Why? The Science of Athletics

SUCCESS OR FAILURE 215 Plate g. These play a very important part in team building. Left to their own devices, athletes go all-out for achieve– ment every time they put on their "spikes," but that way they never acquire good technique. A good coach insists upon his charges doing a great deal of their work at quarter and half effort purely for style.* He supplements that with conventional form exercises, which involve the actual movements used in the particular evolution perfection in which is being aimed at. These form exercises not only build up the required muscle-groups, but, by much traffic, they wear smooth the channels for the transmission of nerve-impulses from brain to muscles. t Another thing the coach must understand is how to balance his scheme of training. Things must be so planned for each athlete to reach a preliminary training peak at a certain time, after which the work must be toned down and decreased, or lightened, so that the peak of performance may be attained on exactly the right day.* The study and practice of athletics is becoming, year by year, a more complete science than our ancestors ever envisaged, and to-day the coach who wishes to maintain a reputation as ranking in the first flight can afford to leave no stone of possibility unturned and · nothing whatsoever to chance. He must, in fact, be constantly modernizing his methods. Modern Methods of Instruction in Sport It is, I believe, a fact that no one was able to prove conclusively how a horse galloped and other animals progressed at speed until the "snapshot" camera came along -to solve the problem. From that statement may be drawn the conclusion that, no matter how efficient the modern coach may be, the human eye is still not quick enough to analyse the style of the athlete as completely as it must be analysed, nor even to pick out the individual points of technique, the understanding of which is all-important to the man * See Athletic Training for Men and Boys. Webster & Heys. (John F. Shaw & Go. Ltd., London.) tSee Exercisesfor Athletes. Webster & Heys. (John F. Shaw & Go. Ltd., London.)