Why? The Science of Athletics

HEALTH ASPECTS AND HEALTH TRAINING 37 the most pleasurable relaxation in pasting up their press cuttings, entering up their training books, making graphs of their performances and in working out their averages. It is impossible to lay d?yvn: hard and fast rules where such highly strung beings as athletes are concerned ; the coach who is training a team must contrive a means of keeping his charges amused and cheerful. That is where men like Jakko Mikkolla, Harvard University; Armas Valste, Finnish Olympic coach; Charles Hoff, Norway; and Alec Nelson, the Cambridge University athletic coach, are such huge successes. They simply exude cheerfulness and have an amazing trick of inspiring confidence. It isn't a trick really, it is a sort of personal genius all their own. WHere the individual athlete, training alone, is concerned, the situation is much more difficult, but the main thing is to keep him from worrying about his chances and his personal form. Relaxation on the day of competition provides a rather different sort of problem. It is a good thing to keep the men off their legs as much as possible on the morning of the contest, but they must be taken to the ground in plenty of time to be massaged and t() limber-up from half an hour to an hour before competing. After the limbering-up has been done the athl<Ste should get into a recumbent position, preferably in the open air– CI.ressing rooms are usually stuffy and often stink to high heaven of embrocations and sweating humanity. None the less it is preferable to rest in the dressing-room rather than run the risk of getting the muscles chilled and the body temperature lowered by staying out in the open in cold or otherwise inclement weather. · Warmth plays ·' ar very important part in relation to relaxation, both before and between competitions. I · remember very well at Paris in I924 how, after Paavo Nurmi had won his heat in the 1500 metres, the team manager whipped him into his sweat-suit without any waiting and bundled him off to the dressing-room, where he was put on a mattress' on the massage table just as