My videos

[AngelaCoon]

@stylee

//youtu.be/y5az-ne37H0

Here’s me finishing dead last in a 100 heat. I’m the white guy in white in lane 2. Race starts 13 seconds in.

I should not have run, as I had a pretty intense tightness on the back/inside of my left knee and didn’t feel like I could stretch my stride out at all. That pain has been coming in and out for the past month but got really bad on the day of this meet, after the 4x1 relay. I was thinking about scratching but said “Screw it, let’s see.” Unsurprisingly, it went terribly. I feel like my stride was super choppy and I was very tense up top.

I think it’s obvious here that my knee lift is abysmal and I’m not sure how to address it best. The whole thing was exacerbated, I think, by the knee tightness limiting flexibility/range. But I’ve also just generally had poor knee lift this whole season, my first coming back to real competition after a long break.

Any thoughts? I was really hoping to go sub11 this year but with only one meet left and that performance, it looks like that won’t happen. I’d love to be able to open up my stride some more though, and hopefully build something for next year. I know that we shouldn’t consciously focus on lifting knees while running. Is knee lift/stride length ALL a result of force into the ground carrying you higher/farther, or does flexibility have a role too?

Wow! Stylee, You have drawn a ton of conclusions based on one race? One month. Oh, I also noted you said " after a long break". ? Ummm,
Long break + sprinting = not much of a problem for recreational stuff.
Long break + sprinting + high expectations + performance higher than before = highly unlikely / almost never
" There are no miracles in sport" = coach Charlie Francis
You were tight. So what. Means you are doing something.
Do you know anything you can do to address tightness?
Here is a list.

1. sleep needs to be " a lot " . Are you recovering from the work you are doing?
2. how methodical is the training? You can 't catch up on the training that you lost taking a break. You need to factor the break into your goals and accept that as a choice you made for what ever reason and plan for different moving forward.
3. If someone knowledgeable were coaching you ( I would not have allowed you to run) likely they would have said " it’s not worth it". Injuries increase in frequency when we decide tightness does not matter. The body is talking to you and you decided not to listen.
4. How many types of therapy do you do for yourself ? How frequently do you practice regeneration? Do you understand the difference between regeneration and active regeneration?
5. RELAX = yup. I am the expert there cause I am so not very relaxed EVER. You likely are not or were not tight before that race just because you may not know how to relax but take it easy… you have not blown all your goals today or the other day unless you quit and you are just getting started.
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   How about you do not draw any more conclusions regarding your last experience and say " hey, my start was pretty good ". Cause it was. And I bet by now it’s even better. And also that you are where you are and you need to address some issues about how to move ahead?
   Tightness will be a possible result of having a break or ( long or longer break) Consistency of training is critical especially when you are doing high muscular demand work and … when looking for performance it is not usually very compatible with ideal training to take breaks.