Dr Brian Hanley from Leeds University, has recently tested world-class walkers in terms of what kinds of flight times occur with each speed and we only see no loss of contact when they're walking at about 10 km/hr.

 

 

At 11 km/hr it's about 10 milliseconds of flight for men and 18 milliseconds for women (women usually have more flight at any given speed). We've always used flight times above 40 milliseconds as a guide to what is 'visible' and most elite men can walk at 14-15 km/hr within this amount of flight.

 

 

Women generally manage below 40 milliseconds at 13-14 km/hr.

 

 

Of course, the best technical walkers have less flight time than those who aren't as good (even if they are at the same ability in terms of times and finishing positions). 

The aim of our study was to measure the duration of loss of contact (‘flight time’) in elite-standard race walkers using different measuring devices. The force plates were considered the gold standard and the results measured using them are what are reported here.

 

Seventeen international athletes took part in the study (10 men and seven women). The men had an average best time for 20 km of 1:23:06 (pace of 14.44 km/hr), and the women had an average best time for 20 km of 1:30:38 (13.33 km/hr). Of the 17 athletes, 14 had taken part in either the 2016 Olympic Games or the 2017 World Championships (the other three took part in other international competitions such as the World University Games).

 

The protocol used was similar to that published by De Angelis & Menchinelli in Italy in 1992. The athletes race walked down an indoor running track that had the three force plates located halfway along it. They walked at five pre-determined speeds, which were 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 km/hr for women, and 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 km/hr for men. The average flight times for each of these speeds are shown below:

The results were comparable to those reported by De Angelis & Menchinelli (1992) in that flight time increases with race walking speed, and men have less flight time than women at any given speed. Athletes tended to keep their flight times to within 40-45 milliseconds even when moving at faster speeds as their techniques were often better at these more familiar paces.

 

Our results also showed that other devices that are frequently used to measure flight time can provide misleading results if adjustments are not made to the sensitivity of the device, particularly given the way race walkers move differently from runners (who are more commonly the target population).