📖 Part 13 of 18
🧠 Introduction
In the last article, we discovered something many athletes never stop to consider.
💥 The arms are not just along for the ride.
They participate during every stride.
They become increasingly aggressive as speed rises.
And they may contribute far more than many athletes realize.
That realization naturally creates another question.
If the arms are participating…
what are the arms connected to?
💥 The torso.
Now, most athletes won’t argue that the torso exists.
🤣
The question is whether they view it as an important contributor to speed.
For many athletes, the answer is probably no.
After all, speed conversations usually revolve around:
👉 glutes
👉 hamstrings
👉 quads
👉 calves
Sometimes:
👉 hip flexors
Occasionally:
👉 arms
But rarely:
👉 the torso
And that raises an interesting question.
💥 If the torso participates during every stride…
why do so many athletes spend so little time thinking about it?
🤔 Is The Torso Just A Connector?
When most athletes think about the torso, they often think about it as:
👉 something connecting the upper body and lower body
👉 something helping posture
👉 something helping stability
👉 something helping balance
And on one level, that’s true.
The torso does connect everything.
The torso does help support movement.
But is that all it’s doing?
Think about what you’ve already discovered throughout this series.
During sprinting:
👉 one leg is pushing
👉 one leg is swinging
👉 the arms are participating
All at the same time.
Now ask yourself a simple question.
Where is the torso during all of this?
🤣
Is it sitting on the sidelines waiting for its turn?
Of course not.
The torso participates during every stride.
The torso participates during every push.
The torso participates during every arm action.
And the faster an athlete attempts to run…
the harder it becomes to imagine the torso remaining completely uninvolved.
At the very least, that should make us question one assumption.
💥 Maybe the torso is doing more than most athletes realize.
👀 If The Torso Participates, Where Is The Attention?
Let’s use the same thought process we used with the arms.
If the torso participates during every stride…
where is the attention?
Think about your own training.
Over the last:
👉 week
👉 month
👉 six months
👉 year
How much time have you spent trying to improve:
👉 glute contribution
👉 hamstring contribution
👉 quad contribution
👉 calf contribution
Now compare that to the amount of time you’ve spent thinking about:
👉 torso contribution
👉 torso support
👉 torso involvement
For many athletes, the difference is enormous.
And honestly, that makes sense.
After all, why spend time developing something you don’t believe contributes very much?
But what if the torso contributes more than you’ve been led to believe?
💥 Suddenly the conversation changes.
Now this isn’t just about understanding sprinting.
It’s about understanding your own training.
Because every contributor that gets overlooked is a missed opportunity for improvement.
🤯 Maybe This Is Another Reason
Think about where we’ve been so far in this series.
First, many athletes discovered they were placing enormous attention on:
👉 glutes
👉 hamstrings
👉 quads
👉 calves
Then they discovered sprinting uses:
👉 both legs
👉 both sides of the body
Then another realization appeared.
💥 The arms may not be passengers.
Now another realization begins to emerge.
💥 The torso may not be a passive connector either.
The torso participates during every stride.
The torso participates during every push.
The torso participates during every arm action.
Yet despite all of that…
many athletes spend very little time thinking about it.
If you’ve spent years focusing on contributors that are easy to see…
while overlooking a contributor sitting in the middle of everything…
could that eventually matter?
Could it become one more reason speed stops improving the way it once did?
💥 Could it become one more reason you’re not faster?
At the very least, it’s a possibility worth considering.
🧭 Continue The Journey
Over the last few articles, something important has happened.
At first, speed seemed simple.
Most athletes focused almost entirely on:
👉 glutes
👉 hamstrings
👉 quads
👉 calves
Then another realization appeared.
💥 Sprinting uses both legs at the same time.
Then another.
💥 The arms are not just along for the ride.
And now another assumption has started to crack.
💥 The torso may be doing far more than most athletes realize.
The interesting part is that none of these contributors operate in isolation.
The torso doesn’t perform sprinting by itself.
The arms don’t perform sprinting by themselves.
The legs don’t perform sprinting by themselves.
They all participate during the same sprint.
And that raises a much bigger question.
What if speed isn’t simply about having important contributors?
What if speed also depends on how those contributors work together?
Because if the contributors responsible for speed are participating during the same stride…
understanding their relationship to one another may be just as important as understanding the contributors themselves.
And that may be one more reason you’re not faster.
