The
sprinter runs short distances in athletics (100 and 200 m). Muscle power prevails
in this sport. Athletics has the right to be called the mother of all sports
and one should not be surprised to notice that all studies in the field of scientific
research are advanced in this sports sector. Also the nature of electrostimulation
was born to meet the requirements of those athletes who wanted to improve their
own performance and who were continuously looking for new training methods to
find what would make the difference. The experiments with electrostimulation
in the past did not obtain satisfying results, due to a still to be developed
technology that did not allow us to do what we can suggest today, with modern,
tiny devices. But let’s come to the card of the sprinter which sums up very
well the physical characteristics of this athlete, proposing training parameters
particularly aiming dynamism and muscle strength. The mechanical action of the
technical gesture is especially charged to the lower limbs. But we should not
forget the role of other districts of the body acting to compensate in a synergistic
and co-ordinated way the principal movement. We particularly refer to strengthening
the abdominal and the upper part of the trunk. The Sprinter has powerful muscle
masses, but also needs specific particular characteristics like the capacity
of reiteration of the main number of rapid fibres in the shortest possible time.
For this reason the programmes of this card turn a blind eye to working methods
directed to explosive strength in particular and rapid strength in general.
We should remind once again that while it is fibres into slow ones, it is impossible
to do the contrary. For this reason, the skills of the trainer are to improve
especially the athlete’s quality of conduction of the nerve impulse and keep
at high level the neuromuscular activation. The training method will have to
be based on those physical activities that foresee extremely rapid contraction
times. Regarding electrostimulation, it will do to insert the correct card to
obtain the results one hopes for. For dry training, ballistic exercises (leaps)
are suggested, as they allow extremely rapid contraction times, more than any
other kind of training. The most frequent pathologies that afflict the sprinter
are without any doubt inflammations due to muscle sprains and overcharge. The
Tens current that is on the card is studied to face in the best way this kind
of structural damage.