Kottke: Avg dude vs. pro football player in 40 yard dash | Hacker News Reader

Kottke: Avg dude vs. pro football player in 40 yard dash

kottke.org

31 pointsjjguy10 comments

Average dude being Rich Eisen, of the NFL Network, who in fact trained for this sprint:

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-combine/09000d5d816ad7b3/Eisen...

It's amazing how fast even the big dudes run. That's what blows my mind.

Hell - compare the Avg Dude to a Marathon runner. A 42.195km marathon in 2:03:59 - is about 5.67m/s or 20.4km/h. That is a 17 second 100m, or 70 seconds for a 400m lap of a track. Plenty of people couldn't run that one lap at that pace.

Plenty of which people? Middle aged guys in suits? As I recall, most of my 10th grade class could break 70 seconds--the guy who took 90 was overweight and a smoker.

It would be cool if they actually gave his time. Also, if you put Tebow in a suit and him in running clothes it would be (a little bit) closer.

> It would be cool if they actually gave his time.

The guy in the suit?

The fastest player was Jacoby Ford with a 4.28s 40-yard dash. http://www.nfl.com/combine/top-performers?tabIndex=0

Yeah, the guy in the suit, for comparison. I know that very fast NFLers are in that ~4.3 range, so it would be cool to know that he got a 6.8 or whatever for comarison

I'm assuming there is an entirely different stride that lets them run so fast (aside from tons of training, of course)?

I really wish they would have added the other players freeze frame stride like the did the guy in the suit - that would have been really interesting to compare.

Yep. The stride of the guy in the suit is way too long. When you're sprinting, you want to be taking short, fast strides that propel you forward and not rely on your momentum to carry you there.

The general idea is that you raise your knee with your lower leg pointing downwards, and then rip backwards, extending your leg as you do so. You don't want to go up at all, just forward.

The other thing to do that he's not is move your arms more efficiently. Your elbows should be locked at about a 90 degree angle, and your hands should be relaxed. Your arms drive your legs, not the other way around.

(I ran indoor track when I was in high school. My main event was the 55m dash.)

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