The shorter the legs, the faster

People with long toes and short legs have many opportunities to become athletes.

Dr Stephen Piazza, a human movement expert at the University of Pennsylvania (USA), spends a lot of time studying the legs of athletes. He and his colleagues recruited 10 people of the same height and weight with 10 school sprinters.

Telegraph said, the team measured the leg components of all 20 people to learn the factors that increase the speed of human running. They found an average athlete's length of 0.9 feet longer than the average person.

However, the average length of the athlete's knee to ankle is shorter than that of the other group by about 3 cm.

Artwork of Getty Images .

In the article in Experimental Biology , Dr. Piazza said that the difference in the length of the toes and legs is not large, but they are very important.

" Shorter legs help athletes create greater turn-around during acceleration. In addition, long toes help them maintain longer contact time between feet and soil in each step. As a result, the athlete's running length is much larger than ordinary people , "he explained.

The Piazza also emphasized that the length of the toes and legs are just two of the many factors that make athletes able to achieve high speeds. The team also found that the distance from the ankle to the heel of the heel also played a decisive role in running speed. The athletic athlete's distance from the ankle to the heel tendon is about 25% shorter.