Kris Brander sticks his headphones in his ear. He blares music, any music, it doesn’t matter.

Through the music, he hears the announcer call runners to the track for the 400-meter hurdle event. As he walks to the starting blocks, he feels his heart beat faster and faster. Maybe he got a little too psyched up.

“Deep breath,” he thinks to himself.

He takes a few jumps in the air, pulling his ankles up to his thighs in a “V” shape. Five deep breaths followed by a quick shake of his arms and legs to loosen up his tense muscles and he feels it — the zone. The place where he is in perfect harmony between being too pumped up and too mellow. It’s just right.

“On your mark,” the announcer says.

As he puts his feet into the blocks, his mind goes blank. He lifts his body up while still keeping loose.

“Get set.”

He tightens up, like a spring, so he can start like one — attacking the track ahead of him with force.

The gun fires.

For short-distance runners, the start of a race is something they work on time and time again. It can mean the difference between a first place finish or a finish near the back of the pack.

“It’s extremely important just because your start sets up the rest of your race,” said ISU sprinter Jared Ingram. “It’s really hard to run and run competitively when you’re trying to come from behind. So being able to get out in front or with everybody else makes a huge difference.”

As the runners start a race, it can be a lot more than just technical movements. The mental side of the race can’t help but creep into the runners’ mind, and the one thing that a runner doesn’t want to be doing during a race is over-thinking.

But for some runners, a good start can give them the right mindset to have a successful race.

“If someone starts out in front in the shorten sprints quickly and are in first or are in the mix early, it tends to give them more confidence and then the rest of the race tends to fall in place because they are okay,” said ISU sprinting coach Glenn Smith. “If they screw up there, it can cause a lot of insecurities to cause them to do things they shouldn’t be doing during the race.”

Starting a race isn’t all it seems on the surface. Coaches and athletes alike stress the importance of setting the body up before the race to have the best possible start. Just one twitch or false movement can get a runner disqualified or started in a bad way.

When the gun goes off, there isn’t time to think about mechanics.

“We talk a lot about how to get thinking in the right mindset to react to the gun,” Smith said. “That’s a process where we talk about what to think about and there’s a lot of little tricks that go into it just about what to think about, what movements to think about to cause the right start to happen for that individual.”

At first glance, a block start can look like the same for every type of race. But starts for sprinters and hurdlers are different in the focus and technical aspects.

For sprinters, the start of the race has a large effect on the rest of the race. Smith said that the runner that can reach the top maximum speed has the best shot of winning the race. Runners can’t hit that point unless they are able to have a strong and powerful start.

Hurdlers focus more on the first hurdle and, while getting a strong and fast start, the footwork leading up to it. The key in hurdles is to settle into a comfortable stride pattern to get the correct leg leading up to the hurdle to put the runner in the best possible position to jump over it.

Without the proper footwork, it can be a struggle for the hurdler to recover.

“If you’re not feeling good and not in your stride halfway to the first hurdle, you’re not going to go over well,” Brander said. “You’re probably not going to hit your leg right, so really the start is really what makes your race.”

But when it comes down to it, the over-thinking aspect has the possibility to crawl into runners’ brain. So when they have to focus on the start, it comes down to instincts and training, not thinking. In fact, some runners have a special way to rid themselves of thinking just a little too much.

“I like to keep my mind blank,” Ingram said. “And just wait for the sound of that gun.”