How do you do a 50 meter sprint?

50 metres, or 50-meter dash, is a sprint event in track and field. It is a relatively uncommon non-championship event for indoor track and field, normally dominated by the best outdoor 100 metres runners. At outdoor athletics competitions it is used in the Special Olympics and a rare distance, at least for senior athletes. It is an alternative to the 60 metres running event. The imperial distance for 50 metres is 54.68 yards.

Records and personal bests in the 50 metres are frequently achieved in February and March as these dates coincide with the indoor athletics season.

Indoor results only
+ = en route to a longer distance
A = affected by altitude

• Updated 30 November 2018.[1]

• B Ben Johnson of Canada ran 5.55 at Ottawa, Canada on 31 January 1987, but this time was rescinded after Johnson admitted to using steroids between 1981 and 1988.

Notes[edit]

Below is a list of other times equal or superior to 5.63:

Outdoor best performances[edit]

+ = en route to 100m mark. N.B. The Seville marks listed are excluding the athlete's reaction times. Bolt's & Su's times are inclusive.

• Correct as of January 2017.[6]

Note: Angella Issajenko of Canada ran a world record 6.06 in Ottawa on 13 January 1987, this performance was rescinded after Issajenko's admittance of long term drug use at the Dubin Inquiry in 1989.

The 50-yard dash, an indoor sprint race largely supplanted by the 50- and 60-meter dashes in the 1980s, allows virtually no room for error. Should you get a poor start, you won't have time to overcome it. And even if you burst from the blocks in style, weak acceleration and an undeveloped top gear can leave you in arrears. Reaction time, power and technique are the essential elements of success in this event.

The 50-Yard Time Trial

1

Record a baseline 50-yard time to shoot for in a race within a month or two. Warm up before your sprint, performing a light five- to 10-minute jog in your ordinary running shoes followed by stretching. Change into your track flats or track spikes for time trials, races and sprint workouts.

2

Have a coach or assistant on hand to fire a starting pistol or give a voice command as well as time you with a stopwatch. Have a second assistant record videos of you sprinting so that you can watch these and determine if your form adheres to sprinting recommendations.

3

Position the starting blocks an appropriate distance behind the starting line on the track, with the rear block and the front block separated by an amount that is comfortable for you. Place your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, with your shoulders right above your hands. Bend your front knee about 90 degrees and your rear knee about 120 degrees.

4

At the sound of the gun, exhale, drive your arms hard and extend your body so that there is a straight line through your head, back and now-extended rear leg. Run out of the blocks instead of jumping out of them. Over the first seven or eight steps, allow your body to move from a 45-degree angle to a 30-degree angle.

5

Continue driving with your arms. Push off the balls of the feet, keep your elbows bent at 90-degree angles as they "slice" through the air, and keep your facial muscles relaxed. Allow your body to reach a full vertical stance when you are about 25 or 30 yards into the dash. At this point your velocity will have reached 90 percent of its maximum.

6

Drive to the finish, keeping your eyes focused on the finish line. Lean forward slightly in the final two to three strides. Your coach or partner can record your time. Perform several of these trials over a one-week period and average the results to account for any timing errors. Make it a goal to improve this by, say, 0.25 to 0.5 seconds by the end of the season.

Workouts to Get Faster

1

Improve your potential 50-yard dash time by combining two types of workouts: sprints about two to six times longer than 50 yards to improve your overall conditioning, and starts and accelerations to hone your technique.

2

Extend your top-end speed by running workouts such as five times 20 yards, four times 30 meters and three times 40 meters out of the blocks. Take as much rest as you need between repetitions, since speed, not conditioning, is the element of interest here.

3

Execute workouts such as six times 250 meters with two-minute rests, two or three sets of 300, 200 and 100 meters with 100-meter walk breaks, and 400-meter walks between sets. The purpose of these over-distance workouts is to condition you, allowing you to train harder and recover more quickly between hard sessions.

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