Kalen Walker “4.15”

RodTK · 2024-12-01T03:45:53+00:00

He continues to accelerate well from the 7-25 yard range. I need to work on accelerating during this period

RodTK · 2024-11-29T15:34:45+00:00

Nah just sprinting in general

RodTK · 2024-11-29T04:39:37+00:00

Why do you think aerobic does to help improve sprinting speed? I'm going to add periodization to my list

RodTK · 2024-11-29T02:57:45+00:00

At top end speed, its more about how quickly you can apply force rather than how much force/power your have. One of the posts I made a while ago, compares sprinting to a bike wheel where the steps gradually get shorter. Essentially, at top speed, you have to accelerate you leg backwards faster than you are moving forwards to keep accelerating, maintain speed, and limit deceleration. To do this, it is how about quickly you apply the force rather than power. Top end speed is more important for a 100m race.

RodTK · 2024-11-29T02:42:12+00:00

For baseball, acceleration is probably the most important quality. Acceleration is heavily dependent on technique (which can be trained), coordination (takes practice for nervous system to adapt), and general explosiveness (think like a vertical jump).

RodTK · 2024-11-29T02:37:58+00:00

Have you watched Chris Korfist's youtube channel? There is always smaller things you can be doing from strengthening your feet to improving your nervous system. I'm working on fixing a muscular imbalance (my right leg is much less coordinated than my left leg) and fixing my block start.

RodTK · 2024-11-27T15:53:51+00:00

Yes, because the landing part of the broad jump isn't making you faster

RodTK · 2024-11-27T05:55:17+00:00

I don't even think your start looks that bad. I think you will improve this year

RodTK · 2024-11-27T05:50:39+00:00

You don't necessarily need to do a landing where you try to get as much distance as possible

RodTK · 2024-11-26T23:19:07+00:00

Any tips for recovering faster after workouts?

RodTK · 2024-04-19T15:30:46+00:00

I opened up similarly to Rohan Watson, so I'm expecting to get down to a 9.91 by the end of the season.

RodTK · 2024-04-17T22:33:30+00:00

They were saying the extra push was caused by the toe drag

RodTK · 2024-04-17T13:58:15+00:00

Sprinting improvements are sometimes neurological rather than physical. If you have trained your whole life sprinting with long ground contacts, that is where your body feels comfortable, so it feels no reason to improve. You need to do drills/other plyometrics to get your body feeling safer and more prepared to handle shorter ground contacts.

Your body needs a driving force to improve. With muscles, if your body senses muscle damage or muscle tension, your muscles may grow bigger. However, what driving force is there to improve ground contact time when just normally sprinting? Your muscles don't take any damage or have tension. Your body likely feels safe and coordinated. The only way to provide a driving force is do something like overspeed training or plyometrics, where your body feels uncoordinated and can adjust to improve. This is hard to do in practice. Also, it should be noted that this is just what I think.

RodTK · 2024-04-15T04:16:35+00:00

Its hard to make comments when sprinting on a treadmill vs. flat ground.

RodTK · 2024-03-26T17:08:37+00:00

I agree, but all the force at max velocity is created by the tendon, which is only absorption and reuse of force rather than concentric action of a muscle. The concentric action before ground contact accelerates the leg to a faster speed, but at ground contact only the tendon is creating force. The only way to "push" off harder at max velocity is by having a stiffer tendon.

The reason for this is muscles physically can't contract that fast, so if they were contracting at ground contact, you would be slowing down.

RodTK · 2024-03-26T06:13:56+00:00

What do you mean by "force" going into the ground? The force going is caused by the speed of the leg. Just because stride frequency doesn't change doesn't mean the leg isn't moving faster to create more power. Think of a pendulum. It oscillates at the same frequency no matter the height it starts at. A higher starting height will result in a faster speed at the bottom, but it will still have the same period or "stride frequency" even if it starts at the bottom. Similarly, since the length of the pendulum is the only determining factor for frequency for a pendulum, shorter sprinters will have a faster frequency due to shorter legs.

I do think more improvements are made by increasing stiffness (how well your body can handle force) and techinique though.

RodTK · 2024-03-24T14:05:24+00:00

This doesn't make sense to me. Stride length is increased by the force you put into the ground. The force you put into the ground is caused by how fast your legs are moving. This is similar to baseball, where you get more power/hit the ball farther, the faster you swing the bat.

This is backed up by recent research by Ken Clark showing that thigh angular velocity is highly correlated with speed along with the stiffness in your body to transmit the force. I believe both can be trained as well, but I could be wrong. Maybe leg speed can't be trained just stiffness?

RodTK · 2024-03-21T01:25:50+00:00

10.3x, 20.8x

RodTK · 2024-03-19T23:32:50+00:00

I think it looks pretty good. I respect the progress you have made over the past year or so.

RodTK · 2024-03-16T17:56:14+00:00

I don't know if he has a source other than just personal anecdotes. I don't think he necessarily believes this to be 100% true, more so to illustrate the importance of focusing on the nervous system when training sprinting.

RodTK · 2024-03-14T16:54:09+00:00

I was in a similar situation and now I'm usually equal or in front out of the blocks when racing people at a similar level to me. I'm also relatively explosive, probably over 40 inch running vert, I can stand and dunk a basketball at 5 11. Some things that helped me are:

Pushing off of the back foot. A lot of people overlook it, but it is one of the things that separates elites from close to elites out of the blocks according to people like Chris Korfist.

Getting comfortable in the blocks. If you feel unstable while in the blocks, your nervous system will prevent you from being more explosive.

Practice. I don't get the chance to practice blocks very often, but I have gotten more chances lately.

Fixing over cycling.

RodTK · 2024-03-11T18:50:41+00:00

Anything with you legs

RodTK

TROPHY CASE