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But yeah... maybe if I'd have better hip flexibility to get the knee higher easily (without "trying") then maybe my mechanics would look different.

But at this point I just automatically put my foot down wherever the body feels like "doing so". I think at my level of strength that's what you get.

Maybe.  But in my experience max velocity mechanics is the one part of the 100m sprint which won't get fixed with more strength/power/mobility.  It is a bit counter intuitive.   While I think the cue to tell the sprinter to relax is poor (relax usually means go slow) there is some amount of active release in lower body tension or reach phase between strides than is necessary to hold max V.   I don't know if this can really be learned if you train without any other fast sprinters; but if so it would take careful attention to your mechanics.   If you only do 20m-40m sprints; your attitude regarding technique is probably fine.

It's also kind of confusing how sprinters with good acceleration also seem to move their feet/legs at the start to the sides so to speak. So they don't really step in line with their body but behind and a bit on the side so their feet combined with their body look like a "V" for the first 10-20 meters. Then they start to step in-line and straight ahead...

You can see me do that in the video in the first post in this thread... I was like "let me try it" and... it's strange. Maybe they want to finish on the big toe or something in the acceleration phase?

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The "v" thing may be due to quad dominance at the start? I know it feels more natural that way for me and I'm pretty sure I'm quad dominant. It seems to let me push off much easier.

Why would quad-dominance contribute?  Sprinters are some of the least quad-dominant athletes.  This really isn't something you should practice and it's definitely (especially not Raptor whose philosophy is not to copy mechanics but run naturally!)  not something that should be carried on for 20m!   If the side to side stepping is carried on for more than a few steps you are simply seeing really bad habits.  If the block clearance angle is low then for the few steps (usually the second step, ie if you start left foot power leg it will be the first left foot strike) your body angle is such that you need to get far enough forward to not fall but your hip can't extend as far forward if it's tucked under the torso; so the leg swings farther forward AND to the outside of the lane.    This really isn't something you should practice and in fact you are better served to try and keep your heel recovery low.  This is the infamous toe drag that you see on Bolt's 9.58.  Of course the actual drag is not good, but it comes from keep the recovery leg low and fast rather than slow and to the outside.  This allows you to maintain balance without wasting your speed to the wrong direction.  If there is any cue to practice at the start I would recommend this over all others. 

For me... it's always been about getting up immediately basically and just sprint as fast as I can. I don't think about it at all.

It's also been about being extremely fast in terms of leg cycle frequency, even if the strides are short. That's how I have always sprinted. So since the strides are short and I am vertical then my knee lift is very low (you can see in the video I don't get my knees high at all... that would be a very illogical position in my case, I would just collapse into the ground from that height like a robot or something).

I've always been criticized that I don't get my knees high enough. Never felt natural at all.

Your start doesn't make sense.  There is no point in getting down in a three point stance if you are gonna rock into a full squat and then roll out of it forwards.  Just do a falling start or practice an actual start.   

Besides that it's fine if that is your cue; thinking of leg cycle frequency.   However, the majority of improvement for any sprinter comes from increased power off the ground which causes increased stride length.  Getting faster is about shorter and more powerful ground contacts.  If thinking about having fast leg cycle gets you to push your feet off the track faster then it doesn't matter.  It's not always about the cue being correct biomechanically it's about the cue causing you to do what is correct biomechanically.  Right now if you kept your head down for 30 meters and lifted your knees higher and stepped over more properly you would probably look more typical but be slower.   Hopefully your knee lift will come naturally as you get stronger.  Since you are weak right now you probably need to train more; perfecting weak form while you have no power makes very little sense. 

** I don't know what you mean about it being illogical to have knee lift when you are vertical?  The athletes with the most knee lift are those that run from a very vertical position....

Main point is make sure your strides are not too short (figure out where you are on your 7th footstrike).  If they are not then keep running however feels right and you will get stronger and faster and your form should come together.

^ Ok, I don't want to hijack the beast thread anymore so you can PM me or post to my journal if you want to reply but I'll give one last point in this thread.

There are two points and I think you have to separate them to understand. 

1) The first point is that you can't PROVE the someones training or ability to maintain weight is necessarily sub-optimal; it might be unorthodox but optimal for them.  I give you this point but arguing about being able to prove something surely true is ridiculous and not in the domain of science.  Like I said before, you have no problem asserting that a lesser athletes training methods are sub-optimal when you know you have strong evidence that their methods wouldn't help most humans.  Now can you prove that someone who has used long distance marathoning to increase their vertical from 20'' to 24'' hasn't maximized their potential?  No.  You can't prove it.  Maybe they are the training outlier and while unorthodox they have fully maximized their potential this way.   But... You can be pretty sure what they are doing is suboptimal. 

2) Your second point is that if someone is extremely good at something then it's much much more likely that their methods have been fruitful.  For this reason the Maurice Clarrett example was actually quite compelling because in his case we can see the whole story in front of us.   He was at one point the top running back in college football as a freshman.  By any measure you would admit he was at the top of his craft.  However, he had what looked to most like a detrimental training regiment.  If we went back in time when he was at his best and told you of his training regiment would you say "Well, seems weird, but I can't say he isn't maximizing his potential because he's the best at what he does so it must be unorthodox?".    I would say "He is a freak but I don't THINK he is maximizing his potential with what he is doing" (Again from pt 1, I don't know but I strongly think).   Turns out in the future his poor approach to his craft cost him and I think now it's safe to say he didn't maximize his potential...

Maybe this isn't satisfying to you because Maurice Clarett didn't at any time maximize human potential like Usain Bolt.  I understand that your intuition is since Bolt is the fastest human of all time it's highly unlikely that he isn't maximizing his potential.  My main point is that this intuition is wrong.  And we have the data to prove it.   I used to work with a group that did modeling of earthquakes; the distribution of the outliers is what causes this to be false.  While you might not be a statistician I am telling you that you arrived at the conclusion implicitly assuming a normal distribution among outliers as well as humans.  Essentially the thought that one would use to assume Usain Bolt must be maximizing his potential is as follows:

A) Humans have a wide distribution natural sprinting ability    [ For the hundred lets assume most males people are somewhere 10-20 second range in the absence of training ]
B) Humans can improve on that natural sprinting ability with training
C) Therefore, if you select a group of fast humans at random it's likely that they are fast because of a combination of A and B.   Some may have more natural ability and train less optimally, some less ability but train better, but on average the group is made up of humans with better than average ability AND training. 

D) Usain Bolt is that fastest human that ever lived.  Therefore in his case it's extremely unlikely that he doesn't have a whole lot of A and a whole lot of B.   It's unlikely that would be born with enough "A" to not need "B" to become the best. 

*** I agree all the way up to part D.   The statistics for why I don't believe in D are explained a bit here:  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL035967/abstract but it's REALLY dry and I think I can give an intuitive understanding of why we should not expect that the performance of Usain Bolt is proof that he is maximizing his potential and in fact take his otherwordly performance as evidence that's it's only as likely as it is for any amateur.    Basically the proof is in the world records.   Just think of when Usain Bolt ran his world record 100m.   Assume the mean 100m time for an average trained male is about 13 seconds.   Then a much smaller number of times would be run at 12 seconds.  And a much smaller number at 11 seconds and so forth.   And a much smaller number at 10 seconds.  In fact with enough data each 1/100 of a second would go down in the graph.  The number of men to achieve 9.98 would be greater than 9.97 which is greater than 9.96 and so forth.  This is called monotonic decreasing and is a the hallmark of a normal distribution.   However, then we notice that Bolt runs 9.58.  Nobody runs 9.59, 9.60, 9.61, 9.62, 9.63.... All the way up to 9.69 which Bolt had run himself.  At the time Tyson Gay's 9.71 was the next fastest.   It doesn't make sense.  9.58 is MUCH MUCH more unlikely than 9.65.  So one observation of 9.58 suggests multiple at 9.65.    But we don't see that.  This is how outliers work.     The tallest man capable of standing up ever was 8' 11''.   The second tallest man verified height is 8' 3''.  Thats a 8 inch difference.   One would assume that under normal conditions since reaching 8'11'' is so unlikely that everything must have lined up perfect to reach such a height.  In fact the guy was still growing when he died of an infection unrelated to his height and thus clearly did not reach his potential....     

That might be a bit rambling, but I'm just trying to get you to think that maybe the fact that someone is an extreme outlier actually allows us to assume less about the conditions that lead to the event.    You have to think about the distribution like this:  Most males are born somewhere on the normal curve.  The further away from the mean the less likely you will have that level of natural ability.   HOWEVER a small amount of people are outliers.  Thus, they are born VERY far from the mean say 4 + standard deviations.  The likelihood of this event occurring is very rare, but given that it occurs it's not much less likely that they are born 4.6 standard deviations away rather than 4.2.     This is a consequence of statistics that I promise is true.  It's an extreme value distribution.  Given this information we can make the inference that in the event of the outlier the normal expectation on the conditions necessary for an event are not only not necessary; they are actually unexpected!   Now apply this to Bolt.  Imagine ability (A) and training (B) are both normally distributed.  Some people train really hard and it allows them to improve at a fast rate.   Consider these two cases:

1) Bolt is an outlier in "A" (natural ability) assume he is 4.2 standard deviations from the mean giving him the natural ability to run 10.3 seconds without much training.  He is also highly separated from the mean (maybe not as much) but say maybe 2 standard deviations from the mean in training giving him the drive to train much harder than the average person resulting in the ability to lower his 10.3 second time to 9.58. 

2) Bolt is an outlier in "A" and is 4.5 standard deviations from the mean giving him the natural ability to run 9.9 seconds without much training.   He is about average as far as training goes thus lowering his 9.9 to 9.58. 

******

Both of these are possible but #1 is much less likely because it includes one extremely rare event and one quite rare event.  #2 assume only one rare event (which is only trivially less likely than the first even in #1 due to the extreme value distribution).

Hope that made sense.  I do statistics for a living and I'm not necessarily the best at explaining it but hopefully you can consider the implications of the extreme value distribution.  Also, I realize the models are contrived (as all models are) and that the real world is much more complicated (eg given that bolt is fantastically gifted elite training will be brought to him, etc), but it is worth considering that when faced with an extreme performance we should not use the correct intuition that we use for intermediate and even advanced performances.   Thus, when Bolt admits he is lazy and his coach constantly admonishes him for his laziness and he comes into every season out of shape and running slow and admits he just doesn't try that hard cause he prefers playstation.... Maybe we should consider that maybe he could be even faster and not that it's impossible to be so great without everything lining up.... rather you just need one thing to line up in an extreme way. 

see the "shaq was lazy" argument drives me insane. shaq is a top-5 all-time center and was THE MOST DOMINANT PLAYER IN THE LEAGUE. how can you say he was lazy? i can just as easily say, if he'd worked harder he'd have burned out and stopped getting joy from the game and retired early.

it's like the idiots who talk about how lazy randy moss was. randy moss is the second-greatest receiver in nfl history. he played exactly the way he needed to play to be better than EVERYONE ELSE AT HIS POSITION EVER EXCEPT JERRY RICE.

Usain Bolt is lazy.  You have to understand statistics of outliers.  Outliers are not distributed normally (gaussian).   Yes the simple model assumes the normal distribution of ability and some normal distribution of effort.   Therefore as you move higher into the ranks of achievement what you get is both more natural ability and more effort.    But realize that you have to divorce yourself from this thinking when you examine outliers.   Most really good people have tremendous ability AND tremendous drive.   But with crazy freak outliers all bets are off.  This is real statistical phenomena.   Think about Earthquakes, most are minor.  Some are moderate.  Few are big.  Even less are very big.  But the biggest one of all.... well it probably doesn't have any neighbors close to it on either side!    Thus, for Shaq, Bolt, etc, there isn't necessarily that guy right behind him that will outwork him if he isn't careful.  Theres that guy 10 stratospheres below him that will outwork him if he simply doesn't try.   But Shaq is admittedly lazy!  Maybe lazy is the wrong word because I am not implying that he simply didn't try.  But he wasn't even close to Kobe Bryant in terms of effort to perfect his craft.  Shaq admittedly traveled and stopped playing basketball in the summers and came into the season out of shape over and over again.   You can say he would have burned out and you might be right.  But I'm talking about peak performance not career performance.  In terms of Shaq's peak.... He simply could have been better.   Usain Bolt could go from the best sprinter ever to the even more best sprinter ever and EASILY take the 400m gold in Rio.  EASILY.  I don't think he will do it because training for it sucks.   Partially when your already the best you don't care to become that much better.  He simply isn't pushed externally and for whatever reason doesn't have the internal motivation to do it.   But he could if he wasn't too lazy. 

Best example: James white.

I chose him from tdub, jusfly, aut etc because he jumps just as high, but he is 6'7'' and he is a profesional basketball player, trying to get a chance in the NBA from 2006 that he was drafted.

Not saying something new here, just making more clear what kind of basketball beasts those guys are!

Wow AMAZING photo and great example vag.  Probably one of the taller ridiculous athletes to still struggle to get a spot.  And the thing is it's not like he is "bad" skill wise.  I'm certain he would still really impress at more than athleticism; he averaged 23 pts a game in the d-league and shot 35% from behind the three point line.  So to recap; he is tall enough, ridiculously athletic enough (far more than necessary), and he is ridiculous skilled.  But still not skilled enough.  NBA basketball players have the unfortunate problem of playing against great defenders which really makes it hard to appreciate just how great they are at their game.  The failures of guys really great players drive the point home pretty well though. 

About James White, I wonder if their is some truth to his athleticism being less useful because he jumps off one foot?   I made the point in the beast thread that when height is factored in as an athletic attribute their is a level you can reach where you will get a starting job in the NBA no matter your skill level (eg DeAndre Jordan @  7 feet, Strong, Fast, Can Jump ).   I wonder where the magic point is to where you won't get picked up just on athleticism.  I personally know moderately athletic and highly skilled guys who are in the 6'5'' range who haven't came close to getting a shot..... Where's the sweet spot, if your 6'9 and have athletic ability will you get a spot no matter what?  If James White was 6'7 but jumped off two feet and was a little stronger could he carve out a rebounding, spot shooting, hybrid role based on his ability?    I don't know but I do know the D-League really hurts some of these guys.   Before the D-League you might get an NBA contract coming out of school if you were tall, strong, fast, etc and they would hope you developed.  Now they can put you in the d-league and see if you can develop the technical skill.... If you don't then you never cash a big check. 

devil's advocate: dwight howard was the best defensive player in the league (measured by win shares) from at least 2008-2011 and even last year he was top-10. sometimes it seems like he's not tapping his full potential and that's disappointing but he's still a great basketball player.

Good point.  I don't totally agree with win shares; I think Kevin Garnett rates higher than Howard in defensive +/- and was the better defensive player certainly for 2008/2009, but the Howard clearly is one of the top defenders.  He is everything but a great pick and roll defender (which I think requires more skill and is more valuable against most great teams).   As paint defense is the one part of basketball that is most dependent on athleticism, this emboldens the point I was making to Raptor; Howard is a great athlete but lacks skill and will (thus poor offensive production, terrible free throw shooting, etc.)   Defending the paint really is the one area in basketball where you can get a job in the pros just based on your athletic ability.  In American football you will get looks at most positions for your stats; I have scouts and combine guys coming up to me when all they have seen is a big 220 guy run a semi-decent 100m (never mind they have never seen me try and catch a football)....

For basketball if your ~7 feet, strong, can jump and run like a 6 footer, etc they will sign you up right away.  That's why a guy like DeAndre Jordan who plays like he has never touched a basketball or cared to practice and shoots 30% from the line is a starter in the NBA.  His physical tools alone make him so valuable on defense.   What I find most amusing is that Shaq is a one of Howards loudest critics.  Shaq was a much better player but he may have been even lazier; as great as he was he seriously could have been much greater.   One year he delayed surgery till the start of the season giving us the great quote "I like to heal on company time".   

Anyway, if there was any doubt that Howard is an absolutely amazing athlete it should end in this video.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olAnwLcOCl8  [ Relay starts at 1:14 ]

I know Maurice Greene is fat and lazy since retirement.  I know he's not REALLY trying super hard.  I know it's only like a 60m turn.  But more than anything watch the form as he holds the stagger on Greene.... A 7 footer just isn't supposed to run like that.  Really ridiculous.  If they had the world championships of sprinting for 7 footers... Howard would clean up.   If you consider height an athletic trait (which it is really), then to some extent the NBA players are the greatest athletes in the world.  NFL guys have ridiculous speed and ability despite massive bodyweight; but height is more rare than size in a population.   There are fewer than 100 men between 20 and 40 that are 7 feet or taller in the entire US.  Just by virtue of his height Howard is such an extreme outlier; when you factor in that his raw athletic ability would probably place in his the top 1-2% of the population DESPITE the fact that tall guys are usually significantly less athletic.... well what he has is really crazy.   Guys like that (Bill Russel, Wilt Chamberlain, Shaq, Howard), movable massive guys are just so rare that it's shocking when they aren't more dominant.

There is so much broscience when it comes to steroids.  Also I feel like a lot of people who haven't reached a high-level of competition just really don't appreciate greatness.  People can be really really really good at something without there being some chemical explanation.  To some extent I agree with Kingfish and Raptor; allowing an avenue for athletes to compete untested would make things a lot cleaner.  On the other hand I think each sport should be able to make the rules as it chooses; the IAAF changed it so you don't get a false start in the sprints anymore, if they want to enforce a rule that you have to test positive for substance X before racing, fine by me.    What bothers me is any political pressure or testing groups which try to force sports to adhere to their rules, these groups profit when there are positive tests which is a huge conflict of interest.

From anecdotal evidence and from what I've read online it seems that steroids can take up to .2 seconds off a 100m for a male but with females they can take up to .4 seconds off a 100m time. I guess it also depends on how the person reacts. Like there are some people that can take steroids and just blow up because their body uses them really efficiently. A perfect example of this theory is Kevin Levrone. Than on the other hand you have people that don't react well to them (most top natural bodybuilders).

"Steroids will not make you crazy if the tendency isn't there already just as they won't make you a great athlete if you aren't already. Here's what they will do. If you run the 40 (yards) in 4.6, you can get it down to 4.4. If you bench 400 you can increase that to 450. If you have a vertical (jump) of 36 (inches) you might get to 40. But you have to be great to be greater, it's not as magical as many perceive."

Numbers like this are seriously hardcore examples of broscience.  Steroids do one thing.  They tip the scale for your body in favor of building muscle tissue.  THAT IS IT.  They don't make you faster by 0.2 seconds or lift 50 more pounds or jump higher... They do nothing of the sort.   IF (and its a big if) what you need is to change the environment to build more muscle tissue, then steroids will help immensely.  Otherwise they will do nothing or possibly even hurt your performance.  Most male sprinters are not losing because they need to build more muscle; short sprints always come down to MaxV which is primarily a function of tendon elasticity, motor control, and the ability of the body to relax in the reach phase.  Steroids do nothing here. 

Also, don't forget you can put your body in an anabolic environment without adding androgens.  The formula is simple.  Eat more and lift more.  Your body will build more muscle.  It will also put on fat.   That's why natural powerlifters are incredibly fat.   Fred Hatfield (the only man with a legit 1000lb squat) admitted that he used steroids because he "didn't want to have to get too fat".   The problem is even worse for the women.  Look at the heavyweight female oly lifters.  They are like 50% fat.   The fewer androgens you have the less willing your body will be to build or maintain muscle unless it's in extreme positive energy balance.    That's why athletes who don't have to fit into a weight class share stories where they are somewhat skeptical about the benefits of steroids.   Throwers often claim they don't help:  http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=joyce/080804

The bottom line is if your goal is adding as much muscle tissue as possible with zero fat you need steroids.  Thus, the only sport where steroids are completely required is bodybuilding.   Additionally pure strength sports which impose weight-class limits will be hard to compete in without steroids.  If your a male sprinter who lacks muscle mass and can't put on any muscle while doing the system work required of a sprinter, then they might help you.  The biggest post-steroids performance gain was probably Tim Montgomery who was always extremely weak and just too small to accelerate...  I don't think Walter Dix's problem is that he needs more muscle tissue...  Of course for women.... well most all of them fall into the Tim Montgomery category as far as steroids are concerned. 

It's really a common misconception to think that because an elite athlete does something that it helps.  Elite athletes are HIGHLY superstitious and competitive.  Justin Gatlin uses cryotherapy, wears oxygen boots after training, wears special hologram bracelets that he thinks make him stronger, he drinks special alkaline ionized water, and he used an androgen cream that his trainer thought wouldn't cause a positive test.   With the exception of the cream, all the other things have NO clear evidence that they work or are BS pseudo-science.  Yet he isn't taking any chances.  He uses everything he can and thinks it all works.    Did the cream help him?  Maybe.  But probably not. 

On one hand I can't imagine someone squeaky clean like Jeremy Lin taking PEDs. But how the hell is he so quick compared to all the other players out there. He's big and strong as well for his height and weight and something tells me it's not from doing squats and oats. In fact i doubt any NBA player has time for that stuff, so its prob just genetics plus drugs giving elite performances we enjoy today.

Seriously?  You can't believe Jeremy Lin is clean?  You think his quickness is so otherworldly it has to be from drugs?  Newsflash.  Jeremy Lin isn't an amazing athlete.  Neither is Chris Paul.  On any test of athleticism (eg. short sprint, short shuttle, vertical jump, weight lifts, etc) they don't display any amazing ability.   But they are really really really good at basketball.  Have you ever played with a NBA level player?  They are ridiculously good.  If you just play pickup basketball with a decent D1 player you will be shocked.  With the type of defense that's played in pickup basketball they can just walk down the court and make a 3-pointer from the college line pretty much every time.  Seriously they shoot like 80% unguarded.    The players who don't even make the NBA are ridiculously good at handling the ball, shooting, etc.   Jeremy Lin's technical ability is absolutely ridiculous.   Your right that he doesn't get his quickness from squats but it's not from drugs either, it's from genetics and an absolutely ridiculous amount of time spent training at their sport.   

For the most part team sports with long seasons don't have much of a problem with drugs.   There just isn't time for a elite NBA player to use steroids.  The are pretty much player basketball year round; the increased incidence of injury from steroids alone and the hard of time off to such a technical sport makes them not worth it alone.   

*** The bottom line is elite male athletes in most dynamic sports are not usually the ones who lacked the ability to put on sufficient muscle.   So unless muscle or muscle/fat ratio is absolutely paramount to performance, it's easy to overstate the benefit they provide.  The real benefit is more likely to women in dynamic sports or those whose genetics leave them lacking sufficient muscle.  Raptor would probably benefit the most from steroids.   The one caveat is that this post was about steroids.  Of course there are other PEDs.   Stimulants have a modest but real benefit to training performance and other drugs have real benefits to endurance sports.   There are rumors of drugs which would just drastically change sports performance all around, eg. locally injectible ATP.   However, I think these are mostly rumors but if possible we should be on guard for the first 40 second 400m performance.