Why? The Science of Athletics

CONSIDERATIONS IN RELATION TO COMPETITION 125 eve of a competition through sheer nervous funk, which is a very different matter. An athlete, of course, will lose weight when he first goes into training. After that it is up to the coach to find out at what weight the athlete does his best perfor– mances, because that is the man's optimum weight which must be maintained as nearly constant as possible. I do not mean .constant to half a pound, or a pound of course, but any large loss of weight-. and it may be as much as five pounds-is a sure danger signal. That statement again needs qualifying, for a fit man may lose up to 8 lbs. in a long distance race, since loss of weight is contingent upon severity of exercise, but a fit man will pick it up again within four-and-twenty hours. It is the semi-permanent decrease in weight which some athletes show that the coach must watch for. Several times already I have indicated clearly my own opinion that staleness is caused by exhaustion of the nervous system, and this brings me to another important point. As often as not it is the coach, parent or games master who is looking after the athlete's training 'who is responsible for creating the condition of staleness which afflicts the athlete. Quite recently there was a team in Europe from the other side of the Atlantic, and, so far as the foreign coach was concerned, it was pretty obvious that for him a lot depended on what sort of show his man put up against . the best middle-distance runners in Europe. Now i happen to know that the athlete was tremendously fond of his coach, with whom he had travelled around quite a lot. He was, in fact, more anxious to win his big race for the sake of the coach than for his own satisfaction, and there is not much doubt in my mind that the coach's anxiety communicated itself to the runner, who actually lost his big contest through sheer racing staleness, due to indirect nervous anxiety. That is an example of one way in which staleness may be caused ; another is provided by the parent or games