SPRINT SCIENCE
For NOAH LYLES – the fastest man alive – speed begins in the hamstrings and glutes
He doesn’t lack confidence. Noah Lyles has ‘icon’ tattooed on his torso and doesn’t hold back when revealing his goals for 2024. ‘We’re going after everything,’ the sprinter says, his voice dripping with self-assurance. ‘We’re going after the triple. Going after the world record, too. I know I can do this.’
That triple, which he accomplished at the 2023 World Championships in
Budapest, is winning gold in the 100m, 200m and 4 x 100m relay. Lyles’ feet move him faster than most on the planet. His quads have carried him 100 metres in 9.83 seconds and 200 metres in 19.31 seconds. The former was the world record in 2023. His hamstrings and calves have produced five Diamond League titles and six World Championship victories.
The 5ft 11in 26-year-old will be chasing lightning at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, sprinting for the rarefied air of Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt – icons who completed the triple on track and field’s grandest stage. Lyles craves that company and caused a stir by announcing on Instagram recently that he would run 9.65 in the 100m and 19.10 in the 200m. That bodacious 0.21-second drop in the 200 would actually be just over the length of a stride for him – an additional
2.5 metres. (His stride is 2.3 metres.)
The numbers may sound like technobabble, but Lyles nerds out over the minutiae of muscle.
‘I’m a student of my craft,’ he says.
Though both his parents were sprinters too, he doesn’t rely on genetics alone, training with intensity and focus. In-season work zones in on starts, acceleration and feeling comfortable at top-end speed. Off season, the backbone of his training, is foundational leg work: the glute/ ham machine, back and front squats, leg presses and single-leg Romanian deadlifts. Prior to running, he does glute and calf activation drills with a physiotherapist who regularly flies in from Australia. Lyles also gets massages weekly, and he’s tended to by a chiropractor every other week. Normatec leg-compression sleeves and the hot tub are consistent parts of his self-care as well. ‘If I don’t work on each individual piece to the fullest ability, I leave variables out,’ he says. ‘And I want constants.’
One constant that challenges him is his start – the weakest part of his sprint game. A fast start could help him overtake Bolt’s record. Lyles’ biomechanist, Ralph Mann, uses force plates and slow-motion video to help perfect his form. Mann hones Lyles’ ankle angles so the 300lb of force he puts into the blocks propels him forwards. Mann wants the physics of Lyles’ horizontal forces optimised in the first two steps out of the blocks. Tauter angle tilts combined with a proper centre of gravity could generate potentially record-breaking speed.
Meanwhile, his physiotherapist gets granular – ‘into the extreme minute details’, Lyles says, referring to an asymmetry found in his starts. While the muscles around his left ankle and calf fire, pushing his foot into the block to drive him forwards, his right teres minor – part of the shoulder’s rotator cuff – should also fire, pulling his right elbow and arm behind him, matching the left leg. But that doesn’t always happen – yet.
Intricacies rule Lyles’ training.
‘Why was one start better than another?’ he asks. ‘Was it actually good, or was it just me being fast on that day? I need to know all the variables.’ Everything for speed.