Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Ain't Heavy-continued
Everybody saw Michael Johnson run in two different Olympics, so there is no secret about his ability. Conversely, Houston ran in near obscurity because he could only win the very shortest races, but for 60 yards or less no one could beat him except maybe Ben Johnson on steroids. I suspect there are a few cats in Jail though that could give any world class runner a go, too bad about that though!
Michael Johnson, on the other hand could cover longer distances and for a short period of time he did it better than anyone else, ever! His thang was that he had superior form accompanied by super speed developed over many years and most likely over many generations. In my opinion, his key to success was that he left the blocks hell bent with desire, but once he hit the 3rd and 4th gears he had long strides that seemed to defy gravity. For a while he just touched the ground for fleeting moments. He was the Flash!
His robotic form had you believing he was not really that fast, but his results contradicted what you saw. I believe that illusion came from a different type of explosion that I describe as the Stride portion of the sprint. A stride isn't necessarily a languid prolonged movement. Rather in the sprint it is a series of leg bursts that are quite long, however due to their smoothness and rapidity seem to be appear almost slow. The secret is that the longer the stride the more distance covered and if you can pick em up and put down very fast you will be as fast as you can be!
Its like this see, if you cover 10 yards with three strides and you make the strides at a faster pace you will cover the 10 yards faster, simple, huh? So like Mike, you have to practice covering those simple ten yards faster, then string a bunch of ten yards together. If you are running just ten yards you just need to explode but if you have to cover more ground, then you must string more of the ten yarders together.
This may all sound trite at this point but as we begin to discuss training for the different parts of the sprint, then this will make perfect sense, I hope! This discussion can be extrapolated to just about any sport that deals with running except distance running or distances over 800 yards/meters.
Michael Johnson, on the other hand could cover longer distances and for a short period of time he did it better than anyone else, ever! His thang was that he had superior form accompanied by super speed developed over many years and most likely over many generations. In my opinion, his key to success was that he left the blocks hell bent with desire, but once he hit the 3rd and 4th gears he had long strides that seemed to defy gravity. For a while he just touched the ground for fleeting moments. He was the Flash!
His robotic form had you believing he was not really that fast, but his results contradicted what you saw. I believe that illusion came from a different type of explosion that I describe as the Stride portion of the sprint. A stride isn't necessarily a languid prolonged movement. Rather in the sprint it is a series of leg bursts that are quite long, however due to their smoothness and rapidity seem to be appear almost slow. The secret is that the longer the stride the more distance covered and if you can pick em up and put down very fast you will be as fast as you can be!
Its like this see, if you cover 10 yards with three strides and you make the strides at a faster pace you will cover the 10 yards faster, simple, huh? So like Mike, you have to practice covering those simple ten yards faster, then string a bunch of ten yards together. If you are running just ten yards you just need to explode but if you have to cover more ground, then you must string more of the ten yarders together.
This may all sound trite at this point but as we begin to discuss training for the different parts of the sprint, then this will make perfect sense, I hope! This discussion can be extrapolated to just about any sport that deals with running except distance running or distances over 800 yards/meters.
# posted by Art @ 8:54 PM 
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dude...you should write a book on this stuff. It makes me want to run to try these secret techniques out. And running is something that I swore very recently I would never do again.
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