Why?

Because it is the benchmark for all out running speed and off and running a superpower gets a good start?

Usain bolt in the Middle East.

Jamaican sprinter.

Usain bolt is the fastest man on earth with an official world record time of 9.58 seconds in the 100 m dash At his fastest he's running more than 27 mph.

Elite sprinters look like they leave it all on the track, but could they eke out just a little bit more.

Somehow.

Today we're going to look at why running 100 m dash in nine seconds flat is almost impossible to find out what it takes.

I toed the line with two of America's top sprinters ran on an absurd treadmill and talked physiological limits with a bio mechanistic.

The determinants of how fast you can complete 100 m are, how quickly you get up to speed and then how fast you can run once you get there, basically make sure that I got a lesson in getting up to speed from two of the fastest runners on earth, Mike Rogers and bryce.

Robinson, and then for the setup, obviously you want your fingers behind the line Rogers, an Olympian has clocked a 9.85 2nd 100 m time.

Robinson, a rising track star is also one of the few sprinters to have run the 100 m dash in under 10 seconds, they showed me how to set up the blocks for a good start, it was only so much help, okay, what do they do right?

He came out the blocks, he did that got incorrectly twist out, but the release from the pedals, we gotta work on that part.

I was basically felt going forward.

You got all you look straight up, trying to see yeah, step, trying to catch yourself, which is normal past class one, Class two, Alright, so he's dragging his back foot.

That foot drag forces Robinson to keep his rear foot planted on the block longer, and that gives him a more explosive start.

He also swings his arms for maximum power.

The drag comes in because you're trying to push off this thing as long as you can, you don't wanna you don't wanna step off this thing without pushing this time, I'm gonna set up exactly how he did the first time, I'll get set and then I'm going to focus on two things.

One is gonna be this toe drag coming off on my left foot, right, because I want to be on that block for as long as possible, and that kind of forces me to do that.

That also has a secondary effect of keeping the lower right, and the third thing I'm going to focus on is move my arms after the lesson, I asked him to race, but it was early in the season and these guys weren't about to blow out a hamstring going full tilt for 100 m against a guy like me.

But as you can see they really didn't have to.

They had me beat the moment we left the blocks they weren't even trying, which is obvious there are two of the fastest people on earth.

But why are they so fast?

It's really great position to find out.

I talked to this guy inside the heel recovery issues are almost irrelevant.

I'm Peter Wayne, I'm the director of the local motor performance lab here at S.

M.

U.

Or we study the mechanical and physiological basis of human performance.

He invites world class athletes like Robinson and Rogers and not.

So world class athletes like me to run and be studied at his lab in Dallas.

How with a lot of really cool and really expensive equipment, have some high tech custom toys of force instrumented treadmill and ultra high speed cameras with motion detection capabilities that are very precise.

His research shows that the key to elite sprinting is how much force you can put into the ground and how fast Usain bolt or another elite male sprinter at top speed will put down five times their body weight typically in point oh nine seconds or nine hundreds of a second.

If a person can put out those kinds of forces, they have a shot at earning a place on the labs record board.

These are the records so 11.72 for a guy that's That's cooking.

It's smoking.

Yeah.

Do you know what do you know about what that translates to in mph?

Just under 27.

God, that's amazing.

What's, what's a respectable, what's, what, what's like?

I would say you're not being polite or I would say anything, you know, 8, 8.5 would be pretty respectable.

We're gonna, we're gonna shoot for respectable sucks.

Speaking of respectability, we didn't have people put on a ridiculously tight outfit.

Let's go do it.

Then I got marked up with infrared dots and strapped into a safety harness to run in the labs.

Force sensing treadmill.

Why the harness?

Just listen to this thing.

It sounds like a jet taking off.

It can go 90 mph.

Wayne had me warm up first with a jog, then he had me running four m per second.

It's about an eight minute mile five m per second, about a 5.5 minute mile.

And then, so this treadmill is moving at 6.7 m/s.

That translates to exactly 15 mph, Which translates exactly two, A four minute mile pace.

I got to feel like Roger Banister for about two seconds whenever you're ready, Robbie.

Finally, I topped out at eight m/s, which is just shy of 18 mph.

Good.

That's right at the threshold.

We had the treadmill set to 8.1 m per second.

I was doing my best to keep up with it, but I was drifting back a little bit drifted, I think we said 20 centimeters, which means I was actually running it around eight flat.

Okay, so how does that compare to a world class sprinter?

So not bad, not bad.

It's a, it's a respectable speed.

And uh, an elite sprinter, a male will hit, you know, somewhere around 11.5 or so fastest ever recorded speed is 12 4 from Usain bolt, 12.4 m per second.

That kind of speed is what propelled bolt to his world record time of 9.58 seconds, the 100 m.

But 50 years ago, the great barrier for sprinting was a 12th 100 m dash in 1968.

American jim Hines burst across the line in 9.95 seconds.

His record stood for 15 years.

Since then, sprinters have been whittling away hundreds of a second at a time.

Track surfaces have improved training has gotten better and sprinters these days where these really tight outfits that helps with wind resistance as athletes seek every advantage, timing and verification technology have also gotten more sophisticated.

Any records set with a tailwind greater than 2m per second doesn't count.

But Wayne says there aren't many ways for athletes to get faster And that's because of basic physics sort of in big picture science, how fast humans can run 100 m is really, it's it's a it's all force in relation to body mass.

So we use use the analogy of athletes as being force, application machines and force in relation to mass is what determines how quickly a sprinter can accelerate.

It's what determines their top speed and there are intrinsic constraints on force.

Remember, it's all about maximizing your force in as little time as possible.

Let's look at how that concept applies over the course of a race, starting in the blocks.

So there's the initial push out of the blocks which is really dependent upon athletes, muscular force or strength capabilities, and they get up to almost one third of their top speed before their foot initially hits the ground.

So by far that's the greatest portion of acceleration.

I saw this happen firsthand, as Robinson and Rogers blasted away from the start line And then there's a transition phase where what they do step two step changes a little bit in terms of how much force they can apply.

They can apply progressively more as they go step by step further into the race, but they're typically by step 12 or so, there 85, of their max speed.

It doesn't take very long.

That max speed is what way.

And examines in short bursts at his lab, and they're the mechanical determinant is no longer sort of their intense intrinsic strength, but but rather it's it's the motion.

It's that their mechanics or technique of sprinting to drive the limb down into the ground forcefully.

They essentially throw a quick sharp punch at the ground and that maximizes their force capabilities.

And then the last 30 m of the race, they typically slow down and they do so because of muscle fatigue very rapidly.

And the period of time that they can sustain their top speed is very short, it's less than a couple of seconds.

Wayne looks at the forces an athlete applies during their run and it's in these numbers, you can really see why an elite sprinter is so much faster.

Once they get rolling the force on the ground and again what they're better doing than everyone else's applying force in the time available, The force on the ground becomes a motion-based mechanism where they use their limbs to throw a punch at the ground.

Let's look at how much more of a punch a pro can give.

The ground.

On the left, is me running at 7.82 m/s on the right, is Robinson doing 10.85 m/s.

I'm hitting the ground as hard as I can to keep up with the treadmill with a force roughly three times my body weight.

Robinson weighs about as much as I do, but he's throwing almost five times his body weight on the ground, and he's doing it way faster than I can.

And that weight is key.

Look what happens when you take away gravity.

This is use a bolt running in a microgravity airplane and even he can't generate any push back on earth.

That raw strength has to be precisely applied to the track That's form.

Look at how much higher Robinson brings his heels and his knees on each stride.

Those mechanics are what allow him to maximize the force his legs delivered to the ground and clock 100 m times just under 10 seconds.

Of course he'd like to get even faster when you're training this season.

Is there a bench mark you're shooting for or you just kind of trying to get the best you can man?

I really want to run 98 this year.

This stuff coming here, if God willing it, it's faster than that, I'll be, I'll be happy, but I really want to run really 98, if I if I get that, which um, the main goal is to run nine nine's consistently.

I run nine, nine's consistently then that 98 will pop out there at some point.

It will.

But what if a sprinter wanted to go a lot faster, say nine seconds flat wayne's research shows that the human body would have to exert forces greater than have ever been recorded at speeds that probably aren't possible.

So typically at top speed, they'll put, they'll put a force into the ground that peaks at five times their body weight and they'll have a foot ground contact time or period of force application That's typically .09 seconds or 900ths of a second on the very short end point oh 85 seconds to get to what would be required for nine flat, they would have to approach six times body weight and a foot ground contact time of just over seven hundreds of a second.

So we're not going to see anyone blast across the line in nine seconds in the 100 m dash, but that doesn't mean a sprinter couldn't cover that distance that fast.

In fact, some of them already have.

So if you remove the acceleration requirement from a stationary start from the race and you allow a flying start coming in, humans are comfortably under the nine second barrier already, world record for a four by 800 m relay held by the Jamaicans about 36.7 or eight seconds.

So essentially each person after the one that ran the opening leg had to average nine flat for their 100 m segments for them to run that fast.

But the start is part of what makes the 100 m dash so thrilling on that last run, you are first out of the blocks by a mile and then you're you're ahead of me and then I was bringing up the rear.

So yeah, he's right out of the blocks, you guys are both beating really fast.

That's nuts.

Now, some of that has to do with their raw strength, but it also has to do with their incredible reaction times.

So, do you practice on reaction time stuff at all?

We do under current rules.

If a sprinter moves before the starting gun, they're automatically disqualified.

This actually happened to you saying both at the World Championships in 2011.

What I like to do is close my eyes and the first thing I hear I moved.

Mhm.

Basically that's that that will help you alleviate false start and stuff like that.

You don't hear nothing, you don't move.

But here's the thing.

An athlete can also be disqualified for leaving the blocks less than 1/10 of a second after the gun goes off.

The reasoning is that a reaction time of less than .1 seconds is physiologically impossible.

But research shows some sprinters may actually be capable of reaction times as quick as .08 seconds.

I close my eyes because I used to keep them open and people people flinch and do all that, all the weird stuff and I'm I feel like I'm a pretty aware person.

So I kind of noticed that stuff and I'll go, I'll be hesitant to go because of it.

So, what is actually possible for the 100 m dash and does anybody stand a chance at breaking bolt's record?

I would say if you put together a perfect human being who's, you know, exceptional and a perfect race, you know, I think certainly something in the 9 40 range, low nine forties, maybe a little bit faster than that under currently, legal conditions should be possible.

So keep watching.

We're probably never gonna see a 9/200 m.

But remember that what these athletes are doing is already almost impossible.