Set position height is personal and coaches keep standardising it

Limb proportions decide where the hips should sit, and copying a champion's photograph is how athletes get it wrong.

There is a photograph doing the rounds on every coaching course, a sprinter in the set position with the hips slightly above the shoulders, and it has done a lot of damage.

The photograph is fine. The athlete in it has femurs of a certain length, a torso of a certain length, and a strength profile that lets them hold that shape without shaking, and the geometry that follows from those three facts happens to put the hips there. Change any one of the three and the right answer moves. A tall athlete with long thighs who copies the image ends up with a front knee angle so closed they cannot extend into the pedal at all, and it will feel to them like a start that is heavy rather than sharp.

What the position is trying to achieve is worth stating plainly, because once you have it the arguments get simpler. You want the centre of mass far enough forward that the athlete is already falling when the gun goes, both legs able to push through a useful range, and the first step landing behind the hips so the force applied is mostly horizontal. That is the whole list. Any hip height delivering those three is correct for that person, and any hip height that does not is wrong regardless of who else uses it.

The test I like takes ten minutes and no equipment. Put the athlete in set and hold it for four seconds. Trembling means the position is beyond their current strength and it will collapse under the gun no matter how good the still image looks. Then start from three or four variations and time to ten metres with somebody honest on the watch. Do it across several sessions, because start times are noisy and one run proves nothing at all.

Almost always the quickest version is not the prettiest version, and this is where coaches lose their nerve. A start that looks a little low and a little cramped but produces a low first step will beat a textbook one, and the urge to tidy up the angles is enormous.

Resist it. The athlete is not being marked on the photograph. Nobody has ever been handed a medal at ten metres for elegant geometry.