Small details with great effects on speed running

. In sprint events, the start is a special issue, which has led us to conduct a more in-depth study of some biomechanical aspects that, on the one hand, may have permissive effects on performance or, conversely, may have a restrictive influence, depending on the stance adopted by the sprinter when getting into the “set” position for the block start. Ensuring optimal angles at the joints of the body segments enables the runner to quickly react when the starter’s gun is fired, but especially to achieve the most efficient flexion-extension sequence of the lower limb joints (hip-knee-ankle) concurrently with providing the necessary balance that allows focusing attention on the sound of the gun. Carefully watching how the block start positions are approached, it has been found that no two athletes have the same stance at the “set” command and the same dynamics of the first steps. The different approaches to the speed running technique are mainly dependent on each athlete’s morphofunctional characteristics, which will leave their mark on efficiency and specific training sessions. There are many situations in which some say that only a particular position allows them “to feel that they push best the starting block”, while others try to imitate the start positions of certain sprinters they have seen in various television broadcasts just because they have noticed something special in their performance as compared to other athletes, but without understanding the degree of efficiency of those movements.