What It Takes: Sprinting to the top in athletics - with Shanti Pereira

SINGAPORE: I crumple onto the bed after a long hot shower. Everything hurts.

Three sessions into a week-long training stint with Shanti Pereira, the effects were already beginning to show.

My thighs were throbbing, my shins were aching, and my feet were hurting. Even the simple act of bending over to pick something up was a chore.

And I still had two more days to go.

When you're at the top of your game, the margins of victory can come down to the finest margins. So fine, that effective use of an elastic band in training can make a difference.

So, while much of my time training with Pereira was, not surprisingly, spent on aerobic exercises, I also found myself learning the importance of things like improving dorsiflexion, or the backward-bending motion of one's foot. 

Proper dorsiflexion puts one's foot in an ideal position to absorb the landing and move into the next stride. This reduces the time spent in contact with the ground, allowing one to run faster and more efficiently. 

Pereira helps address this by tying the band from her shoelaces to the top of her heel.

"If that will improve the dorsiflexion I have, it already cuts down a lot of time if I can do that with every single step," she explained after a gruelling session at Marina Barrage.

Such methods can make all the difference in the push towards gold-medal glory, especially in sprinting where margins of victory can be inhundredths of a second. 

“Once you reach a certain level, there’s more focus on the 1 per cent. A lot of the work has already been done, so we are just trying to find the smallest of details because that could in turn determine reduction of time," Pereira said.

Each of her training sessions serves a particular objective, and each drill serves a specific