Athletic Performance Podcast

Episode 032: Sprint Faster with Science – Lance Brooks on Speed Training, Force Application & Sprint Mechanics

• Ryan Patrick

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In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Lance Brooks, a PhD in applied physiology and biomechanics, to break down the real science behind sprinting faster. We challenge common sprint training myths, including the power paradigm, the role of breaking forces, and whether force-velocity profiling is as useful as it's made out to be.

If you're a coach, athlete, or speed training nerd, this episode is packed with research-backed insights that will transform how you approach sprint mechanics and acceleration.

💡 Key Topics Covered:
 ✅ The biggest misconceptions about power training and sprint speed
 ✅ Why force-velocity profiling might not be the best metric
 ✅ The truth about breaking forces – they’re NOT your enemy
 ✅ The problem with squatty running and improper shin angles
 ✅ Sled training: helpful or overhyped?
 ✅ What actually limits top speed and how to improve it
 ✅ The #1 bottleneck for elite sprint performance

🚀 Timestamps:
 00:00 – Intro to the Episode
 01:00 – Who is Lance Brooks?
 03:30 – The Science of Sprinting: From Macro to Micro
 08:00 – Why Power Training is Misleading for Sprinting
 14:00 – The Force-Velocity Profiling Controversy
 20:30 – The Truth About Breaking Forces in Sprinting
 28:00 – Squatty Running, Shin Angles, and Sprint Technique Myths
 34:00 – The Role of Sleds in Sprint Training (Are We Overdoing It?)
 40:00 – How to Improve Acceleration the Right Way
 45:00 – What Actually Limits Top Speed?
 50:00 – The #1 Bottleneck for Sprint Performance
 54:00 – Where to Find Lance Brooks and His Latest Research

🔗 Resources & Links:
 📘 Lance’s Website & Sprint Training Course: https://www.brooksperformancemethods.com/.com
📩 Subscribe to Lance’s Performance Journal: Brooks Performance Methods Journal
📸 Follow Lance on Instagram: @BrooksPerformanceMethods | @LanceBrooks_PhD

Click Here for the Total Coach OS Mentorship

M-2-peakfast:

Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.

Speaker:

Welcome to the Athletic Performance Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Patrick, and I have a very exciting episode for you today. We all know that speed kills, but do we really understand what makes an athlete fast? Today's guest is Dr. Lance Brooks. He's a PhD in Applied Physiology and Biomechanics, a researcher obsessed with the limits of human performance, and a guy who's not just living in the lab, but actually coaching athletes to sprint faster. In this episode, we tackle the hard hitting questions about speed training, force application, and the biomechanics that separate elite sprinters from the rest. You'll hear why conventional wisdom about power and sprinting might be leading you astray, why braking forces aren't the enemy, and why most force velocity profiling measures might be missing the mark. If you're a coach, athlete, or just someone who geeks out on sprint mechanics, this conversation will challenge what you think you know about speed. Let's dive in.

Ryan Patrick:

Lance, thank you so much for coming on today. This is truly an honor. I've been following your work for a little bit. Love what you're doing, um, both on the science side and actually. Being a guy who is a researcher in the applied space, as well as what you're doing on the practical side for sprinting. So, um, I have some, some history in the lab. Not quite as extensive as what you're doing, obviously, but, um, I live more in the world of coaching speed nowadays. And so let's just start out for those that that don't know you or don't know about your work. Can you just tell us Um, a little bit of a background on, on you and what got you interested in the science of speed?

Lance Brooks:

Sure. Yeah. So my name is Lance Brooks. I hold a PhD in applied physiology and biomechanics. And my research interests have predominantly been in the, the limits of human performance. And I'm really interested in sprint issues and accelerated sprinting was what a lot of my dissertation work. I got really interested in getting into research coming from more of an applied space in the field. And I sort of, I wanted to bridge the gap between how we know what we know versus what we do in practice. And so that's what led to me pursuing research. And then, you know, beyond that, then you start knowing what you don't know. And then you figure out that there's way more gaps that need to be bridged than you previously thought. And so you, you go down that rabbit hole. And so that's what's led to me to want to pursue research as a career. And so that's what made me want to go get a PhD. Um, and now I'm doing research and again, bridging those gaps is my research is, you know, the, the relationship between force motion and energy systems at the whole body level in a locomotor bioenergetics and locomotor mechanics, and, uh, you know, again, the whole body. So doing a lot of, you know, inverse dynamics, force plates, motion capture, but nowadays I've zoomed in more down to lower levels of biological organization and I'm doing in animal models, isolated muscle preps and, you know, investigating, uh, contractile dynamics of force velocity characteristics. Work loops, which are basically cyclical energy exchanges and they're sort of, uh, controlled by a motor and stimulated by a nerve cuff and, you know, in a live animal and, um, investigating sort of work output and force in isolated muscles. Um, really trying to get down into the weeds and really zoom in and link what's happening at the muscle level all the way up to how it manifests in whole body performance.

Ryan Patrick:

Okay. Users, listeners sit tight. We're about to dive deep into this. I have nightmares about inverse dynamics. I spent a lot of time in graduate school doing that, but it sounds To me, like you've kind of gone from this macro perspective, looking at whole body mechanics, and now you're getting into more of this, uh, I don't know if I want to say cellular level, but you're definitely looking at a more microscopic level. Is that

Lance Brooks:

correct? I would say more muscular level. So still things that you can, you can see what's happening, you know, in terms of motion and contraction with the naked eye. I mean, sometimes we're using, we're doing small muscles. Uh, we're doing a rodent model at the moment, but, um, You know, yeah, we have colleagues in our lab who go even further down and look at, you know, myosin interactions and different motility assays and those sorts of things. That's not where my focus is. I'm doing the in situ actual whole muscle, you know, sonomicrometry implantation. So we can actually track in real time the length changes in the muscle and the fascicle level and measuring the force output from a motor. So we tie the end of the tendon. To a dynamometer and it's controlled, um, we, we control the behavior of the motor. So, uh, so that's where we are. We're at the muscle level.

Ryan Patrick:

So this, this highlights a big problem in the industry. I think when it comes to the applied aspects of speed, and that is, I don't think people, we don't know what we don't know. And kind of to your point, you talk about, well, as you gain knowledge, it's like the, what's the old expression that I love. It's as the island of knowledge grows, so do the shores of ignorance. So you're just. You're uncovering more and more things that we just don't have definitive answers to, and when I kind of reflect on my own personal academic journey, there's a real gap just in the applied aspects of speed. I mean, for an undergraduate degree, there's really no focus on speed. you get your C. S. C. S. There might be a chapter from the N. S. C. A. On speed. And then a graduate school, you're kind of left to your own academic discretion. If you want to kind of get, uh, you know, adjacent to some kind of speed research. And so I think a good place to start, just for the average practitioner, I think it's essential to have a physiological and biomechanical understanding of some of the elements that actually contribute to speed. And so for your own model, um, in a simplified way, can you kind of walk us through what we need to be thinking about as practitioners to be scientifically accurate in our approach to developing an athlete who is actually fast?

Lance Brooks:

Yeah, no, that's a great question. I would say simple terms. The primary, the primary mechanical requirement for running happens where the rubber meets the road. It's where the foot interacts with the ground and what the legs are doing. And moving upward. So it's, it's how effectively an athlete can apply force to the ground in the amount of time that they have available to do so. So if we're, if we're to emphasize 1 thing to run fast, it needs to be about being. Effective applying force. So, uh, you know, my, uh, my, my mentors have always described it as athletes being force producing machines and that's exactly what they are. Because if you want to increase velocity, if you want to maximize acceleration, you want to apply greater force with respect to your body mass. It's Newton's second law. It's F equal M A. You flip it around. It's acceleration is equal to force over mass. So if you want big A, you need a big F over M with respect to mass, right? So Yeah. Yeah. If we're to emphasize the one thing, it should be as much force as possible in the time that you have available, and there's going to be different limitations on that, uh, in the acceleration phase versus the top speed phase and deceleration, so those, um, those relationships, they kind of change a little bit. As you, you know, but, but the overall picture is that it's forced with respect to mass and to your point about sort of not getting enough of the emphasis in your education at the undergrad level and even during a master's and then the CCSCS, which is a whole nother thing. It's a whole, there's a whole bunch of other issues. When they do talk about speed, and you sort of get into those certifications, or those courses, where they do talk about speed development, they often do so from a flawed paradigm. So we're, we're looking at, you know, they're emphasizing some of the wrong things. And thinking about speed, performance, enhancement, and training, sort of coming from a flawed paradigm, like I said. And so. The biggest, most pervasive example would be the emphasis on power that a lot of people tend to tend to look at when they are interested in developing speed, if they look at power, but the issue with power is that almost always it's back calculated from the force that you're measuring. So not only are you. So, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're taking force, which is the determination of your performance, and you're stepping away from that more relevant variable and stepping away and going to power. So the velocity that you're, that you're multiplying to the force to get power. Comes from the force. So you're just, you're just taking a step away from the most relevant variable. And then, of course, power is definitionally a scalar quantity, so it doesn't have direction. And so you ignore other axes that are relevant to performance, because you need to push on the ground to support your body weight against gravity. And so when you do a scalar quantity where there's no direction being considered, then you're ignoring the relevant axes, dimensional, spatial axes. For performance. So flawed paradigm. And that's, that's what you get when you, when, when you don't master first principles. And so I see that as a big issue. So to your point about not getting those things into undergrad and master's, it can, it can just lead you down the wrong path.

Ryan Patrick:

The more I do this, the more I find myself revisiting these first principles. Going over, you know, physics and impulse and making sure that I really understand some of these aspects. So I would like you to touch a little bit more on the power. Cause I think that's really critical, especially when we're talking about acceleration, like peak peak power is virtually meaningless because it's very instantaneous and it's really not contributing to enhance. Um, efficacy in the acceleration, but I think maybe an important place to kind of start this conversation is to just highlight some of these limitations, um, from a mechanical perspective, or from a force perspective, when we're talking about the acceleration versus the upright running. So. Let's start with just, let's start with the beginning of a run and just progress from acceleration through max velocity.

Lance Brooks:

Sure. Yeah. So, um, as I pointed out, it's, you know, the primary determinant of your performance is really going to be related to the mass specific force that you apply to the ground because a runner will have to apply an action force down into the ground so that the ground can apply a reaction force back into the runner and that's what's going to drive actual motion. And so we're talking about like 100 meters, right? You're in the blocks. That's where you're going to apply the most horizontal force in your entire run, and you're going to achieve the most amount of acceleration. So, I mean, the greatest change in your velocity is going to occur during that block start. And people, people tend to assume that since the motion is all horizontal, or seemingly all horizontal, mostly horizontal, Most, if not all, the force is horizontal. When you actually measure it on force plates, in the blocks, which I did for my dissertation, you'll see that not only, even though the motion seems to be mostly horizontal, the vertical forces are always greater than the horizontal forces. Because the need to support body weight against gravity never goes away. So you're constantly having to push downward to stay standing. And so what that results in is, and again, this is, you know, this is not published yet. Our stuff is, you know, it's under review, so I don't want to give away too much of the punchlines. Because, you know, um, it's just, you know, it's one of those things, you know, until things are published. Then we're conservative in our messaging. So, um, there is a minimum, there is a minimum angle that even the best sprinters can achieve in terms of the direction of their push. And that minimum angle is determined by all sorts of things. The most important ones though, are the need to get the push horizontally to accelerate horizontally. You need to push vertically in order to remain standing. And so that you don't either rotate forward or rotate backward, the direction of the push needs to go through your center of mass. So there needs to be a direct, the average push needs to go through your center of mass. I mean, of course, there's going to be some sort of rotation you're going to see, but overall, to avoid unsavory, excessive rotations, it goes through the center of mass. So that's the general assumption that we move with. And then, beyond that, the horizontal propulsive forces when you're pushing on the ground get smaller and smaller, and then the braking forces that occur upon impact get larger and larger. And so you get up to top speed and then they're basically even, they cancel out because you're maintaining a steady state, the vertical forces, they are probably at their lowest, even though they're still larger than the horizontals and they're equal to your body weight, roughly, the vertical forces get larger and larger as you make your way to top speed, because the window of force application, the time you have available gets smaller and smaller, which means in order to achieve the vertical forces necessary to remain standing, you have to punch the ground harder and harder. So that's how those dynamics play out. Uh, the, the horizontal forces begin quite large, and then they get progressively smaller and smaller, and then the vertical forces start out still large, but not quite as large, and then they get even larger. Um, the power paradigm would have you believe that You are, as the, as your velocity increases, your power output is decreasing, which is just, it's, it's sort of nonsensical. And so you're looking at the whole body performance and you're trying to do a power calculation and you're taking it from the ground reaction force. And then, and then taking the ground reaction forces, getting to a velocity, multiplying them together, and then getting a less relevant variable, which ignores important axial dimensions that. Are relevant for performance. So, uh, those are, those are the, how the force dynamics play out. They, they are directly to performance, uh, the forces and then, uh, power just being less relevant, it's just, it's less informative. Um, it's less useful and it sort of muddies the water and it makes it sort of convoluted so that people who are interested in learning about performance and what determines it, they sort of get all confused and get frustrated because. They're being told that they need to be familiar with this profiling, you know, the profiling method that is, again, convoluted, it's confusing, and it doesn't even get you closer to where you want to be in terms of understanding performance.

Ryan Patrick:

I'm so glad you touched on that because the force velocity profiling is huge and we've been doing this in the weight room or attempting to do this with, velocity based training. But I would like to touch on this a little bit, because so far you've mentioned forces and how they contribute. One of the things that I think is really common for the applied practitioner is that we're trying to mailbox these athletes. We're trying to define if they are a. uh, force producing style of runner or if they are in elastic velocity style of running. And I know you have some dissent, in terms of how we categorize this. So I'd love for you to dive into that just a little bit more.

Lance Brooks:

Yeah, I always find that, um, I always find that sort of messaging as entertaining as frustrating. Uh, cause they're not mutually exclusive in order to achieve these high forces that we find desirable to increase our sprint performance, you have to exhibit elastic qualities and, stiff, stiffer muscles and taking advantage of the sort of cheaper elastic structures that are able to store and return energy and provide those forceful impacts. And so if everything's muscle driven, you're just, you're not going to be, you're just not going to be fast. And so if you want to, if you want to actually maximize speed and you want to be a successful sprinter, not only are you going to have to be a little bit more elastic, which is also sort of like, there's sort of a, it's sort of paradoxical, like you, you want to use the elastic structures, but you want them to also be somewhat rigid. You want them, you want to have, you want to experience. Stiffness, global stiffness, limb level stiffness, so you can achieve those massive impacts, but it's not going to be driven by the muscle, right? So they're not mutually exclusive. In fact, a forceful athlete is going to be more elastic. So we say, Oh, this guy's more elastic. This guy's more force driven. It's sort of is, it's a false, it's a false dichotomy.

Ryan Patrick:

Let's, I feel like we should break that down just a bit.

Lance Brooks:

Sure. Yeah. So there are, uh, I mean, yeah, the, the, the elastic qualities of muscle, the aponeuroses, the tendons and what have you, even, even muscle itself exhibits elastic qualities. You're gonna. Those are going to provide benefits that you wouldn't achieve if everything was just muscle driven. When I say muscle driven, I mean primarily the shortening of muscle or the lengthening of muscle. So, if you're having to constantly be shortening to, to achieve these forces, as you, as the shortening velocity increases, Less, there's less tension and that's where the force velocity relationship actually becomes relevant and we can actually touch on this a little bit greater detail shortly, but just, the, the, the basic one on one cliff notes is that as the shorting velocity of muscle increases the maximum tension that it can produce. is less. So less force for a greater shortening velocity. So if you're shortening, shortening, shortening, then the forces that you can achieve at the muscle level are much lower. So in order to achieve the forces on the ground necessary, you need to, you need to recruit more and more and more active muscle. And the amount of muscle required To achieve the forces necessary for sprinting are far beyond what any human being actually has on their skeleton, because the 10, the maximum tension for any one unit of cross sectional area of muscle, it can't keep up. So it's just actually not possible. So that's, that's why the assumption that we're, we have forceful athletes who are, you know, they're primarily muscle driven and they're shortening to achieve these forces. It doesn't make any sense. So in order to achieve those forces, you want to, you know, you want to reduce the amount of lengthening that you're actually, or the amount of shortening and lengthening that you're actually doing during sprinting. So the muscles are going to act more so like quasi isometric because there's going to be a little bit of shortening, a little bit of lengthening, but it's primarily the elastic structures that are performing the work and taking up that length change so that you can maintain a stiff limb, strike the ground, and achieve the ground reaction forces necessary to sprint fast.

Ryan Patrick:

and here we are as practitioners in the weight room working on power training and really that's just working on the shortening velocity of muscle, which is not going to contribute to the run because we're talking about these. Uh, eccentric, quasi isometric. There's a lot of debate on this nuance. You know, Franz Bosch says it's isometric. Some people say there's some lengthening,

Lance Brooks:

not really. There's a, the saying that it's isometric is, is an oversimplification of what's actually going on. Um, because yeah, though, some muscles are going to act a little bit differently depending on where you are in stance, but like overall, if we summarized it, there's going to be a little bit of lengthening. And a little bit of shortening, but it's like when you're, when you're striking the ground, that's when most of the lengthening is going to occur. And when I say most, I mean, it's like virtually non existent and then, but there's a little bit and then the shortening happens on propulsion. And it's, it's so minuscule that you kind of like, you kind of stay, if you, if you think about the force velocity curve, you know, that, that, that negative exponential and where the muscles actually operating on that curve during sprinting, it's going to be like right on the Y axis. You might get a little bit of hopping over that Y axis, but it's going to be right

Ryan Patrick:

there. And so I want to kind of parse through one of these important points. We're talking about effective sprinting being about generating high forces, particularly as the foot strikes the ground. So I think a lot of coaches out there are coaching this early thigh extension, you know, from block position down to the ground. We're trying to whack the ground. We're trying to hammer. We're trying to work on activities that create pretension so that we have some stiffness in the muscle. Now, at the same time. You're also talking about this, this type of forceful action is going to increase the breaking forces and many coaches would have us believe that we're trying to almost eliminate these breaking forces to a certain degree, but I still think there's a lot of value in what they provide in terms of loading the system and allowing us to produce high forces into the ground. So would you like to maybe touch on what I don't think anybody does, but maybe some of the benefits of having some breaking force beyond just supporting body mass?

Lance Brooks:

Yeah, I'm gonna say, uh, braking force is, it's, it's the worst thing that you can actually have in your sprinting cycle. It's gonna only hurt your performance. I'm of course kidding. Um, uh, braking forces are a mechanical necessity for sprinting fast. So, uh, just, I mean, it really is. So like, if you, if you think about the acceleration phase and the block start, as I mentioned, that's the phase of the sprint where you achieve the most acceleration, the most change in velocity and you, there's no braking, right? So there's no braking force and it's all acceleration. It's all pure acceleration. Then you spend a little time in the air and then you hit the ground and then there's a little bit of breaking and then some propulsive, and then the breaking gets larger and larger and larger because you can't accelerate into infinity. You're going to just fall over eventually, but you just can't, you can't accelerate into infinity. So you have to maintain. You have to get up to a steady state. And in order to get to a steady state, definitionally, Newton's first law, the law of inertia, uh, uh, uh, an object's state of constant motion is going to be reflective of non zero, uh, a net zero force. So the net zero, the cancellation. A propulsive and a braking that are basically equal, or exactly equal, really, so that you can have a steady state, so the body can move in a steady state. Furthermore, as I talked about with wanting to avoid unsavory, excessive rotations to maintain balance, you want the direction of the push at all times, during the block start, during top speed, to be going through the center of mass. And so in order for that to happen, first of all, side note, you're never going to strike the ground directly beneath your center of mass at top speed, despite what a lot of people think that you can and advocate for. It's not going to happen. You're always going to strike slightly in front of you. And since you're striking slightly in front of you, the direction of that push to maintain balance to go through your center of mass is going to go backwards. That's a breaking force. And then your center of mass moves over the foot into a propulsive force. So the direction of that vector is always going to go through your center of mass when it puts on the ground. And that's for maintaining balance. So, from a, from a actual whole body inertia standpoint, breaking forces are required. And for, from a whole body rotational standpoint, maintaining balance, breaking forces are required.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah. And so this same point, I think some people in the industry like to take it almost to the extreme. Okay, we, you know, we're the coaches say you're upright sprinting, you're trying to hit below your center of mass. We know the nuance of this. You're not actually hitting below, but there is, there's kind of this inverted you, right? There's too close to your center mass and there's also too far and each has its own consequences from a speed standpoint alone. Let alone to what kind of attention is going through the muscles. So they take this and they're like, well, you know, we, you know, you're not upright. So you're actually squatted. And so then it becomes this whole strategy of now we're trying to maximize this effect. And I'd like you to talk. Kind of pick that apart just from a mechanical standpoint of, of why that thinking could maybe be inaccurate and misleading for a lot of people.

Lance Brooks:

Yeah. So when you're striking the ground, like, yeah, you're not going to strike directly beneath center of mass because if you did strike directly beneath your center of mass, you would have to also. Pull the leg up before it gets behind your center of mass. So it's only, so you're not, you're just not going to go anywhere. You're just not going to go. So like that leaves a time window. That's so short where it's impossible for you to actually push on the ground. So you're just not going to go anywhere. You're not going to stay standing. So like just from a mechanical standpoint in that regard, it's, it's completely nonsensical to kind of go back to kind of go on like to the, if you were trying to, if you're trying to strike beneath the center of mass. And you're trying to take on that more squatted posture. You are, again, you're, you're decreasing the mechanical advantage that the muscles have to work on, so then you're having to recruit more muscle mass that's shortening, instead of the, the more upright posture where you can actually take advantage of the more passive structures and the stiffer limb. Uh, you're also decreasing the actual excursion that the leg can go under because if you're, if you are running, I hate, I don't really like this term, but the squatty running people really don't like this term. It's sort of like, it's the straw man that they like to set up. It's like, yo, running tall, like nobody runs tall. It's like, what does that even mean? You don't, no one's saying you're running tall. You're not running with like a, like a super straight leg. But it's going to be more straight, you know, it's more strength and if you're, if you, if you're maintaining that sort of bent limb, you're trying to like, it's, it's cool to try to like bounce on the ground almost. And so, um, you're decreasing the actual effective range of motion that the limb has to sweep through when you're on the ground and just mathematically velocity is going to be a change in length. divided by the time period at which the length change is occurring. So if the numerator is getting shorter, then your velocity is getting shorter. It's getting lower. So you're, you're not running as fast. You're putting the muscles in a disadvantaged position. And also you're adding more compliance to the limb and adding more compliance to the limb is going to increase your contact times, which is going to drive force down. And if the contact time, if the time's getting larger and the numerator is getting smaller, then you're just. It's a completely just from a common sense mathematical standpoint, you're hurting your performance. And then of course, you know, anyone that actually advocates for it can't point to you any of their actually positive results. So, um, there's a, there's a lack of evidence and then there's a lack of sound theoretical framework.

Ryan Patrick:

And for me, it kind of, it stops at the theoretical spot because I'm like, I'm trying to make sense of this. And I like to hear what a lot of different people have, because there are. There are people who are successful and it could be in spite of what we do. Right. Um, I, I do some a series drills with my athletes for coordination and rhythm and timing, but I'm very clear. Like this is not going to make you fast. The thing that's going to make you fast is us actually getting out there and sprinting.

Lance Brooks:

Right.

Ryan Patrick:

Um, on one hand, I do see some value because I think we've gotten. As an industry, the pendulum always swings. So we've become very, um, enamored with front side mechanics. And I think sometimes we don't get enough hip extension. We don't get enough backside. That's one of the things I think that the squatty run might offer some people who have become. So caught up on this front side and not allowing that thigh to extend behind the body. Um, but I'd like for you to talk about, you know, just from a mechanical standpoint, I guess, getting more into the applied stuff. How are you coaching and developing your athletes to have what we would consider maybe, A more textbook or optimal sprint cycle.

Lance Brooks:

Yeah, so that's a good question. Um, from a squatty, don't tell me the squatty running people. Are they, are they using this as a tool to help increase back limb extension on the ground?

Ryan Patrick:

It's one of the things that I see them talk about. The other one is shin angle change, which I think you alluded to when you talk about hitting in front of the center of mass, because where you land at touchdown and where your shin is at toe off is going to change by virtue of. Your center of mass moving over that limb,

Lance Brooks:

right?

Ryan Patrick:

Um, I think there is some concern that some of the wall drills that that are common that people are are approaching them where they're actually extending the quad. And so you see the knee snapping backwards versus being a hip extension. Yeah, that's actually driving that. So, again, I mean, I think that there's some nuance here and I see some of what they're saying, but maybe for me, the explanations are not. Yeah. Jibing, but I think Joel Smith, um, just, just flat performance said it best. He's like, these are all side quests. He's like, I don't use this stuff as much as I used to, but these are the things I'm trying to accomplish. And one of his arguments, and maybe you can even touch on this. I thought was really valuable was like, you know, if we're increasing compliance, if we're increasing ground contact time, how is that different from a lot of the sled runs that people are doing,

Lance Brooks:

I don't think it is. That's my view on it. I actually don't think that it is. Um, and the wall drill thing, I used to be a fan of those, you know, eight years ago. But then as we've kind of all matured, and I've learned more, and I've dove into the actual mechanics more, I don't actually see any value, I would say. I mean, maybe that's a little harsh. And I could probably still be swayed slightly back in the other direction, but I'm sort of in a place where Wall drills, I think maybe are more, especially you get those marches going and also there's many different ways to do it. So if someone says, Oh no, I still like wall drills because we do it this way and not that way. Then it's like, okay, then I can maybe see a little about, because if you look at the way that it's traditionally done, you have, of course, like 45 degree lean into the wall and then the marching back and forth, like the switching of the feet. It's like, you're not actually, that's, that's not mimicking where the foot touches the ground during acceleration at all. You're just kind of going back and forth. And did you know what I mean? So I, uh, from that standpoint, I don't see the value, but if someone comes to me with some method of doing a wall drill, where they're actually striking in a way that actually more so mimics. What you see in acceleration, then I can be, I can, I can, you know, I can concede that point just a little bit, but in terms of the, the traditional usage of the drills, I don't see it. Um, and there was another part of your question.

Ryan Patrick:

It was the sleds. And I think we have to dive into that because. You know, J. B. Marin, his team, very huge on the, you know, uh, horizontal application of force, the decrement of the ratio of force. Now everybody's trying to get more horizontal force. So what are we doing? We're tying sleds to it. Why? Because, because we're American and we want to solve every problem with more force.

Lance Brooks:

Right, right. Right. I would say, um, I think it's important to, let's think about the mathematics again, right? Let's think about numerator and fraction, simple fractions, you have a numerator and a denominator. I, I just, I gave one example. of the numerator and the denominator affecting the actual, uh, the equation. So, yeah, you have in the, in the case of velocity changes in velocity, you have, if the numerator, which is the change in distance, if that gets smaller, then your velocity is going to get lower, right? Yes. If the denominator, which is near in the bottom, if that gets larger, then the velocity is going to get. Smaller, right? Mm hmm. Now we'll talk about ratio of forces, because fractions are ratios. Ratios of forces. It's a ratio between the vertical force and the horizontal force, which, in the end, that's going to affect your ratio of force. The implication is that you want, well, the idea, I guess, is that you, you want more horizontal force, right? And that's going to be That's going to be indicative of a great, a better ratio of force, but we can also do is just lower the vertical force. And that's also going to give you a better ratio of force, right? But there's a limit to how low you can go on the vertical before you can't even run. So, from that standpoint, I'm not a fan of ratio of force as a performance variable. It doesn't make sense, it breaks down under even basic scrutiny, so I'm not a fan of it from there because it's not very important. From the, from the, on the issue of sleds, I've heard many different arguments. It's one of those things where there's many different ways to do it. There's many different ways to apply it. And I think it, it makes more or less sense given any. Context, given context. So I have a, I have a colleague who he did, uh, part his dissertation. He did a lot of sled work and his explanations were, the way I use it is not the way other people have used it. I'm talking, I, I use it as a, almost like I would use a back squat in the weight room. I'm using it for very short distances. Really loading it up with heavy weight and almost treating it like it's a weight room exercise. Or then you have the other people who are doing sled pushes over 40 yards or in the lighter weight. And from that standpoint, I don't know that I see a lot of value, but if we're talking about like. Helping the athlete achieve body positions that maybe that you'd like to see mimicked during sprint acceleration or help them get into a position where they can direct force in a particular way. Uh, maybe. I mean, my thing is you really only are doing that for such a small portion of the sprint. So like in the block start, you're only going to be at that angle that you like for the sleds for like a third of a second. And then it's all getting progressively more upright. Also, I'm, um, I'm not convinced that acceleration is limited by the amount of force that an athlete's capable of producing. I think that's the case during top speed. And again, this is in my dissertation, this is in my work that's being published right now. So this is sort of one of those things where it's like. There's more to come. So, um, but since we're not published yet,

Ryan Patrick:

come on,

Lance Brooks:

if we're not published yet, we, um, we, again, we want to be conservative with what we, what we toss out there. Well, let's

Ryan Patrick:

leave the, let's leave the results to the side. Let's talk about some of the hypotheses of this. Cause I know, um, I can't remember what study it was. They're talking about,, elite sprinters for subtly produce the similar amount of total force. However. Elite sprinters have, earlier spike in their ground reaction force compared to self elite. So obviously just,, getting larger and larger force production is good up to a point. And it sounds like you're starting to kind of dissect some of this. So what was your hypothesis? leading into this and we'll save the results for another time.

Lance Brooks:

So the thinking was that because you have those requirements to not only produce a balance of vertical to horizontal forces and you need to direct the push through your center of mass, you're, you're, you're going to have, there's going to be a strict limit. There's going to be a limit in your angle that you're able to achieve. And then also, since you don't want to push Too hard in the vertical direction during acceleration because you're going to spend too much time in the air. And if you're in the air, you're not applying force. And if you're not applying force, you're not accelerating. So aerial time would be seen as a bad thing during acceleration. So you want to avoid is when you want to avoid as much as you can, there's going to be a requirement for it because we have two limbs instead of four. Um, and we looked at some quadrupedal runners, so some greyhounds and Labradors and of course cheetahs. During their early acceleration, they're 100 percent propulsive. They don't have an aerial for the first couple seconds of their sprint. Uh, since we have two limbs, we have two legs. We have an aerial period that we, that is just a consequence of our design. So we're going to have that sort of dead time where we can't apply for. So it's just part of who we are, but we want to minimize it. So the idea is that since you want to minimize that, you don't want to soar through the air. So you want to limit how hard you push vertically. And since you're limiting how much you're pushing vertically. You're going to have to limit how hard you push horizontally. So that's the thinking going into the study. Uh, we said we're skipping results, but that was, that was the thinking for acceleration. So, um, in short, I would say I'm not convinced that it's a force limit during acceleration. Uh, so from that standpoint, the value of sleds and loading up so you can, you know, push on the ground harder and maximize horizontal force.

Ryan Patrick:

my friend Justin Moore, he's really great coach up in the Jersey area, but he always talks about minimal necessary airtime because you need some airtime to prepare the limb for the next stride, right? The consequence of, I think of like a big heavy in football or rugby. These, these guys are gonna push so long that they're gonna just land way out in front of their center of mass. They're gonna have to roll through. So like That's that's they're pushing too long. Right? And then there's people who kind of come out what I call like Scooby Doo where their feet are just churning, but they're not actually applying for this over preparation, trying to attack the ground, but they're not actually putting force into the ground. And so finding that sweet spot has kind of been, it's been somewhat intuitive. And so I want to shift gears and more practical stuff because I know you are coaching guys. You're not just in the lab doing this. You're You're actually helping people. So when you're trying to improve,, the acceleration and the top end speed of your athletes, what are some of the things that you really like to do that you like to look for to improve this relationship between their stride rate and stride frequency and just their overall projection?

Lance Brooks:

Yeah. So without giving away too many trade secrets, I would say the thing that I've had most success with. Is really just looking at how they're like, let's just use a simple example. And we're talking about linear sprinting. So they're at a dead stop and they, you know, the gun goes off or what have you. And like, even if they're running a 40 yard dash, you know, like what, what are we looking at in terms of how, or if you're, or if they're getting off the line of scrimmage, you know, what are those sorts of things that are going to help them? And I find that there's sort of a misunderstanding or not, not so much a misnomer. But when we talk about acceleration and the acceleration phase, if you look at it, bird's eye view, you know, the 30, 30, 000 foot view of what's happening, yes, the body, the whole body is experiencing acceleration, right? And I think that that's sort of been taken to, you know, well past its logical limit. And so people assume that you want to just maximize acceleration. And I'll say if you, in the block start, or during step zero, that initial push off the line of scrimmage, or, you know, this is an example, if you are just pushing really quickly and getting off the ground, that's going to result in a much, in a very large absolute acceleration. So that's, that's going to be a large spike in acceleration, but you're not going to pick up a lot of velocity. And what you want is to actually build velocity. So in that sense, it's actually not necessarily just a game of maximizing acceleration. It's there's got to be like a sweet spot. There's got to be an optimization of variables so that you can actually get to your end goal, which is achieving a larger velocity. And so I find that adjusting even just the way they set up will allow them to not experience this limit. So I see, I'll see guys who. They start off with their legs very close together, their feet are close together and what that require, and they, their thinking is that, okay, I can get out, I can get off the ground really quick and I can get into my next steps. You're gonna reach a point where that's gonna hinder you because you're not able to develop enough, there's not enough time available to manifest into a larger velocity that's actually gonna help you. So,'cause you know, you, you get off the ground, your leg doesn't have time to swing even for the next step. So you have to pop up in the air. And, you know, to, to get that swing time that you missed out on where you could have been pushing. And so the little simple things like just the way they set up, the way they balance their, their legs, swings, and positioning is going to help their timing a lot. And that's going to manifest into better velocity outcomes down the track or down the field.

Ryan Patrick:

So I hear you, what I'm hearing from all of this is that there's somewhat of an interdependence between a lot of these variables, right? So if I If I sacrifice velocity for this quick punchy acceleration, there's a consequence one to two to three steps after that, where I've kind of financed this step, this quick velocity for the sake of, Oh shit. Now I'm like out of my mechanics. I'm out of my rhythm. I'm out of my synchronization of just everything. And I'm, I'm like over rotating to catch up. Is that, is that a. Is that a fair assessment?

Lance Brooks:

Yeah, I would say, I would say if I, if I take somebody, even a high level sprinter, and because this is, this has happened, you, if you take a high level sprinter who hasn't really gotten that perspective from, you know, the coach that they work with regularly, that just, you know, haven't thought about it or looked that deeply into it. And then they come to me and I, they spend, spend a few hours with them and I'm looking at how they're setting up and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm collecting data and we're, you know, I'm doing my, putting my coach's eye on, but beyond that, I'm looking elsewhere to collecting things at the same time. And I go to them. I said, listen, I think. I think by the end of the afternoon, we can shave off, you know, 0. 2 seconds, you know, uh, just if you set up a different way, if you do this and then you don't have to spend eight weeks training necessarily, we can just, we can, we can improve your performance, you know, this amount right now, if you do this and then you hop in the blocks and we'll do that. Uh, and it works like, wow. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. You know, that's a, there's a great way that we're looking at it. It's because. Cause you, you, you need to balance those factors. You need to balance and not assume that just because I'm out of the blocks quickly, that that's going to trickle downward into success down the track or down the field. It's just, it's, you, you have to look at the big picture. And in order to do that, you, you have to have a better understanding of how these variables, what these variables mean and how they actually translate to performance. Cause again. If you look at the big, the big picture, yes, you're accelerating, but step to step, it's not about maximizing acceleration. It's about accumulating velocity. So that, so that, so when you experience a change in velocity, you're going to be accelerating technically, right? But it's, you have to zoom in.

Ryan Patrick:

One of the things we started doing in my facility, we have, it's about 20, 22, 23 yards of turf. So not, not a huge area. We have a lot of team sport athletes. So somewhat their biases towards short accelerations, but we can get about 10 yards. with our faster guys, because there's a little, there's some equipment behind us. There's some stuff on the other end, 10 good yards to accelerate. 1 of the things we started doing was we, instead of just looking at their time to 10, we started putting the gates,, a yard on either side of the 10 yard line. And I, and I told them, I don't want to know who is getting to 10 yards the fastest. I want to know who's moving the fastest at 10 yards. Yeah,

Lance Brooks:

exactly.

Ryan Patrick:

And so, it kind of seems what you're speaking about is the purpose of acceleration is not acceleration. It's to set up what's happening as you approach the max velocity phase.

Lance Brooks:

Exactly. Yeah, because honestly, you can expand that logic even further and say, does it matter who is Yeah, because those dynamics are going to change because At a certain point in the race, it does matter who gets to a certain point faster. It's whoever gets to 100 meters faster wins. Yes. It's not necessarily who's moving the fastest at 100 meters. So, so I would, I agree that that logic is perfectly sound at that early phase of the sprint, but you have to have the end goal in mind. And so, yeah, you want to look at the big picture, but in order to say, okay, how am I going to maximize performance? In the big picture by chopping it into pieces and figure out what do I want my performance to look like here? What do I want to look like here? And like Usain Bolt is probably the most famous example of this, right? He's not winning the race at 30 meters. He's not winning the race at 50 meters even, but 70, 80, 90, 100, he's winning the race. Because it's how you want your performance looking at various junctures within the big picture. And for him, the big thing was, I mean, not that he's a bad accelerator. People think that he's not a great, he's a pretty good accelerator. But even more so than that, he was a really good decelerator. And so he You see the later parts of the sprint where he's sort of pulling away from the pack and it looks like oh my gosh He's just still accelerating. He's just still going. He's not they're decelerating Yeah, he's he's hold he hits his top speed a little later and then he holds on to it for longer So he's, his, his rate of deceleration is much lower than the rest of his opponents because, you know, they hit their top speed more quickly. So like, you know, they're ahead of them slightly, but then as the race goes, he, he, he not only catches up, but he stays ahead as their velocity plummets more.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah, you almost wonder if they, they tried to get him to accelerate too quick, would he have held on to enough velocity to do what he did?

Lance Brooks:

Gosh, that's a great question. Uh, I don't have a good answer for that, but my, if I'm just going off my intuition, uh, I would say no, I don't, I don't think that he, I don't think that he would be able to, I don't think that he would be able to, Prolong his achievement of top speed and holding and hold on to it because if he's out of the blocks too quickly Then that's gonna screw up the whole rhythm It's gonna result in him having to take more steps over the course of the entire hundred which is gonna be more fatiguing Which is gonna result in not only hitting a top speed sooner But more a larger portion of the race is gonna be spent decelerating

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah,

Lance Brooks:

and that's super good at avoiding not only because he's a very long, lengthy, lengthy individual, um, but just the way he would time his achievement of top speed and how long he could hold on to it. And those are both related, the sort of, you don't want to wait too long to achieve it. But there's a sweet spot and I think he was just a master of hitting that sweet spot.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'd like to talk a little bit about top speed before I let you go, because we're getting, we're getting, uh, close to an hour here. Oh, allentime plus. Yeah, I know. So you mentioned, um, your hypothesis was that top speed might not be, limited by the force production. Is that, am I saying that? Acceleration. Acceleration, but but that top speed was

Lance Brooks:

top speed is limited by force, but only by virtue of the fact that you have such a small time window, right? So really, the primary limit is the amount of time you have available to strike the ground. So it's not it's not necessarily an overall force limit. It's, you're limited, you're force limited because you have such a narrow time limit and you're just not able, you're not able to, to develop high, higher forces given the, the time constraint.

Ryan Patrick:

And so the question becomes, what was your hypothesis for actually improving top speed, not adding more force, correct.

Lance Brooks:

Well, the, the idea is that you actually, you do wanna apply more force during that time window. So you wanna, you wanna be able to train that quality. Because that's what's going to allow you to have the narrow time window. Because if you, if you aren't effective at applying force, then you're going to have to lengthen that time window. And again, numerator, denominator, the denominator is that time. If the time's longer, your velocity is going to suffer. So, the idea is to become more effective at applying force so that you can do it in that shorter time window. Because there's going to be a minimum contact time that's where it's mechanically impossible to go below. So there's a minimum contact time that you can achieve. And those who are more effective at applying force are able to get closer to that limit. And then it becomes, then it becomes making sure that you're actually covering the excursion that you're able to like, what's, what's the maximum excursion that you can, uh, that you can cover during that time window. And that's how you get fast. That's how your top speed goes up.

Ryan Patrick:

Okay, so improving the force applied during contact time is the game changer.

Lance Brooks:

Oh, exactly. Yeah. And that's why there's, there's not many good replacements for just sprinting when it comes to training those qualities. I mean, you want stiff, forceful isometrics, like we're not, sorry, plyometrics, not isometrics. Different thing. I shouldn't misspoke because there are people out there who do isometrics on the end and think that it's going to help their sprint performance, which it's not. It's not task specific. Even though the muscle, like we said, behaves quasi isometric during the stance phase at top speed, That doesn't mean that standing there and like holding heavy barbells and doing those dipoles. And so that's not going to make you better at top speed. Um, but, uh, the time window that you have available, there's a minimum, right?

Ryan Patrick:

Right.

Lance Brooks:

So if you are more effective at applying high forces during the time window, you want to do things in training that only give you a limited amount of time to apply force. And then you want to train to be more effective in applying force. So that's why plyometrics. Are really good. Anything that encourages a forceful ground strike, just like, you know, punching, there's like something, anything that's like you're punching the ground with it with a stiff limb and, um, and then you, you can, then you can progress it and then you can do stuff that like you're moving while doing this and then, yeah, but then again, there's not, there's not really going to be effective replacement for. Just sprinting.

Ryan Patrick:

So the two bottlenecks for, for practitioners listening, one are, is ground contact time. You have to hit someone in front of your center of mass, depending on how fast you're moving, that's going to dictate a lot of your ground contact time. Two is going to be the amount of force that you can apply during that time. So really, we're trying to maximize impulse and fast guys are doing this, with much better efficacy than slow guys.

Lance Brooks:

Exactly. Exactly. And it's like, it can be not, it's not a paradox. It's, it's sort of becomes a little confusing to people because you look at someone like Usain Bolt again, and his average forces actually. End up being like slightly lower than what you'd expect from most elite sprinters, but that's just because of the interplay between his stride length and his, uh, his, his stride time. So his contact times versus contact lengths. He's just one of those guys who, since he's so tall, he can cover his, his strides are so effective. He can cover such a vast distance. But with that distance, there's gonna be sort of a give and take with contact time. So his, his contact times are also a little bit longer, and then that drives down your average force during the sprint. Gotcha. So, uh, so it all makes sense if you really know the mechanics. Yeah. If you're someone who, who's here, oh, force is like, you wanna maximize force. Hey, but you're saying bold. He's like, he doesn't hit as hard as this guy does. Yeah, but there's, there's a perfectly good and valid explanation for that, but the main overall takeaway that everyone should, should, should glean is that you have a limited time window and you want to maximize the amount of force that you can during that time window.

Ryan Patrick:

Perfect. I think that's a good spot to, to wrap it up. So, um, before I let you go, man, can you tell me a little bit about your new course that's on your website as well as your journal?

Lance Brooks:

Yeah, so we try to post articles weekly. Um, and then we tackle any number of issue within performance or science philosophy. Just like try to like communicate first principles type stuff and, you know, to help people understand. How it is that we know what we know and where things are going. Um, and also, you know, trying to dispel myths and so forth. Um, the video course, it's a, it's a, from molecules to motion. So whole body perspective, and then zooming in at the muscle level, the molecular level on, uh, how, you know, locomotor performance, sprint performance. And we touched on some philosophical principles and kind of like the history of the field, where it's going and where we are. And then, yeah, that's all available on Brooks performance methods.com. And for those who are not following me on Instagram, you can follow Brooks performance methods or you can follow me, Lance Brooks PhD. Um, and I'm pretty much only on Instagram right now. So that's, uh, that's, that's where I'm active. So anyone who's not already following me, please go do that and, uh, we can stay in touch.

Ryan Patrick:

Absolutely. I'll make sure I put those in the show notes and, uh, in the caption when I share this, I'm a subscriber to the journal. I think it's awesome. If you're somebody who loves to be like, I do you like diving into the research? I think it's good to have a vetted expert. Like, you kind of break things down and draw a lot of these ideas together. So definitely recommend that. And then just fishing out, man. What's what's next for Lance?

Lance Brooks:

Oh, yeah, just, uh, keep doing my research and, uh, we'll see where things go in terms of, uh, research funding and the, the current landscape's kind of chaotic at the moment, but, um, yeah, I'm staying in, staying in the research world, but also helping my athletes and trying to bridge that gap between the theoretical with the applied. And so that's, that's kind of the space that I occupy and that's where I'm going to stay.

Ryan Patrick:

Awesome, man. I appreciate your time. It was an honor. Appreciate your contributions to the field. So thank you so much for taking the time to do this for me.

Lance Brooks:

Appreciate it. Ryan. Thanks for having me on. This is this is great.

Ryan Patrick:

All right. Take care.