Why? The Science of Athletics

I f l r 74 • WHY?-THE SCIENCE OF ATHLE TICS found in the fact that proper training produces great contractile power in the heart, so that in the case of the trained athlete there need be a lesser rise in pulse– rate than in the untrained man to secure the same blood-output from the heart. · Many people are under the delusion that all training consists only of the building up of certain groups of muscles for the acts of performing certain physical skills applicable to perhaps a single type of athletic event. In reality, prQper training does far more, since it lays the fundamental basis of all athletic success by building up and developing the heart-muscle so that it may meet the demands made upon it to produce blood circulation adequate to the needs of the athlete. Athletic training should build · up the heart to full contractile power, because the rate of human heart-beat cannot increase to more than 180 per minute during forced and prolonged exertion. From all of which arises the conclusion that, although h€ may be otherwise physically capable of the feats he wishes to perform, the untrained man must remain ever at a disadvantage, simply because the heart works more steadily and regularly at the lower rate acquired by training than at the higher rate which the untrained man must produce for the same effort in competition with his prepared opponent. As pointed out above, muscular action increases the heart-rate correspondingly to the violence of the exercise, but, whereas ordinary people have a rate of about 65 to 75 per minute, in the case of an athlete in training the rate may be as low as ·45 when he is at rest, while such rates as 55 are quite common. The point to remember is that these lower rates are normal for the athlete who is trained and in training. ,Putting the theory developed in another way, it may be said that a strong heart beating at 45 has a fourfold capacity when its rate rises to 180 under severe exertion, whereas, as in the case of the untrained man perhaps, if the resting rate is doubled,