• Science is both wonderful and necessary. Wonderful for the soul – in contemplation, say of deep space and deep time from the rim of the Grand Canyon. But also necessary: for society, for our well-being, for our short-term and long-term future.
• Science really matters for life – and by “science” I mean not just scientific facts, but the scientific way of thinking.
• Political decisions, decisions of state, policies for the future, should flow from clear-thinking, rational considerations of all the options, the evidence bearing upon them, and their likely consequences.
• A scientist is much more likely to lie to a spouse or a tax inspector than to a scientific journal.
• The product of natural selection, life in all its forms, is beautiful and rich. But the process is vicious, brutal and short-sighted.
• Rewards are states of the world which, when encountered, cause an animal to repeat whatever it recently did. Punishments are states of the world which, when encountered, cause an animal to avoid repeating whatever it recently did.
• In the absence of artificial breeding, our own values are presumably influenced by natural selection under conditions that prevailed in the Pleistocene epoch in Africa.
• The genes that survive are the ones that wired up ancestral brains with appropriate rules of thumb, actions that had consequence, in ancestral environments, of assisting survival and reproduction. Our modern urban environment is very different, but the genes cannot be expected to have adjusted – there hasn’t been time for the slow process of natural selection to catch up.
• Brains, if they are big enough, can run all sorts of hypothetical scenarios through their imaginations and calculate the consequences of alternative courses of action.
• Brains as big as ours, as I’ve already argued, can actively rebel against the dictates of the naturally selected genes that built them.
• Much of what we read of Jehovah makes it hard to see him as a good role model, whether we think of him as factual or fictitious character. The texts show him to be jealous, vindictive, spiteful, capricious, humourless and cruel. He was also, in modern terms, sexist, and an inciter to racial violence.
• The future is a new invention in evolution. It is precious. And fragile. We must use all our scientific artifice to protect it.
• No longer a baffling mystery demanding supernatural explanation, life, with the complexity and elegance that define it, grows and gradually emerges, by easily understood rules, from simple beginnings. Darwin’s legacy to the twentieth century was to demystify the greatest mystery of all.
• The habit of questioning authority is one of the most valuable gifts that a book, or a teacher, can give a young would-be scientist. Don’t just accept what everybody tells you – think for yourself.
• It is in the nature of scientific truths that they are waiting to be discovered, by whoever has the ability to do so. If two different people independently discover something in science, it will be the same truth.
• If Shakespeare had never lived, nobody else would have written Macbeth. If Darwin had never lived, somebody else would have discovered natural selection.
• Natural selection not only explains everything we know about life. It does so with power, elegance and economy.
• If you find something, anywhere in the universe, whose structure is complex and gives the strong appearance of having been designed for a purpose, then that something either is alive, or was once alive, or is an artefact created by something alive.
• The great virtue of the idea of evolution is that it explains, in terms of blind physical forces, the existence of undisputed adaptations whose functionally directed statistical improbability is enormous, without recourse to the supernatural or mystical.
• Wherever in the universe adaptive complexity shall be found, it will have come into being gradually through a series of small alterations, never through large and sudden increments in adaptive complexity.
• If a life form displays adaptive complexity, it must possess an evolutionary mechanism capable of generating adaptive complexity.
• Every species is a unique entity, a unique set of coadapted genes, cooperating with each other in the enterprise of building individual organisms of that species.
• Genes don’t work in isolation, they work in concert. The genome as a whole works with its environment to produce the body as a whole.
• Natural selection itself, properly understood, is powerful enough to generate complexity and the illusion of design to an almost limitless extent.
• When a creationist says that an eye or a bacterial flagellum or a blood-clotting mechanism is so complex that it must be designed, it makes all the difference in the world whether the “designer” is thought to be an alien produced by gradual evolution on a distant planet or a supernatural god who didn’t evolve. Gradual evolution is a genuine explanation, which really can theoretically yield an intelligence of sufficient complexity to design machines and other things too complex to have come about by any process other than design. Hypothetical “designers” jumped up from nothing cannot explain anything, because they can’t explain themselves.
• There is overwhelming evidence that the human brain evolved through a graded series of almost imperceptibly improving intermediates, whose relics may be seen in the fossil record and whose analogues survive all around the animal kingdom.
• And intelligent design cannot be the ultimate explanation for anything, for it begs the question of its own origin.
• Darwinian natural selection is the non-random survival of randomly varying coded instructions for building bodies.
• Just as Darwin in the mid-nineteenth century destroyed the mystical “design” argument, and just as Watson and Crick in the mid-twentieth century destroyed all mystical nonsense about genes, their successors of the mid-twenty-first century will destroy the mystical absurdity of souls being detached from bodies.
• Evolutionary arms races, such as the race run in evolutionary time between predators and their prey, or parasites and their hosts, have led to escalating perfection and complexity.
• Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.
• To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.
• Let’s get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering.
• The very idea that we might get our morals from the Bible or the Quran will horrify any decent person today who takes the trouble to read those books – rather than cherry-pick the verses that happen to conform to our modern secular consensus.
• Modern society requires and deserves a truly secular state, by which I mean not state atheism, but state neutrality in all matters pertaining to religion: the recognition that faith is personal and no business of the state. Individuals must always be free to “do God” if they wish; but a government for the people certainly should not.
• As a Darwinian, the aspect of religion that catches my attention is its profligate wastefulness, its extravagant display of baroque uselessness.
• Faith, being belief that isn’t based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion.
• Science is based upon verifiable evidence. Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops.
• Most religions offer a cosmology and a biology, a theory of life, a theory of origins and reasons for existence. In doing so, they demonstrate that religion is, in a sense, science; it’s just bad science.
• Religion drives otherwise sensible people into celibate monasteries or crashing into New York skyscrapers. Religion motivates people to whip their own backs, to set fire to themselves or their daughters, to denounce their own grandmothers as witches, or, in less extreme cases, simply to stand or kneel week after week, through ceremonies of stupefying boredom.
• Practices such as branding cattle, castration without anaesthetic, and bullfighting should be treated as morally equivalent to doing the same thing to human beings.
• To base your life on reason means to base it on evidence and logic. Evidence is the only way we know to discover what’s true about the real world. Logic is how we deduce the consequences that follow from evidence.
• Thanks to evidence-based reason we are blessedly liberated from ancient fears of ghosts and devils, evil spirits and djinns, magic spells and witches’ curses.
• The fury with which untenable beliefs are defended is inversely proportional to their defensibility.

For those of you who are not directly involved in the process of scientific publishing and may wonder how these collaborations work, here is a brief making-of.

On Friday, February 13, 2015, I e-mailed my friends Gloria, Louise and Shona from Frankfurt airport, when I was about to board a plane to lecture in Tehran, Iran. Here is an edited version of my e-mail:

“Dear Gloria, Louise and Shona, As you know, I have always considered, and I often mention so in my presentations, that optimal training adaptation and sports performance should be based on four major areas: training, recovery, nutrition and psychology. At some point in the recent past I have discussed with each of you periodization issues in relation with your own areas of expertise, which are precisely psychology, nutrition and recovery. So today I thought it would be great to put together a paper connecting these four major areas. I was considering either a review article (6,000 words) or a leading article (3,000 words). If you like the idea and you are willing to play, please let me know what you think as soon as you can.”

Replies arrived very quickly:

- “That sounds great! I would love to be a part of that project.”
- “Count me in! Sounds great.”
- “Iñigo’s angels? I’m up for a part as long as we get to wear good frocks.”

Five months later (July 2015) the project was still at the “great idea stage”, but we did manage to set an initial deadline to prepare our respective sections by November 2015. In the meantime, I found-out that my friend and former colleague at the AIS Damian Farrow had been doing some excellent work on the periodization of skill acquisition, so I invited him to join the project, and he accepted. The deadline had by then been extended until April 2016 (we are all busy people, you know). Then the Rio 2016 Olympic preparations got in the way, so we decided to extend it a little more; then grants, then research projects, then extended travel, then…

In October-November 2017 I had five full weeks in my hands to move the project forward, so I thought “it is now or never”, and I became a pushy leading author trying to get updated versions of each co-author’s contribution, including my own, with very tight and strict deadlines. I spent almost two months writing and editing what by then had been nicknamed “The Giant Review”. Indeed, the initial idea of a 3,000-6,000 word paper had turned into a 15,000 word manuscript, and manuscripts that size are seldom considered by scientific publishers. Fortunately for us the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance considered it worthy of publication in its special issue on football (soccer), but the reviewers requested including some additional materials that extended the word count to over 16,300 words and the list of references to 187 papers. So “The Giant Review” kept on growing!

As I indicated in the introduction the article was published three weeks ago and it is by now the most downloaded article from the journal website. That’s the brief story of “The Giant Review”, and I want to take the opportunity to thank Shona, Louise, Gloria and Damian for their fine work during this long process.

Download the full article

You can download the full article for free by clicking here.

I am not a writer, but fortunately Richard Ford is, and he recently paid a beautiful tribute to his parents in a wonderful book called “Between them”. Today I am borrowing his words to pay tribute to my own parents, from the bottom of my heart:

Most everything but love goes away.

Death starts a long time ahead of when it arrives. Even in death’s very self there is life that has to be lived out.

Our parent’s lives, even those enfolded in obscurity, offer us our first, strong assurance that human events have consequence. Here we are, after all. The future is unpredictable and hazardous, but our parents’ lives both enact us and help distinguish us. My own belief in lived life’s final transcendance always turns me to thoughts of my parents.

My parents were, after all, not made of words.

…humans comprise much more than anyone can tell about them.

I was fortunate to have parents who loved each other and, out of the crucible of that great, almost unfathomable love, loved me. Love, as always, confers beauties.

Absences seem to surround and intrude upon everything. Though in acknowledging this, I cannot let it be a loss or even be a fact I regret, since that is merely how life is – another enduring truth we must notice.

Sunrise at Everest Base Camp (Photo: Iñigo Mujika).

I know I have neglected my blog these past few months, but there are good reasons for that. This is what I have been up to since my last blogpost of September 30th, 2017:

• Lecturing on altitude training for coaches of the French Swimming Federation in Paris.

• Lecturing at the master’s degree on health and sport sciences at the Universidad Finis Terrae in Santiago de Chile.

• Lecturing on training periodization and strength training at a symposium on triathlon science and practice in Santiago de Chile.

• Lecturing on performance and recovery in the heat at a sport nutrition conference in Rome.

• Lecturing on multiple training and performance related topics in Hangzhou and Kunming, China.

Potala Palace, Lahsa, Tibet (Photo: Iñigo Mujika)

• A wonderful vacation in Tibet, including a trip to Everest Base Camp.

• Lecturing on tapering and peaking at the National Coaching Academy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

• Participating in a research project on optimal nutritional strategies for elite race walkers at the Australian Institute of Sport.

• Lecturing for conditioning coaches at the Sport Sciences Research Institute of Iran in Tehran.

• Lecturing at the master’s degree on high performance in cyclic sports at the University of Murcia, Spain.

• Lecturing at the master’s degree on high performance in team sports at the National Institute of Physical Education of Catalunya in Barcelona.

• Lecturing at the master’s degree on physical activity and sport sciences at the University of the Basque Country.

• Lecturing on physiology of physical activity and sport for medical students at the University of the Basque Country.

In addition to all the lecturing and travelling, I have been training and/or testing several cyclists and triathletes, and also involved in several research projects that have produced several scientific articles. Here’s a compilation of the papers published these past few months:

Recovery and Performance in Sport: Consensus Statement

Kellmann M, Bertollo M, Bosquet L, Brink M, Coutts AJ, Duffield R, Erlacher D, Halson SL, Hecksteden A, Heidari J, Kallus KW, Meeusen R, Mujika I, Robazza C, Skorski S, Venter R, Beckmann J.
Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2018 Feb 19:1-6. doi: 10.1123/ijspp.2017-0759. [Epub ahead of print]

The relationship between recovery and fatigue and its impact on performance has attracted the interest of sport science for many years. An adequate balance between stress (training and competition load, other life demands) and recovery is essential for athletes to achieve continuous high-level performance. Research has focused on the examination of physiological and psychological recovery strategies to compensate external and internal training and competition loads. A systematic monitoring of recovery and the subsequent implementation of recovery routines aims at maximizing performance and preventing negative developments such as underrecovery, nonfunctional overreaching, the overtraining syndrome, injuries, or illnesses. Due to the inter- and intraindividual variability of responses to training, competition, and recovery strategies, a diverse set of expertise is required to address the multifaceted phenomena of recovery, performance, and their interactions to transfer knowledge from sport science to sport practice. For this purpose, a symposium on Recovery and Performance was organized at the Technical University Munich Science and Study Center Raitenhaslach (Germany) in September 2016. Various international experts from many disciplines and research areas gathered to discuss and share their knowledge of recovery for performance enhancement in a variety of settings. The results of this meeting are outlined in this consensus statement that provides central definitions, theoretical frameworks, and practical implications as a synopsis of the current knowledge of recovery and performance. While our understanding of the complex relationship between recovery and performance has significantly increased through research, some important issues for future investigations are also elaborated.

Full text free download

Strength Training for Middle- and Long-Distance Performance: A Meta-Analysis

Berryman N, Mujika I, Arvisais D, Roubeix M, Binet C, Bosquet L.
Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2018 Jan 1;13(1):57-63. doi: 10.1123/ijspp.2017-0032. Epub 2018 Jan 5.

PURPOSE: To assess the net effects of strength training on middle- and long-distance performance through a meta-analysis of the available literature.
METHODS: Three databases were searched, from which 28 of 554 potential studies met all inclusion criteria. Standardized mean differences (SMDs) were calculated and weighted by the inverse of variance to calculate an overall effect and its 95% confidence interval (CI). Subgroup analyses were conducted to determine whether the strength-training intensity, duration, and frequency and population performance level, age, sex, and sport were outcomes that might influence the magnitude of the effect.
RESULTS: The implementation of a strength-training mesocycle in running, cycling, cross-country skiing, and swimming was associated with moderate improvements in middle- and long-distance performance (net SMD [95%CI] = 0.52 [0.33-0.70]). These results were associated with improvements in the energy cost of locomotion (0.65 [0.32-0.98]), maximal force (0.99 [0.80-1.18]), and maximal power (0.50 [0.34-0.67]). Maximal-force training led to greater improvements than other intensities. Subgroup analyses also revealed that beneficial effects on performance were consistent irrespective of the athletes' level.
CONCLUSION: Taken together, these results provide a framework that supports the implementation of strength training in addition to traditional sport-specific training to improve middle- and long-distance performance, mainly through improvements in the energy cost of locomotion, maximal power, and maximal strength.

Please, contact me if you are interested in the full text.

Anthropometric Profiles of Elite Open-Water Swimmers

Shaw G, Mujika I.
Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2018 Jan 1;13(1):115-118. doi: 10.1123/ijspp.2016-0741. Epub 2018 Jan 11.

Reports detailing the physiques of open-water (OW) swimmers are limited. Data from anthropometric screening around competition provides a unique opportunity to describe the current physical attributes of elite OW swimmers peaking for international competition. Anthropometric screening was undertaken on a group of Australian and French OW swimmers as part of performance monitoring within 2 wk of the 2015 FINA World Championships. Height, mass, and sum of 7 skinfolds were measured using ISAK standardized measurement techniques by 2 trained anthropometrists. Data were collated and compared with previously published data on OW and pool swimmers. French swimmers had lower skinfolds (57.3 ± 6.1 vs 80.5 ± 21.3 mm, P = .0258), were lighter (64.7 ± 10.8 vs 74.6 ± 11.8 kg, P = .013), and had lower lean-mass index (LMI) (34.7 ± 7.3 vs 38.2 ± 8.8, P = .035) than Australian swimmers. Male and female OW swimmers had skinfolds similar to their contemporary OW swimmers but were lower than earlier reports of OW swimmers; however, they were higher than those of pool swimmers. Male and female OW swimmers had 9% and 6% lower LMI, respectively, than pool swimmers. Lower body mass and LMI were correlated with better World Championships finishing positions (R2 = .46, P = .0151, and R2 = .45, P = .0177, respectively). These data are a unique report of elite OW swimmers' physiques around international competition and demonstrate a potential morphological optimization in OW swimmers that warrants further investigation in larger populations.

Please, contact me if you are interested in the full text.

Modelling of optimal training load patterns during the 11 weeks preceding major competition in elite swimmers

Hellard P, Scordia C, Avalos M, Mujika I, Pyne DB
Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2017 Oct;42(10):1106-1117. doi: 10.1139/apnm-2017-0180. Epub 2017 Jun 26.

Periodization of swim training in the final training phases prior to competition and its effect on performance have been poorly described. We modeled the relationships between the final 11 weeks of training and competition performance in 138 elite sprint, middle-distance, and long-distance swimmers over 20 competitive seasons. Total training load (TTL), strength training (ST), and low- to medium-intensity and high-intensity training variables were monitored. Training loads were scaled as a percentage of the maximal volume measured at each intensity level. Four training periods (meso-cycles) were defined: the taper (weeks 1 to 2 before competition), short-term (weeks 3 to 5), medium-term (weeks 6 to 8), and long-term (weeks 9 to 11). Mixed-effects models were used to analyze the association between training loads in each training meso-cycle and end-of-season major competition performance. For sprinters, a 10% increase between ∼20% and 70% of the TTL in medium- and long-term meso-cycles was associated with 0.07 s and 0.20 s faster performance in the 50 m and 100 m events, respectively (p < 0.01). For middle-distance swimmers, a higher TTL in short-, medium-, and long-term training yielded faster competition performance (e.g., a 10% increase in TTL was associated with improvements of 0.1-1.0 s in 200 m events and 0.3-1.6 s in 400 m freestyle, p < 0.01). For sprinters, a 60%-70% maximal ST load 6-8 weeks before competition induced the largest positive effects on performance (p < 0.01). An increase in TTL during the medium- and long-term preparation (6-11 weeks to competition) was associated with improved performance. Periodization plans should be adapted to the specialty of swimmers.

Please, contact me if you are interested in the full text.

Clinical, physical, physiological, and dietary patterns of obese and sedentary adults with primary hypertension characterized by sex and cardiorespiratory fitness: EXERDIET-HTA study

Gorostegi-Anduaga I, Corres P, Jurio-Iriarte B, Martínez-Aguirre A, Pérez-Asenjo J, Aispuru GR, Arenaza L, Romaratezabala E, Arratibel-Imaz I, Mujika I, Francisco-Terreros S, Maldonado-Martín S
Clin Exp Hypertens. 2018;40(2):141-149. doi: 10.1080/10641963.2017.1346111. Epub 2017 Aug 7.

The main purpose of this study was to determine some key physical, physiological, clinical, and nutritional markers of health status in obese and sedentary adults (54.0 ± 8.1 years, 141 men and 68 women) with primary hypertension (HTN) characterized by sex and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) level. The studied population showed a high cardiovascular risk (CVR) profile including metabolically abnormal obese, with poor CRF level (22.5 ± 5.6 mL·kg-1·min-1), exercise-induced HTN (Systolic Blood Pressure>210 mmHg in men and >190 mmHg in women at the end of the exercise test) and with non-healthy adherence to dietary pattern (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, 46.3%; Mediterranean Diet, 41.1%; and Healthy Diet Indicator, 37.1%). Women showed a better biochemical and dietary pattern profile than men (lower values, P < 0.05, in triglycerides, mean difference = 26.3; 95% CI = 0.9-51.7 mg/dL, aspartate transaminase, mean difference = 4.2; 95% CI = 0.3-8.0 U/L; alanine transaminase, mean difference = 8.2; 95% CI = 1.6-14.8 U/L; gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase, mean difference = 11.0; 95% CI = -1.1-23.2 U/L and higher values, P = 0.002, in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, mean difference = 5.0, 95% CI = -13.3-3.3 mg/dL), but physical and peak exercise physiological characteristics were poorer. A higher CRF level might contribute to the attenuation of some CVR factors, such as high body mass index, non-dipping profile, and high hepatic fat. The results strongly suggest that targeting key behaviors such as improving nutritional quality and CRF via regular physical activity will contribute to improving the health with independent beneficial effects on CVR factors.

Please, contact me if you are interested in the full text.

Japanese food (Photo: Iñigo Mujika).

It has been two and a half years since my last post based on the 1860 book “Elementary Anatomy and Physiology for Colleges, Academies and Other Schools”. The topic of that post was sleep, a key to recovery, adaptation and performance for athletes. On this occasion, I am going to highlight some texts written by Hitchcock & Hitchcock about another key aspect for athletes: eating. I am also going to relate the statements made by these authors 157 years ago with some recent research dealing with similar topics.

336. We must not eat too fast.—5. Most persons eat too fast. No time is gained on the sum total of life, by taking any from that demanded by nature for eating and digesting food. A fortune or great reputation, it is true, may sometimes be gained a little quicker by using the time which the stomach rightfully claims, yet the penalty for such robbery is a shorter life, or a disease which makes life miserable.

van den Boer JHW et al. Self-reported eating rate is associated with weight status in a Dutch population: a validation study and a cross-sectional study. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2017; 14(1):121.

Leong SL et al. Faster self-reported speed of eating is related to higher body mass index in a nationwide survey of middle-aged women. J Am Diet Assoc. 2011; 111(8):1192-7.

Otsuka R et al. Eating fast leads to obesity: findings based on self-administered questionnaires among middle-aged Japanese men and women. J Epidemiol. 2006; 16(3):117-24.

337. The Time of Eating.— 6. We see that the time of eating should not encroach upon the hours devoted to sleep, or those of hard labor. During sleep the brain needs quiet; but if there be any function going on such as that in the earlier stages of digestion, the brain, as a matter of necessity, must labor till the process is accomplished, and as a result, dreams or imperfect trains of thought will produce that kind of sleep which cannot refresh the body. If again the time for meals precede or follow very closely upon hard labor, a law of nature is broken, and the penalty is sure to follow. The nervous energy cannot be immediately called off from the part to which it has for some time been directed (whether to the brain or the muscles), and consequently the stomach, for a while must lie nearly inactive. Hence a short season of relaxation from all active exercise, whether mental or physical, just before and after meals, is very conducive to health, since in the former case the circulation is equalized, and the brain can prepare its energies to expend them on the stomach, while after meals the whole force of the nervous influence is needed for a time by the digestive function before it can be directed to the muscles for exercise. Even a short time after dinner devoted to a nap promotes digestion quite rapidly, although the habit often is an inconvenient one, to say the least, since if by unavoidable circumstances it is omitted for once, the person feels uncomfortable the rest of the day.

Jiang P, Turek FW. Timing of meals: when is as critical as what and how much. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2017; 1;312(5):E369-E380.

Moran-Ramos S et al. When to eat? The influence of circadian rhythms on metabolic health: are animal studies providing the evidence? Nutr Res Rev. 2016;29(2):180-193.

Peuhkuri K et al. Diet promotes sleep duration and quality. Nutr Res. 2012 May;32(5):309-19.

777.—5. Is Taste a Proper Guide for the Appetite?— The question often arises whether the sense of taste can be considered a safe guide for the appetite. As it is natural, some maintain that it should always be gratified. But even if originally safe to follow, how often has it been perverted by extravagant diet, and is at the time in a morbid condition from a perverted state of the body? If such be the case, we should be on our guard against indulging peculiar appetites, or strange tastes. But in some cases, of which the physician is the best judge, it may be safe to allow a reasonable indulgence in a desire for a peculiar article of food or drink.

Boesveldt S, de Graaf K. The Differential Role of Smell and Taste For Eating Behavior. Perception. 2017;46(3-4):307-319.

McCrickerd K, Forde CG. Sensory influences on food intake control: moving beyond palatability. Obes Rev. 2016;17(1):18-29.

Sørensen LB et al. Effect of sensory perception of foods on appetite and food intake: a review of studies on humans. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2003;27(10):1152-66.

The Stress of Life

The Stress of Life is a classic book on stress, first published in 1956 by Hans Selye, the pioneer of medicine who formulated the theoretical concept of stress and the General Adaptation Syndrome. I read a revised edition published in 1976 a while ago, and I took some notes that I wanted to share with the readers of my blog.

The genetic evolution through endless centuries from the simplest forms of life to complex human beings was the greatest adaptive adventure on earth.

Stress is essentially reflected by the rate of all the wear and tear caused by life.

It is not to see something first, but to establish solid connections between the previously known and the hitherto unknown that constitutes the essence of scientific discovery.

… what matters is not so much what happens to us, but the way we take it.

Even debate inspired by jealousy can stimulate research; but it is less efficient and certainly less pleasant than cooperation.

Great progress can be made only by ideas which are very different from those generally accepted at the time.

Very few fundamentally new ideas manage to bypass the heresy stage.

Stress is usually the outcome of a struggle for the self-preservation (the homeostasis) of parts within a whole.

… the better we know what makes us tick, the more likely we will be to make a success of life.

… it is especially true that, in our life events, the stressor effects depends not so much upon what we do or what happens to us but on the way we take it.

… most of our tensions and frustrations stem from compulsive needs to act the role of someone we are not.

… few things earn you more goodwill and love than the gift of always being yourself. Unaffected simplicity is one of the most likeable traits.

It is well-established that the mere fact of knowing what hurts you has an inherent curative value.

Life, the biologic chain that holds our parts together, is only as strong as its weakest vital link. When this breaks – no matter which vital link it be – our parts can no longer be held together as a single living being.

Comfort and security make it easier for us to enjoy the great things in life, but they are not, in themselves, great and enjoyable aims.

Hence, very few people in the usual walks of life retain the ability really to enjoy themselves: that wonderful gift which they all possessed as children. But it hurts to be conscious of this defect, so adults dope themselves with more work (or other things) to divert attention from their loss.

Certainly, greatness, as the ultimate of achievement, is one of the leading motivators of human endeavor; like its prerequisite, excellence, it is an aim in itself.

Too many people suffer all their lives because they are too conservative to risk a radical change and break with traditions.

The interview is available here.

More info about Endurance Training – Infographic Edition

Buy Endurance Training – Infographic Edition

International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, Volume 11, Issue 3. April

Abstract

Despite early and ongoing debate among athletes, coaches, and sport scientists, it is likely that resistance training for endurance cyclists can be tolerated, promotes desired adaptations that support training, and can directly improve performance. Lower-body heavy strength training performed in addition to endurance-cycling training can improve both short- and long-term endurance performance. Strength-maintenance training is essential to retain strength gains during the competition season. Competitive female cyclists with greater lower-body lean mass (LBLM) tend to have ~4–9% higher maximum mean power per kg LBLM over 1 s to 10 min. Such relationships enable optimal body composition to be modeled. Resistance training off the bike may be particularly useful for modifying LBLM, whereas more cycling-specific training strategies like eccentric cycling and single-leg cycling with a counterweight have not been thoughtfully investigated in well-trained cyclists. Potential mechanisms for improved endurance include postponed activation of less efficient type II muscle fibers, conversion of type IIX fibers into more fatigue-resistant IIa fibers, and increased muscle mass and rate of force development.

Read full article (under subscription)

A few months ago I read Harriet Tuckey’s wonderful book Everest—The First Ascent, reporting on the generally unrecognized contribution made by her father, Dr Griffith Pugh, to the conquest of Mount Everest back in 1953.¹ Despite his outstanding scientific achievements over the years, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Pugh’s problem-solving applied human physiology approach was regarded “as somewhat low level and unscientific”^1(p300) by the scientific establishment.

Undeterred, Pugh had continued his research into the energetics of walking and running, heat stress, the changes the body goes through while exercising for long periods outdoors and many other topics. Athletes, cyclists and skiers regularly trooped to his laboratory for tests and met him at various sports grounds for outdoor trials and he continued to publish highly original academic papers up to his retirement in 1975.^1(p301)

It wasn’t practical to study large numbers in the high Himalayas or Antarctica, and Pugh often deliberately chose to study small groups of exceptional people like Channel swimmers and Olympic athletes who were not available in large numbers. His research assistant John Brotherhood remembered him saying of Edholm’s huge projects: “Those people take a scatter gun approach, John, but we use a rifle. We are sharpshooters.”^1(p302)

One highly original academic paper published by Pugh the sharpshooter² became a key reference in our 1996 study on the validity of a velodrome test used to estimate maximal aerobic parameters of competitive road cyclists.³ I believe that even today such a sharpshooting approach is not only appropriate but absolutely necessary in the sport sciences.

Such an approach is even more appropriate and necessary in the training process of elite athletes. We know very well that individual responses to an exercise training program are highly variable and influenced by a multitude of determinants and interactions between factors affecting training efficacy.⁴ Individual athletes adapt differently to the same training stimulus, and there is currently no accurate quantitative means to describe the pattern, duration, and intensity of training required to produce specific physiological adaptations.⁵ Individualizing training prescription and continuous assessment of specific athlete adaptation is absolutely necessary to best prepare elite athletes for the demands of competition. This approach is well described by 4-time Olympic Champion Michael Johnson in his book Gold Rush⁶:

Since I retired and started Michael Johnson Performance, my training staff and I have been obsessed with the effectiveness of our training programmes. So we have taken the concept of “smart training” to a whole other level from when I was competing. We liken our philosophy to a rifle approach, as opposed to a shotgun approach. With a shotgun you get a lot of small attempts at hitting the target. With the rifle you have to put more time into aiming, but you have a much bigger and more effective bullet to hit the target. We have found that when we take this approach in designing all of our training programmes, and most importantly when we educate our athletes while training them, they improve more rapidly.^6(p140)

Unfortunately, published studies reporting on the actual training programs of world-class Olympic-sport athletes are lacking in the sport-science literature, besides a few notable exceptions including examples on swimming,⁷ rowing,⁸ running,⁹ triathlon,¹⁰ cycling,¹¹ cross-country skiing, and biathlon.¹²

Ever since Founding Editor David Pyne and I started the discussions to establish the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performanceback in late 2004, it was very clear to us that case studies reporting on the physiology, training, and/or performance characteristics of elite individuals should always have a place in the journal. This vision was stated explicitly in the September 2006 editorial.¹³ At the time of this writing, in July 2015, IJSPP has published over 50 case studies on a great variety of sports such as pool and open-water swimming, cycling, middle-distance and ultraendurance running, triathlon, most football codes, cricket, wrestling, volleyball, soccer refereeing, shot put, rowing, snowboarding, hockey, bobskeleton, natural bodybuilding, mogul skiing, and motorcycling. I have made a few sharpshooting attempts myself, publishing case studies inIJSPP on an elite youth association football player, a multiple Tour de France winner and Olympic-champion cyclist, a world-class female triathlete, and a world-champion paratriathlete.

The current editor of IJSPP, Ralph Beneke, encouraged authors to submit their case studies (now included in the broader article type “Brief Report”) in a very recent editorial,¹⁴ and I would like to emphasize that invitation again. As a reminder to authors,

Case studies should describe a single case or a small case series of physiological and/or performance aspects of a highly trained athlete, team, event, or competition. A case study is appropriate when a phenomenon is interesting, novel, or unusual but logistically difficult to study with a sample. The case can exemplify identification, diagnosis, treatment, measurement, or analysis.¹⁵ Sharpshooting in sport physiology, training, and performance is always welcome in IJSPP!

Iñigo Mujika, Associate Editor, IJSPP

References

1. Tuckey H. Everest—The First Ascent: The Untold Story of Griffith Pugh, the Man Who Made It Possible. London, UK: Rider Books, Random House; 2014.

2. Pugh LGCE. The relation of oxygen intake and speed in competition cycling and comparative observations on the bicycle ergometer. J Physiol Lond. 1974;241:795–808.

3. Padilla S, Mujika I, Cuesta G, Polo JM, Chatard JC. Validity of a velodrome test for competitive road cyclists. Eur J Appl Physiol Occup Physiol. 1996;73:446–451.

4. Hecksteden A, Kraushaar J, Scharhag-Rosenberger F, Theisen D, Senn S, Meyer T. Individual response to exercise training—a statistical perspective. J Appl Physiol. 2015;118:1450–1459.

5. Borresen J, Lambert MI. The quantification of training load, the training response and the effect on performance. Sports Med. 2009;39:779–795.

6. Johnson M. Gold Rush. London, UK: HarperSport, HarperCollins; 2012.

7. Mujika I, Chatard J-C, Busso T, Geyssant A, Barale F, Lacoste L. Effects of training on performance in competitive swimming. Can J Appl Physiol. 1995;20(4):395–406.

8. Fiskerstrand A, Seiler KS. Training and performance characteristics among Norwegian international rowers 1970–2001. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2004;14:303–310.

9. Tjelta LI, Tonnessen E, Enoksen E. A case study of the training of nine times New York Marathon winner Grete Waitz. Int J Sport Sci Coaching. 2014;9:139–157.

10. Mujika I. Olympic preparation of a world-class female triathlete. Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2014;9(4):727–731. http://dx.doi. org/10.1123/IJSPP.2013-0245

11. Pinot J, Grappe F. A six-year monitoring case study of a top-10 cycling Grand Tour finisher. J Sports Sci. 2015;33:907–914.

12. Tonnessen E, Sylta O, Haugen TA, Hem E, Svendsen IS, Seiler S. The road to gold: training and peaking characteristics in the year prior to a gold medal endurance performance. PLoS One. 2014;9:e101796.

13. Pyne D. Case studies in IJSPP. Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2006;1(3):193–194.

14. Beneke R. The brief report: a multitasking, concise feature of high quality. Int J Sports Physiwol Perform. 2015;10:417. http://dx.doi. org/10.1123/IJSPP.2015-0180

15. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance.Submission guidelines for IJSPP. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics; n.d.

Download the PDF with the editorial from IJSPP website.

Download the editorial in PDF.