Work presented in this paper discusses the effect of knee angle, during the block phase of the start, on overall start performance using the Omega OSB11 block. Omega claims that the footrest enables the athlete to push-off with a rear knee angle of 90°, which is beneficial to starting performance. Published work to date supports the positive effect of starting performance using the footrest, compared to blocks without a footrest, however, reference is not specifically made to the knee angle of the athlete beyond set-up. Ten male, national-level, sprint swimmers were asked to perform maximal start trials using three different footrest configurations. Force and video data were collected for each trial at a rate of 125 Hz. Analysis of the data focused on the effect of knee angle at set-up, on horizontal and vertical peak forces. For these data the best starts produced a peak vertical force at a rear knee angle of 80°-90°. More interestingly, this study suggests that, for the best starts, peak horizontal force production occurred with an obtuse knee angle of 100°-110°.
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