Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is just 5 feet tall. Here’s how she became an all-time sprinting great

Efficient strides

Fraser-Pryce credits plyometrics — the science of jumping — for how she won races ahead of a field that tended to be almost always taller than her.

She counted her steps as everyone did. “I knew my steps. The race had to be completed in 54 steps or below. We worked hard on plyometrics. Once you put your mind to it, there’s no limits, certainly the height factor never once bothered me,” she tells The Indian Express.

Fraser-Pryce knew her race was going kaput if she felt she was “popping up” — jumping/hopping too high in her stride. That was like all the energy evaporating north, she jokes. It’s why she viewed some of her taller contemporaries as “having awkward, tall strides”.

Her implication: tall does not equate long, and can actually be counterproductive.

“Once I got off the blocks, I needed to ensure that my steps, the jumps in the strides were not popping up. I was moving forward — in the horizontal plane, not too high in the vertical one. Us short sprinters, stay compact,” she explains.

It was like a plane taking off from a runway — it doesn’t seek altitude right away, but builds acceleration by pushing forward. “I mimicked a plane often. That was the science,” she says.

So, off the blocks, she would lean forward as much as she could, without toppling forward. “Start low and — I can’t repeat enough — move forward, not up,” she says.

When the strides drop, the first leg hits the ground and decides the groove of the other one.

Building core strength

Fraser-Pryce worked on her core — once her weakness — to gain the strength and stability to stay centred (that word “compact” again).

“It’s like a roiling, rolling ball of force rumbling forward. If the core isn’t strong, you can drift sideways and lose speed — because, remember, the aim was to move forward,” she says.

Since Robinson in 1928, every Olympic women’s 100 metre champion till 1980 was a minimum of 5 feet 6 inches. Florence Griffith-Joyner was 5 feet 7 inches.

Even those following Fraser-Pryce were somewhat taller than her — Elaine Thompspn-Herah (5 feet 6 inches) and now Melissa Jefferson Wooden (5 feet 4 inches).

Ever since the time of Devers (5 feet 3 inches), cutting-edge plyometric training has helped shorter sprinters chow down more metres of the track, and not lose energy in limbs flaking off. This has gone some way in debunking the simplistic notion that longer limbs equal greater speed.

Bolt an exception  

Of course, Usain Bolt skewed all the causation-correlation theories, and his anthropometry (6 feet 5 inches height, with long legs) was indeed a case of stride length accentuating the stride frequency.

But most sprinters now know that a long stride actually leads to decreased frequency (slowing down). This is something Fraser-Pryce was acutely aware of, while magically winning in the same era as Bolt. Jamaicans just knew to optimise whatever gifts they had. “100 percent, you work with what you are given,” Fraser-Pryce reiterates.

Bolt averaged 41 strides over 100 metres and Fraser-Pryce around 54. Both won gold. “My 5 feet was my superpower,” she says.