The UPM (University Putra Malaysia) athletics championship ended on Sunday after being held for three days at the UPM Stadium, Serdang. However, the competition was held too early in a season, obviously non beneficial to athletes who are going through the preparation phase at the moment.
Following are some major results from the competition:
Forget about your instincts on Cristiano Ronaldo’s 100 metres time. He has never done or tested on the neither time trial nor real race of the 100 metres.
At least the renowned rugby player, Jonah Lomu of New Zealand has run the 100 metres and recorded 10.8s but it was achieved during the high school time. But I definitely doubt about the accuracy of the time as it raised questions like “was it an official time from an official 100 m race?...”
Since myself an athletics statistician, I would put this kind of unofficial timing just outside of my “annual performance lists,” and not even under the “doubtful timing” section. Because in the statistics, the precise measure of performances are the fundamental criteria to ratified the records.
However, the “Gatorade Bolt Race” that was held on the 15th September, 2010 at Sydney Olympic Park in Australia was excellent. They have chosen the eight identified-fastest footballers from Soccer, Australian Rugby Union (ARU), National Rugby League (NRL) and Australian Football League (AFL) in Australia to compete in the 100 metres sprint.
The race was conducted on the synthetic running track by equipped with the auto-timing system (fully electronic time), used the standard starting blocks and all the players worn the sprint spike shoes and running vests. Unfortunately, i didn't see any wind gauge instrument at the 50m mark from the video?
Usain Bolt with Lachie Turner after the 100m race
Lachlan 'Lachie' David Turner emerged as the Australia’s fastest footballer and bagged AUD 20,000 prize money home. Turner, the winger of the NSW Waratahs (and Eastwood Rugby Club) clocked a time of 11.10s, and perhaps became the fastest footballer in the world!? Why not, I haven't seen any other faster race to test the 100m times among the football players like this?
There is no official analysis about the race, but as you can see, Turner has a better top end speed and he covered the whole distance in 48 strides, the same number of strides with Tim Montgomery when he broke the 100 metres’ World record (9.78s) in 2002.
Second place went to Turner’s teammate John Grant in 11.15s, while Jarryd Hayne of Parramatta Eels third in 11.20s. Without proper practice on the blocks and accelerations, those times are respectable especially the times should be on the top 40 fastest in the “2010 Malaysia’s Top Performers" for 100 metres.
RM 19,000.00 to be won in this athletics meet and you might think it will be a long distance (road) event as the total prize money seems "illogical" for track and field in Malaysia.
But yes, it is a track event that offers the highest prizes money in the history of Malaysian athletics.
The 2011 USM Open Relays is an annual "Relays Gala" that will be held at the USM (University Science Malaysia) stadium in Penang, all-day (8.00am - 10.00pm) on the February 12, 2011.
There will be seven categories offered in the meet that restricted the entries to the local athletes only.
Events, prizes money and entry fees are as follow:
1) CHILDREN (12y and below):
> Events: 4x50m and 2x100m.
> Prizes: 1st RM 100, 2nd RM 80, 3rd RM 60.
> Entry: RM 15.
I've written about some interesting facts about Usain Bolt but here is the real story about Usain Bolt being the fastest man on the planet.
In the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Bolt shaken the full-capacity bird's nest stadium by smashing three world records, in the 100m (9.69s), 200m (19.30s) and 4x100m (37.10s).
And, it was said to be almost impossible to run below the 9.60 in the 100m, but Bolt lowered again his incredible 9.69s to an unbelievable 9.58s during the 2009 IAAF World Championship in Athletics in Berlin. A few days later, Bolt destroyed his own 200 metres' world record 19.30s to an amazing 19.19s....
> get one MY STORY to continue reading ...
And then the conclusion is this man is the greatest sprinter of all-time or the King of Sprint for real!. Click on the photo or here to make an order.
Happy New Year 2011 to everyone. I would like to thank to all the readers of AdrianSprints.com, which has been steadly increasing and contributed about 60,000 hits throughout the 2010. I wish you all the very best in your commitments and dreams in 2011.
This year will be interesting as the IAAF World Championship in athletics will continue to crown the world champion titles to athletes during its 12th edition. This Championship will be held in Deagu, South Korea from August 27 - September 04. Apart from that, we also have the biggest multi-sports event this year, the World University Games (Universiade) that is scheduled on August 12 -23 in Shenzhen, China.
In Asia level, Asian Championship in Athletics (ATF) is scheduled on July 07-10 in Kobe, Japan. But before that, Indonesia will be the host for the bi-annual Southeast Asian Games, SEA Games in Jakarta.
For Malaysian athletes, the best chance to beat the qualification marks for all above meets will be during the Malaysian Games (SUKMA) on June which is now upgraded as a senior games, thus became the biggest multi-sports event at the country.
With the continued support from you, we'll continue our effort in bringing the maximum coverage for these events and of course to provide much more useful information and news in 2011. Stay tuned with AdrianSprints.com. All your support is greatly appreciated
Following are the top 10 track and field stories during the 2010:
Distribution of votes to pick 'the greatest sprinter of all-time'
Usain Bolt is ‘officially’ the greatest sprinter of all-time based on a one year survey of public opinion poll from January 01 - December 31, 2010 to pick the greatest sprinter in the history at a sport’s website, AdrianSprints.com which has its readers from more than 100 countries.
Usain Bolt outclassed seven others sprinters likes Asafa Powell, Ben Johnson, Bob Hayes, Carl Lewis, Jesse Owens, Maurice Greene, and Michael Johnson with an unanimous decision of 60% votes.
For the record, Bolt breaks 7 world records in the sprint events within 2 years, 2008-2009 and holds the current world records in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m. He became the first human to run below 9.70s and 9.60s in the 100m. He also won 6 gold medals at the Olympics and World Championships.
The winner of 17 gold medals at the Olympics and World Championships, Carl Lewis gets second-highest votes with 12.3%. Behind Lewis was a former world’s 100m record holder Asafa Powell in 7.4% votes. Powell has the most sub 10s 100 metres of all time with 65.
The most successful long sprints (200-400m) athlete ever, Michael Johnson gets 5.2% votes, the 4th highest. Johnson holds the world records in 400m and 4x400m and has the world best mark in 300m.
Meanwhile, this poll also gave the chance to the readers to pick their own athletes. Therefore, ‘others athletes’ crept into 5th place by a 4.5% votes. I guess that it must be the votes whether for Tommie Smith or Jim Hines or Linford Christie or Tyson Gay.
Jesse Owens who won 4 gold medals at the 1936 Olympics gets 3.5% votes. Merely behind Owens was Maurice Greene, who holds the current 60m world record. Greene had become the three-time world champion at 100m, and also has run 53 times sub 10s. He got 3.2% votes.
Ben Johnson, the man who shaken the world by his incredible 9.79s in the century dash back in 1988 Olympics, however ended up with 2.3% votes, and that's really underrated!
Finally, ‘bullet’ Bob Hayes, the 1964 Olympic champion who became the first man to break under 10s in any conditions, has got the lowest rating with 1.6% votes.
Utilization of dynamic stretching as part of preparation for training and competitions may improve the athlete's sprint performance by 2-3%.
This is based on the recent reviews or findings of scientific studies.
So what does it tell you? if you are a 10-flat sprinter,
will you automatically run 9.90? (not that simple!)
Dynamic stretching has been increasingly studied since the 1998 study by Kokkonen and his colleagues that reported detrimental effects of static stretching (negative effect on athletic performance).
Before we discuss the details lets define "stretching". Broadly, stretching is a physical activity, whereby the limbs or muscles will experience "lengthening" until at the point that some tension is felt. There are different types of stretching.
Dynamic stretching
This type of stretching involves the active (or dynamic) movements that are performed in a progressive manner within the range of motion (ROM). It can be done by performing movements to increase the ROM gradually. It has to have "deceleration" at the end of each (stretch) repetition.
In other words, no
jerking or bouncing actions in dynamic stretching (that will eliminate this "deceleration" action). This is the part
that distinguish between dynamic stretching and the ballistic stretching.
Athletes may consider utilizing specific movements that will be performed in
sports (activities) during dynamic stretching in order to (better) prepare the muscles for the
subsequent sports or activities.
Static stretching
In contrast, static stretching is a constant stretch held at an end point of ROM. This means that the stretching involves "hold" at the end of ROM (for each repetition) for a given time. Typically, athletes performs static stretching for 20 to 60 seconds per muscle group.
The popularity of static stretching started when a book entitled "stretching" by Bob Anderson was released in 1980. Of note, this book has an excellent record in the number of sales.
Traditionally, static stretching is performed by athletes in order to reduce the risk of injury. This argument however has not been fully supported by
scientific literature.
Our studies
In one of our stretching studies “the effects of dynamic and static stretching on sprint performance in junior sprinters” (2009), we found similar results to those of published findings. Specifically, there were 2.1% (30m) and 2.3% (40m) improvements (faster times) when the athletes performed the dynamic stretching, relative to static stretching.
Despite such important findings, "heavy" static stretching are still very commonly practiced by athletes. I’ve seen Commonwealth champions and even World class athletes who are still considering static stretching, or even passive-static stretching (with partner), or a combination of static and dynamic stretching before training and competitions.
Dynamic Stretching called 'Scorpion' to stretch lower back and hip flexor muscles area
For athletes, why considers dynamic stretching instead of static stretching? There are physiological reasons behind it, but in this short article we try to discuss a few.
Static stretching promotes compliance or gap in the tendon and muscles. This is especially when the duration of stretching is too long (e.g. sets of >30 secs).
This phenomenon is also called musculotendinous slackness, which reduces muscle stiffness. For a sprinter, stiffness is needed to optimize power production.
Reduced muscle stiffness may actually affects muscular contraction because of delayed electromechanical process or transmission of forces.
Hence, static stretching may compromise your muscles to perform maximally.
Meanwhile, improvement seen in sprint performance following the dynamic stretching is linked to specificity and readiness.
Dynamic stretching mimics most of actions seen in many athletic activities, including the qualities seen in sprinting. This simply includes the stretch-shortening cycle actions, like squat jumps, "pogo jumps" (toe taps), high knees (flexing and extension actions), and so on.
Other examples, like hamstring kicks (if done correctly) are also specific to leg swing movements during sprinting.
These movements can promote readiness of the neuromuscular system that important for maximal performance.
Furthermore, dynamic stretching can help increase core temperature to a greater extent than the static stretching.
Simply said, static stretching will shut down your nervous system and help to put you to sleep. So if you love static stretching do it during your cool down, not during the warm up.
If you feel not comfortable with dynamic stretching, do not do the specific drills at all because these are the examples of dynamic movements (better called as "ballistic") that will maximize your performance, which proceeds the more "relaxed" dynamic stretching done earlier in your warm up.
(1) Mark Kovacs (2010). Dynamic Stretching (the Revolutionary New Warm-up Method to Improve Power, Performance and Range of Motion).
(2) Fletcher and B. Jones (2004). The effect of different warm-up stretch protocols on 20 meter sprint performance in trained rugby union players.
(3) Arnold G. Nelson, Nicole M. Driscoll, Dennis K. Landin, Michael A. Young, & Irving C. Schexnayder (2005). Acute effects of passive muscle stretching on sprints performances.
Photos: copied from notarunner.com & flex4fitness.com
