An Athletics Compendium

The literature of Athletics and the six day walkers. Perhaps the fact that so many of these performances of the nineteenthcenturystill rankas 'records' tellus somethingof the historyof professional foot-racing. Technical Manualsand Statistics In theory,the development of the technical manual should run directly parallel with the growth of a sport, in that the more highly developed the sport becomes,the greater the volumeand sophisticationof its technicalmaterial. Bythismeasure,Greek athletics,which enduredfor more thana thousandyears, should haveproduced a vast volume of sophisticated technicalwriting.That it did not may reflect the low level of literacy of Greek coaches but is more likely due to the destructionof the Great Libraryof Alexandria in the first centuryAD. This beingsaid, it is perhaps surprising that nothing remains in Roman literature on the rules and techniquesof Greek athletics,since theywere a featureof manygladiatorialgames. The fragments of the literature which survive tell us little of Greek techniques, rulesor trainingmethods. What we do knowof the trainingmethods of this mainlypre- Christian period bear marked resemblance to those of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.This is perhaps not surprising,since they werebasedon similarlimited,usually erroneous, views of human physiology,reflectedin themedicalknowledgeof the period. What almost certainlydeveloped during the thousandor more yearsof Greek athletics wasa highlevelof essentially empiricalknowledgeof training and technique,andwith it a profound understanding of competitive psychology. Little of this is reflected in the survivingliterature. The onlytechnical eventsof the Greek Olympic athleticsprogrammewerediscus, long jumpand javelin,all of which appearedonlyin the pentathlon.These eventsmust have reached a high level of technical sophisdcation by the time the Olympics were abandoned in 390AD, but littlerecord remainseitherof the detailof their rulesor their technicaldevelopment. The first modern 'technical' manual is Sinclair's Results of the inquiries Regarding Athletic Exercises (1807). This is a remarkable work, essentially a sub-section of a substantial non-specialist study of health and longevity. Sinclair's book is descriptive rather than prescriptive, the product of responses to a questionnairewhich he put to leadingtrainersof the late eighteenthcentury.His investigationsshow that therewas, in the early yearsof the nineteenth century,little differencein the training of horses, fighting cocks, pugilists,greyhoundsand runners.Allwere subjectedto the inexorablerigoursof sweating,purgingand bleeding,a direct reflectionof the medical practicesof the period. Sinclairwas, however,prescient in suggestingthat, although the effect of match-based athletictrainingwastemporary,it had health-related valuefor the non-athlete. Sinclair's work reveals general agreement on training methods, which related mainlyto endurance-basedevents. It also revealedan earlydogmatismin the certaintyof tone withwhichthe trainers' viewswereexpressed. Trackand fieldathleticsplayno part in Sinclair's study,whichrelatesto wager-basedmatch-racingand contests basedon time and distance. He describes ancient Greek training. 'Sexual intercourse was strictly [ X X X V ]