I’ve heard that sprinting should be a “pushing” action with the quads in the beginning of a race, and then transition into a “pulling” action with the hamstrings near the end. Is this accurate?
I would argue there is a degree of accuracy in that. However, I wouldn’t focus too hard on pulling on the hamstrings as this will leave them susceptible to a strain I think. A more appropriate cue once in maximum velocity is stepping over the opposite knee.
The problem with either description is that it causes too much thought to focus on the horizontal movement of the limbs. This can lead to exaggerated movement in an attempt to consciously feel the pull or push sensation. This can retard to the speed of the limbs and reduce power output.
In truth, the horizontal component of the limb movements should happen so quickly that you’re not really aware of it. Just focus on stepping over and down, from the first step to the last. Don’t worry about driving then transitioning to lift, etc. Just step down. Ideally, you should only be aware of the up and down movement of your arms and legs. It almost feels like your just stamping your feet up and down. It’s kind of hard to explain without hands on coaching.
Thanks for the advice. I’ll try steping over and down as my primary cue and see if it helps. Up to now I’ve been focusing on driving my arms.
But does anyone know the relative degree to which the quads and hamstrings are used in the 100m? This would help me understand what areas of my body I should focus on working out.
You got it.
Too much thinking with this method.
Certainly this can’t be too much thinking for a coach as they should be on top of what they might be looking at with a particular athlete.
For the athlete, get a good coach that can look, ‘think’ and then prescribe for you. The athlete should mostly be doing rather than thinking.
This gets back to a point I’ve made several times. There is often a big difference between what a coach sees and what the athlete feels. That’s why whenever we talk about sprint technique we need to specify which perspective we’re coming from. It’s important for the coach to know what the technique should feel like in order to use the proper cues.
I think the big problem is when coaches use cues that too closely match the external movement of the technique rather than the internal sensation. If you read Speed Trap Charlie describes the difficulty he had when his athletes began to exceed his own previous performance levels because he couldn’t rely on first hand knowledge of what it feels like when communicating with them.
My advice is not to focus on anything. The relative contribution of the hams and quads will take care of itself in the sprinting. As far as the supplemental strength training, just keep it general and work the legs in a balanced manner with exercises that use all the muscles at once (i.e. squats, deadlift) and let the stimulus from the sprinting take care of developing the specific power ratios. If you keep things balanced from the beginning you won’t have to worry about correcting imbalances down the road.
I think problems arise when people focus too much on trying to achieve specific strength ratios. Such ratios can only be observed in exercises that are not specific to sprinting, so I’m not sure what relevance they have, and more likely than not, they will lead to strength imbalances or overtraining of certain muscles. For example, if someone reads that the hamstrings are relatively more important to sprinting than the quads, he might perform a lot of hamstring work in the weight room on top of the sprinting and just end up overtraining them.
Are you referring to coach or athlete?