Speed is the most sought-after athletic quality for many sportsmen, especially those who are engaged in sprinting, as mastering the sport is not easy. After all, the goal of short-distance running is to generate a sufficient amount of force and drive it through the ground, making the body achieve its peak acceleration. Certain humans can be remarkably fast, but it takes a great amount of hard training, perseverance, and effort to perform such biomechanical feats.
Let’s puzzle out the science behind sprinting to determine what affects human speed and whether it has any limits at all. This information will come in handy if you are seeking to improve the capabilities of your body, or just want to understand how it works to make more accurate sports predictions on GGBet India by knowing which athlete has more chances of winning from a scientific perspective.
Biomechanics and Physiology of Sprinting
Sprint running has four biomechanical phases:
- Starting
It all begins with a 4-point stance position when all the limbs of a sprinter are touching the ground. Once their feet are resting against the starting blocks, they gear their center of gravity towards the leading leg while keeping the arms shoulder-width apart. Herewith, both the spine and head are in straight alignment, ensuring sufficient power transfer and stability as the athlete propels themselves forward.
In the “Set” position (when the sprinter lifts their hips before taking off), it’s important to keep the same spinal alignment so that the front leg creates a 90-degree angle needed for generating the maximum force during the start.
Completing the dynamic take-off, the runner pushes off the blocks, and their back leg swings forward first together with the opposite arm. This takes us to the next sprint phase.
- Acceleration
These are the first 10 or so meters of the race where the sprinter is gaining speed. Maximizing horizontal force production is the key to making this phase successful. For this, longer ground contact is needed, while sprinting in its essence requires as little ground contact as possible, which poses a challenge to the runner.
The solution lies in biomechanics: an aggressive forward lean to about 40-50 degrees helps maximize force production and accelerate faster. Besides, it’s also important to ensure that there is enough vertical force to keep the body from stumbling.
- Drive (Maintenance Phase)
When the sprinter is reaching the maximum velocity, they transition to the maintenance phase where the biomechanics of the body change completely: the spine straightens out, the stride length increases, and the contact time between the foot and the ground decreases. To make the most of this phase, it’s important for the sprinter to land their feet underneath the center of mass (i.e., hips) to minimize the breaking force and continue running at top speed.
- Deceleration
Despite the name of the phase, it’s not about actively decelerating from running but about working harder to keep up the anaerobic endurance of the athlete and stave off any factors that might cause a slow-down in the final stretch of the race. To keep the maximal force output when they are reaching the finish line, runners maintain lots of arm drive and high knee action. The last 20 meters usually pose the biggest challenge, so sprinters need to apply all their effort to this distance.
What Is the Limit to How Fast a Human Can Be?
Speed records for men and women were set far back in 2009 and 1988, and they still remain unbroken:
- The record for men was set in 2009 by Usain Bolt when he finished a 100-meter sprint in 9.58 seconds at the World Championships in Berlin with an average speed of 37.58 km/h. The Jamaican also set the 200-meter record at the same competition by running the distance in 19.19 seconds.
- Florence Griffith-Joyner is a legendary American sprinter who has held two world records for women since 1988. Flo-Jo ran 100 meters in 10.49 seconds at the U.S. Olympic Trials and completed the distance of 200 meters in 21.34 during the Seoul Olympics.
A year before Usain Bolt broke the world record, Mark Denny from Stanford University published a paper analyzing the maximum running speed of greyhounds, horses, and top human athletes. According to his research, no man or woman will ever manage to run the 100-meter race faster than 9.48 seconds, which is just 0.10 seconds under the current Bolt’s record.
While the human body does have its biological limits, no one knows for sure how far they can go. After all, running speed depends on a variety of factors, including the general health condition of an athlete, their sex and age, muscle composition, endurance, training system, and more. Hence, there is always a chance that we will see new speed records sooner or later.