PNB Chapter 471 - 331: Teaching Su God Running (Part 2)
Chapter 471 - 331: Teaching Su God Running (Part 2)
Su Bingtian quickly came out and took out the starting blocks,
and from his bag, he took out a tape measure he always carried with him to measure the position of the starting blocks. Even a one-millimeter error was not allowed, it looked very meticulous.
Wang Ye watched Su Bingtian measure the position of the starting blocks with a tape measure, although he didn’t understand, he showed respect,
that’s how top sprinters are, even for a 0.01-second improvement, they have to pay an extremely tough price and effort.
He doesn’t care about these trifles, simply because his strength is strong enough, and these things would not affect his performance. If the ground friction is not enough, he changes his skeletal form; if the distance angle is incorrect, he adjusts his posture according to the techniques in his mind. At his current level of running, no matter what adverse environment he encounters, he can still deliver an excellent performance.
These things have basically become his instinct now, he can do them perfectly without thinking, just like eating and drinking water, does a normal person deliberately choose which tooth to chew with when eating? Most people even finish their meal before they realize it.
But for someone like Su Bingtian, strong yet unable to touch the extraordinary, a one-millimeter deviation can affect their results. So, he’s focused on these details.
After Su Bingtian adjusted the starting blocks, Wang Ye took out a stopwatch and said:
"You run a segment first, let me see your level."
"Okay." Su Bingtian nodded and crouched in front of the starting line with both feet on the starting blocks.
He assumed a very standard crouched starting posture.
Wang Ye noticed at first glance that Su Bingtian’s starting position must have been adjusted, because there was a slight uncomfortableness, although it was very faint, almost nonexistent, but Wang Ye caught it keenly.
He didn’t pay much attention to sports news in the past, so he didn’t know three years ago at the Tokyo Olympic Games, the reason Su Bingtian was able to break the Asian hundred-meter record was because, in training, he realized that he had issues with the strength of his posterior muscle group and ankle joints, slow speed and power rate of landing proactively, and unreasonable starting posture.
Thus, Su Bingtian made a major decision to change his starting foot from left to right, and the number of steps needed to increase from the original 47 to 48. Decades of muscle memory needed to be entirely overturned, almost equivalent to relearning running, a challenge that could destroy an entire athletic career.
It’s important to know that changing legs for starting training is not as simple as it looks, the rhythm of the entire process and stride changes, equivalent to re-polishing these forty-eight steps from the beginning. If failed, the muscle memory and skills of left-leg starting would also be lost.
When Su Bingtian first switched his starting foot, he naturally experienced various discomforts, his legs became very clumsy and slow. In one starting training, he even lost to a female long jumper from the United States. It shows how much the leg change starting affected him.
But the result of changing leg was naturally good, after the leg change,
Su Bingtian ran a 9.99-second result in the 2015 Eugene Station,
and a 9.92-second result in the 2017 Eugene Station,
In 2018, at the IAAF World Challenge Meet in Madrid and the IAAF Diamond League in Paris, Su Bingtian ran his personal best of 9.91 seconds,
until the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games, Su Bingtian was nearly 32 years old, ran a stunning 9.83 seconds in the semifinals, breaking the Asian record and becoming a legend.
All these progressions were changes after he altered his starting leg.
In everyone’s eyes, Su Bingtian’s choice was naturally correct,
and it elevated China’s sprinting to a new level.
But in the eyes of the more advanced Wang Ye, this choice was not so correct, because it wasted too much time, changing the starting leg should not need ten years to familiarize and adapt. With the knowledge he mastered, there are actually better choices that could allow Su Bingtian to move a step further from where he is now.
However, Wang Ye did not interrupt Su Bingtian’s start, but raised his right arm,
and loudly said: "Get ready."
"Three, two, one, start!" At the moment Wang Ye’s arm dropped, Su Bingtian’s left leg suddenly exerted force, his whole body instantly sprang out, and the frequency of his steps rose to the highest with that momentum.
His start was like a human-shaped cheetah, keeping his upper body nearly parallel to the ground, ran several steps forward, and then his body gradually stood up, with each arm swing becoming exaggerated, and each step pushing down with strong force.
Although in Wang Ye’s view, his technique is quite rough, but admittedly, every step of Su Bingtian was already at the limit and perfection of his own understanding, unlike ordinary instinctive running, every action detail incorporated decades of accumulated skills.
A brief nine seconds or so later, when Su Bingtian crossed the finish line, Wang Ye immediately pressed the stopwatch.
"Nine point ninety-two seconds." Wang Ye reported the time on the stopwatch.
Although not as good as the record at the Tokyo Olympic Games, it was still a very good result. For athletes of Su Bingtian’s caliber, every all-out run causes irreversible damage to the body, so they don’t usually break records in regular training.
Therefore, running this result is expected, rather than a regression.
But in timed sports events, there are usually hand-timed and electronic-timed, hand-timing is done by coaches with a stopwatch, and electronic timing is measured with electronic timers, which are more accurate. Hand timing usually has a delay due to reaction speed, while electronic timing, opening, and stopping timing is done by the timing system without errors, so hand timing results are often better.
For example, if a person’s electronic timing result is ten-point-five seconds, the hand timing result would be ten-point-two seconds.
But Wang Ye’s reaction speed is dozens of times that of ordinary people, and he can calculate the timing of the stopwatch depending on the lead time, so he can make hand timing consistent with electronic timing. Only Su Bingtian doesn’t know this, so he’s curious why this result is similar to his usual electronic timing results?
Su Bingtian walked over, panting heavily, and asked:
"How was it, are there any areas in my running technique that need correction?"
"There are." Wang Ye pondered for a moment, organized his words, and said, "What I am about to say may overturn your understanding, as well as your decades of habits and instincts, but I can assure you, if you can fully digest what I teach you, your strength will improve further, can you accept that?"
"Overturn...?" Upon hearing this, Su Bingtian’s eyes slightly sharpened.
Wang Ye’s words made him relive the panic he felt ten years ago when an American coach overturned his starting habits.
The overturning training and the pain of reversing instincts in the past ten years have left a shadow in his mind,
but thinking of the unbreakable bottleneck he has now touched,
he steadied his mind and firmly said:
"I can accept it."
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About two hours later.
Other athletes also arrived at the training ground one after another,
as most of the athletes came this time were top-notch,
so they basically all knew each other, and their relationships were quite good,
so once they arrived at the training ground, they started chatting,
discussing recent training content and the upcoming competitions.
At this moment, Su Bingtian had been continuously training for two hours under Wang Ye’s guidance,
sitting in the corner resting,
other athletes saw Su Bingtian and wanted to come over and say hello.
But they saw his clothes soaked with sweat.
They secretly thought to themselves:
"Did he come to train at six or seven in the morning..."