Ben Tate (Part III)

Ben’s strength and reflexiveness allow him to be very dynamic in his start. In our analysis, his speed tempo was not being maximized.

Speed Tempo in my terminology means: The rate at which one increases their stride length. I will detail Start technique (instantaneous power), acceleration and maximum velocity in later posts. Today’s focus is on speed tempo and how we integrate specific training exercises to enhance it.

Posture is the most important element in creating the position to organize the body and propel the body in the desired direction with the greatest magnitude (Ben is exceptional at this, as you can see that his posture is similar in all his before and after pictures).

Ben’s greatest deficiency was his speed tempo, he wasn’t optimally increasing his stride length from his 3-11^th Stride.

Extracting literature on stride length from Hoffman, Rompotti, Atwater & others, we have diversified our training to assist in developing this area of speed training.

We based the development of speed tempo on dynamic correspondence, specific adaptations to imposed demands, and the idea that joint position dictates muscular recruitment and the pioneering work of neuroscientist Dr. Merzenich who states neurons that fire together, wire together!

In short the neuromuscular patterns that we emphasized created a training effect that improved Ben’s efficiency and enhanced his sprint abilities.

If you can hold on till the next installment I will cover the exercises we performed with Ben along with video of the exercises…. See below for a break down of Ben's stride length.