For a long time now, the media has played on the fact that an endurance athlete will drop dead during or shortly after an extreme endurance event such as a half marathon, marathon, triathlon or ultra-marathon. While it’s the medias job to sell headlines, a basic dose of statistics will clear this up. Maron et(…)
Whipp, Ward and Hassall 1998 wrote an interesting piece on the average Roman legionnaire. Keep in mind that most of our ancestors lived much more physical lives than we do now, estimating their work capacities becomes very interesting and can demonstrate how far we can go. After some brief translation from Roman Imperial units into(…)
Does the surface of the tennis court have an impact on tennis players’ physiological performance? It appears so. Martin et al. (2011) have demonstrated that clay-court elicits a higher average heart rate (154 v 141 b.min), higher blood lactate concentrations (5.7 v 3.6 mmol.L) and increased duration of rallies (8.5 v 5.9s) over successive games(…)
When does an athlete fatigue during exercise performance? In short, time to fatigue is closely linked to muscle glycogen depletion. Gollnick et al. (1974) have demonstrated that when athletes ran at 80% of VO2max, the time to fatigue was directly linked with the stores of carbohydrate in the muscle (glycogen): athletes with greater muscle glycogen(…)
Methods of cardio-respiratory training is a controversial subject at the best of times. In recent years, long steady distance training has received much criticism in favour of a more popular method of interval training. BOTH methods of training have valuable aspects and the exclusion of one for the other will surely limit the athletic potential(…)
Is it necessary to employ whole body training in order to work at your VO2max? It appears not. An athlete can train at their VO2max by recruiting about 50% of their muscle mass, e.g. the leg muscles. By adding arms to the exercise mode, no increase in VO2max will occur. Even though the capacity of(…)
Is it possible to train the respiratory muscles? In general, it seems that exercise does not have any significant on static lung volumes in marathon runners or rowers. However, one group of athletes’ which display significant respiratory muscle control are swimmers. Elite level swimmers have a greater total lung capacity and lower resting heart rate(…)