Do I really need to work my arms?

Flat-out in the last 50m of a 100m repeat on the indoor track last night, there was no doubt about it: yes, I was driving with my arms (and everything else I could muster).

However, almost every picture of me racing shows me carrying my arms at around waist level. It's been constantly frustrating that my nervous system reports I have my arms neatly bent at the "approved" 90-degree angle and that I am swinging them in a relaxed yet powerful manner so that my hands describe a neat semi-circle from almost my chin to just behind my waist. Yeah, right. There was a time when at moments of stress my arms defaulted to a diamond pattern, straight out to either side at waist level, as if I was running in lane two and was using my elbows to stop people passing inside or outside. So.. some improvement. And yet...

The more I've worked on this aspect with various coaches, the smaller the impact. My arms still default to a low carry. Does it matter? I've started knocking this back and forth with Dwight and we can't come to a conclusion. As Dwight points out, the Chinese women elites, in particular, have a very low carry -- and it doesn't seem to affect their speed. If you look at a random selection of superb runners past and present, they seem evenly mixed between those with the "perfect" arm carry (Ben Limo) for example, and various others, like Haile Gebresellasie, who has a quirk.

Given that my all-time style hero is Olympic 1500-metre champion and mile record-holder Seb Coe, I started looking at pictures and movie clips. His arm carry varied a lot. Finally I found this amazing picture of 1500m/mile greats Steve Ovett, John Walker and Steve Scott in full-on mode... their arms are NOT where we're told they should be.

Maybe Percy Cerutty had the right idea. He advocated using the arms "creatively" and told his runners to drop 'em, not drive 'em, when they needed to find a kick.

Any ideas and opinions?