I appreciate this is something brought up in many threads, but I was just wondering if you could give me some advice.
During the 60m/100m race, quite often when starting I am getting to 10m along with the other athletes, then dropping off between 10-30m, before picking up again 30+m.
Do you think this is technique / strength based (I appreciate that you would probably need video evidence to answer this properly)? If so, could you think of common technical problems I could be making?
In terms of strength, I am currently early-20s, and can clean around the 140kg mark, and squat around the 200kg mark, levels which I believe are fairly similar to athletes of my calibre. I have a small amount of experience in plyometrics, but do not do a great deal of these. Are there any specific training / strength drills I could do to improve this portion of my race?
140 is very good and is am excellent level. In comparison i would say week squat imo though this all depends on your height weight and experience you have
Reaction time is subject to objective limits, which are duration of data processing and nerve guidance velocity. This directly depends on genetic predispositions, psychological mobilisation ability and the level of concentration and motivation (see the RT differences found on given athletes between heats and finals, as well as between short sprints and long sprints). It can be affected by nervous fatigue, and indirectly by physical fatigue.
Since starting-blocks have pressure sensors, with equal duration of data processing and nerve guidance velocity, the more powerful sprinter will hit the 100N base sooner. As for power expression on the blocks, there are different profiles: some sprinters whose RT graph curve is very steep but don’t put much pressure like Kim Collins, some other push hard but with a not steep curve like Asafa Powell, some do both as they apply much force in a short time like Olu Fasuba or Marc Burns, some have low force and soft curve like Churandy Martina or Tyson Gay.
Those elements are influenced by physical abilities and in a lesser extent to set position choices (body positions, blocks distance from the line, distance between blocks, blocks angle).
Sensors used by Seiko take in account the pre-pressure on the blocks, hence body weight doesn’t influence the reaction time.
Women have slower RT than men as they are less powerful and tend to take fewer risks than men. As a result of both factors, they are statistically guilty of fewer false starts.
Comparing reaction times achieved during Youth, Junior and Senior World Champs, we can find that the elder categories have shorter RT. How much of experience and power improvement is involved, is still unclear.
Two external factors influence the RT:
It has been shown that sound loudness positively influences RT.
The duration between the “set” command and the gun sound. False starts usually occur before, between and after the 2 concentration peaks. Athletes can be more prone to react at either peak. If you remember 2007 WAF in Stuttgart, most of the guns were fired around 1.5sec after the “set” command, hence between the 2 peaks, leading to a bunch of false starts.
A third one, the distance between the starter and the athlete (sound travel issue) has been erased with the phones behind the blocks in most international meets.
In order to improve your RT, you have to find out which parameter needs to be improved: psychology (concentration and motivation), power, practice (repetitions of reaction to signal).
As for practice from blocks, you can work on reaction to signal with or without opponent (concentration and motivation issue), with gun or other sound (sound loudness factor). However, this eventually leads to nervous and physical fatigue so might actually be counter-productive at some extent. To prevent this, a tip was given by Charlie: bend your waist over, and flick your lead hand at signals. Since the lead hand is the first thing to leave the ground and the only thing think about (first action), you don’t need to always do the whole movement, so that you can practice any time without fatigue.
The two peaks chosen for meets mirror the natural peaks, which occur between 1.2 and 1.6sec for the first one and 2.8 to 3.4sec for the second one, so you should try to test R/Ts between these time frames where possible.
When called to the set position, draw your breath in and hold it till the gun fires. Concentrate only on the lead arm because
thinking about what you will do after the gun, rather than the gun itself, shifts the start from a reaction to a reflex, which can improve R/T by up to a tenth of a second!
Exhaling slowly under pressure after the gun fires increases power capacity out of the blocks.
This doesn’t strike me as a reaction time issue or a strength issue, if you’re getting out to 10m with the others.
The first thing here that I wonder about is… how do you know you’re getting out with the others then dropping behind? This is pretty early to be looking around, which compromises your accel phase. So the first thing I’d change would be to concentrate on your race and not pay attention to others–you can only control yourself–until you get at least 30-40m down the track.
Your problems seem to be in the gray area between the end of the drive and the transition out of the drive. Most people will drive out to 15-20m concentrating on pulling the arms hard, then start to gradually come up, raise you knees…but maintain power. I’m guessing that either you are not driving out far enough, or you are losing something when you start to come up–and you get going again when you get into MaxV.
One type of training you can do is something like 6X20 (not the whole workout), concentrating on driving out ALL THE WAY to 20m.
There are others that work on maintaining power and transition. Charlie’s 60s with acceleration limits are one of these. John Smith has one that is 5X10+4X20+3X30+2X40 with 4 min. Dan Pfaff has one that is 5X3X(10-40). The one I use is 3X5X(20-50, where you start at 20m and go 10m longer each week) with walkback rest.
I’d vary the starting distance as in IKh’s last example. I’d also look into whether you are lifting the head up at that point. If not, I’d look at whether you are strong enough in the hamstring area and add more reverse hyper exercises (you can see this one in CFTS.)