Physical Fitness and Athletic Performance

A Guide for Students, Athletes and Coaches

A.W.S. Watson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780582091108
• eBook ISBN: 9781317895510
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Sports Science has increasingly developed both as an area of research and as a university subject. This book gives an authoritative account of the biological basis of athletic performance and training, based on an analysis of scientific and medical research in the area. The findings are presented in such a way that anyone involved in training for high-level sport will find the information accessible and of interest.

1	INTRODUCTION

Factors influencing physical performance

At the most general level, physical performance is a function of all the physical and mental characteristics of the individual. Some of these are determined at the moment of conception by the genetic material derived from the father and mother. The most obvious is the individual’s gender. Some characteristics may be acquired later through the processes of growth, maturation and learning, while others result from the interaction of the individual’s basic genetic make-up with his or her environment. All this may seem rather far removed from the scoring of goals in a football match or the winning of an athletic event, but in fact such achievements are subject to just these constraints. Sporting achievement is a complex mixture of genetic make-up and environmental influences – including training – and in attempting to reach any meaningful conclusions about physical performance it is useful to try to separate these two factors. There have been several studies of genetic effects in athletes and it is becoming clear that they have a most important influence (see pp. 76–7). In the case of a few characteristics the effect is entirely genetic, but in many others there is interaction with environmental factors such as training. Training can ‘fine tune’ the characteristic, but the limits of achievement are genetically predetermined.

Certain environmental influences occurring after conception have permanent effects and, together with genetic factors, these represent ‘invariable’ constraints on the athlete’s performance. Characteristics that are relevant to physical performance and over which the individual has little or no control include gender, age, somatotype, height, and the distribution of motor unit types. Many of the effects of the first two factors are obvious, but a few of the lesser known points are referred to elsewhere. ‘Physique’ is briefly considered later in this chapter and ‘motor unit distribution’ is discussed in Chapter 3.

At a less general level it is possible to demonstrate that physical performance is influenced by specific characteristics, many of which can (at least in theory) be measured or otherwise described. These include such variables as strength, joint mobility (flexibility) and the capacity for various types of physical work (endurance). These are frequently classified as components of physical fitness. This, too, is a useful way of analysing physical performance because it highlights variables which can generally be modified or improved through training. As more is known about the biological effects of exercise it has become clear that the changes are all due to definite anatomical, physiological and biochemical adaptations. It seems convenient to group these variable aspects of physical performance under one heading since they are all factors over which the individual has some control. In this book they are considered as components of fitness and their biological basis is discussed in Chapter 2.

Chapters 3 and 4 are concerned with the effects of training. Considerable difficulties are encountered when writing in this area as athletes trained long before physiology became fashionable and much of the available information has been acquired by trial and error rather than by the processes of science. When scientific investigations were started they tended to concentrate on matters occurring during exercise, and it is only recently that carefully controlled studies have been made of the merits of different training methods. Some of the most useful information available about training has come from such studies but they are few in number and, due to the nature of scientific investigation, are limited in scope. The investigations are usually of short duration because it is very difficult to ensure that individuals train under controlled conditions for long periods. And they have to be confined to one particular kind of subject – quite often, college students. It must be a matter of speculation as to how far the results of such studies can be applied to other types of subject. In particular, it is difficult to be sure they will relate to the élite athlete who is already highly trained and whose invariable physical characteristics are far from average. Although controlled studies on such an individual are theoretically possible, they are, in practice, extremely difficult to organise.

Another problem is the uneven coverage of different areas. A good deal of work has been carried out on endurance training – some on strength, but very little on many other aspect of fitness.

Because of these difficulties the approach to the sections on training is different from that adopted in Chapter 2. The authors have taken the view that the athlete is not going to wait to begin training until all the research has been completed, and we have tried to make comments on all the major areas. Where possible these have been based on carefully controlled experimental studies, but where such information is not available we have made use of the best information available.

A training programme is most likely to be beneficial if it is specifically designed to meet the individual sportsperson’s needs. Thus some kind of evaluation of the fitness levels of the athlete is necessary, and this topic is considered in Chapter 5. As with the work on training methods, the information available is less complete and up-to-date than that which exists on basic physiology. Although a large number of general tests have been described, many were developed before the highly specific effects of training were fully appreciated. There is a need to adapt many of these for use with particular types of athlete. The field is so wide that it is impossible to consider all the tests necessary in different situations. We have therefore described tests with general applications and have tried to include material which may help the readers to develop more specific techniques of their own.

Physique

Physique has an important influence on athletic performance but is only to a very limited extent under the individual’s control. A large number of studies have shown that successful sportspeople tend to have particular types of physique and that this is related to athletic success.

Size

Apart from such obvious observations that height is an advantage to rugby forwards, backetball players and throwers, there are also more subtle effects of differences in body size. These occur because the human is three dimensional. If the height of a three-dimensional object is doubled its surface area increases four times and its mass is multiplied eight-fold. Thus, when individuals of different size are considered, the body surface area and the cross-sectional area of muscle (and therefore strength) tend to vary in proportion to the square of height. Variables such as weight and blood volume increase in line with height cubed. Thus changes in size tend to produce differences in the relationships between such variables as strength, weight, power output, acceleration and work capacity. This means that individuals of various sizes are better equipped for different types of activity. A detailed analysis of the mechanical and physiological consequences of changes in size has been made by Asmussen and Christensen (1967) and some of this work is summarised in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1. The influence of body size on some physiological functions and as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Components of Physical Fitness
• Chapter 3 Principles of Training, Warm-up, Motor Unit Types, Sources of Information
• Chapter 4 Training Methods
• Chapter 5 Evaluation of Fitness Levels
• Chapter 6 Sports Injuries and Their Prevention
• References
• Index