Abstract des Autors

This article has focused its attention on the athletes competing in 400 meters hurdles and has shown that the level of performance and their body build have not changed for the last 30 years. Meanwhile, it is necessary to notice that there is a change in the race tactics in both: time parameter (change in pace) and spatial parameter (the change of number of strides in between the subsequent hurdles). It is also noticeable that the contemporary runners start their races faster and tend to be slower in the final parts of their race than the hurdlers who competed between 1986 - 1999). One has also been able to observe number of important changes related to stride pattern. Furthermore, the contemporary hurdlers chose to increase the number of strides much quicker, just after the 4th hurdle. Taken together, these findings may be very important from the perspective of the coaching process.