Collected Answers from SI Article
Passed Out Culminating Task which is due January 11th.
Email me to confirm sport or topic
Britt - Ice Hockey
Steph - Ice Hockey
Jenny - Horse Racing
Amy - Soccer
Mike G - Baseball
Pietr - Golf
Jazmin - Horse Jumping
Blake - Tennis
Kendra - Rowing
Tim - Basketball
Alikhan - Table Tennis
Jessie - Soccer
Andre - Taekwondo
Trevor - Squash
Rob - Tennis
Natalie - Role of Parents in Sport
Lukas - No I in Team
Holly - Volleyball
Have a Merry Christmas and a Safe Holiday
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Thursday December 17th
Read Sports Illustrated Article from Monday - see link
Answered Questions from article - DUE Friday
Answered Questions from article - DUE Friday
Wednesday Dec 16th
Discuss questions from Ben Johnson
Complete documentary
Watched Sports Journal - "Weighing the Risks" Jockeys and diuretics and heaving
Assigned terms for Exercise 11.2 in workbook
Complete documentary
Watched Sports Journal - "Weighing the Risks" Jockeys and diuretics and heaving
Assigned terms for Exercise 11.2 in workbook
Tuesday Dec 15th
PPT Note Performance Enhancing Drugs/Supplements - Why
Ben Johnson Documentary - Quest for the Gold and questions
Ben Johnson Documentary - Quest for the Gold and questions
Monday, December 14, 2009
Sports Illustrated Supplements The Dangerous Obsession
Read the following article on the Supplement Industry
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1155395/1/index.htm
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1155395/1/index.htm
Test Section 7 and Section 10
Unit Test today
Read Section 11 - Performance Enhancing and Start Ex 11.2
Read Section 11 - Performance Enhancing and Start Ex 11.2
Friday Dec 11th
I'm absent today - pick up section 10 text questions and complete before Monday.
Unit Test Monday - Section 7 and Section 10
Unit Test Monday - Section 7 and Section 10
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Smoothie Lab
Smoothie Lab CANCELLED due to bad weather - Lab will be on Thursday
UNIT Test still scheduled for Friday - sections 7 and 10
UNIT Test still scheduled for Friday - sections 7 and 10
Monday, December 7, 2009
Wednesday Dec 2
Energy Balance Note PPT
Factors Affecting Metabolism
Gatorade Energy Needs Worksheet
Watched Youtube videos - exercise infomercials
Factors Affecting Metabolism
Gatorade Energy Needs Worksheet
Watched Youtube videos - exercise infomercials
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Diet Confidential and Nutrition Analysis
Handed out the Analysis portion of the Nutrition/Energy Balance Assignment
- due Monday Dec 7
Watched the remainder of Diet Confidential
Discussed Smoothie Lab for Thursday.
- due Monday Dec 7
Watched the remainder of Diet Confidential
Discussed Smoothie Lab for Thursday.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Diet Confidential
Watched Documentary "Diet Confidential" from CBC with Questions
http://www.snac.ucla.edu/pages/Diet_Nutrition/nutrition_basics.htm
http://www.snac.ucla.edu/pages/Diet_Nutrition/nutrition_basics.htm
Friday, November 27, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Section 10 Nutrition
General Nutrition PowerPoint - 6 nutrients, calories and energy balance
Assigned all terms in Section 10.2 in Workbook.
Field Trip Friday to Queen's - bus leaves at 8:45 am from back parking lot.
Assigned all terms in Section 10.2 in Workbook.
Field Trip Friday to Queen's - bus leaves at 8:45 am from back parking lot.
Tuesday November 24
Discussed Food and Activity Tracking Sheets
Used food and activity calculators at www.caloriesperhour.com
VO2 Max scores from Beep Test Results
Corrected Crossword from p. 102 in Workbook
Trace the Path of "OWTO" from atomosphere to lungs
Used food and activity calculators at www.caloriesperhour.com
VO2 Max scores from Beep Test Results
Corrected Crossword from p. 102 in Workbook
Trace the Path of "OWTO" from atomosphere to lungs
Monday, November 23, 2009
Respiratory Wrap Up
PowerPoint - Ventilation, External Respiration, Transportation, Internal Respiration
Videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXOBJEXxNEo - Diaphragm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWJHSTAWTCk&feature=related -Mechanics of Breathing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-f3RL0KiUg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-f3RL0KiUg - external respiration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXOBJEXxNEo - oxygen transportation -Hemoglobin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFCj9STCvdI - diffusion partial pressure
Traced the Path of "OWTO" from the air to the gastrocnemius
HmwK: Crossword on Page 102 in the Workbook
Videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXOBJEXxNEo - Diaphragm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWJHSTAWTCk&feature=related -Mechanics of Breathing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-f3RL0KiUg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-f3RL0KiUg - external respiration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXOBJEXxNEo - oxygen transportation -Hemoglobin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFCj9STCvdI - diffusion partial pressure
Traced the Path of "OWTO" from the air to the gastrocnemius
HmwK: Crossword on Page 102 in the Workbook
College Pin and Open Book Mix and Match
College Application Assembly
Section 7 mix and match Open Book
Section 7 Text Questions due Monday
Friday a PA Day
Section 7 mix and match Open Book
Section 7 Text Questions due Monday
Friday a PA Day
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Respiratory Anatomy and Text Questions
Reviewed Respiratory System Anatomy p. 100 in Workbook
Watched animation on ventilation, internal respiration, external respiration
http://www.wisc-online.com/objects/index_tj.asp?objID=AP15104
http://www.bmu.unimelb.edu.au/examples/gasxlung/
Brief PPT Note on Tidal Volume, Frequency and Minute Ventilation
Assigned Textbook Questions on Respiratory System due Monday.
Watched animation on ventilation, internal respiration, external respiration
http://www.wisc-online.com/objects/index_tj.asp?objID=AP15104
http://www.bmu.unimelb.edu.au/examples/gasxlung/
Brief PPT Note on Tidal Volume, Frequency and Minute Ventilation
Assigned Textbook Questions on Respiratory System due Monday.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Cardio Wrap Up and Respiratory System
Short note on Cardiac Output, Circulatory changes with exercise and the effects of training on stroke volume, heart rate and cardiac ouput.
Assignmed pages 120 -124 for reading plus terms on page 94 and Ex 7.6 Diagram on p. 100 in Workbook.
Assignmed pages 120 -124 for reading plus terms on page 94 and Ex 7.6 Diagram on p. 100 in Workbook.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Body Worlds
Completed Marathon Challenge Documentary and Questions
Watched Body Worlds DVD - Plastination, exhibits and Respiratory/Circulatory Systems
Watched Body Worlds DVD - Plastination, exhibits and Respiratory/Circulatory Systems
Circulatory System Quiz and Marathon Challenge
Friday
Quiz on Cardiovascular System
Marathon Challenge Documentary - Nova and Questions
Quiz on Cardiovascular System
Marathon Challenge Documentary - Nova and Questions
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Blood Vessels (Vascular System)
Reviewed Heart's Conduction System
http://msjensen.cehd.umn.edu/1135/Links/Animations/Flash/0027-swf_conducting_sys.swf
PowerPoint
Layers of the Heart (Pericardium, Epicardium, Myocardium, Endocardium)
Vascular System (Blood Vessels and their properties)
Cardiac Cycle and Blood Pressure
Section 7 Text Assignment due tomorrow
http://msjensen.cehd.umn.edu/1135/Links/Animations/Flash/0027-swf_conducting_sys.swf
PowerPoint
Layers of the Heart (Pericardium, Epicardium, Myocardium, Endocardium)
Vascular System (Blood Vessels and their properties)
Cardiac Cycle and Blood Pressure
Section 7 Text Assignment due tomorrow
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Conduction System
Path of Blood Through Heart - Review - jigsaw competition
Note - Resting, Maximum and Target Heartrates
Section 7 Text Questions - Handout - DUE Friday
Note - Resting, Maximum and Target Heartrates
Section 7 Text Questions - Handout - DUE Friday
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Section 7 Cardiovascular System
PPT Note: CardioVascular System
Heart Anatomy and Path of Blood through the Heart
labelled the Heart on Page 97 in Workbook, using page 111 in Textbook
See animation at the bottom of the following link: click on figure one at the bottom of the link
http://www.bostonscientific.com/templatedata/imports/HTML/lifebeatonline/winter2007/learning.shtml
Heart Anatomy and Path of Blood through the Heart
labelled the Heart on Page 97 in Workbook, using page 111 in Textbook
See animation at the bottom of the following link: click on figure one at the bottom of the link
http://www.bostonscientific.com/templatedata/imports/HTML/lifebeatonline/winter2007/learning.shtml
Monday, November 9, 2009
Unit Test Sections 4, 5, 6
TEST -Joints and Sport Injuries, Energy Systems, Nervous System & Conscussions
Assigned terms on Page 93 in workbook - Section 7 Cardiovascular System
Assigned terms on Page 93 in workbook - Section 7 Cardiovascular System
Final Jeopardy
Completed Class Jeopardy Game
Correcteed Exercise 4.1, 5.1 and 6.1 in Workbook
Unit Test on Monday
Correcteed Exercise 4.1, 5.1 and 6.1 in Workbook
Unit Test on Monday
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Jeopardy Review
Worked on Section 6 Mix and Match from yesterday.....DUE tomorrow
Jeopardy Review section 4, 5, 6 for Unit Test Monday
Assigned, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1 for review
Jeopardy Review section 4, 5, 6 for Unit Test Monday
Assigned, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1 for review
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Concussions Pt2
Completed videos from yesterday and highlighted SIS and long term dangers of repeated concussions.
Review sheet section 6 mix and match and fill in the blank
Review sheet section 6 mix and match and fill in the blank
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Concussions
Brief review of reflex arc and withdrawl relfex and collected Article Response
PPT Note on Concussions
SAC concussion baseline test - completed this with a partner
Watched HBO Real Sports - Make notes on the Effects of Repeated Concussions
PART 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mB1gFXfOZU
PART 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbxJgN2Udjg&feature=related
ESPN Outside the Lines - Make notes on Secondary Impact Syndrome
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH867uCahEE
Bob MacKenzie commentary on concussions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDxLn8ca1KM
PPT Note on Concussions
SAC concussion baseline test - completed this with a partner
Watched HBO Real Sports - Make notes on the Effects of Repeated Concussions
PART 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mB1gFXfOZU
PART 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbxJgN2Udjg&feature=related
ESPN Outside the Lines - Make notes on Secondary Impact Syndrome
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH867uCahEE
Bob MacKenzie commentary on concussions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDxLn8ca1KM
Monday, November 2, 2009
Relex Arc, GTO and Muscle Spindles
Watched the following videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T4NI_2qDEM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfuhVWK8C0U&feature=related
Read pages 99 - 104 in text and complete terms from Ex 6.2, 6.3, 6.4 and 6.5
Extra time used to work on "Athletes Born vs Made" Article Response - DUE TOMORROW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T4NI_2qDEM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfuhVWK8C0U&feature=related
Read pages 99 - 104 in text and complete terms from Ex 6.2, 6.3, 6.4 and 6.5
Extra time used to work on "Athletes Born vs Made" Article Response - DUE TOMORROW
Friday, October 30, 2009
Article Response Question
It has been said that "athletes are born rather than made through training." Read the 3 articles below and then write a 1 -2 page response stating whether you agree or disagree with the above statement. Give support for your opinions by referring to the above articles or other resources or life experiences.
Due Tuesday November 4
Due Tuesday November 4
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Open Book Quiz Section 5
Open Book Quiz Mix and Match plus Fill in the Blank - Section 5
Time to Work on "Athletes Born or Made" Assignment.....see articles below
Time to Work on "Athletes Born or Made" Assignment.....see articles below
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
What it Takes to Build the Unbeatable Body - Article
WHAT IT TAKES TO BUILD THE UNBEATABLE BODY
Pushing the limits
"How fast can I go? Can I break a record?" "Why not?" replies Bill Kaiser, an aquatics specialist for USA Swimming. He snaps a harness around my midsection. I slip into lane one of the 50-meter pool at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, nod to Kaiser, and shove off the wall. Suddenly my body feels like a bullet ripping through the water. Never have my arms and shoulders rotated with such power. Each stroke seems to propel me twice the usual distance. I feel instantly euphoric, as if my brain were surging with endorphins. Kaiser has hooked my harness to a pulley system known as a tow, a training device that drags a high-performance swimmer 5 percent faster than he usually swims. It allows the swimmer to get a feel for the increased speed, adjust his stroke patterns and body rotations accordingly, and eventually swim faster on his own. In my case, the tow is moving almost 50 percent faster than my norm. Twenty-three seconds later I touch the wall. "Congratulations;" says Kaiser. "You've just: beaten Amy Van Dyken's American record for the 50 free. He's referring to the 50-meter freestyle race Van Dyken swam in 24.87 seconds in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. With that and three other events she became the first American woman to win four gold medals in one Olympics. I'm not an Olympic-caliber competitor, I'm a middle-aged masters swimmer who's won a few medals in nay age group. The human body, I know, did not evolve to swim laps--or to kick a soccer ball or to do somersaults off a ten-meter platform. But as long as humans have had a sense of sport and competition, we have invented ways to push our anatomy to its limits. What are those limits? In this Olympic year I am studying some of the men and women trained to perform as if there were none. Numerous factors--genetic, psychological, cultural, and financial--go into making a super performer, but the right genes may be the most critical. Elite athletes, as these super performers are called, are in a sense fortunate freaks of nature. Take their muscles, for instance. The fibers within most human skeletal muscles are close to evenly divided between fast-twitch fibers, which contract very rapidly, and slow-twitch fibers, which don't contract as quickly but generate energy much more efficiently. Olympic weight lifters have an unusual abundance of fast-twitch fibers; these give them the explosive power to jerk hundreds of pounds from the ground to over their heads in a split second. The legs of elite marathon runners, on the other hand, might contain up to 90 percent slow-twitch fibers, giving them the endurance for longer, aerobic activities. Whether fast-twitchers or slow, however, elite athletes take human performance to a notch we lesser mortals can only imagine. So that I can better understand why I'm among the ranks of those who must imagine, I am escorted to a contraption called the flume. The flume is like a treadmill in water--a 15-foot-long pool with motors that generate precisely controlled currents. The faster the current, the faster the swimmer has to stroke to stay clear of the back of the pool. "You're going to swim for three minutes, then rest for two while we take some measurements," says Larry Herr, an exercise physiologist. "Then we'll increase the speed of the current, and you'll swim another three minutes. We'll do that five times, faster in each set. "This is going to hurt, isn't it?" I say, as a technician straps on a heart-rate monitor. "You can stop anytime," says Herr. The technician inserts a mouthpiece connected by two tubes to a monitor that will measure the air going in and out of my lungs as I swim. That will allow measurement of my VO[sub2] max, or the maximum volume of oxygen I use per minute while exercising as hard as I can. VO2 max is strongly influenced by genetics, but training can increase it as the body becomes more efficient at delivering oxygen to the muscles and using it there. Next, the technician pricks my earlobe for a drop of blood. This will be repeated after each set to measure my lactate level. Lactate is a byproduct of the metabolic process that energizes muscles during the initial stage of intense exercise. This process is anaerobic--it does not use oxygen. Soon after exercise begins, the body switches to oxygen-burning, or aerobic, energy pathways, which fuel longer endurance activity. Normally blood vessels deliver enough oxygen to the muscles and remove enough lactate from them to prevent lactate accumulation. But during a sprint the system may fall behind and lactate may build up. Then cellular fluids become more acid, interfering with muscle contraction and causing fatigue. Training increases heart capacity and the body's network of blood vessels. This increased circulation delivers more oxygen and clears more lactate. Thus the muscles can work longer and harder. Coaches measure lactate levels as one way of evaluating an athlete's level of training. Once my beginning lactate level is established, I'm ready for my first round in the flume. It feels pretty much like a warm-up. After the second round I'm breathing hard. The third round feels like a full-pace effort and leaves me with my heart pounding, but I recover well during the two-minute rest period. Midway through the fourth round my lungs begin to ache. My kick weakens, and my arms feel as if they're moving in slow motion no matter how fast I will them to pull. The same feeling sets in earlier in the final round. With no laps to count, I lose my sense of time. With no wall ahead of me getting closer-nothing to look at and say, "OK, I can get there"--I feel lost in a time warp of pain. The water feels as thick as mud. I can't finish. "Your body went acid," says Herr after examining my biochemical results. "In the third set you hit your lactate threshold--when you couldn't clear all the lactate your muscles were producing." Acidity soared in the next rounds, and my muscles at last shut down. I reached my threshold at about 75 percent of my VO2 max. The untrained, Herr explains, generally reach the same threshold at around 60 percent of VO2 max, while trained athletes don't hit that level until they're at 80 to 85 percent. Athletes rich in slow-twitch muscle fibers appear to have higher lactate thresholds. Elite swimmers regularly approach the heavy lactate threshold of pain. Justin Ewers, an Olympic hopeful from Stanford University, describes it for me. "It's like getting goose bumps with acid in every one, along with deep burning in the lungs and the sensation of dragging lead weights behind you instead of legs." One difference between elites and others is how early the pain starts. "An elite may not feel it until the last three or four seconds of a race. Our training lets us get used to it, and we can ignore it for longer," says Ewers. Lactate threshold aside, Herr gives me many other reasons why I'll never be an elite swimmer--besides the fact that I'm at least 25 years too old. At five feet nine I'm too short. Most male champions are over six feet--taller, more streamlined bodies mean a longer reach and more productive stroke. And I'm a sinker, meaning too much of my body mass is concentrated south of my lungs, creating excess drag. Also, I don't finish my strokes. Depressing as these facts are, there's more to life than swimming--especially at the Olympic Training Center. A short walk from the pool is the weight room, where athletes with entirely different genetic gifts are pushing their limits. It sounds like a demolition zone as intensely focused men and women thrust barbells weighing as much as 500 pounds over their heads, then drop them onto padded platforms. Olympic weight lifting features two types of lifts. In the snatch the lifter propels a heavy barbell from the ground to arm's length overhead in one explosive movement. In the two-part clean and jerk the athlete lifts the bar to shoulder height, then jerks it above his head. All the lifters have large, powerful thighs. In fact it is the upper leg muscles that initiate the lift by pushing downward into the platform at the beginning. Then the lifter uses hip, thigh, and back muscles to propel the bar upward. "This sport's different from what most people think," says Matt Rue, one of the lifters. "It's only 60 percent strength. The strongest guy in the world can't do what we do. What you really need is speed and agility and balance. We can all spring up and slam-dunk a basketball from a dead standstill under the hoop, Surprisingly, a bulky muscle-builder physique is not needed to excel at this sport. More important is a rich supply of fast-twitch muscles, which create the power to heft hundreds of pounds into the air. At about 105 pounds, Tara Nott looks more like the soccer player she once was than a woman capable of jerking 220 pounds. And Jodi Wilhite, a 105-pound teenager from Florence, Texas, was a sprinter on the track team when her high school's football coach spotted her and suggested she try weight lifting. I see Wilhite at work at the American Open Championships--a qualifying event for the Olympics--in Tacoma, Washington. She walks onto the stage and, her face flashing with effort, jerks 177 pounds--a junior American record for her weight. Wilhite tells me she is dreaming of the 2004 Olympics. "But wanting and being there are two different things," she says. Lifters perfect their skills by repeating the same motions over and over until they become almost like reflexes, explains Wilhite. Dragomir Cioroslan, the head U.S. weight-lifting coach in Colorado Springs, had told me: "In one year the average male resident here will lift about seven million pounds in 20,000 reps. It takes thousands and thousands of reps." Wilhite will lift ten million pounds in 80,000 reps between now and 2004. Greg Louganis, winner of four Olympic diving gold medals, says divers must train the same way: "You have less than three seconds from takeoff until you hit the water, so it has to be reflex. You have to repeat the dives hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Louganis credits his thighs, which a biopsy showed to be especially rich in fast-twitch fibers--75 percent--for some of his spectacular success. The higher a diver can jump, the more time he has to complete the movement. But the kind of training it takes to turn physical gifts into automatic motion requires strong mental as well as physical skills. Louganis admits his own drive may have been compulsive: "I equated winning medals with winning love. If I had been more psychologically and emotionally balanced, I wouldn't have--that's not a real healthy place to be. But sport psychologists feel that most consistently successful athletes are psychologically healthy. "They have to be," says Sean McCann, a sport psychologist at the Olympic Training Center. "Otherwise they couldn't handle the training loads we put on them. They have to be good at setting goals, generating energy when they need it, and managing anxiety. Compulsive or not, Louganis found ways to manage his own anxieties. "Most divers think too much about it up there," he says. "They're too much in their heads. I always tried to shift out of the logical side of my brain. What worked for me was humor, l remember thinking about what my mother would say if she saw me do a bomb of a dive. She'd probably just compliment me on the beautiful splash. The flip side of the intense physical and mental work that elite athletes perform is the ever present danger of overtraining--a syndrome that Louganis, like many Olympians, says he confronted. They push so hard they wear their bodies down. "The problem affects about two-thirds of all elite athletes at some point," says Jack Raglin, a sport psychologist at Indiana University. "They get stale and become prone to infections. Not uncommonly, they develop clinical depression. Today most coaches watch carefully fur signs of physical and mental strain in order to keep athletes healthy. And few countries devote more energy to maintaining the health of their athletes than Australia, host to the upcoming Olympic Games and one of the most sports-obsessed places in the world. Some Olympic-caliber Australian athletes live and train at the government-operated Australian Institute for Sport (AIS) in Canberra. They work in state-of-the-art facilities, sleep in dormitories, eat meals tailored to their nutritional needs. A team of experts focuses on their development as parents might, lavishing attention and technology on them. Sport psychologists work with the athletes, teaching techniques for coping with stress, visualizing a winning performance, and setting specific goals, such as beating your best time by a certain date. Physiologists measure lactate levels frequently to help coaches bring athletes to peak performance levels right at competition time. Biomechanics experts analyze minute details of body movement. For rowers they use such tools as instrumented boats that can provide force profiles for every stroke of the oar. The AIS also runs an intensive program for identifying gifted performers. "An elite athlete is the result of a collision--the right person with the right sport," says Deborah Hoare, director of the AIS talent identification program. "In a populous country the odds of that happening are much higher than they are here in Australia. We have to make it happen. "We've modeled the ideal attributes for each sport--speed, strength, or physical traits, for example. Then we go out to high schools to find potential athletes," says Hoare. AIS scouts put students through a series of tests --jumping, sprinting, balancing. They take measurements as well. Rowers should have long arms and legs for maximum leverage, as well as natural endurance. Basketball players need height, speed, agility, long arms, and vertical jumping strength. With only 19 million people in Australia the institute is determined not to miss any potential Olympians. Traditionally strong in swimming and rowing, Australia hopes to win medals in other sports, such as diving, in this Olympics. I visit the Aquatic Centre at Sydney's new Olympic Park for a World Cup diving competition, regarded as a test run for the Olympics. Several dozen female competitors from 30 countries are warming up as I arrive. Attended by a tense silence, the judges take their places alongside the diving well. One by one the divers walk to the edge of the platform and pause, gathering concentration. Then comes a slow, graceful lifting of the arms, a leap skyward, and a twisting, somersaulting dance with gravity. Less than three seconds later, like an arrow, each diver pierces the surface with barely a splash. "People love to watch this on TV," says Valerie Beddoe, top diving manager of the Australian team. "But not many want to do it. It's hard to learn. It's very technical. It's scary. And it takes years to reach the elite level." Also, as graceful as diving looks, repeatedly hitting the water at more than 40 miles an hour can be brutal on the body. The intense work, the injury rate, and the pressures of competition--not just for divers but for all elite athletes--can lead to another widespread problem: the temptation to enhance training with such drugs as anabolic-androgenic steroids, which build unnatural muscle bulk and strength. "Our tests for most drugs are extremely sensitive," says David Gerrard, the physician overseeing the drug testing at the World Cup diving competition in Sydney. "If you tossed a couple of sugar cubes into that diving well, we'd be able to detect it." Officials conduct unannounced drug tests, and athletes with positive results are heavily fined and disqualified from competition. But two of the most popular drugs used by athletes are difficult to detect. Both occur naturally in the body, but when artificial levels are achieved, their effects become exaggerated. Supplements of human growth hormone (hGH) appear to increase muscle mass and strength. Erythropoietin (EPO), released in greater volume by the kidneys when a person goes to a high altitude, tells the body to increase production of oxygen-bearing red blood cells. When injected before competition, EPO enhances aerobic performance. Drugs such as hGH and EPO can cause serious medical complications ranging from arthritis and strokes to liver and cardiovascular disease, but in sports where big money is at stake and the difference between silver and gold may be measured in fractions of a second, athletes seem willing to take the risk. Rampant EPO use scandalized the 1998 Tour de France, and even as I am in Sydney, headlines announce that 22year-old Australian supercyclist Tim Lyons has been suspended from international competition for two years for tests showing excess levels of muscle-building testosterone. The Australians are committed to preventing such abuse at the 2000 Olympics. "It's not cricket," says Nicki Vance, program manager of doping control for the Sydney Games. "Sport is terribly important to this country, and we don't want drugs influencing these games. The Olympics won't be coming back to Australia for decades, and we've got to show the world we can do it right. That won't be easy. In April a scandal hit the country when customs officials seized a bodybuilding hormone ordered from the United States by sport scientist John Pryor, who works with Olympians at the New South Wales Academy of Sport. The drug, called DHEA, is banned by many organizations, including the International Olympic Committee, but is available over the counter in the U.S. Some athletes' body chemistry is naturally enhanced by their environment. Those raised at high altitudes in countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, and Morocco have blood that is especially rich in oxygen-bearing hemoglobin--as long as they continue to train at altitude. Cultural factors have also encouraged their bodies to excel at certain sports. "I had to run ten kilometers to school every day," says Tegla Loroupe, a young woman from the pastoral Pokot tribe in northern Kenya. "I'd be punished if I was late. Loroupe, who has won multiple marathons, including New York City's twice, meets me near the town of Kapenguria, not far from the countryside where she grew up. She now lives near Hanover, Germany, but has returned to Kenya to train for the European track season. Loroupe attributes some of her success to the altitude here--about 8,000 feet--and some to her cultural background. "We make the best runners. We are nomads, moving animals from place to place. As a girl it was my job to carry loads of firewood and water from the river. Today Loroupe, petite at four feet eleven and 86 pounds, runs 120 miles a week. "It's difficult to stay at this level," she admits, "but I have a strong mind. If I want something, I wilt get it. Loroupe exhibited her strong-mindedness at an early age, when her father objected to her running because, as he said, it was not what a woman did. She promised that if he sent her and her brother to boarding school, she would stop, but coaches there insisted otherwise. Her mother and sister secretly urged her on. Today she is a national hero, and her prize money helps support a large extended family. "Last year my father told me he was glad I didn't obey him," she says. A few hours away on the slopes of Mount Kenya, dawn breaking across the African sky, I drive alongside about 50 sleek and determined young runners from the Nyahururu training camp. Roosters crow as their rhythmic pace carries them past missionary schools, country markets, and plots of corn. Their easy, long-limbed stride is as old as this landscape where humans first evolved, but their dreams are of the modern world. They want to be the best-for Kenya, for their fellow runners, and for the big money Kenyans now win in Europe. The camp is little more than a simple two-story concrete-block dorm on the edge of a farming town. "Most Western athletes wouldn't want to train here," says Moses Kiptanui, the camp's founder. Indeed, the camp lacks the high-tech frills common to training camps in wealthy countries, and the schedule is grueling. Each day begins early with a run lasting anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, followed typically by intensive speed work at midday and another endurance run in the afternoon--maybe 15 miles by the end of the day. But complaints are rare. Runners flock to Kiptanui because he has won multiple world championships in distance steeplechases. They also admire his Mercedes. Leg muscles loaded with slow-twitch fibers carry Kenyan runners to their status as the best marathon runners in the world. But it's fast-twitch prowess that drives the high-flying athletes on Russia's national gymnastics teams, dominant in the sport since the 1950s. The team trains much of the year at remote Lake Krugloye, about 25 miles north of Moscow. The camp, surrounded by snowburied farmland in winter, is a run-down complex of institutional brick buildings. But the spacious training gym, outfitted with the most modern equipment, is as bright and warm as a greenhouse the day I arrive. Leonid Arkayev, one of the best and toughest coaches in any sport, oversees about a dozen shirtless male gymnasts as they go from parallel bars to high bar to horse to rings. "They live here," he says. "We train three times a day, six to seven hours, no matter what. Severe, rigid discipline. That's one of the keys to our great success. Like divers--or pianists--gymnasts must turn their complex movements into automatic motor memories through relentless repetition. As I watch them execute their rituals, Arkayev shouts comments to his protege Yevgeny Podgorny, who has just finished a sequence on the parallel bars. "That's very good! Watch your legs! Don't catch the bar too soon. Podgorny mounts the high bar and arcs around it, snapping out of the swing into a somersaulting turn. The next thing I know he's flat on his stomach on the mat. He stands up, shaking his head with disappointment. Arkayev yells something to him in Russian. "That was a move of the highest difficulty," says Arkayev. "Now I've told him to stop. I can see he is mentally tired. We'll work on it later. He points out another of Russia's brightest hopes, a five-foot-three, 22-year-old dynamo named Alexei Bondarenko. As he swings on the high bar, I ask Arkayev what makes him good. "Look at his muscles! They are working muscles,'' he says--extremely strong and explosively powerful, but not bulky. Bondarenko walks over to us, and when I shake his hand, he feels light, as if he might lift off the floor and fly away. Bondarenko weighs about 120 pounds, and that lightness gives him an advantage. It's a matter of physics--larger bodies are harder to accelerate and decelerate. Also, at 120 pounds Bondarenko is less likely to suffer joint and tendon damage than a heavier gymnast when he lands on the mat from a height of 15 feet. Size also explains why most elite female gymnasts are teenagers. Their body mass increases as they mature, making them more vulnerable to injury. And because women add less strength and muscle mass than men as they grow up, they are relatively weaken But strength and compact size are only part of the formula that makes an elite gymnast. "When I was seven," Bondarenko tells me, "my mother brought me to the gym for the first time. I got very excited watching one of the senior boys performing. The coach said to my mother: 'Look at him. He has fire in his eyes. He will be a gymnast!' Bondarenko is also a crowd pleaser. "He is a handsome boy," explains his coach, Valeri Alfosov. "And he has a great aesthetic sense. That's important for gymnastics. You not only have to perform the movement correctly, you have to carry your body in the most beautiful way. Fate did not bless Jason Wening with the same gifts as the Russian gymnasts. But glancing over at him as we're crouched on the blocks, about to begin a 100-yard freestyle race, I realize that more than any athlete I've met, this tousle-haired guy from Ann Arbor, Michigan, embodies the spirit of the world-class athlete. He knows what it means to conquer the unconquerable. Wening, holder of six world records in disabled swimming, was born with multiple birth defects, and doctors amputated his deformed feet in childhood, leaving him with stumps just below the knee. One of his hands is, as he puts it, "goofy," meaning it has only three fingers. "I got lucky with my parents," he says. "I am the oldest son of three, and they never treated me differently. When I was younger, I had a lot of difficulty coming to terms with why I was born the way I was. Who was to blame? Then I discovered disabled swimming, and I made this very conscious choice to be very good at it. I decided to set a world record. Wening set his first record in 1991 at age 16. To compensate for his lower body, he focuses intensely on the most minute details of his stroke, down to the position of his pinky finger as it enters the water. He also swims at least three hours a day. As our race begins, I have the advantage of a leg-driven spring into the water--Wening has to lunge off the blocks from a kneeling position. But as hard as I push, this driven swimmer with barely any kick sweeps past me and beats me by about ten yards. I tell him he's an inspiration, and he shrugs it off. "Why should I be more inspirational than any other athlete you've met? For one thing, no one pays disabled athletes tens of thousands of dollars for winning a gold medal. No one is paying big money for their endorsements or offering stipends so they can train full-time. "Why do you do it?" I ask. "For the simple pleasure," he says after some thought, "of forcing the body and mind I was given to the absolute edge of my capabilities. I'm fascinated by trying to go ever faster. And when I do, I get for just a moment a vision of the limitless potential of the human race. A few weeks later, back home at swim practice, I find my own inspiration in Wening's words. I had been thinking for a while that my best swims were behind me and that my fastest time for the 100 free would remain just that. "How fast can I go?" I start to wonder after a particularly painful sprint. It's not a simple question. The human form has its limitations. And I know the set of genes I got would never have made me world class in any sport. Yet the limits of human performance are set not just by our genes but by our heads as well. I get ready for the next sprint. How fast can I go this time? I'm the only one who can find out.
Pushing the limits
"How fast can I go? Can I break a record?" "Why not?" replies Bill Kaiser, an aquatics specialist for USA Swimming. He snaps a harness around my midsection. I slip into lane one of the 50-meter pool at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, nod to Kaiser, and shove off the wall. Suddenly my body feels like a bullet ripping through the water. Never have my arms and shoulders rotated with such power. Each stroke seems to propel me twice the usual distance. I feel instantly euphoric, as if my brain were surging with endorphins. Kaiser has hooked my harness to a pulley system known as a tow, a training device that drags a high-performance swimmer 5 percent faster than he usually swims. It allows the swimmer to get a feel for the increased speed, adjust his stroke patterns and body rotations accordingly, and eventually swim faster on his own. In my case, the tow is moving almost 50 percent faster than my norm. Twenty-three seconds later I touch the wall. "Congratulations;" says Kaiser. "You've just: beaten Amy Van Dyken's American record for the 50 free. He's referring to the 50-meter freestyle race Van Dyken swam in 24.87 seconds in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. With that and three other events she became the first American woman to win four gold medals in one Olympics. I'm not an Olympic-caliber competitor, I'm a middle-aged masters swimmer who's won a few medals in nay age group. The human body, I know, did not evolve to swim laps--or to kick a soccer ball or to do somersaults off a ten-meter platform. But as long as humans have had a sense of sport and competition, we have invented ways to push our anatomy to its limits. What are those limits? In this Olympic year I am studying some of the men and women trained to perform as if there were none. Numerous factors--genetic, psychological, cultural, and financial--go into making a super performer, but the right genes may be the most critical. Elite athletes, as these super performers are called, are in a sense fortunate freaks of nature. Take their muscles, for instance. The fibers within most human skeletal muscles are close to evenly divided between fast-twitch fibers, which contract very rapidly, and slow-twitch fibers, which don't contract as quickly but generate energy much more efficiently. Olympic weight lifters have an unusual abundance of fast-twitch fibers; these give them the explosive power to jerk hundreds of pounds from the ground to over their heads in a split second. The legs of elite marathon runners, on the other hand, might contain up to 90 percent slow-twitch fibers, giving them the endurance for longer, aerobic activities. Whether fast-twitchers or slow, however, elite athletes take human performance to a notch we lesser mortals can only imagine. So that I can better understand why I'm among the ranks of those who must imagine, I am escorted to a contraption called the flume. The flume is like a treadmill in water--a 15-foot-long pool with motors that generate precisely controlled currents. The faster the current, the faster the swimmer has to stroke to stay clear of the back of the pool. "You're going to swim for three minutes, then rest for two while we take some measurements," says Larry Herr, an exercise physiologist. "Then we'll increase the speed of the current, and you'll swim another three minutes. We'll do that five times, faster in each set. "This is going to hurt, isn't it?" I say, as a technician straps on a heart-rate monitor. "You can stop anytime," says Herr. The technician inserts a mouthpiece connected by two tubes to a monitor that will measure the air going in and out of my lungs as I swim. That will allow measurement of my VO[sub2] max, or the maximum volume of oxygen I use per minute while exercising as hard as I can. VO2 max is strongly influenced by genetics, but training can increase it as the body becomes more efficient at delivering oxygen to the muscles and using it there. Next, the technician pricks my earlobe for a drop of blood. This will be repeated after each set to measure my lactate level. Lactate is a byproduct of the metabolic process that energizes muscles during the initial stage of intense exercise. This process is anaerobic--it does not use oxygen. Soon after exercise begins, the body switches to oxygen-burning, or aerobic, energy pathways, which fuel longer endurance activity. Normally blood vessels deliver enough oxygen to the muscles and remove enough lactate from them to prevent lactate accumulation. But during a sprint the system may fall behind and lactate may build up. Then cellular fluids become more acid, interfering with muscle contraction and causing fatigue. Training increases heart capacity and the body's network of blood vessels. This increased circulation delivers more oxygen and clears more lactate. Thus the muscles can work longer and harder. Coaches measure lactate levels as one way of evaluating an athlete's level of training. Once my beginning lactate level is established, I'm ready for my first round in the flume. It feels pretty much like a warm-up. After the second round I'm breathing hard. The third round feels like a full-pace effort and leaves me with my heart pounding, but I recover well during the two-minute rest period. Midway through the fourth round my lungs begin to ache. My kick weakens, and my arms feel as if they're moving in slow motion no matter how fast I will them to pull. The same feeling sets in earlier in the final round. With no laps to count, I lose my sense of time. With no wall ahead of me getting closer-nothing to look at and say, "OK, I can get there"--I feel lost in a time warp of pain. The water feels as thick as mud. I can't finish. "Your body went acid," says Herr after examining my biochemical results. "In the third set you hit your lactate threshold--when you couldn't clear all the lactate your muscles were producing." Acidity soared in the next rounds, and my muscles at last shut down. I reached my threshold at about 75 percent of my VO2 max. The untrained, Herr explains, generally reach the same threshold at around 60 percent of VO2 max, while trained athletes don't hit that level until they're at 80 to 85 percent. Athletes rich in slow-twitch muscle fibers appear to have higher lactate thresholds. Elite swimmers regularly approach the heavy lactate threshold of pain. Justin Ewers, an Olympic hopeful from Stanford University, describes it for me. "It's like getting goose bumps with acid in every one, along with deep burning in the lungs and the sensation of dragging lead weights behind you instead of legs." One difference between elites and others is how early the pain starts. "An elite may not feel it until the last three or four seconds of a race. Our training lets us get used to it, and we can ignore it for longer," says Ewers. Lactate threshold aside, Herr gives me many other reasons why I'll never be an elite swimmer--besides the fact that I'm at least 25 years too old. At five feet nine I'm too short. Most male champions are over six feet--taller, more streamlined bodies mean a longer reach and more productive stroke. And I'm a sinker, meaning too much of my body mass is concentrated south of my lungs, creating excess drag. Also, I don't finish my strokes. Depressing as these facts are, there's more to life than swimming--especially at the Olympic Training Center. A short walk from the pool is the weight room, where athletes with entirely different genetic gifts are pushing their limits. It sounds like a demolition zone as intensely focused men and women thrust barbells weighing as much as 500 pounds over their heads, then drop them onto padded platforms. Olympic weight lifting features two types of lifts. In the snatch the lifter propels a heavy barbell from the ground to arm's length overhead in one explosive movement. In the two-part clean and jerk the athlete lifts the bar to shoulder height, then jerks it above his head. All the lifters have large, powerful thighs. In fact it is the upper leg muscles that initiate the lift by pushing downward into the platform at the beginning. Then the lifter uses hip, thigh, and back muscles to propel the bar upward. "This sport's different from what most people think," says Matt Rue, one of the lifters. "It's only 60 percent strength. The strongest guy in the world can't do what we do. What you really need is speed and agility and balance. We can all spring up and slam-dunk a basketball from a dead standstill under the hoop, Surprisingly, a bulky muscle-builder physique is not needed to excel at this sport. More important is a rich supply of fast-twitch muscles, which create the power to heft hundreds of pounds into the air. At about 105 pounds, Tara Nott looks more like the soccer player she once was than a woman capable of jerking 220 pounds. And Jodi Wilhite, a 105-pound teenager from Florence, Texas, was a sprinter on the track team when her high school's football coach spotted her and suggested she try weight lifting. I see Wilhite at work at the American Open Championships--a qualifying event for the Olympics--in Tacoma, Washington. She walks onto the stage and, her face flashing with effort, jerks 177 pounds--a junior American record for her weight. Wilhite tells me she is dreaming of the 2004 Olympics. "But wanting and being there are two different things," she says. Lifters perfect their skills by repeating the same motions over and over until they become almost like reflexes, explains Wilhite. Dragomir Cioroslan, the head U.S. weight-lifting coach in Colorado Springs, had told me: "In one year the average male resident here will lift about seven million pounds in 20,000 reps. It takes thousands and thousands of reps." Wilhite will lift ten million pounds in 80,000 reps between now and 2004. Greg Louganis, winner of four Olympic diving gold medals, says divers must train the same way: "You have less than three seconds from takeoff until you hit the water, so it has to be reflex. You have to repeat the dives hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Louganis credits his thighs, which a biopsy showed to be especially rich in fast-twitch fibers--75 percent--for some of his spectacular success. The higher a diver can jump, the more time he has to complete the movement. But the kind of training it takes to turn physical gifts into automatic motion requires strong mental as well as physical skills. Louganis admits his own drive may have been compulsive: "I equated winning medals with winning love. If I had been more psychologically and emotionally balanced, I wouldn't have--that's not a real healthy place to be. But sport psychologists feel that most consistently successful athletes are psychologically healthy. "They have to be," says Sean McCann, a sport psychologist at the Olympic Training Center. "Otherwise they couldn't handle the training loads we put on them. They have to be good at setting goals, generating energy when they need it, and managing anxiety. Compulsive or not, Louganis found ways to manage his own anxieties. "Most divers think too much about it up there," he says. "They're too much in their heads. I always tried to shift out of the logical side of my brain. What worked for me was humor, l remember thinking about what my mother would say if she saw me do a bomb of a dive. She'd probably just compliment me on the beautiful splash. The flip side of the intense physical and mental work that elite athletes perform is the ever present danger of overtraining--a syndrome that Louganis, like many Olympians, says he confronted. They push so hard they wear their bodies down. "The problem affects about two-thirds of all elite athletes at some point," says Jack Raglin, a sport psychologist at Indiana University. "They get stale and become prone to infections. Not uncommonly, they develop clinical depression. Today most coaches watch carefully fur signs of physical and mental strain in order to keep athletes healthy. And few countries devote more energy to maintaining the health of their athletes than Australia, host to the upcoming Olympic Games and one of the most sports-obsessed places in the world. Some Olympic-caliber Australian athletes live and train at the government-operated Australian Institute for Sport (AIS) in Canberra. They work in state-of-the-art facilities, sleep in dormitories, eat meals tailored to their nutritional needs. A team of experts focuses on their development as parents might, lavishing attention and technology on them. Sport psychologists work with the athletes, teaching techniques for coping with stress, visualizing a winning performance, and setting specific goals, such as beating your best time by a certain date. Physiologists measure lactate levels frequently to help coaches bring athletes to peak performance levels right at competition time. Biomechanics experts analyze minute details of body movement. For rowers they use such tools as instrumented boats that can provide force profiles for every stroke of the oar. The AIS also runs an intensive program for identifying gifted performers. "An elite athlete is the result of a collision--the right person with the right sport," says Deborah Hoare, director of the AIS talent identification program. "In a populous country the odds of that happening are much higher than they are here in Australia. We have to make it happen. "We've modeled the ideal attributes for each sport--speed, strength, or physical traits, for example. Then we go out to high schools to find potential athletes," says Hoare. AIS scouts put students through a series of tests --jumping, sprinting, balancing. They take measurements as well. Rowers should have long arms and legs for maximum leverage, as well as natural endurance. Basketball players need height, speed, agility, long arms, and vertical jumping strength. With only 19 million people in Australia the institute is determined not to miss any potential Olympians. Traditionally strong in swimming and rowing, Australia hopes to win medals in other sports, such as diving, in this Olympics. I visit the Aquatic Centre at Sydney's new Olympic Park for a World Cup diving competition, regarded as a test run for the Olympics. Several dozen female competitors from 30 countries are warming up as I arrive. Attended by a tense silence, the judges take their places alongside the diving well. One by one the divers walk to the edge of the platform and pause, gathering concentration. Then comes a slow, graceful lifting of the arms, a leap skyward, and a twisting, somersaulting dance with gravity. Less than three seconds later, like an arrow, each diver pierces the surface with barely a splash. "People love to watch this on TV," says Valerie Beddoe, top diving manager of the Australian team. "But not many want to do it. It's hard to learn. It's very technical. It's scary. And it takes years to reach the elite level." Also, as graceful as diving looks, repeatedly hitting the water at more than 40 miles an hour can be brutal on the body. The intense work, the injury rate, and the pressures of competition--not just for divers but for all elite athletes--can lead to another widespread problem: the temptation to enhance training with such drugs as anabolic-androgenic steroids, which build unnatural muscle bulk and strength. "Our tests for most drugs are extremely sensitive," says David Gerrard, the physician overseeing the drug testing at the World Cup diving competition in Sydney. "If you tossed a couple of sugar cubes into that diving well, we'd be able to detect it." Officials conduct unannounced drug tests, and athletes with positive results are heavily fined and disqualified from competition. But two of the most popular drugs used by athletes are difficult to detect. Both occur naturally in the body, but when artificial levels are achieved, their effects become exaggerated. Supplements of human growth hormone (hGH) appear to increase muscle mass and strength. Erythropoietin (EPO), released in greater volume by the kidneys when a person goes to a high altitude, tells the body to increase production of oxygen-bearing red blood cells. When injected before competition, EPO enhances aerobic performance. Drugs such as hGH and EPO can cause serious medical complications ranging from arthritis and strokes to liver and cardiovascular disease, but in sports where big money is at stake and the difference between silver and gold may be measured in fractions of a second, athletes seem willing to take the risk. Rampant EPO use scandalized the 1998 Tour de France, and even as I am in Sydney, headlines announce that 22year-old Australian supercyclist Tim Lyons has been suspended from international competition for two years for tests showing excess levels of muscle-building testosterone. The Australians are committed to preventing such abuse at the 2000 Olympics. "It's not cricket," says Nicki Vance, program manager of doping control for the Sydney Games. "Sport is terribly important to this country, and we don't want drugs influencing these games. The Olympics won't be coming back to Australia for decades, and we've got to show the world we can do it right. That won't be easy. In April a scandal hit the country when customs officials seized a bodybuilding hormone ordered from the United States by sport scientist John Pryor, who works with Olympians at the New South Wales Academy of Sport. The drug, called DHEA, is banned by many organizations, including the International Olympic Committee, but is available over the counter in the U.S. Some athletes' body chemistry is naturally enhanced by their environment. Those raised at high altitudes in countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, and Morocco have blood that is especially rich in oxygen-bearing hemoglobin--as long as they continue to train at altitude. Cultural factors have also encouraged their bodies to excel at certain sports. "I had to run ten kilometers to school every day," says Tegla Loroupe, a young woman from the pastoral Pokot tribe in northern Kenya. "I'd be punished if I was late. Loroupe, who has won multiple marathons, including New York City's twice, meets me near the town of Kapenguria, not far from the countryside where she grew up. She now lives near Hanover, Germany, but has returned to Kenya to train for the European track season. Loroupe attributes some of her success to the altitude here--about 8,000 feet--and some to her cultural background. "We make the best runners. We are nomads, moving animals from place to place. As a girl it was my job to carry loads of firewood and water from the river. Today Loroupe, petite at four feet eleven and 86 pounds, runs 120 miles a week. "It's difficult to stay at this level," she admits, "but I have a strong mind. If I want something, I wilt get it. Loroupe exhibited her strong-mindedness at an early age, when her father objected to her running because, as he said, it was not what a woman did. She promised that if he sent her and her brother to boarding school, she would stop, but coaches there insisted otherwise. Her mother and sister secretly urged her on. Today she is a national hero, and her prize money helps support a large extended family. "Last year my father told me he was glad I didn't obey him," she says. A few hours away on the slopes of Mount Kenya, dawn breaking across the African sky, I drive alongside about 50 sleek and determined young runners from the Nyahururu training camp. Roosters crow as their rhythmic pace carries them past missionary schools, country markets, and plots of corn. Their easy, long-limbed stride is as old as this landscape where humans first evolved, but their dreams are of the modern world. They want to be the best-for Kenya, for their fellow runners, and for the big money Kenyans now win in Europe. The camp is little more than a simple two-story concrete-block dorm on the edge of a farming town. "Most Western athletes wouldn't want to train here," says Moses Kiptanui, the camp's founder. Indeed, the camp lacks the high-tech frills common to training camps in wealthy countries, and the schedule is grueling. Each day begins early with a run lasting anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, followed typically by intensive speed work at midday and another endurance run in the afternoon--maybe 15 miles by the end of the day. But complaints are rare. Runners flock to Kiptanui because he has won multiple world championships in distance steeplechases. They also admire his Mercedes. Leg muscles loaded with slow-twitch fibers carry Kenyan runners to their status as the best marathon runners in the world. But it's fast-twitch prowess that drives the high-flying athletes on Russia's national gymnastics teams, dominant in the sport since the 1950s. The team trains much of the year at remote Lake Krugloye, about 25 miles north of Moscow. The camp, surrounded by snowburied farmland in winter, is a run-down complex of institutional brick buildings. But the spacious training gym, outfitted with the most modern equipment, is as bright and warm as a greenhouse the day I arrive. Leonid Arkayev, one of the best and toughest coaches in any sport, oversees about a dozen shirtless male gymnasts as they go from parallel bars to high bar to horse to rings. "They live here," he says. "We train three times a day, six to seven hours, no matter what. Severe, rigid discipline. That's one of the keys to our great success. Like divers--or pianists--gymnasts must turn their complex movements into automatic motor memories through relentless repetition. As I watch them execute their rituals, Arkayev shouts comments to his protege Yevgeny Podgorny, who has just finished a sequence on the parallel bars. "That's very good! Watch your legs! Don't catch the bar too soon. Podgorny mounts the high bar and arcs around it, snapping out of the swing into a somersaulting turn. The next thing I know he's flat on his stomach on the mat. He stands up, shaking his head with disappointment. Arkayev yells something to him in Russian. "That was a move of the highest difficulty," says Arkayev. "Now I've told him to stop. I can see he is mentally tired. We'll work on it later. He points out another of Russia's brightest hopes, a five-foot-three, 22-year-old dynamo named Alexei Bondarenko. As he swings on the high bar, I ask Arkayev what makes him good. "Look at his muscles! They are working muscles,'' he says--extremely strong and explosively powerful, but not bulky. Bondarenko walks over to us, and when I shake his hand, he feels light, as if he might lift off the floor and fly away. Bondarenko weighs about 120 pounds, and that lightness gives him an advantage. It's a matter of physics--larger bodies are harder to accelerate and decelerate. Also, at 120 pounds Bondarenko is less likely to suffer joint and tendon damage than a heavier gymnast when he lands on the mat from a height of 15 feet. Size also explains why most elite female gymnasts are teenagers. Their body mass increases as they mature, making them more vulnerable to injury. And because women add less strength and muscle mass than men as they grow up, they are relatively weaken But strength and compact size are only part of the formula that makes an elite gymnast. "When I was seven," Bondarenko tells me, "my mother brought me to the gym for the first time. I got very excited watching one of the senior boys performing. The coach said to my mother: 'Look at him. He has fire in his eyes. He will be a gymnast!' Bondarenko is also a crowd pleaser. "He is a handsome boy," explains his coach, Valeri Alfosov. "And he has a great aesthetic sense. That's important for gymnastics. You not only have to perform the movement correctly, you have to carry your body in the most beautiful way. Fate did not bless Jason Wening with the same gifts as the Russian gymnasts. But glancing over at him as we're crouched on the blocks, about to begin a 100-yard freestyle race, I realize that more than any athlete I've met, this tousle-haired guy from Ann Arbor, Michigan, embodies the spirit of the world-class athlete. He knows what it means to conquer the unconquerable. Wening, holder of six world records in disabled swimming, was born with multiple birth defects, and doctors amputated his deformed feet in childhood, leaving him with stumps just below the knee. One of his hands is, as he puts it, "goofy," meaning it has only three fingers. "I got lucky with my parents," he says. "I am the oldest son of three, and they never treated me differently. When I was younger, I had a lot of difficulty coming to terms with why I was born the way I was. Who was to blame? Then I discovered disabled swimming, and I made this very conscious choice to be very good at it. I decided to set a world record. Wening set his first record in 1991 at age 16. To compensate for his lower body, he focuses intensely on the most minute details of his stroke, down to the position of his pinky finger as it enters the water. He also swims at least three hours a day. As our race begins, I have the advantage of a leg-driven spring into the water--Wening has to lunge off the blocks from a kneeling position. But as hard as I push, this driven swimmer with barely any kick sweeps past me and beats me by about ten yards. I tell him he's an inspiration, and he shrugs it off. "Why should I be more inspirational than any other athlete you've met? For one thing, no one pays disabled athletes tens of thousands of dollars for winning a gold medal. No one is paying big money for their endorsements or offering stipends so they can train full-time. "Why do you do it?" I ask. "For the simple pleasure," he says after some thought, "of forcing the body and mind I was given to the absolute edge of my capabilities. I'm fascinated by trying to go ever faster. And when I do, I get for just a moment a vision of the limitless potential of the human race. A few weeks later, back home at swim practice, I find my own inspiration in Wening's words. I had been thinking for a while that my best swims were behind me and that my fastest time for the 100 free would remain just that. "How fast can I go?" I start to wonder after a particularly painful sprint. It's not a simple question. The human form has its limitations. And I know the set of genes I got would never have made me world class in any sport. Yet the limits of human performance are set not just by our genes but by our heads as well. I get ready for the next sprint. How fast can I go this time? I'm the only one who can find out.
Muscle Fiber Types
PowerPoint Note on Fast Twitch and Slow Twitch Muscle Fibers
Passed out two articles for reading - we will be working on this tomorrow.
I will put the articles in their own posts on the blog following this one.
Muscular Fatigue Lab is due tomorrow.
Passed out two articles for reading - we will be working on this tomorrow.
I will put the articles in their own posts on the blog following this one.
Muscular Fatigue Lab is due tomorrow.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Muscular Fatigue Lab
Tennis Ball Lab today with Graph and Analysis due on Thursday.
Collected Section 5 additional textbook questions
Collected Section 5 additional textbook questions
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Friday Oct. 23
Correct Workbook Ex 5.3 and 5.4
Watched DVD SuperHumans - Genetics and Performance and answered Questions
Watched DVD SuperHumans - Genetics and Performance and answered Questions
Independent Work Section 5
Wednesday and Thursday - Complete the following as I am away
Ex. 5.3 and 5.4 in your Workbook
Additional Text Questions using pages 81 - 85 - these are DUE on MONDAY
Ex. 5.3 and 5.4 in your Workbook
Additional Text Questions using pages 81 - 85 - these are DUE on MONDAY
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Section 5 Energy Systems
Lecture on muscular energy production and the 3 Main Energy Pathways.
PowerPoint on the 3 Energy Systems
Assigned terms in W.B. Ex. 5.2 and exercise 5.3 and 5.4 for Thursday.
Wednesday - independent work period - I am away
PowerPoint on the 3 Energy Systems
Assigned terms in W.B. Ex. 5.2 and exercise 5.3 and 5.4 for Thursday.
Wednesday - independent work period - I am away
Monday, October 19, 2009
Joint Construction Projects
Presented Joint Construction Projects and Completed Walkaround Peer Evaluation
Exercise 4.6 due tomorrow - weight training, muslces and actions.
Exercise 4.6 due tomorrow - weight training, muslces and actions.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Muscle Lab in the Lair
Assigned Exercise 4.6 due next Tuesday....work period to complete exercises in LAIR
Joint Construction Assignment due on Monday
Joint Construction Assignment due on Monday
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Ankle Taping
Terry Fox today with short periods.
Watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnbKqMHgGmc video of an ankle tape job.
Taped one ankle at each table.
Watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnbKqMHgGmc video of an ankle tape job.
Taped one ankle at each table.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Knee Shoulder and Ankle Injuries
Collected Section 4 mix and match and Fill in the Blank
Completed PowerPoints on Knee Inuries, Shoulder Injuries and Ankle Sprains
Tomorrow Terry Fox and Ankle Taping
Completed PowerPoints on Knee Inuries, Shoulder Injuries and Ankle Sprains
Tomorrow Terry Fox and Ankle Taping
Friday October 9th
Quiz on Injuries and Joint mechanics
Video and Questions on Arthroscipic Surgery Knee and Shoulder - Dr. Oz
Video and Questions on Arthroscipic Surgery Knee and Shoulder - Dr. Oz
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Sports Medicine PPT
PowerPoint Sports Medicine - How injuries occur, role of therapist, examples and SHARP for signs and symptoms of injuries
Acute vs Chronic Injuries
Assigned Section 4 mix and match/fill in the blank
Acute vs Chronic Injuries
Assigned Section 4 mix and match/fill in the blank
Joint Construction Topics
Due Monday October 19th
Jenny/Holly - Knee
Any/Kendra - Knee
Mike G - Knee
Rob/Natalie - wrist
Caleigh/Jessie - ankle
Tim - shoulder
Holly/Curtis - shoulder
Andrew/Trevor - elbow
Alikhan/Lukas - elbow
Luke/Andrew - elbow
Pietr/Blake - ankle
Britt/Stephanie - shoulder
Jazmin - ankle
Jenny/Holly - Knee
Any/Kendra - Knee
Mike G - Knee
Rob/Natalie - wrist
Caleigh/Jessie - ankle
Tim - shoulder
Holly/Curtis - shoulder
Andrew/Trevor - elbow
Alikhan/Lukas - elbow
Luke/Andrew - elbow
Pietr/Blake - ankle
Britt/Stephanie - shoulder
Jazmin - ankle
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Joint Classification
Assigned topics for Joint Construction Assignment
PowerPoint - Classification of Joints based on 1. Function and 2. Structure
Typical Synovial Joint Diagram and Parts
6 Types of Synovial Joints
PowerPoint - Classification of Joints based on 1. Function and 2. Structure
Typical Synovial Joint Diagram and Parts
6 Types of Synovial Joints
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Section 4 Reading and Terms
Reading Period - all terms assigned for Section 4 - Exercise 4.1 and Exercise 4.2 - Label the Typical Synovial Joint Diagram
Create a Joint Portfolio Assignment Handed Out - Due Monday October 19th.
Create a Joint Portfolio Assignment Handed Out - Due Monday October 19th.
Playing with Pain DVD
Started section 4 today - Joints and Sports Injuries
Watched DVD - Playing with Pain and completed questions
Watched DVD - Playing with Pain and completed questions
Friday, October 2, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Review
Skeleton Review with Partner "Box" Quiz #1 - 20
FLASH Card Review - muscles and bones
Corrected Ex. 1.1, 2.1, 3.1 multiple choice
Crossword 2.6 skeleton and showed online crosswords
Went over test outline.
Unit Test Tomorrow
FLASH Card Review - muscles and bones
Corrected Ex. 1.1, 2.1, 3.1 multiple choice
Crossword 2.6 skeleton and showed online crosswords
Went over test outline.
Unit Test Tomorrow
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Sarcomere Revisited, Sliding Filament and Review
Labelled the parts of a Sarcomere, including A Band, I Band and H Zone (band).
Reviewed Sliding Filament Theory in Groups
Watched 2 animations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ren_IQPOhJc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ309LfHQ3M
Review for Thursday's Test - Ex. 1.1, 2.1, 3.1.....multiple choice and short answers.
Reviewed Sliding Filament Theory in Groups
Watched 2 animations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ren_IQPOhJc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ309LfHQ3M
Review for Thursday's Test - Ex. 1.1, 2.1, 3.1.....multiple choice and short answers.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sliding Filament Theory
Reviewed Major Muscles with Muscle Man Handout and Legend
Antagonistic Pairs of Muscles - agonist and antagonist in Workbook Ex 3.3
Sliding Filament Theory (Excitation-Contraction Coupling) in Workbook Ex 3.16 - completed as a class
Antagonistic Pairs of Muscles - agonist and antagonist in Workbook Ex 3.3
Sliding Filament Theory (Excitation-Contraction Coupling) in Workbook Ex 3.16 - completed as a class
Thursday, September 24, 2009
More Muscles
Warm Up - naming muscles on body building pictures
Reviewed names of major muscles at the following link:
http://www.gwc.maricopa.edu/class/bio201/muscle/musc13.htm
Assigned remainder of origins and insertions in Workbook pages 57 - 64
Quiz Tomorrow - Open Workbook
Reviewed names of major muscles at the following link:
http://www.gwc.maricopa.edu/class/bio201/muscle/musc13.htm
Assigned remainder of origins and insertions in Workbook pages 57 - 64
Quiz Tomorrow - Open Workbook
Naming Muscles Wed Sept 23
Naming Muscles - Note PPT
Labelled Muscle Men in workbook
Started Colouring specific muscles and identifying origin/insertion and function
Labelled Muscle Men in workbook
Started Colouring specific muscles and identifying origin/insertion and function
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Anatomy of Skeletal Muscle
Read pages 33 - 37 and added key terms into workbook up to "Sarcomere"
All or None Principle and how motor units are used to vary the amount of Force Muscles Produce
NeuorMuscular Junction - labelled in workbook Ex 3.5 left diagram
Anatomy of Muscle from Large to Small - labelled Ex 3.4 upper left diagram
Connective Tissue (endomysium, perimysium and epimysium)
All or None Principle and how motor units are used to vary the amount of Force Muscles Produce
NeuorMuscular Junction - labelled in workbook Ex 3.5 left diagram
Anatomy of Muscle from Large to Small - labelled Ex 3.4 upper left diagram
Connective Tissue (endomysium, perimysium and epimysium)
Monday, September 21, 2009
Section 3 Muscular System
Collected Skeletal Landmark and Section 2 Mix and Match
Video Clip - The Incredible Human Machine
NOTE: Muscle Functions, Types of Muscle and Motor Unit
Read pages 33 - 36 and define Key Terms in workbook
Video Clip - The Incredible Human Machine
NOTE: Muscle Functions, Types of Muscle and Motor Unit
Read pages 33 - 36 and define Key Terms in workbook
Friday September 17 Work Period
Completed Skeleton Landmark Lab - DUE MONDAY
Section 2 MIX and MATCH and FILL in the BLANK also due Monday
Section 2 MIX and MATCH and FILL in the BLANK also due Monday
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Skeletal Landmark Lab
Quiz - Major Bones of the Skeleton
PPT Note - bone remodelling, bone growth and fractures
Started Skeletal Landmark Lab
PPT Note - bone remodelling, bone growth and fractures
Started Skeletal Landmark Lab
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Skeleton in More Details
Review envelopes Language of Anatomy
Bone Formation and Remodelling - PPT (viewer problems do tomorrow).
Workbook Labelling on Skeletal Landmarks on specific bones
Tomorrow
Quiz - skeleton major bones
Tshirts and Shorts tomorrow - landmark lab
Bone Formation and Remodelling - PPT (viewer problems do tomorrow).
Workbook Labelling on Skeletal Landmarks on specific bones
Tomorrow
Quiz - skeleton major bones
Tshirts and Shorts tomorrow - landmark lab
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Skeleton Major Bones
Corrected Ex 2.3 and 2.4 in Workbook
PowerPoint Note: Functions of Skeleton, Axial vs Appendicular, Anatomy of a Long Bone
Labelled Full Skeleton in Workbook with major bones and reviewed on Skeletor
HMWK: finish off terms from page 20 in Workbook.
PowerPoint Note: Functions of Skeleton, Axial vs Appendicular, Anatomy of a Long Bone
Labelled Full Skeleton in Workbook with major bones and reviewed on Skeletor
HMWK: finish off terms from page 20 in Workbook.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Section 2 Skeletal System
Discussed South African Sprinter
Read pages 9 - 12 and added KEY TERMS to Workbook Ex. 2.2
PowerPoint NOTE: Language of Anatomy
Assigned Ex. 2.3 and 2.4 (Body's 5 types of bone)
Returned Section 1 Quiz
Read pages 9 - 12 and added KEY TERMS to Workbook Ex. 2.2
PowerPoint NOTE: Language of Anatomy
Assigned Ex. 2.3 and 2.4 (Body's 5 types of bone)
Returned Section 1 Quiz
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Quiz #1 Friday September 11
Corrected exercise 1.4 and yesterday's worksheet on Directions, Planes and Movements
Quiz #1 Mix and Match/Fill in the Blank for Section 1 and correction
Assigned Online Quiz #1 and Bell Ringer for Section 1 before Monday.
Quiz #1 Mix and Match/Fill in the Blank for Section 1 and correction
Assigned Online Quiz #1 and Bell Ringer for Section 1 before Monday.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Online Quizzes, Bellringers and Crosswords
Bookmark the following website as we will be using it throughout the semester.
http://www.thompsonbooks.com/exercisescience
Before Monday September 14
Complete the Section 1 Student Quiz and email your result to physed@cogeco.ca
Complete the Bell Ringer (right hand side) and email your result to physed@cogeco.ca
http://www.thompsonbooks.com/exercisescience
Before Monday September 14
Complete the Section 1 Student Quiz and email your result to physed@cogeco.ca
Complete the Bell Ringer (right hand side) and email your result to physed@cogeco.ca
Anatomical Directions and Movements
Corrected Ex. 1.3 in Workbook
Completed PPT note on Anatomical Directions and Movements
Add elevation/depression, superficial/deep, inversion, eversion from textbook to notes
HMWK: Planes, Directions and Movements Worksheet plus exercise 1.4 in W.B.
Quiz Tomorrow - Ex. 1.1 in WB for preparation
Completed PPT note on Anatomical Directions and Movements
Add elevation/depression, superficial/deep, inversion, eversion from textbook to notes
HMWK: Planes, Directions and Movements Worksheet plus exercise 1.4 in W.B.
Quiz Tomorrow - Ex. 1.1 in WB for preparation
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Anatomical Position, Planes and Axes
Passed out "Eye Opener" Assignment - choose 3 dates and resubmit your paper as soon as possible....check out http://www.getbodysmart.com/ as a valuable resource for anatomy.
PowerPoint Section 1 Anatomical Position, Planes and Axes
Assigned Textbook Reading pages 2 - 6 and workbook Exercise 1.3
PowerPoint Section 1 Anatomical Position, Planes and Axes
Assigned Textbook Reading pages 2 - 6 and workbook Exercise 1.3
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