It’s said that tibial length (height) is an advantage for a sprinter, I don’t know exactly why but it does allow for a longer achilles tendon and my coach reckons it allows quicker turn over.
However, reading a article somewhere on vertical jumping I noticed that it listed long femur length as an advantage for jumping??
Funnily enough one sprinter with a very noticable long femur in comparison to tibial length was also a long jumper - Carl Lewis.
Thoughts??
is it possible that a longer femur would put a long jumper at a mechanical advantage. if you think of the hip as the fulcrum…just a thought
Back in the day’s where exercise had genuine scientists (using Aristotle’s induction method) a basic tenent was that sprinters must posess a long Femur in relation to tibula…Hmm Look at Bolt’s legs 
Tib in relation to Fem? What was the percieved advantage?
If this was a must then Carl Lewis wouldn’t have been as dominant as he was in sprints, and Patrick Johnson wouldn’t have gone sub-10.
If so then why not an advantage for sprinting? A long jump take-off is very similar to a running stride…
Bolts tibia to femur ratio looks fairly normal to me. Both bones look equally long.
Equally long is not normal. The femur is usually significantly longer.
Sorry, I didn’t use very accurate language there. I meant equally long in a relative sense. His femur looks slightly longer than his tibia to me.
I would say his ratio of tibia to femur is slightly higher than normal, but not much.
Images taken from “analyse this”
edit - pics didn’t upload
Check out the picture second from the bottom on page 95 of “analyse this”.
Bolt’s ratio looks relatively normal to me, with his heel reaching around mid-glute level on the follow through.