Way out in front thanks to a big bum
The bum makes the difference between sprinters who win gold medals and those who finish at the bottom. An amazing effect for a single muscle group.
They all have powerful thighs and calves like steel springs. But the last tenths on the way to the gold medal for sprinters are probably in the gluteus maximus, the large muscle that gives the buttocks their round basic shape. This has now been revealed by a study published in the journal "Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise" - one of the few that actually conducts research on real top athletes, according to the authors.
In fact, the athletes that the team led by Jonathan Folland from Loughborough University in the UK put through the CT scanner were among the best in their field. Their personal best times for the year were around 10.1 seconds - and some were even under the magic ten-second mark. Not exactly slow "sub-elite athletes" with annual best times of 10.8 seconds on average were also used for comparison.
Folland and his colleagues used the scanner images to determine the volume of the muscles in the legs and hips and then compared the data with the respective best times. The biggest differences between the groups were found in the hip extensors. However, the gluteus maximus, the large gluteal muscle, stood out in particular. It explained 44 per cent of the differences in personal best times. Folland finds this remarkable "because so many factors actually play a role in sprinting - technique, psychology, nutrition, other anatomical structures," he told the "Guardian"
Follow-up study in planning
The group of elite athletes comprised five participants, the group of not-so-good athletes 26 people, and they were compared with eleven untrained men. This makes the study group relatively small, and it also consisted exclusively of male participants. In the follow-up study, the scientists also want to put female sprinters in the tomograph. Folland speculates that if the gluteus maximus really is of such central importance in cracking the last tenths, perhaps special training will help. Coaches of top sprinters would certainly take a close look at the current study.
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