New research suggests there is no universal blueprint for sprinting success.
An international team of researchers is questioning long-standing assumptions about what gives elite sprinters their extraordinary speed. Their findings offer new insight that could influence how Australia trains and develops future track stars.
The study, published in Sports Medicine, approaches sprinting from a dynamical systems perspective. Rather than attributing success to a single ideal running style, the researchers argue that top performance arises from the interaction between an athlete’s body, surroundings, and training background.
Led by Flinders University in partnership with ALTIS, Johannes Gutenberg University, and Nord University, the project explores how coordination, muscular strength, limb structure, and other physical traits work together during high-speed running. This combination of factors helps explain why elite sprinters often look very different from one another at full velocity.
Dr. Dylan Hicks, a movement scientist at Flinders’ College of Education, Psychology and Social Work and the study’s lead author, says the results challenge the long-accepted belief that coaches should guide every athlete toward a single technical blueprint.
“For decades, sprint coaching has often been based on the belief that all athletes should move in one prescribed way,” says Dr. Hicks.
“But our research shows that sprinting is far more complex. The best athletes in the world don’t all run the same. What they share is not one technique but the ability to organize their bodies efficiently under pressure, and that looks different for every sprinter.”
