in a 100m race
If you increase your maximum sprinting velocity do you continue to accelerate longer through the race?
If you are very very strong, couldn’t you attain that maxV in a shorter amount of time, thus actually decreasing your “drive phase” and hitting your maxV earlier?(
I’d say generally yes. If we look at sprinters purely based on time (novice-intermediate-subelite-elite), the less advanced the earlier you reach max velocity, on average.
Strength isn’t the only factor in acceleration. If you have good acceleration, you will hit your max v earlier, relatively. Still though, a fast sprinter will take a while to get up to top speed regardless of acceleration ability, but it will just happen relatively earlier.
yeah, davan i see. thanks for your answer!
I think the ideal athlete in 100m would have those attributes ( if you notice any flaws in my thinking process, do point it )
So in theory, this athlete would accelerate pretty damn hard ,but his drive phase would be short and he would attain his “sick” maxV (say for example 40km/h)pretty fast and soon and then due to his superior speed endurance capabilities he would decelerate the slowest.
So we would have a short “drive phase”, a very high maxV, and superior speed endurance/relaxation to carry him with the previously attained velocity through the end .
** sorry for my bad english, it’s not my native language 
Isn’t that what elite 100m athletes are? If you are running sub 10, you must have all of those qualities.
If you have a “sick maximum velocity” you need more time to attain it, which gives you more time to accelerate towards it, which makes your speed endurance demands less and less, i.e., the reverse of what described above. A 11.00 sprinter needs more speed endurances vs. a 10.00 sprinter. Others?
yeah nikoluski that’s what confuses me…
but wouldn’t it be optimal to attain that sick maxV sooner and then have the speed endurance to maintain it as best as possible?
I mean if you have such a great maxV (lets say 43km/h) and you also have a sick rate of change of velocity (that is the acceleration, due to increased relative power), it would take a disproportionate little time to attain that otherwise huge maxV.
Yeap, sorry for my engish and syntax errors 
Why would it take less time to get there? Yeah, you can get to the same speeds faster, but that still doesn’t account for an ever improving max velocity.
It wouldn’t take actually less. I meant that If his acceleration was also perfect (because of his relative strength) it would take a disproportionately little time to attain such a great maxV.
for example if two athletes have the same maxV , the one who has the better acceleration, would reach his maxV faster ,obviously
For an ever improving maxV (alone) yeah, your acceleration would probably lengthen. But if your acceleration also improved concurrently, the drive phase wouldn’t lengthen much at all. (and this is not a bad thing at all, especially if you’ve taken care of your SE)
maurice greene has an “extended drive phase”, watch him run, he keeps his head down for nearly 55 meters. I dont think having extremely good acceleration would cause a need to shorten the drive phase.
The person with stronger acceleration will be able to accelerate LONGER and reach a higher Max V. Charlie has been over this a number of times. The total acceleration will be longer, and the drive phase will be longer. Ben reached his top Max V after a (slightly) longer and less aggressive acceleration.
See the videos of Asafa and Justin running 9.77. Gatlin brings his head up at (it appears) exactly 5.0 seconds into the race. I’ve had the best results doing exactly what Gatlin does.
Athletes able to accelerate longer and reach MaxV later in the race (70-80m for some people) need to depend LESS on speed endurance.
Your initial question was answered earlier, but one aspect should be made more clearly, I think: Yes I’d agree acceleration phase (I don’t use the HSI term drive phase here - I only talk about phase 0m to top speed) will be relatively shorter the more advanced the athlete is, but in fact acceleration phase will get longer in total. A 10.00 guy will reach 10 m/s faster than a 11.00 guy, but he will still accelerate longer, because he’ll go further up above 12 m/s.
I’d doubt anybody can reach 12 m/s before something like 55-65m of acceleration. And That decreases the phase where speed endurance is primary factor.
This topic is very interesting because it leads to the very different requirements for athletes of different levels.
Some numbers (I love numbers for illustration) - simplyfied, just models:
A 11.50s guy will reach top speed (close to 10m/s) at around 40m, probably at 5.40s, manage to keep close to top speed from 40-50 and from 50-100 run more than 5 secs on speed endurance.
A 10.00s guy can reach 10m/s before 25m, proably little after 2.5s of the race (!), but his top speed at around 60m, probably little before 6.50s, manage to keep close to top speed until 70m and run only about 2.5 secs where speed endurance matters most.
Keeping that in mind we can see how important it is to train these 2 athletes in very different ways (most trainers know that, but I’ve come across a lot of >11.00 guys ‘trying’ elite level methods).
Just a simple example: It is one thing to develop a quality of an elite sprinter by making him do 60m meter at full speed, for the 11.50 guy this workout will have completely different effects…maybe it sounds quite commonplace, but I’ve seen a lot of people make mistakes, because they were not aware of this point.