Ben Johnson @iamben.johnson still has one of the most extraordinary starts ever filmed. When you’re trying to improve a phase of performance, you have to look at the problem from multiple angles. You have to understand what makes it work and that starts with the athlete in front of you. That’s the foundation of my new ebook, Force and Expression - identify who you’re coaching, what the task demands, and what’s genuinely limiting performance before you start picking tools. With a start like this, five things matter 1. Relative strength - enough force producing capacity relative to body mass to create the projection in the first place 2. Net horizontal impulse - not just force, but force applied in the right direction in a very short ground contact 3. Sequencing & organization - timing, joint angles, stiffness, & rhythm all have to align 4. Commitment - the athlete has to attack the projection without hesitation. You can’t ease into a start like that 5. Coaching depth - great coaches understood phases, positions, and what each drill was meant to develop. Charlie Francis didn’t just use drills to fill space. He used them to build specific parts of the start. That’s the difference between copying a drill and understanding what it was actually built to do. If you want to learn more about building phases, max velocity vs acceleration, agility, speed endurance, programming and more. Check out Force & Speed. #acceleration #explosivetraining #speedtraining #sprinttraining #sprints - @fred_duncan