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Short heels make elite sprinters super speedy
Date:10/29/2009

than in the non-sprinters. Instead of benefiting from the mechanical advantage of having a long heel lever, the sprinters seemed to be at a mechanical disadvantage because their heel levers were much shorter.

Puzzled by this unexpected discovery, Piazza turned to the literature to find out how animal sprinters' ankles are constructed, and quickly realised that the human elite athletes were built inline with their animal counterparts, which also have short heel levers. So how does this mechanically disadvantageous arrangement give elite sprinters the edge over weekend joggers?

Piazza and Lee realised that a fundamental property of all muscles could be responsible for the sprinters' unexpectedly short Achilles' tendon translations. He explains that muscles that contract quickly cannot generate much force, giving runners with a long moment arm a weak push off despite their increased mechanical advantage. However, muscles that contract slowly produce much greater forces that overcome the mechanical disadvantage of a short heel lever, giving sprinters with a short heel lever a powerful push off.

Testing his theory with a mathematical model of a sprinter's body, it was clear that the extra force generated by the calf muscle as it pulled the short heel lever would provide sprinters with the additional acceleration required to get ahead in the first few strides. And when the duo compared other physical characteristics between the sprinters and non-athletes, they noticed that the sprinters' toes were almost 1 cm longer than those of the non-sprinters. Not only could the sprinter generate more force while accelerating, but their longer toes allowed them to remain in contact with the ground longer during each stride, giving them longer to push against the surface and out perform slower sprinters.


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Source:Eurekalert

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