How fast can a human run

A cheetah accelerates as fast as one of the world's most powerful sports cars. Scientists calculate a cheetah's top speed is 75 mph, but the fastest recorded speed is somewhat slower.

The world record for "fastest land animal " is held by a female cheetah named Sarah, living at the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio. When Sarah was 11 years old, she ran the meter dash in 5. In contrast, the fastest person, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, ran meters in 9. The cheetah's body is made for speed.

The average cat only weighs lbs. It has a small head, flattened rib cage and lean legs to minimize air resistance. The hard foot pads and blunt, semi-retractable claws perform as cleats to help the feet maintain traction. The long tail acts as a rudder to steer and stabilize the cat. A cheetah has an unusually flexible spine. Coupled with flexible hips and free-moving shoulder blades, the animal's skeleton is a sort of spring, storing and releasing energy.

When the cheetah bounds forward, it spends over half its time with all four paws off the ground. The cat's stride length is an incredible 25 feet or 7. Running so quickly demands a lot of oxygen. A cheetah has large nasal passages and enlarged lungs and heart to help intake air and oxygenate blood. When a cheetah runs, its respiratory rate increases from a rest rate of 60 to breaths per minute. Bolt holds the record for the meter sprint, clocking in at 9.

Christian Coleman, however, broke a world record earlier this year for the meter dash, coming in hot at 6. And for the ladies, Florence Griffith-Joyner has the fastest meter at That's 22 MPH!

No matter who holds the top spot, whenever I see these outlandishly fast humans, one word comes to mind: how? How can a human be so damn speedy? But they also have genetics working in their fast-paced favor, says Colleen M. Brough, P. This article explains how running helps you lose weight. There may be some health benefits to running every day, but you may only need to run for 5 to 10 minutes a day.

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If you're looking to boost your resistance-training routine, you may consider supersets. What are they? We've got the scoop. And although top backward speed was substantially slower than top forward speed, as expected, the minimum periods of foot-ground contact at top backward and forward speeds were essentially identical.

The fact that these two drastically different running styles had such similar intervals for foot-ground contact suggest that there is a physical limit to how fast your muscle fibers can work to get your feet off the ground, the researchers say.

The new work shows that running speed limits are set by the contractile speed limits of the muscle fibers themselves, with fiber contractile speeds setting the limit on how quickly the runner's limb can apply force to the running surface. While 40 mph may not impress the cheetah, the world's fastest land animal reaching speeds of 70 mph kph , it's enough to escape a grizzly bear and much quicker than T. Live Science.