The New Science of Speed Training For Athletes w/ Exercise Scientist Dr. Ken Clark

Can you walk us through in like the the easiest way to to figure out how people actually run fast?

Olympic golden medalists, you know, division one collegiate track and field athlete. This is the track and field model. This is the way that our really elite sprinters run and that that's the correct way to do it. And that anything that's not that is not as optimal. It's not as good.

Your paper that I've read about sprinting at max velocity actually increases your rate of acceleration. If you're, you know, whatever lacrosse player, football player, maybe acceleration is the most important thing. But hey, you better have a pretty darn good max velocity. And if you're a 400, a 400 meter runner, well, yeah, speed endurance is going to be huge. But you're not going to be an elite 400 meter runner if your max velocity is not here.

How would that week look? Would you be doing a resisted sprint day on one day and then how many how many days off till they would do like their flies like?

Excel day would be Monday or is Wednesday recovery day, some some sort of fitness, speed endurance, whatever. Friday and then Saturday we're going to go over how you can actually run fast and we're going to start right now. We were privileged enough to sit down with one of the greatest sprint researchers on the planet in the entire world, Dr. Ken Clark. Dr. Clark goes into all things around how do you actually run fast? What can you do in your training? What are you looking at from a biomechanics perspective to increase that overall impulse so that you can get down the track faster or run faster out on the field or anything along those lines. We even cover practicality like training specifics, what you can do on a hill, what you can do with your starts, all of these different aspects. Genuinely, this is the longest podcast I ever remember doing. This is the most amount of notes I've ever taken. Please buckle down, take those notes, and get ready to get faster.

My my biggest question right off the bat that I think could be, and we'll just we'll just start rolling that that might be applicable for people to understand speed is like one, they might think, how do people actually run fast? But then, how do different types of people run fast? So, if we're looking at like the the quadrant um method of how James Wild breaks it down or how you've broken it down where you looked at high-speed track athletes versus low speed track athletes versus team sport athletes, can you walk us through and like the the easiest way to to figure out how people actually run fast?

Yeah. Uh, it's a great question and I think one that's uh fun to discuss. I know it kind of includes my own thoughts and how they've evolved over the last decade because I think it's really changed from 2015 when I was first finishing up my PhD till now where I currently you know, kind of uh 10 years away from that and also kind of back in the real world, if you will, out of the lab onto the track and kind of more working with athletes and seeing like, okay, well, how have my thoughts stayed the same versus how have they changed over that time period.

So, I think when I finished up my my PhD at at Southern Methodist University and we had, you know, a lot of athletes testing with us, you know, um Olympic gold medalists, uh, you know, division one collegiate track and field athletes, division one all the way down to division three team sport athletes, soccer, lacrosse, you name it. Um, I kind of got in the frame of mind of, okay, well, this is the track and field model. This is the way that our really elite sprinters run and that that's the correct way to do it. And that anything that's not that is not as optimal, is not as good basically. And so, you know, the the sprinters are going to display this classic upright posture and high knee lift and um all the things that we know from, you know, that Asafa Powell model. Call it whatever else you want. And that anything that is not looked like that probably needs to be corrected or if that's what team sport athletes are doing that maybe that's limiting them from running as fast as they could and you know, we we had some data that supported that for sure, data and videos and a lot of those videos that went viral out of that lab and probably that I use those videos even upwards of three or four years ago uh even in my own content and it was just kind of like the classic, okay, well, here's a sprinter on the left and here's a team sport athlete on the right and look at the sprinter's posture and front side mechanics and look at, you know, green circle all of that and then red X this team sport athlete on the right that has the the big backside loop and a front side kick out, a cast out and, you know, and um what we've gotten kind of into with our more recent research is definitely a lot more of a of a spectrum and of a gray area uh, such as like, well, there's you know, definitely ways that maybe sprinters uh more classically demonstrate, but even within the elite sprint community, you're going to see some athletes that stick to that kind of Asafa Powell more. And then there's some that stick to that a little bit less. Like even within the women's elite sprinters, like if you look at Sha like she's very upright, front side, high knee lift. And then if you look at like SAFP, like Shelanne Fraser Price, like she has lower knee lift, like, you know, a little bit more backside, a little squattier. So, two female sprinters, both of whom are extremely elite, of relatively similar builds that demonstrate actually pretty different mechanics, at least to a certain extent. And you can say the same thing on the on the men's side of it, right? There's just going to be guys that are a little bit more upright, front side, etc., and and guys who are not um all of which are, you know, kind of in that metal contention. And so I think even within track and field athletes, I start to when I as I was getting out of the lab, I started to say, well, look, there's actually a fair amount of bandwidth, a fair amount of variation within this track and field model. And then you go over to team sports and okay, well, there's definitely some fast team sport athletes. Like if you look at NFL wide receivers, especially the ones that have a little bit more of that sprinter background, yeah, they're they're going to be maybe demonstrating a little bit more of that kind of classic track and field model, but you're going to see plenty of athletes that are running 22 miles an hour plus on the field that are a little bit lower hips, a little bit more backside, a little bit longer on the ground, that sort of thing. So it just became pretty clear to me over the last decade and especially within the last three to five years like, okay, well, there's um different models for getting it done, different roads lead to Rome and there's a lot of bandwidth within, you know, even like a track and field model that sort of thing. So that's kind of where I like to start the discussion, like how how my own views have changed from 2014, 2015 to kind of like the present time.

So, what do you see then as like the non-negotiables between the models that are like very consistent of someone who, even if this individual has longer ground contact right, versus somebody who has shorter ground contact? What are like the like two, three, four things that you're like, "All right, these are the consistent aspects that always point towards this person."

Yeah, great great question. In fact, probably the best follow-up question to that answer is like, okay, well, if there's variation, but then what next? Like, where shouldn't there be variation? So, I think like ground contact, so how far out it is in front of the the hips, I mean, yeah, some athletes might strike out a little bit further in front, but you're not going to see too many super fast people at top speed strike like way out in front of themselves, like 40 centimeters. Like it probably has to be within a foot, give or take, of the center of mass, like 30 centimeters on the ball of the foot. I mean, it's just not going to be too many elite sprinters that heel strike. You're just not going to see it under non-fatigued conditions. So when people are running and they're and they're not fatigued, they're going to be on the ball of the foot pretty close to the center of mass. Uh, to clarify, it's impossible at top speed to strike like directly under your hips, but just like a little bit out in front of your center of mass. And then I think, you know, the knee lift, you are going to see variations on how much knee lift people get. Some really people have a lot of knee lift, some, you know, some have a little bit less, but how fast the thigh reverses after toe off. So, in other words, I guess this is one place that's evolved for me is like, okay, obviously the thigh is going to be extended behind the body at toe off, but what you don't want to see is it really linger for like a long time behind the body before it reverses and comes forward. So, it's got to have like a pretty quick reversal after toe off. That's kind of a nonnegotiable. So even though there's going to be some like backside action, like the thighs got to reverse pretty quickly after toe off and start making its way towards the front side. Um, and then when you when you look at like, I guess posture and pelvis, certainly I see a little bit more postural and pelvic variation than maybe I was thinking when I came out of the lab. I still don't think you're going to see like tons and tons of people that are um on a net basis extremely anterior tilted. You're going to see some that clearly have anterior tilt during certain points of the gate cycle, but I think like overall being relatively more neutral is going to be a good a good thing kind of on a on a net basis, I would say.

So, when you're talking about the ground contact relative to the to the center of mass and you're you're like, "All right, somebody no matter what, they're going to ground in front of Yeah. of the center of mass." 30 centimeters. What's the closest that you've seen?

Yeah, it's a it's a good point to clarify because I think uh like a lot of times in a whatever whether it's social media or just common coaching cues, it's like strike right underneath your hips or right under you at initial contact, which I actually think is a good coaching cue, like as a thing to say. That's a good thing to say actually because for athletes, that's easily easy to conceptualize, like, okay, strike underneath myself. It doesn't actually happen from like a biomechanical standpoint. Typically people go land, people land. So 30 centimeters is like 12 inches, is is one foot, basically. So like one foot length, if you will, anywhere like 20 to 40 centimeters in that ballpark is good. If you see people just like sticking their foot, like jamming their foot, like way out in front of them at initial contact and sometimes that's accompanied by like a a midfoot or a rear foot contact, that's that's probably um problematic from a top speed standpoint, probably not what you want to see.

I was just thinking about Jaden even Jaden Stewart's one of our runners. When you see someone with a running back, actually when you see someone with that high back leg, like a field I feel like you see this pretty prevalent with field sport athletes. With what do you, even though he's still fast, it's it still comes back to the thigh speed reversing forward off of that.

Yeah. So, um, probably a guy who's a little bit longer on the ground. Uh, I don't know, just cuz he said he's a running back. Maybe he's a squattier build. I don't know that for sure, but sometimes it goes with that.

And so maybe it just means he's pushing a little bit longer on the on the back side and so his his leg is just a little bit further back behind him during ground contact. And so something just like Qin, okay, you know, as soon as he's contacted the ground, trying to get the leg forward again or like a little bit of a tighter fold maybe during ground, sorry, during the swing phase, maybe would help with that. Um, but, you know, it's it's probably again, we I know we're going to talk about this, like track and field versus team sport kind of models, that may be just kind of like the model where he's in and we're really just trying to make it not too excessive for him. So something along those lines. I'm not sure if I answered your question, but.

No, I I think that does. I think that's where it's like even coming back then, I guess I'm trying to think through when you're when you're looking at these different models and you're looking at a a sprinter versus a field-based athlete or even, I don't know if you see anything with gender differences as well, but.

If if you if you see like um, I'm I'm almost trying to think through like someone who is running fast, is it more so the fact that they are their hip is responsible for coming forward and then coming back down? Is it something that like what what do you think is more important for athletes to focus on in development? Is it the hip or is it the?

Right, ground up or hip down, basically? So, yeah, another great question.

I think you can kind of look at it either way. Uh, I was doing a coach inservice about a month ago and I said, "Well, if you're if you're watching video, you can either look top down or bottom up, but choose one. You can't like take it all in, right?" So, just pick an approach and go with it, top down or bottom up. I'd say if you're thinking about it bottom up and let's take your running back example for a second. I don't know, maybe he's got an ankle that yields too much and he's really collapsing during ground contact. And so that's causing him to need to stay on the ground longer to get like the requisite impulse, vertical impulse. And so that is causing him to really push off far behind him to over push. And so because of that, now he's kind of got his foot and his leg like way way back behind his hips at takeoff. And so that's getting him into like this long recovery. So maybe it is a foot, ankle, you know, issue where if you kind of give him the appropriate levels of stiffness and have him be able to better handle ground contact, that actually that's going to clean up the leg cycle that you could look at it that way from like a bottom up approach where maybe, okay, it is something foot, ankle, you clean that up and it cleans up the rest of the cycle. Or if you're taking like a top down approach, maybe you'd say, "Okay, well, if you're looking at what he's doing from a thigh recovery mechanics, say, well, he just needs to just speed up like essentially how quickly it's reversing after he gets off the ground." And without, you know, looking at this athlete and without like watching video, I couldn't answer that question. But those would be the two different ways you could approach it, I would say. So look at okay, ground up, what's going on and maybe start with the foot and ankle and see if that's like checking the boxes or kind of look at what's going down, hip down and saying, "Well, is this reversing at the appropriate time uh after toe off?"

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Okay. If you're looking at field sports, I want I want I was thinking about when if we're out at like the football field, right? And you're you're looking at let's say your best your best track athletes versus your fastest football players.

When they're grounding, do you see any difference like first grounding position on where their their swing leg would be, their knee relationship, their thigh relationship that that would be like a very telling difference between that those type of models?

So, and this is the crazy thing about the these two uh papers we published in 2024 and 2025 where we looked at um college track and field athletes and and team sport athletes, all males, although we have a similar data set on females that we're analyzing.

So, and I'll just take you through the whole story and then I'll come back and answer your question.

So, like our original hypothesis was that okay, track and field athletes will be faster. It was like kind of a no-brainer, we thought. And that they would also like display more front side mechanics, you know, everything that goes along with the track and field model. So, the interesting result that was a little bit counter to our hypothesis was that so we had like fast track and field athletes and and you've already alluded to this and we had like what we deem slower track and field athletes and we had fast team sport athletes and slow team sport athletes. Basically, the slow track and field athletes and the fast team sport athletes in our sample at least ran at the same speeds but with different mechanics. So, that was surprising because kind of coming out of the lab 10 years ago, I'd be like, well, no, these guys got better mechanics. They're they're going to be faster because of their mechanics. And what like immediately opened our eyes, and we tried to slice the data every other way, but the data was just telling us one thing. It was like, no, these team sport athletes, they're more backside, lower knee lift, they're landing a little bit further out in front of them. Their swing leg, to your answer your question, is further behind them. Whereas the track athletes, you know, their knees are a little bit closer together. They're landed a little bit further underneath them, but their but their speeds were the same that that slow track athlete group and the and the fast team sport group. So, it was interesting trying to tease out the the cause and effect and the the conclusion we came to out of the study and then I'll just directly answer your question is, well, hey, it's it's not that mechanics aren't important, but it's like we have to kind of um interpret the relationship between mechanics and speed with a little bit of a grain of salt. Still very important to work on mechanics. Maybe just as important from an injury uh and a soft tissue standpoint as it is like a direct effect on improving speed. Still something like as a coach that I work on all the time with our athletes, we both team sport and track and field, but like just a little bit of like a, hey, you know, if you see somebody with good mechanics, does it necessarily mean they're going to be faster than somebody whose mechanics are like a little bit more backside? And we had to essentially, you know, challenge that just internally within our own results. Um, coming back to your question, if you take like a track and field athlete and a team sport athlete, whether or not they're the same speed or or not, like the track and field athlete is probably going to have a little bit more upright posture, a little bit higher knee lift, land a little bit more underneath them, maybe land a little bit more on the ball of their foot. Team sport athletes going to, you know, maybe have a little bit more trunk lean and anterior tilt, maybe land a little bit more out in front, a little bit more flat foot, a little bit more on the ground, that sort of thing. So, um, you know, I I think it's, uh, I I think it's interesting to think of like, okay, does my athlete, if this is a team sport athlete, do do they run fast this way and whether and should we make a change with their current mechanics? And still in a large number of cases, I'm like, "Yeah, we still want to work on this athlete's mechanics, but maybe it's for the reason of saying, "Hey, this guy's already running fast, but we need to make sure that they can run fast, safe, and all the time basically." So that that has become kind of my why as far as working on mechanics with team sport athletes. So, it's like, hey, he may be able to run a 4.5 40 and run it, you know, whatever, 21, 22 miles an hour, but we need to make sure that he's able to do that like all the time and make sure that he's doing that in a safe manner and when he gets fatigued that maybe his mechanics are still pretty clean, that sort of thing.

So, in that case, what would the what would be the movement in those mechanics of a field sport athlete that would make them more prone to injury?

Yeah, I think that all the evidence, and this isn't my research, but those of Jordan Menaguchi and and his colleagues, you know, it's still the anterior pelvic tilt. It's still the, you know, the extra um touchdown distance. It's still having to kind of kind of casting out and then landing at too far out in front and having to essentially pull the center of mass over the foot during ground contact. So the late swing phase, early stance phase, but uh all of those same, you know, um all all those same I think issues are at play here. And so just trying to work on, as Jordan says, not me, but both the hardware and the software. So the the hardware being, you know, kind of the physical limitations, whether that's flexibility, mobility, uh, that sort of thing, and then the software being the the motor programs or the technique elements and just trying to trying to address both of those. But but certainly I think, you know, you could see a track athlete and a team sport athlete running with different mechanics at the same speed. But you'd still say, "Hey, it's it's desirable to get that team sport athlete to run a little bit more like that track model, if only for like an injury resiliency and a soft tissue standpoint, if nothing else, that sort of thing." So.

Okay.

Is that anterior pelvic tilt, is that more of like a like software versus hardware thing? Cuz I feel like I I'm built similarly where I have a big anterior tilt. We've talked about this actually for myself with the hamstrings and whatnot. Is that something you have to like coach more or is that more with like, hey, like we have an issue strengthwise?

Yeah, great great question. I mean, I think it's it's probably both, which is such a copout of an answer, but I mean, I think there are athletes that are just built like that, right?

Yes.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, I was a small college running back and I'm a short squatty body, right? Just built that same exact way, just like, you know, in anterior tilt like all of the time basically and getting up into a good top speed running position was uh, you know, that was a challenge my entire athletic career 25 years ago trying to find those positions. But I think it is something you're probably trying to address, you know, in the in the weight room, in the AT room, anywhere you can off the track and then still trying to queue it, coach it on the track, on the turf, whatever, that that sort of thing. For some athletes, I feel like they just depending on their level of training from a speed standpoint, they just can't feel that to a certain extent at first and then there there's certain times where like it clicks at least a little bit, like, oh, okay, well, that's where I need to that's where I need to be. So, it's definitely a it's not a one and done like short-term fix though.

Here's the cue, it's fixed.

Exactly. Right. You know. Yeah. For for sure. So, I know like with one athlete I'm working with uh on the on the track team this year and he's kind of even though he's a track athlete, but he's an overstrider, like a long in the back, long in the front, a little bit more rear foot type of guy. He's fast, but like just with mechanics that need a little bit cleaning up and I mean, it is a gradual process. It's just been like the whole fall just trying to like get a little bit more.

Baby steps.

Yeah. Right. And it's incrementally improving to be sure, but it's like, yeah, it's it's definitely not a one and done like, okay, here's this.

Tons of ab wheel in your future.

Yeah.

If if you take if you take running at max velocity, this is sorry, legend, I'm going off the anterior pelvic tilt because I'm trying to think about the the grounding of the center of mass. If we're testing like a flying 10, right? And we're looking at the footage after flying 10s and we're trying to see what they're how to improve this aspect. If we're seeing uh someone grounding and their their center of mass is good, what I mean, maybe what happens with that or they're grounding 30 cm in front? What is happening from the time that foot grounds until it picks up? Can you walk us through like?

I guess that would be the kinetics of it.

Yeah. And like walk us through what is actually happening from a physical perspective so that people can.

I think hear and almost paint that image and then we can go into that collision with the ground and how people can improve that.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So I guess just to make it a little bit easier to digest uh visually. So like so 30 centimeters is just you know, roughly one foot length, give or take, right? Right? So, if you're watching an athlete run and their center mass should be slightly out in front of their belly button when they land and so their foot, whatever part of the foot contacts the ground should be roughly one of that athlete's own foot lengths in front of that, right? And if it's too much more than that, then that's probably a little bit overstriding to make that that part of it just a little bit simpler. So, they should hopefully be landing on the on the ball of the foot, right? Obviously, you're going to see some that are um, you know, really flat foot striking or rear foot striking. Clearly, that's not ideal. You will see some athletes that like really are planter flexed upon touchdown and like toe strike. So that's a different challenge which we can talk about as well. Um, but so let's just say, you know, that in a good scenario, they land on the ball of the foot. So, there's going to be some amortization where the heel drops a little bit for some athletes, even the best of the best, like Usain Bolt, you'll see some foot strikes where, you know, his heel comes down and and touches the ground and that's okay. You'll see within athlete variation from step to step where like on some steps the heel does touch the ground, on others it doesn't. Maybe there's a right to left asymmetry. All of that and this is again one place where my head has evolved over the last 10 years. Like all of that step-to-step variation is probably somewhat natural. You're going to, you know, you're going to see that heel, I think, collapse a little bit or or lower towards the ground a little bit. What I don't want to see in very unscientific terms is you just don't want to see that thing like mush into the ground, right? Like if that athlete contacts the ground and the foot is like to to use bad sound effects.

Yeah, that's good.

That's problematic. So, you know, it it could mean that, you know, they don't have if you don't want to use the word stiff, optimal stiffness, but they don't have control over that ground contact. It's an out of control contact. Or like on the on the other side of things, especially team sport athletes, like football players, you don't want to see heavy feet where they're just and and everyone knows that, but where they're just landing like flat-footed and it's just like this, you know, they're they're not landing ball foot under control. So, from a vertical force standpoint, if they really have um uh a a good swing phase, a good end of swing phase, they're able to, you know, have a pretty high velocity of the foot and the lower limb coming into ground contact. They should be able to deliver a lot of vertical force early in that ground contact phase. And this is going back to some of my doctoral lab work. So within the first 30 milliseconds, so within the first 0.03 seconds, there's upwards of three, four, even five times body weight of force. And that's kind of where all our our research was focused. Like the best sprinters are delivering a lot of force a really early on in under ground contact. Um, and then, you know, as the center of mass starts to travel over the body. So, like right in the middle of ground contact. Um, that is when the foot is going to be relatively uh flatter and, you know, there is going to be some bend at the ankle and knee. I think um a lot of times people, you know, hear the term like well stiff ground contact and and interpret that as you're not going to see any flexion at the ankle and knee. Well, clearly there's going to be like some amount of flexion at the ankle and the knee. We're not running on pogo sticks, right? But so there's going to be some flexion at mid stance. And then as the center of mass um travels during the second half of ground contact, uh, then you're going to see basically um the leg starts to extend and that's when you're into propulsive ground uh uh horizontal forces. So, let me take that back for a second. When the land foot's out uh when the foot lands out in front of the center mass, you're getting breaking horizontal forces and we talked about this a little bit uh with less and I don't know, I'm not sure if you did as well. Those are going to be in some cases pretty large, even for good sprinters. And then when you get in the second half of ground contact when the center of mass is in front of the foot, you're getting propulsive ground forces that are kind of horizontal forces that are accelerating you into the next step. Um, at top speed, those braking and propulsive horizontal forces are going to be essentially equivalent when you're upwards at 40, 50 meters, something like that. That's kind of the definition of you reach your top speed, when the when the braking and propulsive impulses are are essentially equivalent. The vertical forces are going to be uh very large during the first part of that ground contact. So, um.

Fire away.

Well, I'm just seeing are you are you looking at then? Okay. If somebody grounds.

And when they ground, there's a breaking force that will be extremely high. So, they have to they have to have rapid, I guess it would be eccentric strength to to be able to handle that. So, they have to do like in my mind I'm thinking through this, when they ground, it's it's a breaking force. They have to be able to overcome that breaking force and then a very brief isometric time frame, which I don't know the, you know, whatever milliseconds that would be, and then have this crazy rate of force development to use for propulsive forces to then transfer that into propulsive forces to go forward. Is that is that accurate?

Yeah, they have to um they have to be able to to handle those large breaking forces that that occur in the first half of ground contact. So, let's put some numbers to it. So, for an elite sprinter, for ground contact times, they're typically on and off the ground and in less than 0.1. Okay? And and then sometimes it's as low as 0.08, but let's just call it 0.1 for easy numbers. So roughly again for easy numbers, the first half of ground contact is 0.05 and the second half is 0.05. It doesn't quite work out that symmetrically, but we'll just.

Right.

So that means the first 0.05, 0.04 to 0.055. Those are uh from a horizontal standpoint, breaking forces and and those are going to be, you know, again, quite large and in elite sprinters, they have to be able to to handle those and that's also when the highest vertical forces are are going on as well. They're decelerating their center of mass, which is traveling downwards, and there's horizontally breaking forces acting on the center of mass because the foot is out in front of the center of mass during that first half, during those 0.05. So they have to be able to handle those those braking forces, that collision, and they have to be able to get their center of mass in front of the foot into the propulsive phase horizontally um as effectively as possible. Right? So if you if you over uh if you land too far out in front of yourself, if you overstride, that's bad for any number of reasons, but it also means you're like in breaking phase for like this long amount of time before you can get to the the propulsive side of things, right? So if you land with a foot in a proper spot, if you if you ground in the proper spot, you're undergoing, you know, large braking forces both horizontally and vertically, but you can get through the braking phase effectively and get to the propulsive side of things um in a good amount of time. And now you're kind of reacelerating your center of mass forward and you're rebounding your center of mass upwards at the same time. So that's how I would probably describe things uh kinetically.

Okay. And then is that so this is where I want to go into the hip versus the lower. Yeah. The lower the lower mass.

Extremity.

Yeah.

And and looking at like if you could expand then.

On and I'm trying to think about how to tie this together because it's like what role does the I'm trying to link the the hip torque and and the whipping from the hip to the foot and and what that does at grounding at in max velocity. I don't know if you can walk.

I know. Let's absolutely. So, we'll talk about the hip a little bit. So, if you think about um peak thigh flexion when the thigh is up in front of the body or when the thigh, you know, the other thigh is back behind the body. And let's forget if we're dealing with a track athlete or team sport athlete or whatever and how much knee lift they do or don't have. The thigh gets to its maximal knee lift, its maximal thigh block at some point. Let's say that's 70 degrees, whatever. Whoever you are, whatever sport you play, whatever model you you're following, you got to reverse that as fast as possible. The thigh has to go from flexion, hit that peak thigh block, and then reverse it into extension, you know, while you're in the air prior to ground contact as fast as possible. We published a whole paper on this. That's that's thigh acceleration because you're taking it from a a flexion, a positive velocity into a negative velocity. The faster you can reverse that velocity, well, you know, you're going from velocity to acceleration. So, the greater thigh angular acceleration you have, right? Basically, the more effectively you're going to now be able to transition into the ground contact phase. If you get up to that peak thigh block position, let's say you're hitting 80 degrees and you look great in a Google image photo, but you're just floating there forever. Well, that's not actually a very effective way to run. So the the hip torque, so to speak, and and, you know, the whip from the hip means, okay, well, you're getting to that thigh block position, now you rapidly reverse it, and that's what generates like that high lower limb velocity at foot speed. So, uh, sorry, at uh at ground contact. So, to give kind of just the scientific background history, and I know you got another question on the tip of your tongue. So my doctoral research with with Dr. Peter Wayne and Dr. Larry Ryan in the SMU lab from 2010 to 2015 was working through like, okay, how are these large forces being applied? Like Peter had already established in his prior work at at Harvard and Rice, like, okay, faster runners apply larger vertical forces, but the how was kind of unknown. And then from 20110 10 to 2015, where we did our our spring mass, sorry, our our two mass model and we looked at, you know, how forces did or did not um adhere to the spring mass model. Like, well, actually, these these really fast sprinters are not applying forces like a spring mass model, that we have this two mass model where they're they're really striking the ground and the lower limb is really striking the ground with a fast incoming velocity, but we didn't know in 2015 like how that was occurring. And then at Westchester, what we've done over the last 10 years is kind of like extend that and be like, well, it's really it's coming from up the chain. So, if you have like hip torque and high thigh angular acceleration and you can really reverse it from the peak thigh block, that's going to translate into fast foot shank, lower limb velocity at contact. And that's kind of what you need to really ramp up those vertical forces at initial contact.

Okay.

So, and then so that's on the front side. And I know I'm going all the way, but now think about it on the back side. So, your legs act like scissors, right? Right? Or just we'll do like this. So if this is your front leg and this hits its peak thigh block and now has to rapidly reverse to come down to apply force. We've also said on the back side, well, this thing needs to rapidly reverse right after toe off and come forward to be effective. But your thighs are in.

Basically perfect synchrony. They function like scissors. They have to be in motor control terms, anti-phase.

And the better runners are like more equal and opposite, basically. So the better you can do that with the front thigh, the better you can do that with the rear thigh, and the whole system functions better. So it's like it's really not possible from a coordination standpoint to have this thigh like come in like reverse like really hard and not have that and this one's just like lagging behind.

Yeah.

That'd be like extremely not in, you know, it'd be it'd be poor motor control. I'll put it that way. Uh, and most of the the better the runners, we have another paper on this, but the better the runners, not just have faster thigh angular velocity, but they have better anti-phase motion, meaning like, okay, as soon as this one's coming down, like reversing, like this one's coming forward, which is a good thing all the way around. Now, that's just at top speed. We'll talk about it for acceleration as well. But anyways, like five questions.

No, no, but when when you have someone then at at max velocity and they're running uh and they have that.

Uh, and I'm just now now I'm trying to it's making a little more sense with the with the the archetypes and you look at somebody who is a high-speed track athlete.

Yeah.

And you're going, okay, they get their their knee, let's say 70, 80 degrees, uh, and then they come down faster, they have greater hip torque, and then you can see, uh, on the force plate, that's where you'll see the the two mass model appear.

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's more readily apparent in that situation. Yeah.

If if you have a field athlete is that that doesn't have as you know, they're squattier, they don't have as much knee lift, they don't have as much of like the the classic like front side mechanics that you would have from like someone like a soft pal or Justin.

Gatlin.

Is that is that lack of the knee lift and then there's there's possibly a lack of like the apparent two mass.

Right. It's there's not is observable in the overall force trace, you're saying.

Yeah. Yeah. So, are you trying then as do you think it's it's effective to then try to get that from them to increase their speed to to improve that or do you like lean into their.

Into their style of how they run?

Wow. Great question.

Four years ago, I would have said, "Yeah,

Front side mechanics.

And if you do that, it will definitely make them faster or it should make them faster. Now, I'm like, lean into their style, but if we can move that needle just a little bit more to the front side model, but probably more for injury reasons. If they're like really anterior and backside and anything else. I think it's kind of TBD the, you know, the direct correspondence between changing their mechanics and and, you know, what that acute improvement in speed is or is not. So, you know, I think um it was interesting. I was um uh talking about this with a a few other people and I I think those those acute changes in technique can be good for acute improvements in speed, but it's it's certainly not a guarantee. Sometimes it can be kind of like in a in an acute change in technique or a change in technique over the course of a 4, 8, 12 week, whatever cycle and maybe the speed stays the same, but now they're running the same speed but with better mechanics that are maybe like less, you know, at bad positions or, you know, better positions from an injury risk standpoint. Um, occasionally maybe it's one step back before it's two steps forward from a performance standpoint. So, I don't know. I think it's really interesting. I in my everyday practice because I, you know, I'm coaching track at Westchester. I help with Penn lacrosse. You know, I help with Westchester softball and I'll do men's soccer in the spring. So I'm working with both team sport and track athletes in the in my daily coaching practice. I still do try to work.

Towards that. But I'm much more cognizant of the fact with team sport athletes like, hey, they're probably just not going to look like a soft power and that's okay. I'm just trying to move that needle maybe like a little bit. Whereas I think maybe 10 years ago, I'm like, "No, they got to look like this. Let's let's let's do everything to get them to look like that front side model."

Is there anybody that you've looked at in in in the research or even like Yeah, I'm maybe proximity geography. I'm not an Eagles fan, but looking at someone like like Sequin running at full speed. Sure. Like you look at someone like that or or Randy Moss back in the day. Do you ever look at these field athletes and think like that's the where we could work towards that is like the bridge between you know that this is the quintessential field athlete that's very fast and maybe that's the model we should work towards instead of working towards a Gatlin pal or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So I think, you know, with the kind of with the team sport athletes and if you're trying to think like, okay, well, if we're trying to work on their mechanics but not necessarily, you know, going for this super high knee lift or whatever else, but I think that's the first question you asked, which is what we would circle back to, which is what what are the non-negotiables? So then you're saying, "Okay, well, all right, well, if we're not we're working to get them to have a 90 degree knee lift or whatever, but let's make sure that they're contacting the ground in the right spot on the right part of their foot, you know, that they're not getting too much over pushing back behind them that we're trying to get their hips.

"into a relatively better position." To me, that's the that's the sweet spot of the answer, which is to say, yeah, you're still working on their mechanics. It's just you're trying to work towards those nonnegotiables as opposed to saying like, hey, if they don't look like a Safa, then then they're not doing it right. You know what I mean? So, I think I think that's probably the answer to that question and maybe even the first question you asked.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and that that helps me. Do you have do you have any other questions on max velocity because

>> Yeah. Yeah. The So, I had a guy who tried out for uh what was it the spring league?

>> Yeah.

>> We were doing some This is with the 1080. I don't know if you have access to that. I know a lot of people don't have access to like the assisted.

>> The idea that I had was like, hey,

>> it might be a way for him to kind of feel more of that upright proper mechanics if someone's pulling him.

>> What's kind of like the the things you've seen from there? Like is that a a way a good way to go about that?

>> Yeah, great question. Um, so I don't have access to training with a 1080. I've done one research study with a 1080 and then I have colleagues that have a 1080. So, you know, I've kind of seen it in action. I can't speak from super experience as far as saying like this is what I did with the 1080 and this is what works, etc.

>> But you're saying it was pulling him forward, Bo. Sorry.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, more detail. It's pulling him forward towards the machine, not him. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

>> Interesting. You know, I I have much more experience saying, "Okay, well, we use like light sleds and said, "Okay, well, feel this very light resistance and the belt around your waist as like almost a constraint or, you know, motor learning reminder of get your hips up and through as you come through the transition phase and get into top speed, like that sort of thing." I'm not opposed to anything like 1080 wise because I think the instrumentation's unbelievable. I just can't speak to it from an experience standpoint, but you know, I think whatever gives the athlete a like um an enhanced sense of where their hips are at is a good thing. And with the 1080 being, you know, or muscle lab being so precise as far as the assistance or resistance that you can dial in so that you can do it safely, to me, I'm like, why not, you know, you might as well experiment with it and see if the athlete feels a difference or if for some reason the assistance allows them to get into better positions at at top speed than they w than they normally would. So, yeah, I I can't comment from personal experience on on using assistance for that purpose. However, to me, since the 1080 allows you to do so many things safely, if you play around with it and you figure out it works, I mean, maybe only work for that athlete or a select few types of athletes that that need that type of help. But I I have seen, you know, to kind of that same point.

>> So, um, you know, we use like heavy sleds, heavy resistance for early acceleration, which is pretty common practice. You know, I I think lighter sleds, as I just said a minute ago, can serve, I think, you know, um an interesting kind of just uh drill uh purpose, if you will, to say, "Hey, you got to keep pushing through transitional acceleration." And as you're getting more upright, don't let the hip don't let your hips go back with the sled. Essentially, like don't don't let the sled pull you back. So, it's almost as much like a motor control drill as it is anything else. Uh, and of course you could do that same thing or better with a 1080 or a Dino Speed or anything like uh like that that has some of the accommodating.

>> Yeah.

>> So you were saying as well not just like the start but also like the later acceleration.

>> Yeah. Like maybe different different loads for different stages if you will. Um

>> I I had questions on this specifically because I think you know selfishly I feel like we are pretty good through 10 like

>> and now full transparency anyone watching this it we're a very heavy lifting place

>> and speed has been our our weakness as far as like training is concerned. So I've always felt like and we do a lot of jumps, a lot of plyometric work. I've always felt like we do a pretty good job through 10 at least based off of our numbers. Sure.

>> Uh uh now where I see a weakness of ours is that let's say 10 m through 40 m 10 m through 50 m and as you just you know that transitional acceleration and getting more upright. So, I was I wanted to see if first we could go through the mechanics of that part of of a sprint and then because I also think that's where most of the speed is is

>> is >> seen in football or lacrosse or soccer or anything. So, maybe maybe first get into the mechanics of that

>> of that transitional uh acceleration and then we can dig a little deeper.

>> Yeah, absolutely. So, great uh it's a great discussion point. So to the to the last thing you said, yeah, if you look at like game play, I mean, very rarely is like a like a long sprint initiated from like a static sprint, right? Like even in football, it's running back weaving through first and second levels and then breaks into the clear and is relatively upright. I mean, maybe has good pad level, but you know, it's not from a four-point block start before they just up and go. Or in lacrosse, it's certainly like more upright and they're moving. They're either walking or they're jogging again. And then they sprint. Same thing in soccer, right? So, from a from a team sport, especially a field sport standpoint, like the ability to have good acceleration kind of on the move is a huge thing, a huge ability capability that you know is frankly rarely discussed. And it's like, okay, most of the accelerations we do are from or a lot of in practice are from a static start, but from a gameplay standpoint, like transitional acceleration, moving accelerations are huge, you know. Um so if we if we look at a static start up to full speed so uh to state the obvious you have zero velocity in your start whether that's 2 point 3 point four point you um increase velocity every step those increases in velocity are large the first couple steps. So typically people are at 3 m a second, 4 meters a second, uh upwards of five or 6 meters a second after their first couple of steps. And then you know by the by the time you hit like 10 I'll use yards and meters interchangeably here, but

>> by the time you hit, you know, 10 yards, you're at a relatively high percentage of top speed. Typically higher than people recognize. maybe something like 70% 80% typically by 20 yards 20 m you're at depending on the athlete 15 uh sorry uh 20 yards or 20 mters is like 85 sometimes even 90% you know you're at 25 meters you're well over 90% only only for extreme track and field athletes Usain Bolts in the world are those numbers dramatically different for most of our football players you are at a pretty high percentage of of top speed to be sure your best 40R dash athletes are still accelerating like the entire race, right? But you're at high percentages of of top speed pretty early on.

>> The interesting thing and the challenging thing about acceleration, of course, every step is different than the last, right? So, step one, you have uh the first couple steps you have very long ground contact times, very short air times. To state the obvious, you're really leaning in and and pushing down and back. Every step, the body gets more and more upright. the ground contact times get shorter and shorter, the air times or the flight times get longer and longer uh as the as the athlete becomes more upright from a a kinetic standpoint, from a forces standpoint. So the vertical forces are are always larger, which is actually sometimes not recognized. It doesn't necessarily mean they're they're more important, but having an an optimum blend of ver vertical and horizontal forces is important. And I think that's that's important to acknowledge because you know I think a lot of times we think acceleration like okay just push back but if you like literally did that taken to an extreme you'd have the athlete like face plant or nose dive right so it's having an optimal blend of vertical and forces in concert every step that gives you know that that um results in that in that uh gradual rise. Um so uh relatively speaking more propulsive forces early on and then as you become more and more upright the the net anterior posterior horizontal forces become you know basically equal and the vertical forces become larger and larger. So the demands go uh early on more of an even blend of vertical and horizontal forces and then when you're upright they're largely vertical forces. Now, what I think is interesting is like, okay, what do we want to see kinematically from a technique standpoint during that entire way? So, we talked about the ground contact times, the flight times, like generally the body positions, right? What do we want to see? So, um, step rate, step rate, and I bring this up with like what we want to see. A lot of times acceleration gets coached and I'm not criticizing this because I think it's a good coaching cue, but it gets coached as a as a crescendo like duh duh duh duh duh like that's how when actually your step rate is almost at a maximum like right from the start like if you look at the research like athletes steps are actually basically going as fast as they're going to go from like the third step onwards. It's the step length that changes

>> that actually gets longer every step. I'm not saying you should say that to an athlete, but I do think the

>> even longer between

>> it's actually the step length that's getting longer and longer in every step. So, it's just like a you know, it's another one of those areas where it's just like

>> that's sort of a weird It's a weird Yeah. It's like you're trying to help with rhythm.

>> Yeah. You have to like

>> as a coach know what's going on biomechanically, but also know like what to say and what not to say.

>> Yeah. Because it's the same thing as like land underneath yourself. Well, that's not actually what's going on at top speed, but still a good thing to say, right? And and same thing here. Well, crescendo. Well, actually, your step rate is basically just going right from the start, but you probably shouldn't coach it that way, but just kind of biomechanically something to kind of put in your back pocket. So, step rate's going to be pretty fast. You still want your athletes to complete their pushes. It's the step length that gets longer and longer and longer. And I think from a a whole body angle, you know, really what you're looking for is just that gradual and progressive rise. So the red flags, and this is I think very well known, but like you just don't want to see any sharp rises, like one two pop basically, right? Or where they're doing something funny like, you know, keeping their head down for like five steps and then they pull it right up because, you know, they think like, okay, I should transition now. and everything like abruptly uh rises, you know, here and the rest of the body falls. It should just be uh you know, in a in a pre-planned sprint in a 40-yard dash or 100 meter dash or whatever, this gradual progressive rise. Younger athletes, weaker athletes, uh athletes that are strong but maybe not as strong relative to their body mass, i.e. a 300lb lineman, they are going to have higher projection angles due to their, you know, their relative strength levels. athletes that are, you know, uh, stronger relative to their body mass. You know, your your defensive backs, your sprinters, they're going to have lower projection angles that they can handle. But I think the key in either of those cases, clearly like a 6'5, 330 pound left tackle and a 510, 190 pound, you know, guy that's strong as an ax in a weight room and a whatever 5'4, 140 pound female sophomore in high school soccer player. What those ideal angles are is going to be completely different. But you just want to make sure that it's kind of like this gradual and progressive rise. You may see like a a high school female soccer player, she's nearly vertical at 10 meters, right? And you may see like similarly with like a left tackle, they're going to be pretty upright relatively early on, whereas maybe it's not till, you know, closer to 20 meters or something like that for like a a Dback or a sprinter or something like that. So there there are going to be some differences as to when people are becoming more upright, but to me like a what a good clean acceleration and transitional acceleration is it's all about the progression and less about like the absolutes if if that makes sense. So

>> yeah, I was just thinking about when Chop Robinson ran that it was like a 14910. I think he ran a 449 or something and a lot of people So this is a d a dend.

>> Yeah. Oh,

>> yeah, I think he plays in Miami now. Penn State.

>> Yeah. And and they broke down his 10 and they were like

>> his front foot was quite far in front of his center of mass for acceleration.

>> But if he's achieving he still wasn't standing upright. If he's achieving length and he still has that high rate. if he's achieving length and can still handle that high rate even with that large braking force. Yeah. Far in front of the 30 to 40 centimeters and maybe

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> You know,

>> that's still the key that even if you see someone doing that, as long as they can handle the

>> if they have the if they can achieve that rate or that lengthening early, but they still hold a rhythmic rate.

>> That's the key there. there. And there's also going to be some guys, I don't want to call them outliers per se, but that are just, you know, have that physical capacity to basically overcome whatever we would say is maybe not classic technique, right? So, like maybe he's landing out a little bit further in front than, you know, he should or we've talked about or whatever, but maybe he's just got the strength to pull the center of mass over the front of that and and that's okay. there's going to be, you know, occasionally there's sprinters you'll see that maybe are can do the same and get away with it and still perform well, something like that. But I don't know. I'd have to go back and and watch his video. Yeah, exactly. Specifically. So, um,

>> do you have anything specific? I I I wanted to bring up when when I think about like that that 10 to 40 or 10 to 50 like the I remember my my dad you know growing up I was fortunate enough where he was this old you know we would just lift and sprint you run hills and it was like oh your start you'd work you would we would run 10ens or 15s

>> okay if we wanted to improve anything else you ran hills

>> uh and and I I'm fairly certain it's your paper that I've read about max velocity sprinting at max velocity actually increases your rate of acceleration. I want to talk about that, but then I also want to go into um what is the difference or the adaptations that you see from hill sprints versus resistance sprints? And I and maybe those are two or three questions.

>> Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's great great uh great line of of uh uh kind of discussion. So, yeah. Um the the paper we put out on the NFL combine kind of looked at velocity profiles. uh this is uh a few years ago at this point, but what we found overall is of course there's individual variability in in athletes and and how they accelerate, but we kind of broke down the the athletes into two groups, the fast and the slow, if you will, and and overall their their velocity profiles kind of were were similar from a a percentage standpoint, indicating that like okay, basically if you can raise the ceiling, this wasn't like a training study or anything like that. We didn't have athletes just like run max velocity and then see if it helped their acceleration. But the implications were kind of like hey the ceiling is like top speed and if you can bump up that ceiling then everything else underneath it is is likely to rise and and I think you know conceptually that thought has also been around uh regarding speed reserve right and so like from a speed endurance standpoint like max velocity is is the ceiling. It doesn't mean it's the most important thing because in a team sport scenario clearly you can argue that like well acceleration is the most common you know dominant action as far as who gets to a ball first or whatever else but it I think in a lot of ways you can think of max velocity as the as the ceiling and say like okay well it's going to be pretty hard to run a good 40 if you don't like a really really good 40 if you don't have a good max velocity. Obviously it's going to be impossible to run a good 100 meters if you don't have a good max velocity. If you look at the elite 400 meter runners though, they all have a very impressive max velocity. Like you can't do anything at a high level, like an elite level, even 400 meters, unless your max velocity is like really, really good. Like people are always surprised if you look at like the elite 400 meter runners of the world, at just how darn good their 100 meter times are, right? So, it may not be like the most important thing depending on what your event is, but it's hard to be good at anything 40 to 400 unless your max velocity is at least at a certain level. I think that'd probably be, you know, at this point, which is several years away from that NFL combine paper that we wrote, but I think that's my biggest takeaway, which is to say like, okay, you know, if you're, you know, whatever lacrosse player, football player, maybe acceleration is the most important thing, but hey, you better have a pretty darn good max velocity. And if you're a 400 a 400 meter runner, well, yeah, speed of burns is going to be huge, but you're not going to be an elite 400 meter runner if your max velocity is not here. So, I think it's just one of those qualities, and maybe this is obvious, but maybe it's not, that it's almost like regardless of your sport, event position, like it's great to train. Okay, 350 lb left hackles, are you doing 50 to 60 meter flies? Maybe not. But should you still be doing some pretty high-speed running? I think so. I forget if it's Buddy Morris. I don't want to misattribute it to him or Brian man or somebody, but basically said like, "Yeah, we're still having our bigs do like a lot of these high-speed running." I think I don't want to uh misattribute it, but yeah, I was I spoke at the NFL combine like in 2017 and I was like, "Well, maybe you shouldn't have like your your bigs do 30 to 40 fly runs." And I I think it was prime said, "No, we do." Like, no, be confident in your statement. We have our bigs do fly runs. It's good. It's good training, you know. I think as long as it's done smartly, I mean, it is such an unbelievable stimulus, which I believe is the second part of your your question. So, you know, if you think about the the forces every step at at max velocity, if you're if you're slow, if you're slow, the peak forces are like three times body weight. So, if you're 200 lb, then that's like 600 lb of of peak force, right? If you're fast and you're 200 lb, then it's literally like a half ton of of peak force, right? So, the the peak forces are extremely high, the ground contact times are extremely short because if you're an Olympian, they're 08. And if you're like if you're a slow team sport athlete, they're 0.12. So, what I a lot of times what I'll do, uh, and the listeners at home can do this if they like, but if I'm giving a clinic talk, I'll have everybody like break out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Just say take out your your your your cell phone stopwatch and say start and stop it as fast as you can. And like you can barely do it in less than a tenth of a second. Like if you're really you got a really fast finger, it's like 010 like 0.11. You're like well if your if your ground contact's 0.1 you're probably not that fast, right? So it's like how fast it is. It really brings it to life. So now you think about well you're loading a,000 pounds of force

>> That quick.

>> That faster than that really. Yeah. And you think about that rate of force application and then there's like really nothing else you can do plytrically. And this is not a criticism of plas whatever. We do them all at at Westchester as well. I think they're all great. But if you're just trying to like quantify rate of force application, there's really nothing else that can match it as far as how much force how fast. So in small doses, you know, prescribed appropriately, especially given the population, but there's nothing that can beat it from that stimulus standpoint. Um, as far as, you know, how much force, how fast. And so

>> if you if you were just hypothetically to think about it like in plyometric terms, a lot of times the plows we quantify like ground contact, right? So if you think like okay so a fly 20 to 40 maybe you're taking like 10 steps like two yards per step or something like that right so you're getting five contacts per leg at that unbelievable like rate and you do three or four of those like that's a great stimulus even from just like a plyometric standpoint especially if you combine it with some of your some of the other plaus you're doing. So, a lot of times I think it's important to keep that in mind. Like if you're doing top speed work setting PRs is great, you know, from a practice standpoint. Obviously, if you're a track athlete in a race, it's great, but it's also all about like the stimulus, like just the high quality force application and rate of force application that comes just from running fast. And I know we'll get into this either in the podcast or when we go down to the track, but the turf. So, with our team sport athletes,

>> feel the trick. indoor trip.

>> Me, too.

>> Come on.

>> So, uh, so like with, um, with pen lacrosse in particular, we do this a lot. We do speed golf, and I think we stole that from Zack Desand or somebody else. It's not our term, but you set a a goal, um, time based on their Fly 10 PR, and I do this. So Cory Waltz is the head strength coach over at UPEN and worked with him for a long time and and get a chance to to uh collaborate on this when we trained the pen men's lacrosse team. So let's take a an athlete that has a fly 10 yard PR of 1.00 for easy numbers. So we do three or four reps.

>> We say okay the first rep you're doing 90%. We have all this printed out just on a very simple Excel sheet so the athletes all know what their goal time is. So like the first draft, if the athletes PR is one flat, then P then 90%'s a 1, right? And so they're not trying to go at full speed. They're trying to hit 110, hence the name speed golf, right? It's closest to the hole, if you will. So like 111 or 109 is good because you're really close to your goal time. We're not trying to have them go

>> 09, not on the first rep, for sure. And then maybe their second and the third rep like, okay, 95%, so like 105 for that specific athlete. And so what's pretty interesting and I think incredible is is severalfold. Number one, you will have, especially with team sport athletes, se several guys or gals will break their will set PRs on those days, even though that's specifically not the goal. Like, okay, your PR is one flat. Don't run one flat. Run 105 or run one. But for team sport athletes, and you guys know this, you know, when they're when they're trying to do a PR, like they just muscle it. Yeah. and the mechanics break down and they totally tense up and a lot of times the times aren't as good as they could. You tell them run 105

>> fast and fluid. That's that's like literally the the only cues we say is run 105 or run 95% fast and fluid. And then I'm not saying like all the time, but certainly for several athletes a session will say, "Oh, what was your time? Did you hit 95%?" They say, "No, I just ran a PR." And you're like, and they're surprised and I've stopped being surprised because I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that doesn't actually surprise me." And it comes with mechanics that are actually some of the best that you'll see. And now the second the second reason I love I know you got a question is okay so say they run like a a one or 105. We say this to them after the session. Cory and I we say think about that stimulus. If you go in the weight room and you knock out like several reps at 90% 1RM or 95% like that's not a failure of a day. That's like an amazing day. Well, you just do that on the turf. He runs like several reps at 95% like easy. That's an amazing day from a stimulus standpoint and you circle back to what we just talked about from like how much force how fast. Well, I guarantee you that if they're running like a 105 like 95% like the ground contact times and the forces like have to match that like biomechanically that's a fact. So like so they're getting like an amazing stimulus out of that um while probably doing it with pretty good mechanics. And knock on wood, we've like never had an athlete pull a muscle on those days cuz they're not like ah

>> well that's that's e even there it made me think about it's like you're you're getting them to get this flow this feeling. It's almost like I I've related this in we we have something similar in the throwing world and it's almost like batting practice. They're just getting this flow and it and I would be interested to see their mechanics if on those days because they're more relaxed if they're getting their technique and their their movement is more closer to the track model.

>> I I can't say anything quantitatively, which kills me because we never documented it. Qualitatively, just with your coaching eye, you're like, "Oh my god, you're

>> they look better." Yeah. Cuz they're not as forceful. And when you see them being more forceful, they they will have a longer

>> stride. They over push. They sink down. They tense up. Like all of the bad attributes that go along with that and sometimes can lead to like you know in a worst case scenario like a soft tissue injury. Like those issues disappear when you say hey give me 90 to 95% but fast and fluid and you know like

>> mindset wise it takes the pressure off. Physically it takes the pressure off and yeah like better mechanics come out. And again you're still if you're just chasing the stimulus which is obviously the goal from training like you're still getting that that result. So, um, I'll just continue on this path for another m minute minute if that's okay. So, like what Corey and I have done with Penn Lacrosse is we kind of with our with our top speed work without getting into all the details of the speed training program, but we kind of are on this um like four three to four week cycle. So, like one week we'll do wickets. We have like this very specific routine. We presented on this at the 2024 NSA summer uh conference. So, we have this wicket for team sport uh big big group setting. So, we do that with with our athletes. One week we do wickets. Another week we do uh like the second week we do what we call like technical buildups, which are actually pretty similar to um uh

>> the golf

>> to speed golf. Yeah. But instead, it's like a 90% fly, but where they're like specifically focusing on an aspect of technique. So, we all know from a motor learning standpoint, you really can't think about like more than one thing at once, if that when you're running. We give them like kind of um one thing to focus on per rep. Like maybe it's posture, maybe it's ground contact, leg recovery. Like a third week we'll do like a speed golf and then like a fourth week we will do a PR. So like basically once every cycle they are trying to go for a PR and then like once every cycle they are doing a speed golf. Once every sometimes every cycle we're doing a a technical buildup and and like once every cycle we're doing wicket, something like that. That we've done that for the last two or three years. And again, the credit goes to to Cory and the pen lacrosse coaches who allow us to do that as part of their practice, but it's worked pretty well. I've had some pretty solid improvements. Um, athletes seem to respond. A very limited soft tissue injury from that standpoint. And and it's like um you can you can see guys who are clearly team sport athletes, you know, shifting over time. Again, I can only say that qualitatively. We've never done like a true research study on the mechanics of it, but definitely you can see guys within the course of a year and then we've had athletes that have done this for several years over time. Like I was just saying to a senior the other day at practice as he was running in our fall ball. I was like, man, if we only had video of that versus your freshman year, like

>> disaster. Yeah. So,

>> what what's the best distance on that? Like when you're when you're talking about this going into a flying tent because we've done this where legends set it up like I mean we've done 10, we've done 20, we did 30 build up. What do you see as like a good distance into the buildup? Or maybe even the question should be what are the best distances to hit high max velocity like to hit your actual max

>> for team I I mean I don't think you can go wrong as long as you document it and if you want to keep records or monitor it you you standardize it. So I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. What I've typically done and what we've done with the groups I've worked with is for top speed, we either do 20 to 30 early in the season and then when we're a little more comfortable a little bit later on in the in this uh I don't mean the competitive season, I mean the like the fall off season or whatever, then we'll go 30 to 40, i.e. a 30 yard run in with a 10 yard fly. Um, track and field athletes will start like for fall training. This year we started 30 to 40 and then we'll extend like 40 to 50 later. So just a little bit deeper for that.

>> So 20 to 30 buildup or 30 to 40 buildup then the 10.

>> Yes.

>> Okay.

>> Uh well no sorry let me rephrase that. Early in for team sport athletes early in the year a 20 yard buildup and a 10 yard fly after that. I.e. the fly is 20 to 30. Okay. or later on a 30-yard buildup plus a 10 yard fly, i.e. a 30 to 40. Yeah. And then for track athletes, we start with a 30 meter build up into a 10 meter fly. So I 30 to 40 and then extend that out to 40 to 50. So,

>> okay. Do you see then? Okay. Going back maybe going back to the transitional velocity or transitional acceleration.

>> Do you see anything like like could you see an athlete who is a let's say like they do train on a hill versus with resisted on a 1080 that's very very

>> um I feel like the 1080 provides a very consistent feedback whereas a hill is like

>> you don't know the degree you don't know the incline. Some hills are different, you know, whatever. Do you see any technical pattern that that someone who has trained on a hill shows? Like are they faster bringing their hip through or that is there anything consistent there?

>> No, it's a great question. I I can't speak to that uh from my experience and I do like hills. We use those like for Westchester track, we used that in our first uh cycle. So in our September cycle, we used hills as our form of resisted runs and then we transitioned to um transition is a bad word. we moved over to sleds for October and and November. Uh uh you know, as far as that. Um and then uh you know, 1080 is uh an incredible piece of instrumentation. You know, I think there's so many advantages of that if you have access to one. Like I have nothing, you know, nothing negative to say about, you know, either 1080 or Dina Dina speed that that sort of thing. I mean, I think both the the precision, you know, it can give you on the um on the resistance, the feedback it immediately gives you and the athlete. So, from both a, you know, dialing up or dialing down the resistance or the assistance, the motivation, I'm sure, you know, right, for the I mean, there's just so many things that are that are great about it.

>> It's like a straight up competition. They're writing down their their numbers and it's like, wait, what what' he get instant

>> feedback? Yeah. All of that is nothing but great. um having just never had one uh to personally train with and and also I although for USA track and field my role there is is different as a biomechanical consultant and a lot of those groups those training groups do have 1080s so I'm providing kind of consulting input on how the 1080 should be used like best uh or giving them some ideas for like load velocity profiling or things like that in my own coaching that I do at Westchester and at Penn we're in very big group settings and and we don't have 1080s there So, it's just we just find other ways to do it. Basically, sleds or or or hills. As far as back to your original question, can't say like, "Oh, this athlete's been running hills or sleds and I notice the effects of X, Y, and Z compared to a 1080 specifically." What the research would tell you is that running hills, which is very general statement because obviously the hill

>> Yeah. just

>> distance, angle, all that can be different. But

>> let's say a 30 yard a 30 meter hill

>> of a reasonable incline. Yeah. Two two to 3%.

>> I I mean generally speaking I think the research would tell you that both from like a a biomechanical standpoint a motor control standpoint it's going to be very similar to resisted sled sprints and and also very similar to acceleration patterns. So, as far as body body angle versus, you know, essentially versus the normal um ground contact times kind of uh

>> I think you could speculate and say muscle action. There has been one that's looked at like the coordination pattern and found that it's all pretty consistent with with acceleration phase. So to me I think there's both literally almost a hundred years or millennia of doing hills to improve acceleration and also just you know some some common coaching experience and also like a reasonable a reasonable degree of coaching uh sorry of um biomechanical research would say yeah like hills are good for acceleration sleds are good for acceleration not the exact same thing but probably work in pretty similar manners so

>> um legend I know I'm taking all these questions Do you have anything specific? Because I just had another one pop in.

>> Just related to the sleds. How do you deal with like bigger groups? Like how do you choose the weight? Like say you have

>> more than like 10, maybe 20, how many people you coach at once, but how do you deal with that?

>> Yeah. Get lots of sleds.

>> Caitlyn, the CFO, they're calling you up.

>> Yo, seriously. So, um,

>> so for for men's soccer last year at Westchester, we were training a group of of 20 guys. For track and field, you know, we had gosh, I don't know. I think we had 30 plus athletes that were doing sleds on a regular. So, literally what I did two years ago, and I won't mention the Well, I'll mention the company's name. Is there any reason not?

>> No, no, no, no. Yeah, go ahead.

>> Spud the nylon sleds. Yeah, we have uh some of the stuff Ben Patrick >> brought because I needed something that I could do indoors on a gym floor in Westchester and I was training a men's soccer team. So, I ordered 15 of those. So, I basically just said, you know, simple math. All right, what's the biggest group I'm going to deal with, which is track, which is like 30 plus. You have them partner up or go in groups of three or you have half of them do the unresisted while the other half's doing the resisted in partners. So, now you now you cut your group number in four, right? Because you have half do your unresisted, you have to do your resisted, you flip-flop them, but they're always in partners. So if you have whatever 40 athletes for easy numbers, 20 are doing their unresisted, 20 are doing the resisted, but one's working while they're partner rest. So if you have 40 athletes, you only need 10 sleds and then you just figure out what you know how much weight you need to put, which is I learned the hard way. On a gym floor, those spud sleds are amazing. But on a gym floor, man, if you got some strong athletes, you need like

>> it might be flying. Oh, it's Yeah, there's so little friction. I ended up having to load them up with like 180 pounds per sled, but it it worked out. But yeah, it's a joking answer, but it's not. So, I have 15 spud sleds, but they're at a a reasonable price point. Uh, and so, you know, easier to get the job, though.

>> Yeah. And then and you know, with those harnesses, the athletes just step in and step out. So, like the rest time is while their partner's going and it actually flows seamlessly.

>> So, in that case, is that where it's just very clear? You know, we've we've sort of had this discussion where you look at and I this is like years ago. I talked with Aaron Feld who was the strength coach at Oregon and then at Miami >> and and he would use the the velocity decrement and that's just where it's like look in the spud sled maybe let's just I'm throwing this out there 100 pounds is on there. Well, that's way past the body weight percentage number that you would look at but if you're using the velocity decrement that you lose

>> well that's that would be a better way to do it.

>> AB absolutely. So I'll speak to that both from ways which I've done it quote unquote very scientifically and then other times where it's just kind of like no we're just putting an absolute load on this sled cuz we got a huge group number. So with men's soccer men's soccer last year we had 20 guys and we were doing it indoors with the spud sleds. We had uh gyms and so I did load velocity profiling and so what I did was I um had them each do uh we had baseline tested numbers. So, we had like their uh essentially what their unloaded top speed was. For those not familiar in the listening audience, for load velocity profiling, you need like a a top speed kind of or a near top speed and then you need a a velocity at two or three different loads basically. And forgive me if you guys know this, but the the listening audience may not. So you basically need to get an unloaded top speed and then a fastest velocity they can hit with roughly, you know, whatever 20% body weight, 40% body weight, 60% body weight, something like that. And then you just create essentially a linear regression that that is amounts to basically like a velocity based training chart kind of. 1080 sprint now does this for you. But anyways, what we did with um with the Spuds Sleds and men's soccer was we set up the Brower timers from the 15 to the 20 yard marker and said that's basically going to be the fastest five yard segment that they can hit. We we put three different loads on them. We ran the entire team through it at three different loads. I created 20 different tabs in an Excel sheet and then I had 20 different load velocity profiles. Now, the funny thing was like those 20 athletes basically ended up sitting in four different buckets of like the velocity of the load that they needed to have like a 50% V-deck. But I did have them all work at 50% V-deck and they all had their individualized sled loads. It just so happened that that was basically in one of four buckets. But for the spud sleds on a gym floor, it was like 120 pounds, 140, like 160, and then like the the heaviest was like 180 pounds.

>> Um, so it was a little bit challenging, you know, we were bringing all these weights up from the weight room to the gym and loading them up there. No one squatting that day.

>> Yeah. But, you know, but it it worked. I mean, it was logistically doable. Um, and to your point, like that was a scenario where you're like, Yeah. I don't think like a 45 on this nylon sled on a gym floor. I don't know what resistance that offers. Like we have to profile this to have some idea of how much resistance they're they're getting out of that so that we can kind of like have a better idea of how to prescribe it for this this training session. So that was probably the most rigorous I've ever been about it both from like a baseline testing and like an actual training side of things. For transparency, with Westchester track, we use those same sleds because they're great. We used them on the track. We had 30 to 40 athletes going at a time. Have some at the starting line and some of the 30 meter line just going like this in partners basically. And we basically had the guys use one weight like 75 lbsish plus or minus a little bit. And the ladies were using another weight like a little bit less than that. We adjusted as needed. So that was a little a lot less scientific. that was just like, you know, uh an absolute load that we were kind of using for everybody and and manipulating a little bit on an as needed basis. And then the in between. So if the way I talked about with Westchester Soccer is like the most probably quantifiable you could be without a 1080 and the the way I described for Westchester track is just like old school. So the in between would be doing something like body weight related, something like that.

>> You're what you what do you weigh? 200 lb. Okay, let's go 10%. The way I see it, those are kind of like your three big options. You can just say everybody's doing this absolute load.

>> No matter what, you got to run.

>> This is Yeah, this is going to be somewhat unscientific, but we got a huge group. We're just going to put in work and we'll manipulate it a little bit as we see fit based on how like what your mechanics look like. In between is like, okay, we're going to do this based on body mass, you know, and everyone's running at a similar percentage body weight, but and then the most would be like the velocity decrement. There's no doubt that doing load velocity profiling and doing based on a velocity decrement is I would say the most rigorous way of of doing it.

>> Would you do resisted training like this? Would you do this like let's say talk about track or or maybe the soccer team. Would you do

This sounds like a resisted day. Like, how would that week look? Would you be doing a resisted sprint day on one day and then how many, how many days off till they would do like their flies? Like, is that how you would set up a week?

Yeah. I mean, I think the classic high-low model would just be like resisted accelerations would be on Monday. Excel day would be Monday, or resisted excel day for track, which is the easiest. Yeah. Would be on Monday, and then Tuesday recovery day, and then flies would be, you know, top speed or whatever you're doing for top speed, flies, speed golf, wickets would be Wednesday. Recovery day, some, some sort of fitness, speed, endurance, whatever. Friday, and then Saturday off, recovery, Sunday totally off, and then back at it again.

Okay. We've done, we didn't exactly do that for Westchester track this year. I won't give away all the details, but we had something that was pretty similar where our Mondays were our kind of like resistance day and our like, uh, either hills in September or resisted accelerations, uh, in October, November. So, I think that works pretty well with college kids. I, I hate to put it this way, but it's just the reality. I don't want them going max velocity on Monday. I just don't know what they've been doing over the weekend. I think in some worlds that's ideal. Like if you had an, if you could guarantee that your entire team was in bed by 10 p.m. Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, not drinking, you knew they were ready to go Monday, I'd say, "Hey, do, do Max V on Monday because it's when you're the most fresh." But that's not reality. And I think you could also frame it like, "Well, if you do a low volume but high intensity acceleration on Monday, you're just hopefully priming them for Wednesday. For Wednesday."

Yeah. Yeah. Especially with a Tuesday off.

That was essentially what Loi had said to us, who was a strength coach at Penn State. Now he's at Virginia Tech. And when we talked to him last year about this, setting up our summer training with our speed group, it was, we would do, he would say, he would echo that. Now, he would shift the days slightly, but he would say, "Okay, Monday they might do a heavy clean and then like an upper body lift, but they would do a clean." And he, he swore he was like, "I, I don't know for sure, but I don't know what they're doing on the weekend. And if they do a clean on a Monday, they feel okay, but I know whatever happened on the weekend, it gets out of them." So, Tuesday they could do, they, they did their max velocity then on Tuesday.

Yeah. I know. I love that. I, I wouldn't want max velocity to be Monday, but any other day, no matter how you're doing it, I think is fine. And Monday as a primer, I think is a great idea. Again, we're just talking realities in college athletes, like you got to deal with.

Literally the culture basically.

Yeah. Exactly. Right. So, I'm not, you know, getting up on a pedestal or anything like that. That's just like, hey, let's deal with reality and let's just say, okay, we want to make sure that they're ready to go Tuesday or Wednesday when, when they're doing, you know, VMAX. So, um, yeah, I think what you just described is great because you could easily go, you know, some sort of primer Monday, high day, Tuesday, recovery day, Wednesday, high day, Thursday, recovery, Friday, and then another like speed endurance or special endurance on Saturday and Sunday off.

Some. What's up, guys? Our podcast and our channel are sponsored by our own strength training app, Peak Strength. The entire focus of Peak Strength is to provide you guys with the absolute best sports performance app that you could ever imagine. We build out the programs on the back end. We take in all of these different decisions that we learned here on site at Garage Strength so that we can then apply it to you so you can improve your training. So, if you guys want to improve your overall sports performance, head over to peakstrength.app, app, the Google Play Store, or the Apple iOS store, download Peak Strength, you'll go to free week of training, and then you can start getting on those gains, get those reps done so that you can become a champion. Now, let's get back to the video. Peace.

Would you see when you, when you're going through the, the, the decrements with the different amount of weight that you would have on a sled?

Yeah. Do you see any correlation where you're like, "Okay, once we get to this decrement, like this speed drop off, the now I can start to make correlations to the weight room or no, like, like in the sense of I'm thinking about our guys like if we're doing like a, if we have a kid who, let's say they're a good cleaner or they're good single leg squat or they're good like a Bulgarian squat or a good back squatter, like that's where we'll start to see maybe at a much slower speed. Do you, that there's a relationship or do you have you never seen that?

Wow, that's a, that's an awesome question. Um, I don't know the answer to that question because it's been, um, a long enough time since I've been like a head strength and conditioning coach in charge of like their their weight room program as well where I know like all of their numbers. So, in my role, I'm doing speed development, uh, but we have a, a sep, and I'm like a volunteer assistant sprints coach. I'm doing speed development for several teams, uh, in an assistant role, but we have a separate, uh, head strength and conditioning coach in Westchester, for example, who's more in charge, uh, and more in tune with what their numbers are. I could go back and look at that, but I don't know that. But I have an interesting point. I actually did want to discuss both as it related to the hills and velocity decrement and then the sleds and velocity decrement and then programming.

So, um, so the one interesting thing about hills that I've never done, but that you could do is you can do velocity decrement on hills probably more easily than you can measure like distance and and degrees incline or just as easily or it might have more transfer. So you can easily, if it's a paved path, put up a set of whatever timing gates and measure how long the entire rep takes them or just what the last five or 10 meters of that rep is. Like let's say it's a 20 meter hill, like a 20 meter distance and you measure what the last five meters is and then you measure them just on the flat in a 20 meter sprint. You measure the last 5 meter segment. So you have like a way of quantifiably relating their performance on the hill to their performance on the flat that now becomes analogous actually apples to apples with a sled. Cuz think about it if they run like the last 5 meters on the hill at a, I don't know, 30% velocity decrement compared to their flat sprint in a vacuum, like you don't know like how much you're slowing them down. But if you have that number now, you can actually relate that back to like a 30% velocity decrement on on a sled. It's not completely like apple biomechanically, but at least now there's a way to kind of triangulate where you are from a programming standpoint. There's one thing I forgot to mention about hills. Do as I say, not as I do. I've never actually done that, but it's one thing that.

Looks like you got some homework, legend.

Yeah, we, we, it is in there in one of the research, uh, publications I think by Jay Delaney where they've done velocity decrement on the hill, something like that, and then I've always thought about that and been like, man, next cycle we do hills, we got to do this, um, as much for that also for that motivational piece, right? Like you have with the 1080, right? Once you start quantifying those sort of things, you'll be like, okay, well.

Now you're really looking. Yeah. Okay. Sorry.

So that's just one side note piece. Um, so as as far as using sleds, doing load velocity profiling. And then again, for our listeners who maybe aren't as familiar with load velocity profiling on the on the sleds, uh, or with 1080 or with anything, what it allows you to do is it really gives you an individualized, um, really just chart or percentage scheme to say, okay, you put this much load on the sled or you put this much load on the 1080, resistance on the 1080, and your athlete is going to be able to hit this percentage of top speed. So whatever 45 lbs on the sled based on this athlete's load velocity profile is going to give them, you know, a 20% V-deck, i.e. they're going to be able to hit 80% of their top speed, right? And again, I know you guys are familiar with this, but so what I think would be, um, a logical way to progress it, have not done this in practice yet, but again, it's kind of on the to-do list, is to say the following. Well, the higher loads, lower, uh, uh, like 50% V-deck or whatever, 40% V-deck, when the athlete's running slower, that relates, if you look at the research, that relates to initial acceleration and that makes sense. You're slowing the athlete down more. Okay. And then the intermediate loads, which may be like you say, a 30% V-deck or a 20% V-deck. Well, that's going to probably relate a little bit more to that transitional acceleration piece. And then the lighter loads, maybe you're thinking like 10 or 20% V-deck. Well, that's probably going to be like a little bit closer out to to top speed. And also, if we talked about with like sleds, well, maybe that's good. A little bit lighter sled load for working on almost that motor learning piece of like getting their hips with them as they as they work out towards top speed.

So, it seems to me, um, okay, let's say you have like a 12-week training cycle, whether that's summer with a college athlete or like a fall with a, you know, like college track and field, you have like a 12-week training cycle. Like, you could do this. The first four-week block, the first two weeks of that could be habituation. Maybe you're just getting them used to sleds, doing like 20 or 30% V-deck, like relatively lighter, but then you're going heavy, like 40% V-deck, 50% V-deck, something like that. So, you're really working initial acceleration. By the way, short to long training programs and like track and field is like pretty classic way of progressing your sprints, right? So, you're doing for your acceleration work, like more work, like shorter reps, like maybe 10, 15 meters, something like that. Then your second block, you're working a little bit more intermediate distances. Maybe you're working out to 20 meters. And on your acceleration days, maybe you're doing lighter loads, like 30% V-deck, something like that. So the loads are getting lighter as your distances get longer. And then your third, uh, block, so like weeks 9 through 12, now you're going a 10 to 20% V-deck as you're working outwards of 20, 25, 30 meters, something like that. So, it seems to be a pretty natural way to marry up the velocity decrement and your load velocity profiling with your training prescription with like a short to long, like training profile or programming for the acceleration day. Again, maybe that's only one day a week. Maybe that's just for like your first day of the week, your Mondays or whatever else. But to me that seems pretty logical if nothing else as a way to kind of integrate that because I get a lot of questions on like not just what is load velocity profiling, but okay, like let's say you do it, like you do the load velocity profile, like now what do you do with that information? Like how do you take that and now implement it along with, you know, just the other basic questions of like, well, what's, you know, some different ways or ideal ways you can implement like short to long or different types of acceleration progressions. So again, we didn't do that this year. Uh, we had like, we did hills for the first four-week cycle, which I thought worked well, and then we did sleds for the second two cycles. But I think, you know, at least in a vacuum, that'd be a pretty interesting way to kind of implement something. And I think a 12-week cycle's pretty, you know, it's a pretty common cycle. I don't know, maybe colleges over the summer like 10 weeks, but you know, somewhere in that 9 to 12 week cycle is pretty typical either for summer or for like a semester type of block for for college athletes. So, just something for the listeners out there to maybe think about.

I got one more thing. I don't know what.

I mean, that, that was great right there. That was a great summation.

Legend is going to be listening to this again, even though he's in here and be like, "Okay, this is what I need to do. This is what Dane doesn't.

Sound guys get ready.

This is your training next summer.

So, I.

That was great though.

Yeah, that, that I love that. Um, I have, uh, off tangent going back to the hip.

Yeah.

You mentioned the 400. Okay. You mentioned the high max velocity, seen the, the high speed from the 400 and immediately, you know, I forget if we were even recording at this point. Uh, I had brought up off air or maybe I was on air. I don't know.

Yeah.

That Yulimar Rojas, a triple jump Olympic champ from, uh, '21 from Tokyo. She's been clocked as running faster. Even in that that Olympics when Elaine Thompson won the 100 and the 200, she was clocked faster. It was like 41 and a half kilometers per hour. I think Elaine was just over 40. Uh, and now, uh, Thea, um, Gadson has also been timed or Thea Leond has been clocked close to that 40. She's another triple jumper. And then you said the 400, and I, and I remember Christian Taylor, who's the best American triple jumper, also was a good 400 meter runner, uh, himself. Like he actually, I want to say he might have even meddled in the 4x4 the year, one of the years that he won the world championships. I, I could be wrong on all this, but where I'm going with this is I also recently there's a research paper where single leg plyometrics transferred really well to decreasing 10, 20, 30 meter times versus bilateral plyometrics. And I guess where I'm going with that is could this in theory, because of the triple jump and the triple jumper speed and even, you know, anecdotally, you watch Jonathan Edwards' world record and he's freaking fast and you look at it, it's like because it's a, a unilateral plyometric, they're, they're overcoming these massive forces, um, at very high speeds, you know, 10 times, 12 times body weight possibly. Uh, and it's all seems to be from the hip. So maybe where I'm trying to go with this is like, does this show that the hip and, and, and that the hip might be more important to train than the than the lower leg or does it not matter? You're looking too deep. I'm looking too deep. It's like.

Oh, great, great train of thought. I, I'm always hesitant to say one's more important than the other. I feel like, um, this is again, not my statement, but just a, a thought that I like is like, okay, the, the hip, if you will, kind of, uh, generates like torque generated at the hip, but the force needs to be transmitted at the ground. So if you have all this torque, just big picture conceptually here, we're thinking all this torque being generated from the hip and like maybe the thigh can really reverse at the top and at the back and, you know, can really generate a lot of torque, but at ground contact, you get this mushy ground contact and all that dissipates.

It's just not going to be that effective. And so regardless of what the ceiling is here, if it's lost there, it's all probably for or mostly for not. So, I probably wouldn't say one's more important than the other. Likewise, if let's say you've got this super stiff, springy re, you know, from the glute, but you can't here, then you're not working with anything in the first place. So, I, I think it's probably equal parts and, and I think they probably need to be trained, you know, equally just from a 10,000 foot view kind of macro level concept. I, I should say we haven't talked much about the knee. Um, I guess maybe that's my own personal bias coming in. It's not to say the knee isn't important. Clearly, it is. If you yield at the knee or if the knee can't transmit, you know, forces up and down the chain, that's obviously going to be problematic as well. But, um, I think generally my thoughts tend to go to the extremes, I guess you could say, of the limb, just the the hip and the and the ankle.

Or even the top down versus the bottom up. Exactly. And so, it's like, oh, you're just the knee's a link in that chain, and it's an important one. They're all important, but I just, that's not where my, thoughts tend to to focus. I guess I guess you could say I want to go back to your your point just about the those different, you know, kind of Olympic athletes, etc. Look at Mondo. Yeah. Best Pter of all time. He ran a 10.2 200, right? So, you know, is what's the cause and effect? Is he a great P valter because he just because he's a great athlete or does that great speed contribute? I mean, it's both, right? You can't, you can't say chicken or egg. It's just both.

In my work in track and field, and I don't consult for for all events. I, I only really truly consult for the sprints and the hurdles, but I've seen a little bit of of of everything from the different events. Rarely if ever have I said, "Oh, that athlete's top speed was slower than I thought it was going to be." Many more times than not, I'm like, "Wow, that athlete's got a better top speed than I," you know, if they're not a sprinter, right? If they're like obviously 6'12", you're like, "Oh, that's going to be fast." But if they're of a different.

You look at a long or a high jump.

Exactly. Right. We've worked with long jumpers, you're like, "Oh, yeah. Person's got a fast top speed." I mean, that's a, that's a large contributing factor to a lot of those events. Coming coming back to earlier partner conversation, whether your track and field or team sport, it may not be the most important thing, but it's a, it's a ceiling that's going to, you know, contribute or raise up, you know, a lot of other or factors that are important to one sport or event. So, just kind of a, a point on that, which I just think is is funny. Yeah. Pretty rare if you look at like an elite athlete and you're like, "Wow, there long jumper." You're like, "Well, he's slow." Like, you're not going to probably find an elite long jumper who's got a super slow top speed, I would say. Be pretty rare. But, um, yeah, I think just the training piece, I don't know. I think, yeah, it's, it's really, I think it's, it's mostly.

Um, my focus goes to both. I want to bring up one point. This is like part satire, but not really. So, I've talked about this a fair amount, uh, recently as like, just an interesting thought experiment. So, take like Usain Bolt and Michael Jordan, right? So, so arguably the two best athletes in their respective sports ever. I mean, Bolt's the fastest guy who literally ever lived and Jordan arguably the the GOAT in basketball, right? So, their builds are actually like really similar. So, Bolt 6'5", Jordan 6'6", right? Their body weight was extremely similar in their prime. I think Bolt was, don't quote me on this, like 205 and Jordan was maybe 215. So you look at their BMI, it's like nearly identical actually. And so, and you would look at Jordan and you're like, well, this isn't a guy who's like lacks elasticity or forcefulness. I mean, the guy could apply vertical force at a fast rate with the best of them, right? But why isn't Michael Jordan like the fastest of all time? Because a lot of times people look at Bolt and they're like, "Oh, he's so fast because his his legs were so long."

Yeah, he's just tall.

He's just tall. He had longer strides than everyone else. I'm like, well, what a cop-out answer that is.

I was like, if Bolt was so fast because he had long strides and long legs. Well, why wasn't Michael Jordan the fastest guy?

Every sprinter would be 6'5", 6'6", then we just start recruiting from the NBA and they'd all be the fastest of all. LeBron would be the fastest of all time. So, it's so again, I say that somewhat sarcastically, obviously, but it's more than that because it comes back to this hip torque question. Well, Jordan, just if you just think conceptually, didn't have the hip torque to be able to turn it around the way that Bolt could. People say, "Oh, well, Bolt's stride frequency is 4.4 steps per second. It's not that great." No, for a guy who is 6'5", it is that great. And if the guys who are 6'5" everywhere else in the world had the hip torque to turn it around and apply force at a stride rate of 4.4, they, they'd be the fastest guy in the world. But they're not. And so like I, I bring up those two. I did a coach education inservice where I put Bolt and, you know, Jordan on the tail of the tape and I was like, basically the same size. Don't tell me this guy's the fastest guy ever because he had long strides. It's And don't tell me it's because Jordan couldn't apply vertical force with a picture of Jordan like dunking from the free throw line. You know, it's that's actually not the quality he was missing in my opinion, you know, or if you watch him play or dunk or whatever else. So I think it's a very interesting just like thought question be like, well, you know, Bolt at 6'5", all things considered, actually had a pretty good start and his stride rate for being 6'5" was actually amazing and if it wasn't like everyone else who's 6'5" would be in the Olympics, you know what I mean? So I don't know, just kind of an interesting thought to bring the hip to question to life.

I think that's the interesting part with Rojas going back to my triple jump example is that she reminds me of Bolt. She's 6 feet, 6'1". She's built exactly like him, the female version. And I've always wondered what if she ran the two? What, you know, what if, you know?

But that's, it's like this.

It, it almost goes back to a training, uh, concept, I guess. One more thing before we, we get downstairs. Was, um, I'm sure you guys got to go to the bathroom because we're going pretty long here. Is, um, simply related to to hamstring injuries because I think this is a topic that a lot of people have questions about. Is like, where do you see with soft tissue with with with hamstring injuries being, what do, what do you see being the most prevalent position that causes hamstring issues?

Yeah. Uh, great question. Um, somewhat in my wheelhouse, although to be transparent, I'm not a hamstring injury researcher per se, but I think most of the research would tell you that it's, uh, you know, those hamstring strains occur in the late swing phase, although some occur in the early ground contact phase. Um, I read one or two research papers recently that kind of indicated that, um, proportionately more were in acceleration than I was expecting. Not like versus top speed versus change of direction, but just maybe, you know, I had it in my mind like, hey, they all happen at at top speed, whereas there's some indication that like, no, they're happening some acceleration as well. Um, and I think, you know, from a, again, from like a, a kinematic position standpoint, we've already addressed that a little bit, but I do think there's a pretty consistent body of evidence that says like, hey, you're getting into these really extreme postural positions, uh, pelvic positions, you know, that sort of thing, especially if you're, if you're, if you're casting out in a late swing phase where the hamstring is, you know, um, in the latter part of its flexion, but the shank and the knee are extending basically, i.e. the hamstring stretched across both joints, the hip and the, um, and the knee, and it's happening at high angular velocities. So, you're putting it on this big stretch at a high rate of stretch that, that's where the, you know, that's where the the injuries occur. And to me, that makes sense. And again, I, a tiny bit out my outside of my wheelhouse from a, from a statistic standpoint, but there is that old kind of joking saying that you're too slow to to pull a a hamstring, right? But if you think about it, that's kind of true in the sense that, okay, well, fast angular velocities are associated with speed. So, our faster runners, generally speaking, are going to have faster angular velocities. So, you're stretching this muscle, these group of muscles across these, you know, the the hip and the knee faster. And oh, by the way, if it's not the late swing phase that's getting you, it's the early ground contact phase. Now, we have this whole body of research, a lot of ours, where it's like, oh, the forces early in ground contact are larger as well. So, if you're running fast, you probably have high angular velocities and higher forces. So, if you're not in great positions to do that, or if you're slightly, you know, overworked or fatigued, then yeah, probably you are going to be more likely to pull a hamstring if you're a little bit faster. If you're running slow and you know you're running with lower forces and lower angular velocities, I say this half joking, but not really. Maybe there's something protective about that, you know. So, uh, I don't know. Again, just something like another interesting fact or interesting, uh, thought I should say.

Okay. All right, Dr. Clark, thank you for being on here. We're running quite long, so we'll, uh, resume filming shortly downstairs. And I hope everybody enjoyed this and, and all the listeners took.

Uh, the nine pages of notes that I have on my computer. Until next time, peace.