Thoughts about relationship between acceleration and deceleration in sport:
Is the athlete that is able to accelerate at a faster rate, or has the better ratio of force, going to be a more “effective” decelerator against the athlete that is not as efficient of an accelerator?
For example, a corner in press man against a wideout.
Does the DB that is a better accelerator have an easier time redirecting their momentum to decelerate because they are running at a sub-maximal speed compared to the wideout who cannot accelerate as well?
I tend to believe that the stress of deceleration is reduced & the ability to redirect momentum becomes easier in a game situation where an athlete is accelerating at a sub-maximal rate
The athlete accelerating at their maximal rate would have a harder time redirecting mass
Therefore, improving acceleration should be extremely beneficial to being an effective decelerator in a game
Now obviously training deceleration is still extremely important, I am just thinking about the relationship between the 2 qualities
But I could be wrong or misinformed
Even guarding someone in basketball, the guard with the quick first step is going to make it harder for the defender to stick their foot in the ground and decelerate if they were to get crossed compared to the guard that the defender is already quicker than
AI is hard to guard
There are obviously so many other neuromechanical variables that go into playing sports, but this is just something I was thinking about
Let me know your thoughts if you’ve got any.
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