PERFECT sprinters require one thing – perfect legs. Arms hardly matter at all.
“If they didn’t help with balance, you might as well rip them off and throw them away,” says Ralph Mann, an exercise biomechanics specialist and president of the Las Vegas company CompuSport, which trains elite sprinters.
The ideal sprinter has legs jam-packed with “fast twitch” muscle fibres, which contract quickly without waiting for oxygen to diffuse into the tissue (see diagram).
While only half of an average person’s muscle fibres are fast twitch, Olympic sprinters commonly have 80 per cent. The stars of the future are going…
