Why? The Science of Athletics

ELIMINATION OF HUMAN ERROR experiments at Cornell University, U.S.A. His electrical timing apparatus comprised a series of coils placed at accurate intervals of I, 3, 6, 10, I 5, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 6o yards respectively from the starting point. Each coil consisted of about 200 turns of insulated copper wire, the coils being connected up in series with a galvanometer, arranged to record its movements photographically on moving bromide paper in a camera. As in the case of the Canadian experiments, with Miss Cook and Percy Williams for the subjects, the runner carried a magnet; in this case it was a hack-saw blad~, minus the teeth, magnetized in a solenoid and worn round the waist. By these means each time the runner passes a coil the magnet induces a current in it and that is recorded on the bromide paper, thus producing accurate and easily read timings. I have also seen an apparatus tested abroad in which the coils were suspended above the track-lanes, so that the form of each of, say, six runners in an important race could be recorded and the science of sprint-running accurately analysed. Now let us see to what conclusion the study of accurate ·- timing will lead us. I think it will be obvious that once (by electrical timing or other means) we can determine at what point a man develops his maximum speed, at what point he becomes fatigued and gets his second wind, we can, with the added factor of his known oxygen consumption, and _ other available information, begin to think quantitatively in terms of energy, because the building-up of good technique is really nothing more than the production of certain physical skills. This means one of two things. according to the type of athlete concerned. Either he . needs endurance, so that he can go on for a long time, or strength, so that he ca1<1 produce the maximum amount of work in a given time, and in either case he will best achieve his object by moving his muscles so efficiently that he will waste the least possible amount of energy.