Why? The Science of Athletics

CHAPTER XV DIAGRAM AND DEDUCTIONAL CALCULATION TEACHING Camera as "Eye-in-Attendance"-Diagrammatic .coaching -Calculations and Deductions from Diagrams-Solution by Cinematography-Evolution of Perfect Form-Your History in Your Footprints-Written on the Cinders-Inferentional Reasoning from Footprints-Crucial Angles in Athletics. THE question has often been put to me, "Is it possible to teach any form of sport with a true degree of success to a person whom one sees but seldom, or never sees at all?" Candidly, I thin~ that it is possible, and apparently other -people hold the same yiew, if the letters I receive every week asking for training schedules, or advice upon style, are any criterion to go by. · As regards coaching a person one has never seen, I would instance the case of Douglas Shetliffe, the Austra– lian schoolboy jumper, who wrote to me in I 933 when he was seventeen years of age, enclosing photographs to show his jumping action, and asking advice as to how his style might be improved. I criticized young Shetliffe's style and advised him to the best of my ability. . In I934 he cleared 6 ft. 2 ins. for second place to Jack Metcalfe in the New South Wales Championship, and a week or so later, with Metcalfe not competing, he won the Open Championship of Australia at 6 ft. oi ins. His actual winning jump is shown in Fig. 6o, Plate I6, and with Fig. 6I, Plate I6, portraying his action from a different angle, suggests that he built up an almost perfect technique in less than a year on the written instructions I sent him and my criticisms of the action photographs he s~nt me.