Why? The Science of Athletics

158 WHY?-THE SCIENCE OF ATHLETICS that success in athletics depends upon strength and speed, in other words the athlete must have at his command force and velocity, which are synonymous terms for strength and speed, but force-times-velocity is power, and so you see how we arrive at the term "horsepower", or simply "power", in relation to track and field athletics. Determina– tion of Muscular Viscosiry Here I would pause a moment to remind the reader that speed is dependent upon not only the contractile power of the muscles, but also upon how quickly they can be contracted. In this connection something was said in preceding chapters about lowering the viscosity of the muscles by limbering– up, and giving them greater contractile power by means of preliminary stretching exercises. This I refer .to again specifically, because the fast starter in a spriht race-I mean the man with a good pick-up, like Percy Williams, the Canadian double Olympic winner-the first class high jumper and the record-breaking shot-putter, all depend for their successes upon the low ' viscosity of their muscles and the force with which they can cpntract them. Professor McCloy holds that the Sargent jump provides perhaps the .best nieans of measuring muscle viscosity, and, if !le meai}s natural and normal viscosity one is prepared to agree with him ; but· a bald )3tatement is a little dangerous in this connection, because so much mu_st depend upon the prevailing temperature and the amount of running about, or preliminary exercise, a boy has done just prior to performing the Sargcmt jump test. The Sargent jump is simply a leap straight up into the air, -the instructor assessing by eye the height to which the jumper's head rises. It is, however, necessary to stan– dardize a method of jumping, so that the boy with some knowledge of style shall not score over the boy who has none, since what the test is for is to measure jumping capacity, in relation to muscular viscosity, not hew much the boy knows about jumping.