Usain Bolt has the perfect body shape for sprinting success, researchers find

Is this one of those “Bolt is the world record holder, so his body type/training method/achilles length/diet/neck circumference/shoe size/age/IQ/skill at video games/ability to dance/et cetera is the best way to be a sprinter” papers?

Usain looks bigger than 76kg - and Carl didn’t look bigger than 76kg… weird.

Personally i think they are grasping at straws and trying to make an article based on Fluff.

pretty much IMHO, you can always justify something if you work backwards from the result. Wonder where Frankie Fredericks fits? :wink:

Usain is 210 pounds/roughly 95,5 kgs. He said it himself on a British talk show which has been uploaded on youtube. No way Lindord is 76 kgs, either, or Lewis being bigger than Bolt or Linford. Quite a moot study.

Dont see why heat disipation is relevant to a sprinter - 5K and upwards yes. But never seen a sprinter overheat/dehydrate.

Probably a power /weight ratio (rather than total size) + stride length thing.

time to do a scan of his psoas and do a test of his quad tendon stiffness. perhaps that’s his secret to success…

and along came ben johnson and blew all this BS out of the water…if you believe the above stats sign yourself into a hospital quickly!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQEne2ea2bA

I wish both teams had similar changeovers, so we could really compare them properly. Bolt’s finish was clearly stronger, as it always was, but I couldn’t tell how much difference there was for the first 60m or so.

what a bunch of crap

Does anybody know what Bolt’s maximum squat is??

Acording to Carl Lewis’s book- One more victory lap, Carl mentioned that his best racing body weight in 1996 was 185lb, that’s 84kg or 13.2 stones. Bolt really said at that show that his body weight is between 205 and 215lb (93-97kg), 14.5-15.3 stones…

If you order Charlie’s Weights for Speed series (this series is a must in my opinion, and I do have everything), in Part 3 he goes into detail about what’s likely present in the Jamaican weights program- it is fascinating.

Considering the variables, I doubt Usain squats a staggering amount of weight if he squats regularly at all.

Here’s an example of him doing some sketchy hang cleans, but note they are not very heavy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSsiUyMR-gw

^^^^ yeah, I saw in another interview he doesnt like to squat at all, but he feels he must do some

During the beijing run9.69 he basically breathed 8 times…from 30-70m on every other stride then…relaxed in to 100m mark…cant really tell from 0-30m what kind of breathing went down, but he must of breathed at least once at block exit

Fantastic documentary on Usain Bolt last night on Australian TV station SBS. “World’s Fastest Man” chronicled his life up until the 2011 World Champs. Some great footage of Bolt running as a junior and training with Glen Mills.

I wasn’t aware that Mills commenced coaching Bolt after he had run 19.93 as a 17 year old. (And a 45.4 400m!). What an athlete to join your stable! Already a WJ record holder - sub 20s for 200!

Watching a 15 year old Bolt smashing kids 3/4 years his senior in junior sprints was fascinating.

The film showed the great camaraderie in the Mills camp and the respect Bolt has for Mills.

Yohan Blake: 1.8m X 80kg =>RPI 41.77 (well below optimal, according to the article)

Would the researchers like to try again?

Now on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IScGP3b9gUA

Exactly, I call BS. Though, I do believe that short powerful guys have a sprinting advantage up to 60m.

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I believe Usain Bolt has the ideal sprinting body for Usain Bolt. This sounds like a rehash of the biometric analysis of Michael Phelps. Whoever is at the top of the sport at the moment is held out as the theoretical model of what other athletes should emulate (or more appropriately have no hope of emulating, so they might as well just give up now). The chapter in Speed Trap where Charlie describes all of the 100m finalists is a perfect example of this as he explicitly calls attention to the fact that there was no single ideal body type for a top sprinter. He quotes Abraham Lincoln who said the ideal length of a man’s leg was long enough to reach from the crotch to the ground. If light and lean is the ideal body type, why weren’t sports scientists holding Calvin Smith out as the ideal back in the early 80’s after he broke the world record? Or think of the '93 World Championships, where Linford Christie (6’2") and Andre Cason (5’7") went 1, 2 in the 100m.