I guess this is just a silly little thought experiment, but the final estimate (6.97s 100m) is quite ridiculous on its face.
The heavy lifting seems to be done by the study linked in the "anatomical studies suggest peak speeds up to 15.6-17.9 m/s (35-40 mph) are achievable" line. I'm not sure where those exact numbers were pulled from - I can't find them with a cmd+f. One line in the study uses some nearby numbers:
> If, for simplicity, we assume no change in contact lengths or the minimum aerial times needed to reposition the swing limbs at top speed, the average and greatest individual top speed hopping forces (Favg) of 2.71 and 3.35 Wb would allow top running speeds of 14.0 and 19.3 m/s and of 50 and 69 km/h, respectively
But the study concludes that, even though our leg extensor muscles can produce much higher maximum forces than those generated during sprinting, the "contact length" imposes a constraint on these "hopping forces":
> Because humans have limbs of moderate length and cannot gallop, they lack similar options for prolonging periods of foot-ground force application to attain faster sprinting speeds at existing contact time minimums. Consequently, human running speeds in excess of 50 km/h are likely to be limited to the realms of science fiction and, not inconceivably, gene doping.
So the craziness of the original estimate seems to follow from on a misreading of that study.
We don’t do it efficiently or effectively would be better than saying we cannot do it.
It’s only useful for going downhill quickly which we’ve all subconsciously or perhaps even mindfully done.
From your link:
> Gallopers exerted that effort unevenly, with the front leg doing more work than the back leg. And the galloping stride, researchers saw, demanded more from the hips than running did.
This tired people out quickly. Out of 12 treadmill gallopers in the study, 4 gave up before the end of their 4-minute session, complaining of fatigue and stress in their hips and thighs.
(An intended 13th galloper couldn't figure out how to gallop on the treadmill belt in the first place.)
When researchers calculated their subjects' metabolic rates, they found that galloping was about 24% more costly than running at the same speed. In other words, galloping burns up more energy, takes more effort, and is less comfortable than running.
> Because humans have limbs of moderate length and cannot gallop
Yes, we don't because it's not great, but that's not the same as not being able to. (This is very pedantic sorry, it's just a stronger claim than it needs to be which bothers me).
Also, I wonder if that changes if you have very uneven leg lengths?
I mean, this is a bipedal gallop, standing upright. What if someone were to train for running on both their hands and feet, the way a horse, dog, or cheetah does? I’ve seen a video of a young woman doing this, and it looked very uncomfortable/unnatural and it was frankly terrifying to imagine a human running at you in this way.
Mechanically it seems like the advantage would be using more muscles and being able to take advantage of your core and upper body when pushing off in addition to the legs. landing seems like it would be a challenge as fingers aren’t really made for that.
“The winning time was fitted to a rational fraction curve for the quadruped records (r2 = 0.823, adjusted r2 = 0.787, F = 26.9, P < 0.05) and to a linear curve for the biped records (r2 = 0.952, adjusted r2 = 0.949, F = 336.1, P < 0.05; Figure Figure1).1).”
Unfortunately, a linear extrapolation implies that at some time, the bipedal 100m will take negative time…
I saw a video about that which claimed that 4-legged running is in general faster than 2-legged running. The video concluded that it might be possible for humans to "run" faster with 4 limbs rather than 2 limbs, if trained properly. Btw they also mentioned the record in 100m 4-limb running is something over 15s.
I've genuinely wondered whether humans could "run" faster if they employed full body flex and did a sort of springing cartwheel, using all the muscles in their body to propel them forward.
Imagine a slinky, but more elastic and with better roll.
> Elite sprinters can apply peak forces of 800-1000 pounds (3560-4450 Newtons) to each limb. Beyond ~1300 pounds, ideal human leg bones would surely break[1].
I followed the link and it just said
> If you're looking for the specifics to snap a piece of your skeleton, it takes about 4,000 newtons of force to break the typical human femur.
So the sprinters are already producing that much force (900 pounds) and the 1300 notion seems unsupported. Not to mention that applying the force with different amounts of torque might not break the bone, since bones are 10x stronger in compression so can withstand a lot more force longitudinally.
From your quotes, there seems to be an important difference: in the first quote they talk about "ideal human leg bones" and in the second one about a "typical human femur".
I'm certain that an elite sprinter blessed in genetics has leg bones significantly stronger than the average human. Bones also get stronger from repetitive exercise.
I would guess there also may be a difference between the two cases in that the force needed to break a leg wasn’t measured by compressing it, but by exerting force perpendicular to its length.
Even if it isn’t, there are so many ways to measure breaking strength that it’s unlikely the two cases are perfectly comparable.
This was my assumption. The original article implies parallel force, which I imagine has far higher limit than perpendicular. Eg trying to chop a 1x4 in half long ways probably takes quite a bit of force(and a touch of stupidity).
For a bit of scale on what we know the human leg can handle without breaking: the best drug tested, sleeves-only squat in the world is 490 kg (Ray Williams IPF Worlds 2019). Drop the drug testing and add multi-ply squat suits and the record is 590 kg (Nathan Baptist, UPA Utah Kick Off Meet 2021). Granted: these are two-footed squats and you run with one leg at a time.
Alternatively, look at Olympic weightlifting. While the weights used in the clean and jerk and snatch are less that used in the squat in powerlifting, the instantaneous forces are much greater. I don't think 1300 lbs is anywhere near enough to break a human femur if we're talking compressive forces, lateral force is a different story.
Olympic-style lifts are among the most powerful things a human can do. Elite athletes can push beyond 5kW at the peak of exertion. This is why technique is so important. The forces involved are insane once you go beyond 200lbs or so. The snatch can be extremely troublesome if you do it wrong. Clean and jerk is more tolerant to bad form.
oooh yeah the speed is definitely something to consider for them. Hmm. Kinda wanna grab some hookgrip slow-mo edits and do JV science with them. Kinda don't because I have shareholder value to create.
Not to down play the "what's possible", but it's important to note that bone strength depends on stimulus and nutrition just as much as muscular and connective tissue strength. Those athletes bones are likely far stronger than the average human of the same size without training.
Oh yeah, in fact Gene Rychlak (first lifter to bench over 1000lb) said he could feel his bones bending during the lift. Training is getting your body adapted to the movement, and that for sure includes bone density. I'm guessing our 100m runners are also pretty dense.
Tendons may be the limiting factor here. They are soft tissue that has an elastic limit that is likely to be lower than solid non-deformable bone. Exceed that and tendons will either tear or pathologically lengthen.
The 4-minute-mile is an average of 15mph. I haven't measured how fast I can sprint, but at my age (40s), I doubt its higher than 15mph for any timespan longer than a few seconds. So milers effectively sprint for 4 minutes straight. Its mind boggling what the human body can do.
I don't think you're familiar with the performance levels of masters (40+) atheletes.
I'm 60 now, but in my 40s I was a moderately good marathon-to-ultramarathon runner, and with a little bit of speedwork training, I managed to run a 5:30 track mile. That's not even fast - I had friends of the same age who could run 4:30.
It is truly remarkable what the human body can do - the world record for the marathon involves running 26.2 miles faster per mile than I could ever run 1 mile.
But if you can't sprint faster than 4mph for a few seconds, that's fine but it's not indicative of "at your age". Unless you have some actual health issue that prevents it, I would very surprised if you were incapable of hitting 6mph for a mile with some training, and a lot of people would not find it tremendously hard to hit 6.5-7mph if they had the time and motivation to train.
Not just that, but elite marathon performances (42.2 km) are under 5 minute miles.
Say, 2:10 (130 minutes) over 26.2 miles is a 4:58 mile pace.
The current world record seems to be 2:00:35, which is like a 4:36 mile pace.
Sometimes footage of elite level long distance running events shows fans trying to follow the runners on bicycle. It looks quite astonishing and ridiculous at the same time.
Hilariously, I got passed by a runner on my bike just yesterday. We were both trudging up a mountain. I suggested she carry my bike; she demurred. Eventually when the terrain leveled out a little bit, I left her in the dust.
We can't call it running if at least one foot has to be on the ground at a time. That requirement also drastically limits stride length, giving an inherent advantage to the runner.
It's an open secret that "cheating" (i.e. not having both feet planted) is ubiquitous, to the point that since 1996 the official rule is now "not naked-eye visible loss of contact, or visibly bent knee". You can watch any slow-motion video of racewalkers and they seem to lose contact on every stride.
And they seem to break that break even that very loose rule when they think they can get away with it. With cheap modern tech I am sure they could enforce the contact rules.
“Race walking” is distinguished from “running” based on technique. In this case, “walking” is defined very strictly as “never having both feet off the ground.”
Yes, obviously it’s just a silly way to run, if “run” is “move fast on foot”.
It’s just that “race walking” is fewer words than “a silly way to run where you have to keep one foot on the ground always.”
It's not that it isn't enforced, it's that the rule is very specifically that it must appear that one foot is always touching the ground when watched in real time with human eyes, the rule isn't that one foot must technically always be touching the ground.
That very well may be the rule, but you can't then argue that it isn't a "silly way to run". It clearly is if both feet can be in the air at the same time.
"Beat the Freeze", a half-time show the Atlanta Braves used to put on, is pretty close. It's where a member of the crowd takes on a former collegiate sprinter in a 160m race, and they're given a five second head start.
I hadn't heard of this event before but watching the video it does seem like the last one might have beaten the freeze if they had got a full 5 seconds head start. Makes you wonder if the freeze head start is based on how fast you run / how fit they think you are.
It seems like when the freeze is beaten, he is beaten by a hardcore amateur:
It's clear from his form that he's an experienced runner. I googled a bit. He ran track in HS and at least the start of college. These were his HS senior times:
> Was the Region 6-AA Champion for finishing first in the 5k in 2010… Finished third in the state in the 5k in a time of 17:46.66 during the 2010 season.
The dudes they pick utilize poor strategy. They come out the gate hot, and are gassed by 50% of the race. Really, they should be running at a pace they can just barely maintain to the end, and then push all out the last 20m
I've run over two dozen marathons. Even at that distance, it takes a lot of discipline to not go out too fast. These are random people they find in the stands who are going to be very amped up in the moment. Strategy is the furthest thing from their minds and even if weren't, it takes practice to know what your ideal pace is.
There was a display at an airport I read about. Had a projector showing the average speed for a champion marathon runner. Most normal people couldn't match it over the short distance.
Couldn't find the link but here is a similar video of people (mostly amateur runners) trying to match a 2h marathon time for two minutes:
It takes a lot of practice and training to learn how to pace yourself in order to do that strategy. Some rando off the field isn't going to be able to do that. Hell, I think even experienced runners may have trouble doing that for distances that they don't run regularly (e.g. a 100m specialist doing a 800m or a marathoner doing a 100m or 400m).
I've never seen Usain Bolt's speed in terms of mph before this article. A top speed of 27.8 mph is seriously incredible. Granted I'm no professional sprinter, but when I try to go much beyond 14-15 my balance can't keep up with the cadence and I start to trip over myself.
When I was in my 20s, I was in great shape, riding thousands of miles a year (distance riding, not racing). On a flat, straight track in still air, I'm pretty sure my top speed was around 32mph. And while pro cyclists would scoff at my personal best there, most people aren't even coming close to that.
A downhill where a road bike can reach that speed is pretty normal. I reach those nearly every day on my to work commute and I live in Iowa - there is a reason we are known for being flat so if I can find a hill to reach those speed surely anyone else can too. Of course I am riding a road bike, kids and mountain bikes may have limitations (tires?) that slow them down.
Reaching those speeds on level ground doesn't seem possible for a normal human, but level ground is rare.
I can hit 45 mph going down hill on my 1980 road bike... but that's just balance, carrying enough potential energy, being too stupid to slow down to a reasonable speed, and having hills that I have to walk the bike up most of the time. There's some skill and physical conditioning there, but not a whole lot; at that speed, there's a lot of instant feedback on form, which helps encourage one to get low and tight.
I think if we're talking about how fast you can get your bike to go, flat land, still air is implied. I don't have a lot of those conditions to try, but I'm happy to cruise around 15, and maybe push it to 20 if I don't need to save my energy for a nearby hill.
I'm not sure what you might mean by a "normal human".
I used to be a back-of-the-front-of-the-pack triathlete, with a previous history as an ultramarathon and touring cyclist. In my best shape (probably aged around 46), I was training on a flat loop course with some younger very strong but not professional cyclists where we would generally pull the group at 28mph for about between 20-60 seconds at a time.
I appreciate that there's a distance between that sort of thing and an "average person", but it's not a whole lot larger than the distance between the people who were in the group and, say, professional tour cyclists.
I suspect that "most people" even includes the guy who sprinted at 27.8 mph. The crank lengths and gearing are all wrong on a bike for an explosive sprint, preventing all the right muscles from being recruited to the job. No matter the speed and gear, your feet are constrained into spinning around the same smallish circle. And wile you can use your whole body in order to sprinting on a bike, it's not the same like when a running sprinter uses their entire body.
Mmmhh, not sure about that. Most people, even if not reaching high speeds, can still go substantially faster on a bike than running. Even grandmas, it's all relative.
People like Bolt should be compared with bike sprinters, who top out at around 45mph.
“His thighs were measured with a circumference of 73 centimetres (29 in). A circumference of 86 centimetres (34 in) has also been recorded, and the size of his quad muscles has led to him being called "Quadzilla" by some in his sport.”
That's definitely not true. You can sprint explosively on a bike, you just have to get up and push your legs down on the ground. Since your leg is at 90 degrees you can exert maximum power. I've done 50kph on the flats on a bike, it's not that hard; far easier than on foot!
A class 3 ebike (the kind legal on most streets but illegal on most rec paths due to their speed) has a top speed of 28mph, so I would say so. Barring a steep decline of course.
I wouldn't go near that speed on a bike wearing a tour de france outfit. Crashing at those speeds will be very, very painful.
A friend of mine had a low speed crash on his bike, and knocked his front teeth out. After that, both he and I bought full face helmets.
When I ride dirt bikes, I wear a full set of armor. I look like a storm trooper. But I've crashed many times, and was unhurt. The armor is worth every penny. (The only way to learn how to ride a dirt bike is by crashing it.)
I think if Bolt really pushed himself, he could have broken sub 9.5 seconds at the peak of his ability. In all races where he dominated, we see him slack off right near the end once he realizes how much further ahead he is of everyone else.
At this short of distance it would be slacking off. However if you watch his world breaking run (vid below) to me it appears he's likely not doing that.
Personally would argue these guys do this same sprint/distance so many times in practice/competition that they generally implicitly know when they're running a WR type time and generally don't slack off (in this video he's not in any threat of being caught but still presses on for the WR).
Professional bodybuilders all use steroids. There are "natural" bodybuilders that don't use steroids or PEDs, and a few competitions for them, but the sport in general is saturated in drugs.
I did about that speed for about half a mile once, but I was drafting close behind a 2 ton truck. :) The truck's driver was taking it easy for whatever reason. I noticed that and slipped into the slipstream. Once in the slipstream, it felt like no effort; like bicycling downhill.
If I were to guess today, I'd say that my front wheel was within about 2 meters or so of the tail gate.
This is obviously dangerous, but the truck was going slow; slow enough that if it slammed on the brakes, I would have been able to react (and failing that, not get badly hurt).
It was a strange sensation. It took effort to pedal up to the tailgate, but then you feel the effort drop off, as if you went over an invisible ridge.
I think the article must have ignored drag, which makes their estimate of 35-40 mpg unrealistic. Tour de France sprinters can reach 45mph speed, but the average Tour speed is more like 25-30 mph. Running is less efficient, and less aerodynamic, than cycling.
I think that used to be true in the early wave of e-bikes.
Today, I regularly see e-bikes and scooters easily keeping up with traffic that is moving upward of 50 km/h.
If there are still e-things on the market today with speed limitations not related to their power capacity, people must be easily working around those limits somehow, with firmware patches or secret codes or what have you.
Most of the stuff comes from China, which is an uncontrollable entity that doesn't care about regulations in North America and elsewhere.
I've recently come to believe the differences in hypertrophy are negligible between eccentric and concentric focused movements, but can't find any recent, compelling research that says so. There was a 2017 meta analysis by Brad Schoenfeld (basically THE hypertrophy researcher) that showed a pretty significant different in hypertrophy: an average of 10% vs 6.8%.
I know Greg Nuckols from StrongerByScience believes this is mostly caused by lifters, especially untrained lifters which most of the research is on, having spent less time in eccentric phases so there is more opportunity for growth there, but it will eventually plateau.
* Can the misconception that micro-muscle tears cause growth just die? We already know since 90s that it’s the myonuclei addition driven by muscle tension.
* There is no strength gain without muscle gain. There is not a single mechanism recorded that would drive this behavior.
* This post made me angry on so many fucking levels. Hex-bar deadlift is at least a good choice for legs due to its lower load on lumbar.
* Finally, it’s the concentric that drives most of the hypertrophy. Not eccentric. It’s why you see gym bros and most IFBB pros (gear aside) disregard eccentric control and hammer the concentric. Because that’s the movement that drives the growth.
* Eccentric cause most fatigue (many types) and lowering slower on purpose would hinder recovery times (and growth as well since the relationship between the two exists)
> There is no strength gain without muscle gain. There is not a single mechanism recorded that would drive this behavior.
This doesn't add up to me, it seems like it doesn't account for the impact of a "trained" nervous system vs. an "untrained" nervous system, skeletal biomechanics, and a whole host of other factors.
Maybe given an ideal muscle in a perfect vacuum, size == strength, but that is not the world we live in.
BTW: if you are looking for something to latch onto with the Olympics starting this week, the USA vs Jamaica rivalry in the short distance trace events is a great David vs. Goliath story. The two countries have been battling back and forth with each other for the top spots for the last decade or longer. The runners have flamboyant personalities and these are some of the fastest sprinters we have ever seen; both men and women. There is a documentary on Netflix called 'Sprint' that sets the stage for this Olympics.
Statisticians think it can be gotten down to 9.51 seconds ( https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090806080343.h... ), though, as with most things statistical, knowledge of the underlying sampling process (biology/physiology & physics in this case) may shed more light. { Similarly, knowledge (& tweaking!) of OS schedulers may be able to reduce measurement noise more than pure statistics in a project to time software like https://github.com/c-blake/bu/blob/main/doc/tim.md .}
They would certainly have to add that new data point to their analysis. :-)
I expect it moves the estimate down by less than the 100 ms record beat, though. That's how converging to a true minimum tends to work (at least, like I said before, in the purely statistical modeling sense which is never quite as strong as a detailed micro-model).
Unsure how either of my comments could be read as disagreeing with your point - both mention physics/micro-models being stronger than pure stats, but maybe in spite of your "The problem is" phrasing you only meant to amplify or only read quickly. That said, I can perhaps respond with something amplifying & clarifying of our shared skepticism of the pure statistics approach relative to something "more detailed" that might someday somehow help someone.
There are probably a half dozen micro-model effects even non-experts could rattle off that have "trended" over the decades from your shoes & surfaces to various aspects of population diet, young-in-life identification / more-optimized-maturation conditions and on & on. Statisticians call this a "non-stationary sampling process" meaning the independent & identically distributed (IID) assumption is at best a weak approximation and at worst totally misleading.
Ways to measure how much evidence there is that IID / other distributional assumptions are failing do exist { such as some of the ones here: https://github.com/c-blake/fitl/blob/main/fitl/gof.nim and referenced at the bottom of https://github.com/c-blake/bu/blob/main/doc/edplot.md (at the stage where one "plots / pools together multiple data points into some kind of "sample" with a "distribution") }. Sadly, few test such assumptions (which are rarely truly comprehensive anyway) and even small departures from modeling assumptions may lead to relatively large errors in estimates. E.g., the linked to Einmahl 2009/2010 research states this as an assumption to apply the ideas, but then shows no test of that assumption on the used data.
I can read all these technical extrapolations of physics but I don’t think humans can run much faster than Usain or they would currently do so. Without more performance enhancing drugs and I’m assuming we don’t want that. We are going to live in a weird world in the future when we realize things can’t just continue forever up and to the right on all charts. We may just live at the plateau for eons. I believe we are all very lucky to have lived at a very special time in human history.
And I think it is smart to prepare yourself for when the world realizes that stuffing money into stocks can’t give 10% every year forever. And all hell will break loose because that is what our whole world is currently built upon. I don’t know when that will happen, but mathematically we can prove that it must happen eventually.
I was reading this carefully looking for the reason of "why this can't go on", and seemingly this is the reason
> if the economy were 3*1070 times as big as today's, and could only make use of 1070 (or fewer) atoms, we'd need to be sustaining multiple economies as big as today's entire world economy per atom
What kind of argument is that? Sounds like someone had an idea and went looking for evidence to support it.
> mathematically we can prove that it must happen eventually
Please explain, and not using a reasoning comparing dollars to atoms
The math for increasing 10% per year over any long length of time gets so crazy that you have to use how many atoms exist as an absurd placeholder. Dollars don't work anymore.
The rule of 72 says at 10% per year (historical returns in the stock market for the past 100 years) means you are doubling the value of the stock market every 7.2 years. Things like economies can't grow like that and if you are questioning why it's because you and I grew up in this era where they could for a brief blinking in time. Human reproduction is slowing, we've harvested all the low hanging fruit, "free" land is all taken. I feel like we are probably at the part of the 100m dash curve talked about here.
At our current rate, the record of 9.48s will be reached in 500 years if you plot it. But I don't think people are going to maintain interest for 500 years to get there from 9.58 seconds.
if i were born and living in the 1500s, how could i predict the economy would soon grow 10%/year for over a century?
you're just stating things like facts which have never been predictable. nothing about our current growth was inevitable, neither is a gigantic slowdown.
i think these kinds of predictions are:
1. far more difficult than we realise
2. so difficult that there is almost no value in making them.
the writer of the article could have just as easily predicted an epic slowdown as infinite growth. that's how much evidence and reasoning they provided. it's the monkey throwing darts
I do not think it is very responsible to increase the incentives even more for exploiting your own body. Also, a mindset like that might easily spill over into "normal" jobs.
> Without more performance enhancing drugs and I’m assuming we don’t want that.
I mean, what are the arguments against PEDs? I guess that they carry risks for the athletes and unfair advantages. It's conceivable that future tech will enable us to legalise and regulate drugs in much the same way as we do equipment now. If that leads to records being smashed, I think the general public will probably come round to it.
For myself, I don't like them because I know they come with health risks and that makes me watching the events like a roman citizen watching gladiators die for their entertainment. And I try to stay away from that as much as possible.
"There is evidence that the pattern of banned substance use in elite athletes is high, yet morbidity and mortality of elite athletes is not greater than the general population, and former elite athletes live longer and healthier lives than age-matched controls. There is evidence that misuse of PEDs, often obtained from the black market, without medical guidance or intervention contributes to morbidity and mortality in recreational athletes, but this pattern is not evident in elite athletes."
Even in events you don’t watch, like the Bumphuck Senior Games 40+ Steeplechase, people are doping. And as a competitor in endurance sports, I don’t want to have to take PEDs and risk my health just to stay competitive in bullshit, no-one-cares-but-your-Mom local amateur events.
And if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its ass when it hops. You asked for the argument against PEDs, and right now the argument is that they have adverse effects on health. If the health effects ever change in the future, then we can revisit.
Fair enough. I think ketones might be a parallel to what you're thinking. Seems to be safe so far, seems like it could be beneficial, still legal. But at $5/day, I'm hoping that shit doesn't work because I don't want to have to spend $5/day to remain competitive.
Professional sports inherently come with health risks. They are unhealthy almost by definition.
If someone wants to risk their well-being for achievement, fame, big money and/or anything else (which is crazy, but people do crazy stuff) - it is more beneficial for the society if it's all transparent and goes into scientific papers and not some anti-doping agency or court papers.
Aren't the numbers at the start of the article mixed up?
It starts by saying "Other than Bolt, no human has ever run 100 meters in under 9.73 seconds"
Then just below there's a table of records showing 3 other runners with sub 9.73 times.
> Really shows how strong competition can bring out the best in you.
In cycling there is also a tech, nutrition and physiology aspect to it. Obviously the tech side is much reduced in running (though clothing and shoes might get some) and Bolt’s diet was notoriously poor.
They might have changed the article. It now says "Other than Bolt, no human has ever run 100 meters in under 9.69 seconds". The table then shows Tyson Gay and Yohan Blake have matched that time, but not beaten it.
>Shouldn't even be considered due to his history with doping.
People are naive about how much sports are riddled with PEDs. It certainly isn't just Tyson Gay. You only know about the ones who get caught. But there is enough info out there to suggest that getting caught is just a matter of slipping up.
>I'm talking about him in relation to Usain Bolt. The latter is yet to be caught doping (if he is on juice to begin with).
Of the top men's 100m runners (in terms of times) only a few escaped the testing dragnet unscathed, one of which is Bolt. As entertaining as Bolt was to watch I have little faith that he was clean at his peak.
I mean for fair competition no. But the article doesn't seem to be caring about that. Just how fast can a human possibly run. I don't know that chemical based enhancements should necessarily be off the table. But physical augmentations should probably be off the table.
> One Australian physiologist calculated in 2014 that a sprinter with Bolt’s force could maintain it while also cutting contact time with the ground to just 70 milliseconds (down from 80 or so). This would result in a top speed of 12.75 meters per second, or 28.53mph – and a new world record of 9.27 seconds.
Obligatory link to article discussing whether Usain was on PEDs or not:
“When people ask me about Bolt, I say he could be the greatest athlete of all time. But for someone to run 10.03 one year and 9.69 the next, if you don’t question that in a sport that has the reputation it has right now, you’re a fool. Period.” Carl Lewis
Dude would never believe that anyone could do what he couldn't without PEDs. Bolt ran a under 21s 200 meter at age 15. His 10.03 time was literally his debut time with the 100 meter.
So we have 2 different theses being posited by this article. The headline (how fast for 100 meters) and the whole rest of the article (how fast for 100 meters under racing rules).
Sport, in general, is about the quest for excellence. It's a tradition that dates back millennia, across nearly all cultures, which suggests it is a deeply-rooted and possibly evolutionary trait in humans. Racing in general, and specifically the 100m dash, the crown jewel of track and field, might be considered one of the purest expressions of athletic excellence.
I understand the sentiment - and yes tradition is important in human culture. That said its like we've trained so acutely for the test but the test doesn't really answer any good questions.
Historically running had a very important part of humanity. You needed to run from animals for hunting, if you were a warrior you needed to fight and run, etc. It feels like this is one of those races that was historically important as a human metric but no longer has the heft of value except for nostalgia.
What are physical tests that are actually important to a modern day human? I don't think there's anything that can be taken to an extreme that is a good measure of an activity that is valuable to modern society.
Well, if you want to view it in that broad of light, pretty much all physical activity has excellent returns on emotional regulation, health, and well being, including sprinting.
>> Sport, in general, is about the quest for excellence.
Is it, really? It feels like it's a business and a spectacle, a form of entertainment not fundamentally different than cinema or theater, except that it lays claim to being "about the quest for excellence". A claim that unfortunately is hard to support in view of how common is doping, for instance, or how common is violence around football matches.
Today's sport is very different than e.g. the ancient Greeks' Olympic games which were an event held in honour of a god (Apollo) that very few people still worship today. The Olympic were also a sex- and race-segregated event (only Greek free men could take part) so even for that period, maybe sport was about "excellence", maybe it was about something else. The Nazis were certainly quite ready to embrace the Olympics. A certain totalitarian, eugenicist ideology is never very far from sport.
Sports and games, and "noble competition" seems to have been a universal, though. I'm thinking for example of the Afghan national sport, Buzkashi:
Might I introduce you to the concept of sports in general? We build giant coliseums costing hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to keeping ice cold in the middle of summer just so people can answer the question of who is best at stick puck.
Sports serve a social purpose, and contribute positively to society's overall fitness since most people playing sports aren't pro athletes
A 100m sprint, as fast as humanly possible is super impressive, but the person you're replying to does have a point: this is an extremely specific and narrow activity with no purpose other than competition. You don't socialize with sprinting, and most people wouldn't use 100m sprinting as an activity to improve their fitness
At best, it's designed to test fitness, but it even fails at that really
I don't think your second paragraph follows your first. Just because you're doing an activity like sprinting solo doesn't mean there aren't social elements. The Olympics this summer will prove that hundreds of million if not billions of people can come together around sprinting, and several dozen other extremely specific and narrow activities, if only for a brief time.
This doesn't reflect reality as far as I've ever seen
Hundreds of millions if not billions of people may watch sprinting, or diving or any number of niche solo sports, but do they really care further than "I hope our guy wins"?
Do they care about the technical aspects of running or discus or whatever else? Not a chance
It's not even remotely close to how passionate people get about team sports. Millions of people will celebrate in the streets if their soccer team wins a medal. People will argue endlessly about the technical little details of a soccer match, the calls refs make, etc
Solo sports aren't really comparable to team sports in the social aspect, either for society or for the players on the teams
Nobody who lived during the Cold War would say that solo Olympic sports weren't part of a team sport, the team being your nation. A solo gold medal in one of the premier events (100m dash, gymnastics all-around, figure skating) was just as intense as any professional league championship ever was. It's not an exaggeration to say it was proxy warfare and possibly prevented actual global war. It was a way for those nations to express dominance off the field of battle.
I agree with you. Of course it doesn't get remotely close to how passionate people get about team sports. The audience and money involved in these won't be beat anytime soon, simplify due to traditions.
But your comment is short-sighted because you don't seem interested in sprinting or track and field sports and haven't been following recent events coming out of that space.
Just as an example, have you seen what Marcell Jacobs did for his country, being the first Italian sprinter to ever win a world championship, not just once but a couple of times, defying the Jamaican and American hegemony against all odds? He became an overnight sensation, was on the cover of a bunch of magazines, and inspired millions in his country. Nowadays he's under a lot of criticism because he couldn't keep his position exactly because sprinting requires the utmost physical and mental toughness.
> At best, it's designed to test fitness, but it even fails at that really
> You don't socialize with sprinting, and most people wouldn't use 100m sprinting as an activity to improve their fitness
FAILS to test fitness? Really? Have you ever read anything about sports science and psychology?
First, athlets don't compete singularly in the 100m sprinting event, a lot of them compete in different modalities, like the 100m, 200m, relays, etc. Sprinting 100m and specially the 400m are considered the hardest races for humans. It tests endurance, lactic acid build-up, pacing, mental toughness, strategy at the rawest level, and not to mention the mental preparation you have to have to deal with the pressure and criticism of the media, when you're on the track being viewed by millions and you have just a few seconds to prove yourself. How is that not testing someone's fitness well?
You just can't isolate 100m sprinting especially as an activity. Sprinting up to your 100% max heart rate is excellent for fitness, muscle growth, and longevity. There's a lot of research on this coming out with concrete data about the benefits of sprinting vs other kinds of sports.
I’d wager that sprinting races, like most sport, have their origins in warfare. Being able to move from point of cover A to point B as quickly as possible is very useful in avoiding projectile weapons.
That seems too complicated. Racing from one point to the other it's really one of the simplest things two people can do and it's one of those purest expressions of athletic ability. Even animals do it.
Can someone help me to understand this concept? In particular, why so many people watch it - what drives them them do so?
I'll try to explain my own vision, why I think I don't care - which, of course, is entirely subjective thing, so despite it may read as such it's not exactly meant to say "[some] pro sports are nonsense" but rather more of "[some] pro sports don't make sense for me".
Say, Olympic games. I can watch the opening ceremony (it can be visually or aesthetically impressive), but I don't care about the actual event. Yea, some folks do some impressive things, that... utterly fail to impress me. I'll try to explain why, and I wonder how others are different in this regard.
I can understand watching sports that have a significant strategy component to them. I would've probably watched Go or chess if I would be able to understand what's going on there (I don't), but I occasionally watch e-sports and those can impress me with how people think outside of the box, doing things that no one thought of - but that are so obvious in the hindsight. For those kind of sports, when I understand the game mechanics and when those feel interesting to me, I can relate and feel engaged.
I have a suspicion that a number of people watch it (among other reasons) for the "this is our athlete(s) doing it" vibe. This is something that doesn't click with me. Never really did when I was a kid (the country I was born in doesn't exist - and good riddance), and since then I've immigrated a few times, so - long story short - save for obligatory subconscious biases, I don't care about other folks' flags and passports. But even though this is not commonplace (I guess), this doesn't feel like a reason why I have no feelings for the Olympics. Back to the e-sports example, I watch international events, and people from different bubbles bringing their different strategies and play styles makes watching fun, as the games are more diverse.
So, when someone's running, jumping, lifting, throwing, shooting, spinning, or alike... I honestly don't get what impresses so many viewers so much everyone and their dog seem to be glued to the screens. Please don't get me wrong, I don't want to diminish athletes' personal (or team) achievements. What they're doing is objectively impressive, but subjectively it's in some... detached, unrelated way. Also, as someone raised on sci-fi I can't shake off the feeling of it being sort of unimportant or meaningless on a global scale - I suppose I'm gonna give post-/trans-human Olympics a try, if I'll live to the day, maybe I'll find something to cheer for. Not sure.
Either way, in the modern day, personally, I don't feel any engagement as I fail to relate with the athlete, leading to the total lack of the entertainment value for me. Best I can do is "uh, that looks fast/heavy/far/...", but 9s, 9.5s, or 12s are all the same for me - just "fast" - nothing in my brain fires off, as I don't have any experience of such speeds/levels of exertion anyway. So I wonder, does it for others, do they subconsciously tighten their muscles watching, do they feel connected or something? Maybe not, because people also watch races and I suppose they don't associate with horses?
As you can see, with all this blabbering and guessing (sorry!) - I'm really confused here. I realize that even if someone explains it to me, I still won't feel that way, but what I'm missing is the idea - I only have guesses, and I have no clue how accurate they are. And I'm curious to understand others, even if a tiniest bit better.
====> tl;dr: If y'all watch the professional sports (esp. if aren't an athlete yourself), what makes you engaged and entertained watching it?
It sounds like you already sort of know the answer.. you are atypical in your ability to relate to sports. You mention a couple times that it just doesn't "click" for you, and fair enough, but it might just be one of those things where you need to recognize (which you already seem to) that you hold a minority opinion.
> [You] occasionally watch e-sports and those can impress me with how people think outside of the box, doing things that no one thought of - but that are so obvious in the hindsight
This happens literally all the time in professional athletics. Strategy, and the creativity required, is absolutely at the core of any team sport - what else do you think coaches (who are paid in excess of $10m in many sports) exist at all if not for coming up with out of the box strategy? Football strategy is a constantly evolving thing, from one week to the next. There are other sports (like tennis) where strategy can change within a singular point, let alone across the whole match.
The human connection element of sports is also very real, following an individual because you like their personality or style of play is just being a fan and is based in admiration - something that is seemingly inherently human.
> I honestly don't get what impresses so many viewers so much
I mean this statement about olympic sports just begs for the reciprocal (and much more common) question of what about e-sports impresses anyone? The literal exact same arguments can be made. "uh, that looks complicated/fast-paced..." but games are all the same to me, it's all just pressing buttons - nothing in my brain fires off.
And because the same arguments can be made, maybe just assume that for as passionately as you would defend e-sports for it's creativity or strategy or whatever else, that exists in essentially the same form mirrored over in the sports world. It's the same "argument" happening, just mirrored.
> raised on sci-fi I can't shake off the feeling of it being sort of unimportant or meaningless on a global scale
There's maybe a whole separate conversation about how fantasy over-emphasizes things like the fate of humanity or how it depicts unachievable utopias under the guise of like... here's what societal advancement could look like unencumbered by the realities of actual society? There's a reason sports/games have existed since prehistoric times - I'd put all my money in on betting that there's no Star Trek future that doesn't have sports. It's just that important. You don't have to "get" it, but surely looking at the widespread popularity makes it obvious that's true?
> It sounds like you already sort of know the answer.
Maybe, but I'm also sort of stupid. Which prompted me to write all this, so maybe I'll figure it out for myself (and, hopefully, others too - surely, I'm not unique in this regard).
> where you need to recognize (which you already seem to) that you hold a minority opinion.
Yea... I had this assumption as a possible truth, but I have no idea how true is it ("am I sure?"), and what exactly is different ("why?").
> Strategy, and the creativity required, is absolutely at the core of any team sport
For sure, although I originally thought more about individual disciplines, like the 100m sprints (the primary topic here), which surely have some strategy to them as well, but I would be very surprised if it's something complex.
So I'm not even sure if people are watching sports because they relate with the athletes. Certainly not universally, and I have no idea how much it is the case.
Even with the team sports, I'm confused:
> "uh, that looks complicated/fast-paced..." but games are all the same to me, it's all just pressing buttons - nothing in my brain fires off.
Thank you for this. It totally makes sense to me, but this is also one thing that makes me question the "minority opinion" hypothesis. I haven't explicitly went into details and just barely touched that with "I don't have experience running fast so I cannot relate with runners - no clue what they're doing" idea, but I thought about it and it confused me.
I brought e-sports to the picture, because it's relatively (compared to pro non-e-sports) niche thing. I believe they are interesting to me because I can actually understand what's going on there. Just like that chess example (I don't watch chess because I don't play it) - I can watch a football or basketball or tennis match and have no idea on what the players are doing out there even if I know the rules. So I made a logical conclusion that to watch sports, one must likely understand it. And for understanding something, surely one needs to have some experience in the matter (at amateur level)? This all definitely feels true for e-sports - while one may not perform at the level - anyone can try things out (and save for extra-complex micro-level mechanics that require physical dexterity can even make it work... occasionally).
And this is where it doesn't click. I always had an assumption that e-sports are niche because player base is low (compared to the overall population numbers). Folks who play $game may watch $game tournaments, some may not play but watch with friends (rarely) - and I guess that's about it. So I tried to find the numbers, comparing involvement with engagement.
And I found a statement that about 72% of Americans watch American football, and a statement that only 5-6M people are playing it. So, there are drastically more viewers than players. For comparison, I looked up stats for Dota 2 and found that TI10 (the Super Bowl equivalent) had 2.7M peak viewer count, and there is around 14M MAU. I looked up other games and it all seems that viewer count << MAU for e-sports, while the inverse is true for non-e-sports.
Which seem to invalidate my hypothesis of "should play to watch". And that generates a lot of questions (from "why is it so different", though "am I actually right assuming that people understand what they're watching?" to "if you don't play, why learn the game?" and so on).
And the same (back to the original topic of individual disciplines) applies to the 100m sprints. Can't find the breakdowns, but it seems that there are still drastically more viewers than people who run in any capacity. Here I'm back to "our athlete vs others", as I don't have any better ideas how to explain it.
I sort of feel that the answer that makes sense is somewhere out there, really close - yet I'm still honestly confused and can't really grasp it. Sorry.
> I'd put all my money in on betting that there's no Star Trek future that doesn't have sports
Haha, no, I won't take that bet. The idea of sports may change depending on what kind of future is out there, but competition is deeply ingrained in our human nature. But the modern idea sports may not survive, especially as more people start to debate what's "natural" and what's "doping".
Before you asked the first question did you try to put yourself in someone else's (running) shoes and figure out their motives? If you haven't, try. Steel man the case for running and getting better at running before you just declare it "useless."
People like watching excellence in action, especially if it's in a domain they can relate to in some way. Almost everyone has tried to run as fast as they could at some point, so they're naturally curious to watch others who have spent years training to do it really, really well.
People like all sorts of useless things, and their life gets worse once they get introduced to them. The amount of people involved in pro sport is lamentable.
You get no getting new insight, catharsis or inspiration from watching someone run. Like chewing gum, it exploits your desire to watch, but there's no substance.
Then again, there's the problem of how thousands of kids drop out of school to become pro athletes, and don't even reach college level, and the problem of colleges admitting illiterate athletes and letting them graduate illiterate for "prestige".
2014. Finals of 4x400m female relay for the European Women's Championship.[0]
The last French runner, Floria Gueï, gets the baton passed to her in a distant 4th place, well behind the top 3 favorites for the race: Russia, Ukraine and UK.
In her own 400m solo race she was eliminated in the semifinals, a titanic disappointment. And now she is so far behind in the relay race, the French TV commentators are focusing on watching the battle unfold at the front and writing her off as a lost cause.
That day, she performed one of the most impressive comebacks in the history of the sport to finish in first place.
I would say that there is way more catharsis and inspiration in watching someone beat their own limits and rise above the odds, than you can find in most of fiction entertainment. I certainly don't find Rocky or Die Hard to be more impressive or inspirational as this 2-minute video.
Just because you do not get any benefit from watching athletes excel does not mean it is devoid of substance. I find it inspiring to watch someone do something that they have spent years working to achieve. Seeing them do the “impossible” through hard work and dedication is a great moment.
Apart from getting inspired (like other replies have mentioned), there is plenty of insight to be obtained from watching sports. It is quite fun to observe and analyze the strategy and technical aspects of a sport - especially a sport that you play and train yourself. If someone never partakes in that sport, then yes - they may not necessarily understand the subtleties that happen in a particular move. But even if you're a hobby player, watching top pro athletes or teams utilize the techniques you are learning can make you appreciate the amount of work, skill, practice, and determination that goes into it. And that can be useful for people to apply in other areas of their lives.
> You get no getting new [...] inspiration from watching someone run.
I'm an amateur runner and I get immense inspiration from watching pro athletes run, I'll never get half as good but it gives me a huge push to keep working towards my own goals.
I feel like people railing against these things are people who aren't aware of the various subcultures. It doesn't matter if you're a runner or a powerlifter, we all have people we see who inspire us. Just because Joe Schmoe doesn't know them doesn't mean no one does.
Yes. You have Einstein's "Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss!", and I don't think anyone of note ever said anything like that about any athlete. Yes, pro sports beget more pro sports, but that's not a positive feature.
It seems like you're over-intellectualizing the human experience. You don't think anyone has been inspired by sports? I just watched my entire city come alive with Stanley Cup fever. People were having a great time, it was a party the whole time.
I barely understand the sport itself, I'm not a team sports guy, but to deny the excitement, inspiration, and sheer joy seems ridiculous under the crushing weight of the energy sports can bring people. People use it to better themselves, not just trying to get more pro sports, and that's a goal I think every person should strive towards. We are thinking things, but we're also masses of tissue, and it's important to celebrate that connection and that part of us.
You can read Dostoesvsky and watch pro sports. They're not mutually exclusive. Do you think going to a music concert to listen to professional musicians play is also "wasteful" and of no benefit for anyone?
I'd say yes, but then I'd say the same thing about reading Dostoevsky (if talking with this mindset), so I'm not really on GP's side re: novels being more valuable than sports.
i get a lot of inspiration out of watching top sports teams perform. Basketball and American football especially. Basketball for the level of coordination between players and American football for the different specialized experts working together.
It's useless to you, but you're not the arbiter of what is useful to other people. It's certainly useful for the professional athletes making lots of money, getting to travel, becoming famous, and you know, pursuing their dreams from childhood.
Because humanity is not about minmaxing a game where output is the most important metric. We are humans, and a human thing to do is sports, we love being impressed by other's physical prowess even if they are narrow and of no economic value.
Why do people paint? Or make music? Or play football (whatever version of it)?
The heavy lifting seems to be done by the study linked in the "anatomical studies suggest peak speeds up to 15.6-17.9 m/s (35-40 mph) are achievable" line. I'm not sure where those exact numbers were pulled from - I can't find them with a cmd+f. One line in the study uses some nearby numbers:
> If, for simplicity, we assume no change in contact lengths or the minimum aerial times needed to reposition the swing limbs at top speed, the average and greatest individual top speed hopping forces (Favg) of 2.71 and 3.35 Wb would allow top running speeds of 14.0 and 19.3 m/s and of 50 and 69 km/h, respectively
But the study concludes that, even though our leg extensor muscles can produce much higher maximum forces than those generated during sprinting, the "contact length" imposes a constraint on these "hopping forces":
> Because humans have limbs of moderate length and cannot gallop, they lack similar options for prolonging periods of foot-ground force application to attain faster sprinting speeds at existing contact time minimums. Consequently, human running speeds in excess of 50 km/h are likely to be limited to the realms of science fiction and, not inconceivably, gene doping.
So the craziness of the original estimate seems to follow from on a misreading of that study.