engine—is a recipe for disaster. “I do more eating than training,” he says with a laugh. “It keeps my energy levels high and my protein high, and I can come back and train with the same intensity the next day as I did the day before.” It’s also an important part of building


“I’ve been pretty fortunate, my body has held up really well,” he says. He attributes that partly to being


against his lifetime Olympics ban, which he lost. “I was looking for another place, but my heart was always in athletics. My mind was made up. I was going to stick to the easy life—that’s running!” Chambers rededicated himself to athletics, focusing on the 60 m and the 100 m and proving he could still compete at the highest levels of the sport. He broke the 10-second barrier again in 2010, and has been among the fastest sprinters in the world this year.


more intelligent about his diet than he used to be. “When you’re young you think you can have it all. I thought I could eat everything I wanted,” he says. Now he knows that’s not true, especially for athletes at his level. “We’re pushing our bodies to the limit. Not looking after your body—your


strength and speed without bulking up—which would slow him down. “With the amount of food I consume I maintain my strength a lot more,” he says. “I’m continually eating, maintain- ing good muscle. If the muscle is healthy it will maintain its integrity.” Chambers’ training now focuses on


fine-tuning his performance. “I’m paying attention to what’s going wrong in my running,” he says as he describes his favourite exercises. One area where he wants to improve is his posture. “Before I wasn’t really running vertically like Usain and Asafa Powell,” he explains. “I used to get out of the blocks and almost dig into the ground.”


The hang snatch is one exercise Chambers is using to correct his posture. “I put 60 kg on an Olympic bar or a bench press bar, take a wide-arm grip—outside shoulder width—bring the weight below my knees, then snatch it over my head as quickly as possible,” he says. Because he’s working on explosive


power, he doesn’t do a lot of reps. Four or five sets of two reps each give him the fast twitch and explosiveness he’s looking for. The hips are key to posture, so Chambers pays particular attention to training them. In the hip push, he rests his head and shoulders on a bench, his body at right angles to the bench. He loads 60 kg of plates onto a 20 kg bench press bar and rests it across his hips. Then he puts one foot on a platform with his leg bent. “I use my hips to bring the weight up and hold it for a second and then I lower it back down,” he explains. It’s better to use only one leg at a time when doing hip presses in order to isolate them. “You’re always stronger on one side,” he points out. The exercise strengthens the legs and


core as well as the hips, he says, all of which improves form when running. Of course, for any sprinter, explosive


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