There is a common notion that the explosiveness is genetically conditioned and therefore can not be visibly improved. It is said that one can only improve it by 3 – 5% and that you should not waste your time with trying to change it and focus on other things instead. But, is that really the case?
The fact is explosiveness and speed are indeed genetically conditioned and that you can not improve them in such a great way as your absolute strength, endurance or flexibility. For example, no athlete who long jumps 5 m at the very beginning will ever catch up (or beat) an athlete whose initial long jump length is 7 m. However, both of these athletes have capacities to improve if they undergo a discipline specific training regime combined with suitable nutrition and regeneration. Athletes' motivation and focus are also very important factors. So, how big of an improvement can we expect to see?
In practice, it is highly impossible to monitor a large enough group of athletes over a longer period of time that would follow the same training regime for development of their athletic abilities. That is the main reason why it is very difficult to determine to what extent explosiveness and speed may be results of individual's genetics or of the said appropriate training regime.
To get a fair and objective evaluation of how much one's explosiveness and speed can be developed and increased over time, we have decided to look at the results of world's best athletes, competing in explosive sport disciplines. In each discipline we have looked at 10 best representatives and their best personal achievements. If there happened to be the case of us not being able to determine the improvement of athlete's results, we have used another best one instead.
We can assume the chosen individuals have had the best dedicated training regimes and support they needed to push their own boundaries and reach their ultimate physical capabilities.
Our research focused on the following disciplines: 100 m sprint, 200 m sprint, long jump, high jump, javelin and Olympic weight lifting (snatch, clean and jerk). These disciplines were chosen because they all require extreme explosive or reactive power or the combination of both.
At the very beginning we realized personal bests were not conditioned by athletes' age. Some athletes achieved their personal bests in their early twenties, some of them in their mid-twenties, whereas others only reached them in their early thirties.
It is also important to point out the results used in this research have been achieved by athletes at international competitions specifically, all under IAAF and IWF. This means the athletes competing there have already been specialized in their own field prior to their first international competition and have reached a high level of discipline-specific physical preparation before their 'worst' result which represents the base of our research. It is also worth pointing out that many of them showed a great potential before they started training, which means their physical development basis was set very high.
The research of each discipline focuses on improvements of results from athlete's first appearance at international tournament onwards. Some of those athletes have had their first international appearance before they turned 20 (the youngest of them were 16), whereas the rest of them noted their first results in their twenties.
Because human body develops very differently from one individual to another we have decided to divide athletes' progressions towards reaching their personal bests in two groups:
- GROUP 1 shows progression of athletes’ results from their first international appearance before they reached 20 years of age until their personal best;
- GROUP 2 shows progression of athletes’ results after they reached 20 years of age until their personal best.
Note: In group 2 are also athletes who are in Group 1, only we take their result at year 20 as their ‘worst’ result from which we examine their improvement. This enables us to conclude that their bodies have developed enough; therefore the body development does not influence or condition their results anymore. Group 2 also includes athletes who reached their first international result after they reached 20 years of age.
