Why would springs make you run faster than calf muscles?

I'm sure some sorta math could be done on this, have you done it?

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

More: http://www.nytimes.com/...utee.html?ref=sports

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I dont want to sound rude, but i saw the guy on Sky Sports and he looked really lets say "large". I dont know if the springs give you an advantage but if they dont this guy isnt getting enough credit. There is just no way someone his size can run with the best 400 runners in the world at that size

Edit: I just went and looked at some pictures of him and i will correct myself. He isnt as large as the TV made him look but he is still way bigger than most 400 runners.

The world record holder in the 400 was pretty large.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

I estimate this guy is about 180lbs or 81 kilos. Does anyone know his weight? How big was the record holder?

Just imagine how fast he could run if he could put some Newtons on those bad boys...

This goes into a lot more technical detail:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/2189

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Unfair? That's ridiculous.

Read this older article: http://www.nytimes.com/...a06652e6&ei=5070

Here's the most salient bit:

According to Gailey, a prosthetic leg returns only about 80 percent of the energy absorbed in each stride, while a natural leg returns up to 240 percent, providing much more spring.
“There is no science that he has an advantage, only that he is competing at a disadvantage,” Gailey, who has served as an official in disabled sports, said of Pistorius.

There is also the issue of him being able to optimize his height, and also the weight of the prosthesis may be lighter than normal legs

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Okay, thanks for that. So it seems that spring is only a small part of the issue but length of stride is the major beef. Those opposed claim that his stirde is made longer but his prosthetics and thus there is an advantage gained by anyone who can move their limbs fast enough to capitalize on that. Length of stride x frequency of stride = speed.

The height issue I agree. The weight is true too. But he's also missing a hell of a lot of muscle, there's balance issues, and the overall system is tremendously inefficient compared to a fully functioning human.

As to the other poster's bit about "springs": load of crap.

Michael Johnson was a burly sprinter of the modern build - quite different from current champ Wariner. He was in that 180 range, slightly less maybe - but he was 6'1 or 6'2"

But my guess is that most top sprinters are born with near optimal stride length, which is why they are fast.

So what do you do with a guy born with no stride length at all? Force him to be average (where he will never be able to compete)? Or let him pick an optimal stride?

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

You would guess incorrectly. YouTube Michael Johnson. YouTube Jeremy Wariner. YouTube Butch Reynolds. What do you see in common about their strides? Very little you say? Exactly. MJ had ridiculous turnover. Wariner is a loper. Reynolds was in between. reynolds was a lot taller, but MJ and Wariner are about the same height and inseam, yet run drastically differently.

Speed is a function of turnover and stride length. Each person chooses their own to be fast.

As for Pistorious, I do think it's fair to limit the prosthetics to whatever is the proper length based on the proportions of the rest of his body. You can't let it be unlimited, but it should be based on his proportions, not on an average for all people his height.

I hear what you're saying and i dont blame the guy for trying but i can also see the other side of the story. There is a lot at stake for these athletes at the elite level and to compete against someone who may or may not have an unfair advantage would be troubling. It may be a little self enduleging since he is still 3 secs off of the winning time but none the less. Id say unless you can present proof beyond any reasonable doubt that there is no advantage, it isnt fair to the people who do no use technology in the event.

Ill go on the record and say that even if technology is helping him, he still has to be a great athlete to use those things as fast as he does.

By the way, other PC athletes have made similar complaints about his technology.

I didn't mean to imply all top sprinters would have the same stride, but they would have strides well suited for their own bodies.

Also, if it is the case that a variety of strides can produce top sprinters, then what does it matter if Oscar gets to pick one? If we limit it based on his proportions, id be interested in seeing how many top sprinters have stride lengths that are off the normal scale... Perhaps if you only use top sprinters as the data set to pick the upper and lower bounds of the stride length based on his arms and upper legs or whatever, it would make sense

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Nice troll! :)

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Forget speedwork. Speedwork is the icing on the cake and you don't have a cake yet. - MattinSF

Basically they have 9 tenants, live life to the fullest, do not turn the cheak, and embrace the 7 deadly since. - TheForge (on satanists)

There's some confusion in the terms here. Everyone picks their stride length. It's simply how far in front of one foot you place the next. It's leg length that you're stuck with (or in Oscar's case, is choosing).

You can only get faster by increasing stride length or increasing turnover (or both). So all top sprinters work on both. They're limited by their own physiologies. Johnson had ridiculous turnover and was crushing much taller guys with much longer strides. He was easily 3-4 inches shorter (most of it in the legs) than Reynolds, but his records are gonna stand for a while.

In comparison to slow people, all top sprinters have stride lengths off the normal scale, but their leg lengths aren't usually particularly out of proportion.

I'm not an expert on human proportions, but I guess there would be a way to figure out about what Oscar's lower leg length "should have" been. If that's possible, that's a better way to go than using the population at large.

From the article I looked at, they were trying to devise formulas based on other measurements of his body.

Such as, "his arms are X long, so his lower legs, based on the rest of the population with ARMS X long, should be Y long"

The problem with that is if top sprinters tend to have slightly different ratios than the population at large, then no amputee would ever get 'lucky' in the leg length 'lottery'. But if you let them pick an optimal length, then they ALL get lucky in the leg length lottery.

It *is* a bit of a problem. Oscar in particular, his genetics gave him a lower leg length of "floppy-no-bones". So there is no real answer for how long those lower legs should have been.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Well, if they can figure out a range of Y, he should be able to pick the upper end of it and that's it.

As for the slightly different ratios, there are tendencies, but nothing locked down. Again, looking at 2 world champs of approximately equal height (MJ and Wariner), you have MJ with slightly shorter legs who ran like a piston (low stride length, high turnover) and Wariner who had slightly longer legs and runs in long, loping strides. I admit I don't know the ratios of their upper to lower legs. Considering they run in completely different styles suited to their physiology, you can't say either one was "lucky" in the leg length lottery alone. They were each lucky to get the right combinations of everything to be that damn fast.

Like you say, it's a problem. Sure, with Oscar it seems easy to say he should get to use prosthetic legs - but what about me? I ran faster than him, but not fast enough partly because I have a malformed chest cavity (a clear physical deformity like his) and I have less than 60% of the lung capacity of a "normal" person. Following that, I can't carry as much oxygen in my blood. Should I be able to blood pack? use epo? have some sort of device implanted that gives me an extra lung?

You need to have an "accident" and when they fix you, you happen to have more chest cavity =)

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

> I ran faster than him

You ran 400m in less than 46.5 seconds?! What's it like to go that fast?? How fast did you go? What has it been like transitioning to triathlon from that kind of athletic background?

springs don't get tired?