As a fellow athlete, I have always wanted to improve my athletic performance in strength and speed. However, I have never been so sure what the relationship between the two were. As it turns out, the magnitude of speed is directly proportional with the magnitude of strength if we were to eliminate the factors of weight, endurance, and efficiency. Basically, if an athlete were able to dead lift 500 pounds with perfect form, he or she should potentially be able to apply that maximum amount of force on each step. This is simple physics, if we were to apply more force on the ground, we would increase the distance of our stride and therefore go faster.
However, we must always consider technique. Running with poor technique such as: landing on the back of your heel, leaning too much backwards, or opening up the knee angle too much can lower our running efficiency to 74%. This means that, each of these poor techniques decrease the amount of force we apply on the ground.
Works Cited
http://www.athletesacceleration.com/the-simple-math-behind-running-faster/
That efficiency rating is a really interesting idea. It reminds me of how unrealistic some of the highly general problems are that we do in high-school level physics. Also, it goes to show how important form/technique is in sports, because with perfect form we can get the most out of our strength.
ReplyDeleteWhile this is interesting, the relationship between strength and speed is a little confusing. Are you talking about how more strength in pushing or lifting an object increases the rate at which the object moves? If that is the case then I agree with youPeople who lift weights do it for strength while the people who run do it for speed. Usually, bulkier people cannot run very fast because of all of the muscle they have to lug around!
ReplyDeleteinteresting. hope you can improve your speed!
ReplyDelete