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Super Speed Part I - Biomechanics

If you hang around  sports long enough (or watch enough SportsCenter) you’ll undoubtedly hear the phrases, “You can’t coach height,” and “You can’t coach speed.” The former is an indelible truth, the latter is an outright lie. You can coach speed. Here’s a promise: if you are able-bodied and have never been coached as a sprinter I can make you faster – probably in less than an hour. You won’t break any world records or be able to run much faster over a long distance, but I can improve your sprinting speed so that you’ll have a faster 40 time. (And that’s what the superhero scouts are looking at anyway, right?)

How is this possible? Simple: mechanics. In all likelihood, you don’t run very well. You don’t drive your knees or use your arms correctly or your body position is wrong or most likely, all these things. And you know what? Most super-speedsters don’t know how to run right either. (Okay, to be fair, the real problem is artists who don’t know how to draw people running, but work with me here.)

Here’s a cover from THE FLASH No. 214:

Not surprisingly it’s got a picture of the Flash running – actually several. Look at the way their arms drive all the way across their bodies. Ugh. Movement like that would cause the entire upper torso to twist creating a lot of wasted  motion, in fact this movement would probably slow you down more than anything. But it’s very common to see super-speedsters depicted like this in comics. How should the arms look? More like these guys:

These aren’t sprinters but you can get a good sense of proper arm position and even knee drive by examining the various runners in this picture. When you’re trying to run fast your arms should be moving in the same plane as your legs – the object is linear momentum and velocity so driving the arms across the body is counter productive. And yet Flash does this a lot. There are times he looks more like and speed skater than a speed runner.

Body angle would be a fascinating thing to study if you had access to a real life super speedster. Typically you wouldn’t coach the kind of extreme body lean you see depicted nor it’s ramrod upright opposite that is also pretty common, but some of that has to do with fatigue. It’s very difficult for your garden variety human to maintain a 45 degree body lean for an extended period of time and it’s not particularly desirable because it limits the ability to take a longer stride – one of the big components to successful sprinting. But it’s also a postural limitation since a pronounced body lean would put stress on a number of muscles groups that are normally not very active while running. And the more muscles you fatigue the faster the body as a whole fatigues. But the Flash does not get tired so this wouldn’t be a limitation for him and there may be some aerodynamic advantages to a body lean like the one shown below, especially at the speeds at which the Flash moves.

But I suspect a super speedster would be better suited running slightly more erect. It’s a more natural position and if nothing else it would allow for greater visual awareness. How erect? Well, Michael Johnson set world records in the 200 and 400 meters and won multiple Olympic gold medals running in a nearly vertical position so I don’t suppose there’s any real limitation. Although I have to say that this doesn’t look right:

Since they already can pick them up and put them down faster than anyone else and they never get tired, what would be the purpose in teaching a super speedster better biomechanics? So there’s a little wasted motion, big deal, right? A little wasted motion multiplied over the speed and distance the Flash typically travels becomes a lot of wasted motion. And even the Flash could be faster – how many times have you seen the Flash needing to run “faster than he ever has before”? About every third issue right? So here you go Flash, just give me one hour and we’ll break a few more barriers.   

Mary Mapes Drew These...Yeah, That’s The Ticket

What’s wrong with these two pictures?

Tons, apparently. Check out this fascinating post at Suspension of Disbelief for the specifics. I actually have a half-written archery post I’d planned to file under “Superhuman Kinesiology” but this is far more detailed than I could provide.

In grad school I participated in a study of how release angle affected various implements (baseballs, shot puts, javelins, arrows) and from that I realized how frequently I’d seen Hawkeye (or Green Arrow) depicted shooting at a target often hundreds of yards away while aiming pretty much parallel to the ground. Now, that’s the first thing I look for when I see one of the archers. After reading this post I’ll be looking for a whole lot more than that.

I’ve always thought comic book archers were the perfect candidates for a technical geek-out in regards to equipment and mechanics, and I mean beyond a couple of trick arrows. It would be fun to see multiple bows for special situations, electronic targeting devises, high-tech optics, etc. Imagine what kind of gear utility-belt era Batman would have. Maybe this has been done and I just missed it.

Superhuman Kinesiology – Introduction

What’s kinesiology? It’s the study of anatomy, physiology, and mechanics of body movement, particularly the human body. As a comic book fan and someone who did his graduate work in kinesiology, the physiological elements of super powers hold a certain fascination for me - even though trying to apply real world human physiology to a world where people can fly, turn invisible or fire lasers from their eyes is purely mental mastur…well, I won’t go there. I don’t need those kind of Google hits.

Setting aside the odd physical properties of the various superhero universes there would seem to be some common ground with our own universe from which to draw comparisons. But you have to be careful when examining things too closely since much of what’s available for interpretation is filtered through artistic impression. Take eye color. I would wager that 80-90% of all superheroes are depicted with blue eyes. Why do you suppose that is? We could come up with all sorts of exotic answers but the most reasonable is blue is pretty and vibrant and colorists like using it. How about height? Artists have a tough time with this one, particularly in large team environments like the JLA or the Avengers. The natural tendency seems to be to lump all the males in at about one height and the females a few inches shorter. Now you'd think any quasi-normal height distribution would dictate that, in addition to a large number of taller than average hero types, there would also be some short superheroes, some average sized superheroes and maybe some really, really tall heroes - like maybe 6'9, 6'10" or greater. But for an artist this would be extremely tough to depict consistently and accurately. It's tough enough to deal with height using the relatively narrow distribution we currently see. It’s probably unfair to point to any one book, but what the heck, I need some images to punch this thing up. So for example, here’s the cover of Identity Crisis #2:

This isn’t too bad, Hawkman, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) and Green Arrow are the same height, Flash is a bit shorter and the two gals are shorter yet. For some reason I’ve always thought of Hawkman as being taller than the two green guys, but I can live with this. Now here’s an interior frame:

Zatanna and Black Canary seem to have grown and Green Arrow is noticeably shorter. Is this a problem? Not really. But it demonstrates how tough consistency is when related to the physical form. I don’t think it detracts from the story here or in other books but it does make it pretty much impossible to examine height in any meaningful way. I will say that a disproportionate number of superheroes are really tall. Say 6’4” or greater. And I’m just talking about the normal types who have become heroes not aliens, mutants, meta-humans or what have you. (A little trivariate analysis of eye color, height and skin color of all superheroes would be pretty interesting…to me anyway.)

Now I’m not bringing these attributes up as part of the kinesiology discussion but rather to show how difficult it is to judge certain physical factors due to the way they’re portrayed by an artist(s). So my discussion will be more from the hypothetical viewpoint. How does stride length affect the Flash? What is Green Arrow’s resting heart rate? What type of force does Hulk need to make the jumps he does? And would plyometric training help him improve his distance? How many turns should Thor need to throw his hammer? Okay, I’m reaching there, but you get the idea. (As an aside, has there ever been a character who threw javelins? A big guy could easily carry a dozen or so in a huge quiver and they’re the perfect size for building in all kinds of electronic gadgets.)

I promise to try and make it as fabulously entertaining as all of my posts. (That’s a joke – but you probably knew that.) And I’ll try not to retread ground already covered by The Science of Superheroes and in order to keep that promise I’ve ordered the book and will actually read it. So that's the plan, and the first thing I plan to explore: Superspeed.