Why? The Science of Athletics

HUMAN MECHANISM The coach must remember, right through his career, that the danger signs exhibited by athletes in training are loss of weight and/or appetite, loss of sleep, indigestion and loss of interest. These are definite nervous symptoms, and the athlete who shows any such indications of nervous fatigue should be taken out of training, perhaps only for a brief space, perhaps for a long rest. The conclusion we are bound to arrive at from what has been written is that the training of the nervous system is more important than the training of the muscular system, and that while general training develops and conditions the muscles, what we must strive after is the storing up of large reserves of nervous energy. At first sight it may seem that we are approaching an impossible task in trying to train something like the sympathetic nervous system which is not under the control of our will. But it is not quite so difficult after all, for there is no sort of self-hypnotism involved. The fundamental training starts with fundamental -exercises, the second stage comprises exercises for speed, endurance and resistance. Then come specialized exer- . cises for the development of certain groups of muscles used in the performance of what we may term "event– physical-skills"; and finally practice is given in form and style training, which definitely establishes the technique of the athlete. It is by natural exercises which build up the general health that the sympathetic nervous system is trained. These exercises depend upon voluntary action which is conscious at the commencement but, by long practice, can be translated from voluntary to involuntary perfor– mance, until conscious action is gradually m·erged into t~ose involuntary centres which record our finer co-ordina– tions by the progressive development of action-ha-bits. Now let us try to see how our nervous system functions, and, of course, the easy analogy which springs at once to one's mind is to liken it to a telegraph system, and that, I suppose, is really what it is.