Adarq.org

A 6'5 guy takes longer strides than 5'9 sprinters?  No shit?

The white mans common view of sprinting is almost laughable and I think easily surpasses the degree of OCD overanalyzing that takes place in any other sport.  All the relevant research in the sport would appear to make things simple for them (see the Weyand study), but evidently people don't get it.  All the OCD film analysis, lingo, form talk, charts, training regimens, etc. is laughable considering the sport is more about genetics than any other and improvements are damn near as synonymous with performance enhancing drugs as bodybuilding, which few of these folks ever mention.

Edit:
If you ever decide to train more for sprinting instead of vert I think you'll know exactly what I mean. You know your science and terms and all that, but I bet it takes you 6 months just to translate the lingo and figure out what the hell people are talking about. "MY GPP consisists of a warmup of A & B skips, intensive tempo,  SE1 work, and power speed drills designed to improve my frontside mechanics and full body weights on a 3-1-3 scheme.  haha  WTF?"

Well I thought the article seemed kind of odd as well, but it probably could have been better if it explained the ideas behind the different types of running a little more.  From the running I have done, I think that it is possible to run differently depending on what you're focusing on and the type of form you try to keep when you run.  I also believe that different forms are more appropriate for different people.  Other than height, some important factors would be stuff like skinny joints and reactivity, as well as hip power.  A guy like Ben Johnson relied mainly on hip power and put out a smaller ratio of power through his ankles than hips compared to some other people and this could have had something to do with his style having a high rate of turnover.

As for the fact that people sometimes overanalyze technique, I would have to admit that I obsess about a bunch of stuff that I later decide is pointless as well. However, a lot of the time you're only trying to improve by tenths of a second, so anything to make you more efficient is worth it.

RJ I wasn't throwing out any training recommendations so don't take that as me throwing out training schemes.  All I was commenting on was the general degree of labcoating, analyzing, counting, etc. that goes on in the sprint world by sprint enthusiasts and some coaches.  In my experience it's not at all uncommon that a bro spends a year or 2 learning about sprinting then the next 3 trying to turn his mind off.  Wanna know a good way to take sprinting out of the hindbrain where it belongs and put it in the forebrain? Make people acutely aware of things like how many steps they take, stride frequency, etc.  I actually think the foundations of the inno-sport system are pretty good.

RJ and Kelly
Sitting in a tree
K-I....

I love your discussions

My first reaction was the same a kelly's.  Like Bolt actually trained for his stride length.

And like at 5'6" I could somehow train my stride length to equal Bolts