DEEP DIVE
I was talking with a sprinter this week, and I want to walk through what he asked, because the answer is one of the more useful things you can understand about acceleration.
He's 43, two years into sprinting, and he opened his season at 11.4 and 23.3. He's six foot two, ninety-two kilos, and he's squatted close to 200 kilos for reps. So he's strong, and he's quick.
His problem is the first thirty metres. The quicker guys are gone off the line, and he only starts pulling them back over the second half of the race. His top speed is nearly there. His start is where the time is leaking out.
So let's start with the obvious answer, the one that comes to mind first. Slow start? Get more powerful: heavier squats, more sled work, another block of strength training.
But look at his numbers for a second. He squats close to 200 kilos. That is a serious amount of strength. If raw force were the thing holding him back, a squat like that would have sorted his start out already.
So it's probably not how much force he can produce. It's where that force is going.
Let me explain what I mean, because this is the part that matters.
When you accelerate, you want to push back into the ground so the ground drives you forwards. Every step in that early drive phase wants the foot landing under your hips, or even slightly behind them, striking down and back. Do that, and the force you make points you down the track.
Now watch what happens when the foot lands in front of your centre of mass instead. For a fraction of a second, before it can push you forwards, it pushes you back. It brakes. You're still producing plenty of force. You're just spending a chunk of it stopping yourself, and then paying again to un-stop.
Think of it like shoving a heavy door. Stand right against it, lean in, and everything you've got goes into the door. Stand back and push at it from a stride away, and you'll feel most of your effort sliding up and off it.
It's the same push. What changes is the direction, and that changes everything.
And this is exactly the trap a strong athlete falls into. A near-200-kilo squat means he can put a lot into the ground, so if it's aimed slightly wrong, he's producing a lot of the wrong thing. The stronger he is, the harder he brakes. The more he tries, the worse it gets.
So how do you fix a direction problem?
You might think the answer is a cue: stop reaching, stay behind the foot, feel it strike back. But cueing this is close to useless, the same way telling a tense sprinter to "just relax" is useless. You think about it harder and you tighten up.
You don't coach the direction at all. You pick tools where the wrong direction is physically impossible, and you let the exercise do the teaching for you.
Hills are the cleanest one. Twenty to thirty metres up a moderate slope. You can't reach out and brake on a hill, because the ground rises to meet your foot before it can get out in front of you. The slope forces the lean, and it forces the foot down and back, whether you understand any of this or not.
Heavy sled marches do the same job on the flat. Load it up heavy enough that you have to lean into it and drive each leg long and slow. You cannot overstride into a sled that heavy. The resistance sorts out your shin angle and your foot placement for you.
Prowler pushes run on the same idea. Hands fixed, body leaned, every rep a long deliberate drive with nothing reaching out in front.
Then drill the position directly. Wall drives to groove the lean and the leg exchange, single holds first, then doubles, then continuous. Falling starts and push-up starts, where you tip forwards from a fall and your feet have to scramble to catch up underneath you. That fall drops you straight into the angle you're chasing off the line.
And the strength you've already built?
You don't need more of it. You need it to come out faster. Trap-bar jumps, short-contact pogos, proper plyometrics. Over the first thirty metres, that will do far more than another ten kilos on your squat ever could.
One more thing, because he raised it himself. He's six foot two, and he wondered whether tall guys are just doomed to be slow out of the blocks.
Longer levers do take a bit more time to organise, so yes, his acceleration will always look slightly later than a shorter man's next to him. But that's geometry, not a fault.
The fastest people alive accelerate in completely different shapes, some low and snappy, some long and unfolding. Looking sharp early isn't the point. Getting the force pointed the right way is.
So for him, this is what I'd build nearly the whole programme around right now. Not more force. The same force, aimed properly. Because a strong push in slightly the wrong direction is still a push going mostly nowhere.
Point it down the track instead, and the strength he's spent two years building finally starts showing up in the one place he's currently losing the race.