Chapter 24 "Running Life" - 23 scientists

23 sports scientists A laboratory for running secrets In a lab in Dallas, a scientist sterilizes Frank Short's skinny calf with cotton balls.Short frowned as the scientist injected anesthesia into his calf.Immediately after the drug took effect, he skillfully made a quarter-inch incision with a scalpel.An assistant handed him a stainless steel instrument half as thick as a pencil, six inches long, and hollow in the center like a needle.The scientists inserted the end of the rounded tip into the port and pushed hard until it buried itself in the fibers of the gastrocnemius muscle in Short's leg.Then a small round tube is inserted into the hollow tube of the above-mentioned needle-shaped instrument, and the edge of one end of the round tube is ground very quickly, like a miniature cookie mold.A piece of meat the size of an orange core was cut from Xiaoyuanguante's calf.Both tubes were then withdrawn, the opening on the calf was bandaged, and the freshly removed muscle fiber sample deep in the calf was cooled in liquid nitrogen.

Sports scientists are at it again.Not too long ago, runners were mostly figuring out how to exercise on their own.Even if one is lucky enough to come across a knowledgeable trainer, so little is known about the basic sources of speed and endurance that any proven exercise method must be largely by chance.But all of this is, in any case, largely a thing of the past.Much has also been learned in recent years about the physiology of running, nutrition, and even the most elusive of all factors—motivation. Thus, an athlete, if he takes the trouble, can quickly gain experience that others used to take a lifetime to gain just by reading.Not only the best athletes, but even us mortals can draw on these lessons.Just to name one point in nutrition, until recently, many athletes, even many coaches, believed that if they needed energy, they had to eat protein.However, to the surprise of the researchers, they finally discovered that in strenuous exercise, the main source of energy is carbohydrates, not protein. If steak is the main dish on the table of some football players during training, it is only because The power of common sense is often no match for tradition.

The secret of carbohydrates, and many others, was discovered thanks to a novelty at the beginning of this century, the creation of the Sports Physiology Laboratory.The first such laboratories were established in England and Germany. In the 1920s, this practice also became popular in the United States.The Harvard Fatigue Laboratory, which had the first treadmill, was active in Cambridge.But the big boom didn't start until the 1960s, when, as a result of people's curiosity about psychology and the availability of appropriate funding, laboratories sprung up all over the United States.

Because there are so many labs now, they are doing all kinds of research.Dr. Lawrence B. Oskey of the University of Illinois at Chicago is trying to understand what effect physical exercise has on the size and number of fat cells.His research may one day be seen as an important milestone in the fight against excess weight. In Knoll's laboratory at Penn State, Dr. Ellsworth Baskoko has been studying the utility of a portable defibrillator, a device that restarts the heart when it has slackened to ineffective intervals. instrument.In addition, researchers at Ball State University are already studying issues like how to rehabilitate patients who have had knee surgery and the role of physical activity in helping diabetics lead normal lives, but sooner or later most labs will have to. Back to the favorite subject of almost all exercise physiologists: running.The reason is that the human body is under such intense pressure during running that changes occur quickly and are easily measured quantitatively.If a person played petanque one night a week for a whole year, his body might change slightly, but who could figure out how to measure this change?Conversely, a person who runs five miles a day is bound to experience significant physical changes.

Work in the Sports Physiology Laboratory has yielded some notable, if sometimes limited, practical results. As I write this, John Walker of New Zealand is the world mile champion.He received perhaps more medical attention than any other runner in history.His doctor, Dr. Lloyd Drake, closely monitored his pulse, blood counts and oxygen capacity.If his hemoglobin levels dropped (and thus his blood's ability to carry oxygen), Drake would raise it and inject him with vitamin B12, which stimulates the bone marrow to make more hemoglobin.If Walker suffers a minor injury, Drake will deal with it immediately to prevent the injury from becoming serious.He even dictated how fast Walker should run during his workouts (often five minutes per mile).But the place where the work of physiologists was most valued was East Germany.Every world-class athlete there is supported by a whole team of experts, which, as one doctor put it, "is like flight control when an astronaut is sent into space."

Given the sporting success that East Germans have enjoyed in recent years, it would be surprising if our own exercise physiology laboratory does not quickly take on an increasingly important role. But not all people think that the above approach is a good way.Speaking at a symposium on exercise and heart disease, Roger Bannister said he believed that "scientific research doesn't help athletes very much because every athlete is different.""He's got to try both fast and slow, learn from his mistakes, and figure out what works best for him," Bannister said. Besides, the physical factor is just that of a runner, he says. Part of what it takes to succeed: "I think the most important qualities that a runner can develop are his drive and his tenacity. That's as important as any physical quality." Some commenters also worry that we'll end up Cultivation of mindless 1984-style superstars with perfect bodies but manipulated by a small group of manipulative researchers and technicians.

This scenario is unlikely.First, as Bannister points out, mental fitness is important when running a race.Second, the success of a game depends on so many variables that it is nearly impossible to be ready for every one of them at any given moment.No one can know.Anyway, East Germany is an example.East Germany's ability to win Olympic medals has risen dramatically since the physician's participation. To find out what the exercise physiology labs are really about, I visited one of the most famous and respected of them all, the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.The laboratory was led by David Costil, an articulate and quick-thinking physiologist.

The Human Behavior Laboratory is a very inconspicuous metal structure house with no architectural style.It is the smallest and most unobtrusive building on the entire Ball State University campus.Recently, however, it has flourished.When the laboratory was first established in the mid-sixties, there was only a bicycle, a stepped bench and a drawer of stethoscopes.It only started to gain attention when David Costill arrived in 1966. Kostil was forty-one or two years old, with graying hair and a thin build.He is a man who does what he says and runs five miles a day himself.Although he was interested in sports from an early age, he didn't think of exercise physiology as his career until very late.He told me: "After I left college, I was a high school swim coach for a while. I quickly found that I didn't want to be a coach for the rest of my life because I couldn't get anything else fulfilled except that I liked the kids. What I really liked was the Athletes do research. I was able to spend hundreds of hours doing this in my spare time just because it was interesting. I ended up going to Ohio State University for my Ph.D., but I didn't know what I wanted to do at the time. I started hanging out of research labs. I would sometimes go in and stay all day, just for the fun of it.” After earning a Ph.D. in physiology, David Costill began looking for a job.

Someone just happened to send him an advertisement for Ball State University looking for a director of its laboratory.He was recruited. The north wall of the lab housed five or six general offices, including Kostill's own.Elsewhere in the lab is packed with the latest equipment: an electronic computer, a centrifuge that measures the oxygen, carbon dioxide, and other substances that runners absorb and expel from their bodies as they work on treadmills. gas, and a ten-foot-square thermal chamber used to study the human body's response to extremely high or low temperatures.In the middle of the room is a treadmill on which some of the country's best runners have contributed to scientific research.

It was in these rooms that some important discoveries were made, several of which permanently changed the sport of running.For example, when Kosteel was conducting research a few years ago with Bent Zaltin, a physician at the University of Copenhagen, Kosteel noticed that the world's best runners seemed to have more muscle than their less accomplished runners. different.In search of this elusive clue, the two researchers finally explored the muscle fibers themselves.When they took a closer look at the hair-like filaments, they noticed something intriguing.After dyeing, two different types of fibrous mass can be distinguished.In addition, in the first-class players, most of them are of the same type of fiber.what does this mean?Using sophisticated analytical techniques, they began to study muscle fibers to probe factors such as enzyme activity and contractile properties.At last a rather important discovery was made from this research: some fibers were called ST type, and contracted slowly; another fiber was called FT type, and contracted quickly.They found that virtually every elite long-distance runner had more slow-twitch fibers than fast-twitch fibers in their muscles.For example, an examination of fourteen long-distance runners, including Frank Short and the now deceased Steve Prefonte, found that their muscles had an average of 79 percent slow-twitch fibers (Check a random group of people and the average number of slow-twitch fibers is only 57 percent).Since they also found that the middle-distance (half-mile to two-mile) runners had 62 percent slow-twitch fibers, it was clear that there was a difference in the composition of the muscle fibers of the two types of runners.But is this a decisive difference that some people are naturally good marathon runners and others are naturally good middle-distance runners?According to the results of further research, this is probably the case.

Some have suggested that the above experimental results seem to imply that elite runners are born rather than trained.For Kostill, it doesn't mean that.The above results do suggest that one day athletes can avoid entering a dead end where they work in directions with limited possibilities for progress and instead focus on what they are best suited for.Of course, there is no guarantee that a certain athlete will be able to win the championship, but at least it can prevent him (or her) from spending energy on areas where he (or her) is not born with outstanding talents. "We showed you that unless you have a lot of slow-twitch fibers in your muscles, you're never going to be a champion long-distance runner," Kosteel said. What happens to body fluids during intense exercise like a marathon?Here, too, Kostill made some important discoveries, and he presumably saved many lives in the process.A few years ago, he expressed doubts about the validity of the age-old rule of not drinking alcohol while exercising.He and others have shown that this rule is unwarranted, and that, in fact, failure to ingest fluids, especially in hot, humid climates, can cause heat stroke.Further experiments showed that drinking beverages while exercising not only does not reduce efficiency, but actually increases it.As a result, the American College of Sports Medicine issued an epoch-making opinion paper in 1975, requiring that people no longer restrict people from drinking beverages during exercise.This has had widespread repercussions. Another change Kosteel is currently making in his running workouts concerns the distance he runs.Runners have traditionally tallied up their running distance on a weekly basis.For example, when I talked with Bill Rogers, Rogers said, "For the past three years, I have run a total of 140 miles a week." The reason why counting miles in weeks rather than days has become an accepted method is Because it is easier for a runner to make up the difference from one day to another.Kosteel believes that even this is not enough.He had data to support his thesis, and it was based on himself, whom he knew best.Energy for running comes from a sugar-like substance called glycogen.Glycogen is stored in muscle tissue and its supply is gradually depleted during exercise. If all the glycogen is used up, no matter how strong your willpower is, the activity will inevitably stop.Kostill checked his glycogen levels after running ten miles a day for three days and found that it could take up to two weeks for his glycogen supply to return to normal levels.To be clear, there's no way he's going to have enough muscle glycogen for a big game after a week of full-out training.He told me: "My glycogen was slow to recover. The speed of this recovery is different for everyone.I can't do anything other than eat more carbs. " Kosteel recommends that runners total up their miles over a month rather than a week, which makes it easier to allow themselves to occasionally exercise less in a given week.He wrote this advice, along with many others, in a very excellent book called The Scientific Attitude To Long Distance Running, which has not yet been published. He once showed me the rough draft of the book.On the question of monthly or weekly distance calculations, Kostil writes: "The purpose of exercise is to stress and often wear down the biological systems in the runner necessary for the continuous and rapid production of energy. Unless the organism is given sufficient rest to recover and compensate for the strain of exercise and improvement, then the exercise is worthless...so in an exercise program, rest is an equally important component without which the program is bound to fail...whereas most physiological systems (eg: muscle enzymes) take three to four weeks to respond to a certain level of exercise intensity. It appears that the intensity of a runner's exercise should be judged by the total distance run in four weeks.The advantage of this kind of exercise method is that it can not only make the strength used for running different every week, but also arrange a long period of easy exercise so that the body can fully recover. " Kosteel's discovery that he had a sluggish glycogen system led him to another conclusion: No matter how scientifically sound a training principle is, it may not work for some runners.He said: "We're all different. If you want to find out what you can do, you try all kinds of different things, even things that seem extreme and totally unreasonable." Kosteel also found some other situations as follows: 1. Even long-distance runners need fast running training.Some coaches deny this, but Kosteel's research shows that all the muscle fibers used in the game are only active when running fast.Fast running also enhances the biomechanical effect. 2. Intense training will consume about three days of glycogen supply.Therefore, one more day of light training should be carried out before the competition.Kosteel recommends three days of light training.Incidentally, he doesn't think it's necessary to stop running the day before a race, as long as the distance is no more than four to six miles and the pace is slow. The week I visited Kostil was a busy one.As we talked, just outside his window was the deafening noise of a backhoe on the back of a tractor, digging the foundation for an outbuilding to the laboratory.A salesman from a scientific instrument manufacturing company came here for a demonstration.In the lab, technicians probe through microscopes and use needle-like instruments to select muscle fibers for later chemical analysis.Before I leave, I ask Kostill another question: What does he see as the next frontier of exploration in human physiology? "Things move so fast when it comes to this kind of work," he replied. "Only a few years ago, we were experimenting with rats. The problem was that you couldn't get rats to run as fast as they could, no matter how hard you tried." Shock it, and it stays still. Then we learned how to do muscle research in living people, which was a breakthrough. Now biochemistry is the field to explore. We have to discover what happens in muscle. I'm sure, This is where the action is. What we have done so far seems to have just opened the door and peeped in. We know there is a great deal of mystery within. We must now hurry to discover what it is."