Coaching and Care of Athletes

SPRINTING hands are turned towards the body. The arms then swing across the body at the pit of the stomach, and the abdominal muscles rapidly accustom themselves to assisting the pull and thrust which is provided by the arms. The loose swing is greatly aided by the 'shrug,' or hitching up, of the shoulders, there being a lift as the arms swing left and another lift as the arms swing right. These combined movements of the upper body help to lift the legs and lighten the effort. Whereas sprinters taught by the American method are apt to pound hard upon the track, those men who use the Mussabini method seem to skim above the cinders with their feet close to the ground, and always land very lightly well up on the toes. The Mussabini method agrees with the American system in one point at least. In both styles the first stride out of the holes is from 2! to 3 ft. in length, and there is the same principle of 10 yds. being covered in very short strides and the athlete rising from the crouch position to the proper sprinting body inclination of 75° somewhere between 15 and 25 yds. from the start. There is yet one other variation ofsprinting styles to be discussed. In 1937 that great American authority Boyd Comstock enun– ciated the principle that a starting position should be adopted which would allow the athlete to get into the natural sprinting position as soon as possible after leaving the holes. He entirely discarded the theory that a man should at the start of his race rise gradually from the 37° inclination of the start to the 75° inclination of the true sprinting angle over a distance of 15 to 25 yds. Corn– stock's new idea is that a man should reach the running angle as soon as possible, and should progress on the balls of his feet-that is to say, the forward part of the balls of his feet-throughout the race, rather than at any time getting right up on his toes. For this reason he has the soles of his sprinting-shoes· spiked entirely differently from the very forward spiking to which sprinters have been accustomed in the past. All coaches, of course, are in agreement upon the matter ofhead– positioning. At no stage of the sprint race, or, indeed, in any other race, must the athlete throw back his head. During the early period of preliminary training the coach will no doubt be content to have his sprinters, and other athletes, jogging around easily to gain strength and elasticity in the leg muscles, and also for the purpose of building up their stamina. In addition the sprinters should do a fair amount of running with 1 79