CHarlie talks occasionally about the above mentioned in his posts.
My question is what is the optimal distance?
Is it the same for al sprinters?
What methods are used to determine this distance per runner if it is individual?
He says if the knee is too high it will cause the hip to drop lower. I understand this but how to measure or determine the distances is what perplexes me at this point.
Thanks
I don’t think you can change the distance from your knee to your hip since it is set by the length of your femur.
However, if you are talking about how high to lift the knee, then the point is that at top speed, you don’t want it to go higher than parallel to the ground. Or perhaps more accurately, you don’t want it to go past perpendicular to the body because once you do that, the knee is actually arcing back and up. This can cause the hips to drop and shorten stride length.
I think you may be overanalyzing a bit.
The optimal distance from knee to hip will be different for everyone based mainly on femur length. I think the statement by Charlie was countering the traditional high-knee cue where many coaches bark for high knees or knees up so thighs are parallel to the ground. Often, at top speed, the thigh will not be so high as to be parallel with the ground.
If you really wanted to measure, I suppose you could measure from the bony protrusion of the hip to the end of your knee while in a standing A-Skip position.
thanks to you both for simplifying my complexities.
That helps. Sometimes we all are guilty of thinkin’ too much!
Peace