Remember, everyone at the time thought that Hayes’ arm action from the blocks was wrong. now they realize that he was on to something ( Lead elbow to the side to shorten the lever)