Why? The Science of Athletics

LESSONS FROM FACIAL EXPRESSION 51 and retracts his lips in the subconscious hope of giving the air he needs a wider and more direct passage to the lungs, and it is to give the air yet one more means of ingress to his labouring lungs that his nostrils are so widely distended. The index to all these things is clearly written in the despairing .expression of the runner's face, as shown by John Rinkel, C.U.A.C., in Fig. 4, Plate I, when he beat 0. Peltzer, Germany, for the A.A.A. 440 yds. title. When the race is over, if he does not fall to the ground, the athlete will stand panting, body bent, hands resting on his knees, apparently to support him. The pose is purely instinctive, but why is it taken? For this reason, that a man standing thus with body bent and hands pressed hard down on his knees is able to steady the struc- - ture of the thorax, and by so doing brings into action the great muscles of respiration which help him to get more of the much-needed air down into his lungs. The poisons are not eliminated, when Fatigue a man gets what is sometimes termed his "second wind", through the respiration and the heart catGhing up with the need for air. These poisons are bound, in time, to create a condition of extreme fatigue. With the passing of the urgency of breathlessness -at the coming of second-wind a general feeling of lassitude begins to creep in and one group of muscles after another function less efficiently. No longer are the eyes scrcr:wed-up fiercely, no longer do they look des_eairingly ahead for help, for now the eyelids are heavy as with sleep. The athlete is gradually becoming stupefied by an accumulation of poisons .in his system. He is experiencing a form of auto-intoxication which accounts for his tired, stupid and peculiarly vacant expression, which is characterized by the drawn brow, ~he half-closed eyes, the slackly fallen jaw and the loosen– mg of the muscles of the cheek. Again, all the charac– teristics · of fatigue are shown in Fig. 5, Plate I, by T. B. L. Bryan, C.U.A.C.