It’s a shame Asafa Powell is injured as the top 3 guns would have been the A-card event of the night.
But when Usain Bolt shows up, he’s always the A-card.
The only reason why Usain Bolt is running at Stockholm, Sweden is the UK tax issue that prevented him from running at next week’s Diamond League in London, UK.
Glen Mill is a smart coach. He knows a 100 meter sprinter needs certain number of races to get sharp and find all the zones. We saw what happened to Tyson Gay last year in Beijing 2008 after his horrendous injury at the USATF Olympic Trials.
I always suggest 5-7 races before a major meet for the 100 meters, and 3-5 races for the 400m. Walter Dix knows this too and he ended up running in Nova Scotia, Canada!
To race well, you need to race. There is no substitute. Not even for super-human Usain Bolt.
Tyson Gay upsets Usain Bolt in Stockholm 100 meter Video
Here is the Usain Bolt upset from Tyson Gay in the 100 meter showdown!
Jimson Lee
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Hey Jimson,
Unfortunately the video isn’t available anymore. But my question is, what relevance do you think this has? I’m looking and seeing Bolt barely under 10 seconds, nearly 4/10s off his best times, and Tyson a little off too. I’m just not sure that, other than Tyson finally getting past the mental hurdle of beating Usain, it’s a big deal. What are your thoughts?
Cheers
Scott
Here is a better one:
awesome race gay is obviously been working hard he deserves it and now it seems that bolt has been slacking
Well, like I tried to tell (reason with) the “braniac” a few weeks ago–Usain Bolt is generally a “horrible starter.” Usain Bolt himself, the race analysts, and track and field observers hold this to be true. I had the insight to prognosticate that if Tyson Gay could obtain a rapid-fire start in the manner of Asafa Powell against Bolt, Bolt would be hard-pressed to catch him. This is exactly what happened.
A few weeks ago, I lamented on Bolt’s generally poor reaction times and transition to the sprint posture. In the first heat, his reaction time was about .22 seconds, or poorer than nearly all of the reaction times for the men’s 400 meter dash, held earlier in the day. In Gay’s preliminary heat, his reaction time was about .15 seconds. This disparity accounted for the differences in Gay’s and Bolt’s respective times in their heat.
As witnessed by Gay’s superb start technique, this is something which can be learned and acquired through PRACTICE. If the race were 200 or 400 meters, the start would not play a significant role. But, we are talking about a 100 meter race which lasts less than 10 seconds. Time is of the essence. As I forecast several weeks ago, Bolt cannot afford to “spot” .07 seconds to rivals the caliber of Gay and Powell.
I heard reference that these past few races which Bolt ran in are “not important.” Well, in the Diamond League series events, these races are the season’s most significant races in the absence of the Olympics or World Championships. In addition, competitors can earn over $ 1,000,000 for accumulating the most points in a season. That seems “important enough” to me and to them.
not the first time gay beat bolt
bolt lane 6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJS0c6xI454
In looking at Bolt and Gay when both were running their Personal Bests @ 100m (Berlin ’09, before Gay ran 9.69 in Shanghai)IN THE SAME RACE, Bolt reaction time was .02 quicker, his first 20m was .03 quicker, his time from 40-60m was .02 quicker and his top end speed (from 60-80m) was .02 quicker. So, Bolt had .07 on Gay (when both had their best 100m race) through 80m and added .03 from 80-100m. This shows how small a difference in Top End speed there is between the two but how each area of the race contributes. Bolt’s 20-100m was 1second faster than Gay’s so the start to 20m contributed the other .03 to the final .13 difference in time. It is easy to see that when both start together and progress through 40m together that the one whose strength/power levels ARE PRESENTLY at the higher levels, will have the advantage over the last 50-60m if sprint and race mechanics are technically proficient. So, Jimson is spot on when he talks about having enough 100m races to adequately prepare for REAL RACE type execution. The other factor that cannot be ignored is Bolt’s statements that he has need to work on strength and power as he lacks power in the early phases of the race. Any drop in Max Strength will cause a drop in power and being injured would certainly hamper strength/power training as well as sprint training.
Speaking of reaction times, I wonder how they differ this year with the IAAF No False Start rule? Are they a tad slower? I don’t have my stats handy…
All the times are interesting as they are far off from what those same sprinters run in various big meets during “Championship” years. Not just .005sec off, we are talking .2 to .3 sec. This is peaking time and at a major meet, and yet everyone is running almost as slow as the now clean Justin Gatlin(10.24), lol. Richard Thompson(9.89 pb), Travis Padgett(9.89 pb), Michael Rodgers(9.94 pb), Usain Bolt(9.58 pb). On another note, it didn’t seem Tyson got a great start to me, he didn’t completely leave Bolt or anyone else in the first 30m, it actually looked like he took a small lateral step at one point, but we would need splits to be objective about that.
all these new manuals, do old subscribers get them?
@Ted, good point, I was planning to update and send out the manuals in the Sept newsletter.
@ jim – do you do max strength work all year round? How does your quantity of hypertrophy/max str./power vary throughout the training year or does it stay the same as your 4 week cycles demonstrated. How do you peak and maintain max str. levels all the way through the season?