Block spacing measured in foot lengths is inherited folklore

The two-and-a-half foot rule for setting starting blocks survives because it is easy to teach, not because it fits anybody.

Two foot lengths from the line to the front pedal, another foot and a half back to the rear. Every beginner sprinter in the world has been set up that way, usually by a coach who was set up that way, and the rule has the enormous advantage of taking eleven seconds and requiring no equipment.

It also has no reason to be correct for the athlete in front of you.

What the block position is really doing is choosing the joint angles from which the first push happens and deciding how much of the athlete's mass sits over the front leg. A tall runner with long shins and a strong posterior chain wants a different arrangement from a short, quick, quadriceps-dominant one. Those two athletes can have identical feet. The foot has nothing to do with the mechanics being set.

I would rather set blocks from the shin. Put the athlete in the position you want at the moment of the gun, front knee somewhere around ninety degrees and the rear closer to a hundred and twenty, hips above the shoulders, and then measure where the pedals ended up. That number is theirs. Write it in a notebook and carry it to every meeting. It will drift as the athlete gets stronger, which is itself useful information, because a sprinter who can suddenly hold a more compressed front angle has gained something real over the winter.

The other half of the folklore is the instruction to make the settings as aggressive as possible, on the theory that a lower, longer first push is always better. It is better only if the athlete can express force from that position. Put a young sprinter in a compressed setup they lack the strength to leave and they will stall, take a stuttering half stride to recover, and post a slower time than they would have from a lazier looking arrangement. Strength decides how aggressive you are allowed to be. Ambition does not.

There is one place I would keep the old rule, and it is a practical one. A coach with thirty children and one afternoon needs something fast that will not hurt anyone, and foot lengths are fine for that.

What is not fine is a senior athlete four years later still using a measurement taken from a shoe.