ive noticed from watching a number of clips of maurice greene that when his in the blocks and in the set position that he technique is very different and distiguishable from everyone elses. i was wondering what it is that he does that is different to the rest of the competition when in the set position??
state what you see as different…
it looks as though his hand spacing is alot wider with bent arms and his hip height seems to be much lower. i was just wondering if anyone could explain why he does this ?
Hand spacing a lot wider? Wider than who? BJ had his the farthest out legally allowed and some others do that as well.
The videos I have seen show him with a fairly normal hip height and joint positions. Can you provide some pictures and/or video to show?
this is a video of him back in 2004 against asafa powell. I think you can see what i mean when you compare it to asafa powells start. if you skip the video and pause it at 2.09 mins into the video!
I think that is just what the arms tend to look like when you space them wide.
Look at BJ: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0nYCO-40MY
Charlie has said these positions require a lot of strength to be able to maintain and accelerate well from. There are some elites that use it, obviously, but I do not know if that is the reason necessarily for their success, rather than just an adjustment made to accomodate their skills.
Remember that Mo is about 5’8", not nearly as strong as Ben in the Gym, and not nearly as tall as Asafa, Usain, or Obikwelu. He could not move his feet up the block like some to get additional block pressure, because the angles would be wrong.
So at times he moved his elbows out (almost like doing pushups) to get his shoulders lower and a bit more leverage out of the blocks.
have you ever watched travis padgett run before? his foot placement is really high up on the block and his even shorter than maurice greene, i think 5 ft 7 ? his start does look kinda wierd! if you watch him in this vid in stockholm you can see he puts his foot half way up the block in lane 8.
that link isn’t giving me anything back
Not that it is only for his front block from what i observed in Monaco last year. It has not always been the case, and it might have change again with his new coach this season.
Ive noticed also that Mark Jelks sometimes does not put his back foot in the blocks at all whilst “on your marks”. When he goes into set, his heel goes into contact with the block, but his toes stay on the floor. This is obviously illegal. I also remember Crawford doing this in the 2005 Worlds.
But why?
My ideas are that they could start to move without affecting RT too much?
Anyone else know?