Why? The Science of Athletics

HUMAN MECHANISM 6g ·man's own heart was drawn on his chest, and he then walked a mile in 7 mins. The subsequent immediate medical examination of this man showed that his heart had expanded 3/8 ths of an inch. A man entirely untrained then walked half a mile in 6 mins., and showed a heart expansion of I I/2 ins . He had walked half the distance at . approximately half the speed of the trained champion, but the heart expansion was more than doubled. A similar experiment with a trained · runner covering a mile in 5 mins. and an untrained runner going half a mile in 3 mins., produced an almost identical result, in relation to the proportionate heart expansion of trained and untrained subjects. In the foregoing experiments the fatigue coefficient was present to some small degree. It still remained to investigate cases of violent effort. Here the difference between the trained and the untrained runner was very much more pronounced. The first subject was a man who had been in steady training and leading a regular life for two years. He ran a fast I50 yards and his heart remained virtually unaffected. On the other hand, the untrained man who ran that distance at but 3/4 of the speed was completely exhausted. l;;.he experiments were then carried a stage farther and it was clearly proved that, even in the case of two runners neither of whom had trained, or was in training, the effect of brief, violent exercise was far greater in the case of the smoker than in the case of the non- smoker. · Very careful records have been kept of the ejfects which athletic training and competition have upon the average boy ~· and from these statistics it would appear that the youth who trains conscientiously, "who neither smokes nor drinks, and who is content to participate in actual competitions to no more than a reasonable degree during adolescence, has no need to fear that he will contract that somewhat mysterious and quite possibly mythical complaint called "athlete's heart". On the other hand there is an almost overwhelming