Sprinters need to get stronger before they get lower

A low drive-phase position only produces speed if the athlete has the force to hold it, which most of them have not.

There is a shape everybody wants in the first steps out of the blocks. Body angled forward, shin close to parallel with the track, hips travelling in a straight line rather than popping up. It appears in every slow motion clip of a great start and it gets coached relentlessly, usually to athletes who physically cannot produce it.

Holding that position is a force problem before it is a technique problem. The lower the body angle, the greater the torque the hip and knee extensors have to overcome to stop the athlete collapsing, and the longer that force must be sustained because the contact time in the first strides is much longer than later in the race. An athlete without the strength to meet that demand does one of two things. He rises early, which everyone can see and everyone corrects. Or he stays low because he was told to and shuffles, taking small ineffective steps that keep the shape and lose the race, which nobody corrects because it looks right on video.

The second failure is the worse one and it is the more common. It has produced a generation of athletes with photogenic starts and slow ten metre times, coached by people watching the picture instead of the clock.

So the sequence I would insist on is strength first, position second. Heavy hip extension work, single leg loading, and enough all-round durability that a young athlete can accept the forces without breaking. Then let the drive phase angle find its own level, testing it against time to ten metres rather than against a still frame. The right position for an athlete in November is not the right position for the same athlete in June, and it should be allowed to move.

The counterargument is that technique learned early sticks, and that leaving a teenager to start upright builds a habit that is hard to remove later. There is something in that, and I would still rather have a strong athlete with a fixable habit than a weak one with a beautiful position and nothing behind it.

The photograph is not the performance. Time it.