Interested on everyone’s opinon on how an athlete should run bends, that is in 4x100m relays or in the 200m.
What do you get the athlete to do with arms, feet or is it just trying to adopt the same ideas of sprinting in a straight line. Charlie mentioned common injuries with at the transition from the bend to the straight are their methods to limiting these risks?
For 200m athletes is it worthwhile to work on what takes place in the bend specifically or is the time spent on the bend in reps a more useful time to work on things?
Don’t run in the middle of the lane because of the ground loss. But don’t run too close to it, because of the disqualification risk of course, but also because you may loose your concentration and relaxation thinking of it. You shall look ahead, not look the line.
Also, the feet touch-down on the axis is more important than in the straight running, as you may touch the inner line!
Don’t lean your head, shoulder or trunk (like Marion Jones did!!), the centrifugal gravity will do it for you, in relation with your speed.
Avoid runs in the opposite direction, it’s useless…
Also, bend running may be traumatizing, Andre Cason was forced to run 4x1 2nd leg instead of 1st in 1993 due to Achille injury, and Christine Arron didn’t ran 200m in 1998 because of back problems.
I’ll add on to what Pierre said.
One of the most important things to take note of when running the curve, is to make sure your not conciously leaning. Too many people think that leaning into the curve helps them to run the curve better. Marion is a good example. You only lean as much as your body needs to in order to handle the Cent. force. During the first half of the 200 all you should be worrying about is accelerating. You’re not going fast enough in the beginning to lean in the first place. Also, at least in the 200, don’t spend too much time trying to run a pr in the 1st 100m on the curve. It’s not gonna happen. You can get away with it on the 4x1 since you don’t have another 100m to worry about.
