How should my arms look on acceleration versus at top speed?

Question

Michael Johnson · Answer

How should my arms look on acceleration versus top speed? It's a great question because it's not the same on acceleration. So first of all, obviously, you already understand with the question that the arms drive the legs. So arms are very, very important in sprinting. So on acceleration, even out of the blocks, it's very different. You're going to have a much bigger expanse of the arms when you're coming from a static position out of the blocks trying to drive yourself forward. So imagine you're trying to generate enough power to actually pull yourself from a static position into motion. So that takes a lot, and so you're-- the bigger your arms at that point, the more you-- power you're going to be able to generate with your legs. Once you get up into your maximum speed or maximum velocity, then you're not as big with your arms when you're in an upright position. The most important thing are when you're at top speed or at max velocity is making sure that left-side right-side synergy is absolutely identical, not crossing your body, making sure that the arms are just going straight up and down. And you want about a 90-degree angle. It varies from athletes to athlete, but somewhere around there. You don't want to have a straight arm because then you're not generating enough power. So you want to imagine as if you if you're standing and you've got a gun in a holster on each side or in a pocket, and you're pulling it out, like the quick draw back in the westerns, that sort of thing. That's the sort of motion that you want to mimic. So the arm, that hand, just comes right by your pocket and almost sweeps the side of your hip each time, and it just goes right past the hip and then comes right back up. So that's a general rule of thumb. But arms are very, very important. And you want to make sure-- again, the most important thing is synergy at max velocity. And at any point, whether it's acceleration, or whether it's max velocity, or maximum speed, full speed, you don't want your body-- your arms crossing your body.

Loren Seagrave · Answer

Hey Priscilla. Thanks for the question. The action of the arms during top-end speed and acceleration are and can be somewhat different. The key thing that I learned early on is arm action is like driving a motor vehicle on a one-way Street. You only drive in One Direction. And so you either extend the shoulder by hammering the hands back or punch the arm forward. Typically the Elbows are at a loose 90 degree angle and the thumbs are up with the Palms facing in. You don't want to turn the hands over and dog paddle because this pronation of the hand actually turns off the biceps muscle, which then can no longer be used maximally. So we teach two things, we teach Drive where you drive the elbows back, keeping the Loose and not letting the hand extend keeping the thumb up and the Palms facing in. Typically, now, we can also teach punch where we're going to punch the hand forward, bringing it up to about shoulder level, and then letting it, letting it go back on its own. Oftentimes within the race model, we will use the arm action to change during the different phases. Whether it's pure acceleration, transition maximum, velocity one maximum velocity to, or speed, Which is the final phase of the model. So the people that are throwing the arm back and opening the elbow, especially during the acceleration phase, they have a tendency to over push and that's something that you don't want to do. You don't want to continue the thigh going backwards. When the foot is no longer in contact with the ground conversely, if the arm is coming forward, You want to see the elbow joint roughly stabilized, if you see the elbow joint Bend, when they get toward the action, this is almost always an indicator that the athlete is over pushing and needs to buy time to allow that thigh to. Then start coming forward. You can correct this.

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"How should my arms look on acceleration versus at top speed?"