How The Muscles Of Sprinters Develop

Bodybuilders focus on symmetry, concentrating their weight room efforts on building a balanced physique. That isn’t necessarily the case for other types of athletes, as a study of elite sprinters published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports illustrates.
 
Researchers measured the sizes of different leg muscles in 15 college sprinters and compared them to the muscles of normal individuals. Limb muscles in sprinters were an average of 22% greater in sprinters, with the biggest differences seen in the hip and knee flexors and extensors. Sprinters had 19% to 54% greater muscle mass in those areas compared to their non-sprinting counterparts.