Why? The Science of Athletics

ATHLETIC PSYCHOLOGY 349 time and a fairly high level of excellence in performance will be maintained. So far the athlete has had no cause for disappointment, but now comes the time when he steadily goes up, until a "peak performance" is reached. He is delighted, of course, and, unless warned, looks for better and still better things. It is, however, almost certain that one of two things will now ensue. If he is a very good athlete and, moreover, a person who is neither easily elated nor depressed, he may maintain the standard he has now achieved. But it is much more likely that, having broken his personal record, there will be such a feeling of enormous satisfaction that he will succumb to the temptation to lie back and rest awhile on his laurels, wondering how in the world he ever did that trick. In other words, the reaching of a peak is usually followed by a relapse. Yet another possibility is that he will be so tremendously pleased with his latest effort that he will straightway abandon all pretence at training for style and will go all out to achieve yet another peak. In either of the two last mentioned con– tingencies, it is practically certain that the athlete's graph will show a distinct curve downwards after a peak per– formance. If it has been a really good peak, the readjustment will come with stability at what the coach knows to be the boy's proper peak average for that particular season. Let me give you a concrete example. In I 933 my son, then still a schoolboy, started his pole vault season, untrained, with a vault of I I ft. 3 ins. in March, which was equal to his best performance of I932. From March to May his form oscillated between I I ft. 3 ins. and I I ft. 6 ins., but in June he suddenly shot up to I I ft. I I ins. and then settled to an equable I I ft. 6 ins. until his last competition in August, when he vaulted I I ft. 7 I/2 ins. for Great Britain against Germany. A long rest followed, but in January I934, before doing a day's training, he came out into the paddock, put the bar at II ft. 9 I/2 ins. and cleared that height with the