Human Limits

Mike’s ideas on deconditioning as a condition were reported on in Scientific American and NPR.

The Olympics showed us all the amazing things humans can do as a result of intense training on top of talent.  While performances in the Olympics and other sporting events get better and better the sad reality is that the world as a whole is getting less fit and less active.  Here is a link to a statistics filled analysis of the inactivity pandemic that appeared in the Lancet medical journal just before the Olympics.

This paper was part of a series of articles on physical inactivity and what to do about it.  The article points out that “inactive people would gain 1.3–3.7 years (of life expectancy) from age 50 years by becoming active” and that “with elimination of smoking, life expectancy at age 50 years was estimated to increase by 2.3–2.5 years in the US population”.

These data are consistent with the idea physical inactivity now rivals smoking as a cause of premature death.  Inactivity is also perhaps the major cause of non-communicable diseases worldwide.   In fact regular exercise or even just building more activity into your daily routine can be used to either prevent or treat all sorts of things including:

• Diabetes
• Hypertension
• Coronary artery disease and other forms of atherosclerosis
• Aging associated frailty
• Obesity
• Depression
• Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and POTS.

The figure below shows just how protective physical activity is.  The data are from about 4,000 middle aged men in Great Britain, but all sorts of studies in all sorts of populations have essentially generated curves that look just like this.  The important thing to note is that most of the protective effects of physical activity occur when people go from inactive to moderately active.

The question now is what to do about all of this inactivity?  In a recent editorial on a form of orthostatic intolerance (light headedness and fainting when standing up) I pointed out that, like so many other medical conditions, exercise training appears to make this condition better.   I then argued that inactivity should become an official medical diagnosis.   This would raise awareness of the problem, improve physician training related to exercise, and perhaps stimulate organizations that pay for medical care to do more.  It might also lead to more widespread support of supervised progressive training or “reconditioning” programs and related public health measures.

These ideas are not new, and in fact Dr. Frank Booth, a truly visionary scientist, has been making similar arguments for many years.

Finally forget mortality and the cold hard statistics mentioned above, and ask yourself how many people are leading limited lives because they are unfit, frail, or suffer from preventable chronic diseases?  How many older people can’t chase their grandchildren around the yard?  How many people can’t go for a hike on beautiful but challenging mountain trail or body surf at the beach?   It is a big world and being fit makes it possible to engage fully in the many interesting things that are out there and waiting for us.

Today we have a guest post from my colleague and research collaborator Jason Carter, Ph.D.  Dr. Carter is the Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology at the Michigan Technological University.  We share a passion for our research, but also for sports!

1992 Dream Team vs 2012 Olympic Team:  Who Wins?

In early July, Kobe Bryant created a firestorm with his comments that the 2012 Olympic Team could “pull it out” against the 1992 Dream Team. While Kobe backed away from the comment in subsequent weeks, it led to a variety of comparisons.  Kobe vs. Michael? Magic vs. Paul? People love those direct comparisons, and everyone was willing to give their opinions prior to the actual games being played. Now that the games are done, and Team USA has won the gold, let’s break this down a little more with actual numbers. Basketball is a team sport, and hypothetical player to player comparisons only get you so far.

Let me preface my comparisons with a brief background. I played basketball my whole life, and was fortunate enough to play college basketball at a small DII school. I followed that experience up with 7 years as a high school varsity basketball coach. I love the game, and appreciate the complexity of the game. That said, my playing and coaching experiences have led to a simple philosophy that while hot shooting can throw a wrench in any game, winning and losing consistently boils down to number of scoring opportunities and quality of those scoring opportunities.  When I coached, we focused on creating extra scoring opportunities by three simple goals: 1) limit turnovers and always have fewer than opponent, 2) force the opponents into poor shot selection and maximize our shot selection, and 3) control the boards by maximizing our offensive rebounds and limiting the opponents.

So how does the 1992 team stack up against the 2012 team in extra scoring opportunities?  One might assume that the 1992 team would get more shots given the scoring and average margin of victory, and that this would bury the 2012 team. However, let’s break the numbers down a little more and see what they tell us. In 1992, Team USA shot 52.1% (638) of 1,224 total shots taken in the 8 games played. In 2012, Team USA shot 53.9% (629) of the 1,166 total shots taken in the 8 games played. So a case could be made that the 2012 team was slightly “better with the ball” by a margin of ~1.8%, and that this would translate to a few extra possessions for the 2012 team in a direct match-up with the 1992 team.  Let’s assume a contest between 1992 and 2012 teams would result in a total of 155 total shots taken in the game (reasonable given the number of game shots for the 16 USA Olympic games played by these two teams); if the 2012 team was “better with the ball” by ~1.8%, this would result in ~3 extra possessions (155 × 0.018).

Prediction – The 2012 team is slightly ‘better with the ball’, resulting in 79 shots compared to 76 shots by the 1992 team.

Ok, so let’s agree that the 2012 team gets a few extra key possessions due to turnovers, steals, blocks, and rebounding; how do those extra key possessions translate to points?  Let’s assume free throws (FT’s) are a wash — each team shot a similar number of FT’s (201 vs. 191) and similar FT% (73% vs. 72%). Where differences exist is in overall field goals (FG) attempted and made, as well as 3-point FG’s attempted and made. The 1992 team pounded the ball inside way more; 79% of their shots were 2-pointers (often times transition layups). The 2012 team was much more perimeter oriented, with only 53% of their shots coming inside the arc.

Prediction – Of the 76 shots taken by the 1992 team, 16 are outside the arc. Of the 79 shots taken by the 2012 team, 37 are outside the arc.

Now here comes the hard part– how will these two teams shoot against one another?  Presumably both teams would likely shoot lower %’s than they did against their international counterparts. The 1992 team’s overall FG% was 21.3% higher than their opponents (57.8% vs. 36.5%), while the 2012 team’s was 6.9% higher than their opponents.  So a case could be made the 1992 team was more efficient on both offense and defense by ~14%. Let’s play it safe and say the difference is only ~10% in this match-up; reasonable given the higher % of shots within the arc and lower opponent FG% for the 1992 team. For 3-pointers, the 2012 team was ~11% better than their opponents while the 1992 team was ~10%, so let’s call it a wash and conservatively estimate that both teams shoot ~38% against each other’s more athletic matchup.

So here’s the breakdown–

My Conclusion – The 1992 Dream Team wins 108-104.

I attempted to analyze this matchup using objective team statistics and what I consider ‘reasonable’ assumptions. I avoided the player-by-player matchups because that’s 80% of what is out there already, and it is incredibly difficult to quantify such comparisons.  We could debate all day the MJ vs. Kobe matchup, and who would finish better down the stretch (let the record show my money is on MJ)… but those are subjective comparisons with obvious biases (I grew up wanting to “be like mike”).  That isn’t to say my ‘reasonable’ assumptions above don’t have flaws, and I’m certain others will be happy to point them out.  One could make the case that there’s no way a 10% total FG spread will exist in this game. On the other hand, one could counter that argument by saying that there is no way the 2012 team will be able to get up as many 3-pointers against the lock-down defenders like MJ and Pippen.  That is the beauty of this debate!

All in all, I really can’t blame Kobe for saying they would have a chance; I think they would.  But in a 7 game series, my money is with the 1992 Dream Team.

Click here for video.

I was a guest on the Huffington Post’s live segment on doping in the Olympics.  Here is the link!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/08/pot-as-a-performance-enha_n_1757310.html?utm_hp_ref=live321&ir=HuffPost%20Live%20321

Over the next week or so I am going to wrap up some issues raised in the saturation posting I did on London 2012.  After that I am planning to do several series of longer but less frequent posts on issues like obesity, training, aging, exercise and heart health, and perhaps health care reform.   There will also be topical posts when things related to human performance pop up in the news.

Here are a few random thoughts about London:

• The success of London 2012 shows just how well things can go in an open and democratic society.  What happened in 1936 in Berlin was not the future. What happened in 2008 in Beijing is not the future.   A quote from Churchill seems appropriate here.

“No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

In the long run we are ahead in spite of all of the chaos, confusion, distraction and pettiness that go with open societies.

• What will become of Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps?  At age 50 will they be fading dissipated stars looking for a gig on reality TV, or will they find other ways to contribute?  Here is a link to a mother’s letter to Phelps about his future.  People like Roger Bannister and Johan Olav Koss show that it does not have to be all down hill after an early athletic peak.

• How about the joy of the U.S. men’s basketball team and Coach K after winning the gold?  It is easy to caricature these guys as spoiled prima donnas.  Who would have thought they were motivated by things other than personal fame, statistics and money?

If you are having post Olympic withdrawal, my advice is to set some sort of athletic or exercise goal and start now, 2016 is closer than you think!

Unless something unusual and unexpected happens today in the marathon, the only world records in track and field will be for the women’s and men’s 4x100m relays and the 800m for men.  Most of this post will be about what David Rudisha did in the 800m; however the U.S. women went 40.82 in the relay and broke a record held by East Germany from the uber-doping era in the 1980s by over 1%, a remarkable achievement.  Before the ink was dry on the women’s record speculation started about just how clean it was.  This speculation was fueled in part because the previous record was held by a team from East Germany where there was a massive and well documented state sponsored doping program.  Last week I linked to a scientific summary of exactly what the East Germans were doing.  Here is that link again.

However, before we get too suspicious let’s quickly compare the Jamaican men to the U.S. women.   The 100m personal bests for the Jamaican men total 39.00s.  Divide their relay record of 36.84 by 39.00 and you get a ratio of 0.9446.  The personal bests of the U.S. women total 43.45s so the ratio of their 40.82 relay record to their group personal best is 0.9395.   Not that much difference.  If their ratio was similar to the Jamaican men’s their estimated time would b 41.04, still the world record by 0.31 seconds.   They were 0.22 seconds faster which can easily be explained by their superb baton exchanges.

So, before we all get a terminal case of skepticism about records, let’s look at the data.  Plenty of big jumps in record times over the years have had nothing to do with doping.

Now to Rudisha of Kenya who ran 1:40:91 in London.  He is the first man to break 1:41 and really dominated the fastest race at that distance ever run.   The depth of the field and the number of people who broke 1:43 was incredible.  Three of the ten fastest 800m times ever were run in this race.    This was clearly not the typical “sit back and kick” middle distance or distance race seen at the Olympics.

So, how good is Rudisha’s time?  I checked on the point tables contained in my copy of the classic “Computerized Running Training Programs” book and compared point totals for world records.  The tables are not perfect but they use a few reasonable assumptions about physiology and statistical models to make some educated guesses.  The tables were developed in the late 1960s and have stood the test of time.  I will pick the time in the tables closest to current world record for comparison with the current record on the right.

100m                  9.6 = 1110 points            (Bolt 9.58)

200m                19.2 = 1140 points           (Bolt 19.19)

400m                43.2 = 1110 points           (Johnson 43.18)

800m             1:41.1 = 1070 points           (Rudisha 1:40.91)

1500m           3:25.6 = 1100 points          (El Guerrouj 3:26.00)

3000m           7:19.8 = 1120 points          (Komen 7:20.67)

5000m         12:37.5 = 1130 points         (Bekele 12:37.35)

10,000m      26:16.4 = 1140 points         (Bekele  26:17.53)

Marathon  2:03:30.0 = 1120 points         (Makau 2:03:38.0)

You can see from the point tables that the 800m record appears a bit slow in comparison to the 400m and 1500m records.  The same is true for the marathon in comparison to the 5000 and 10,000m records.   The other point here is that Bolt’s 200 is worth about 1140 points and is the current “best” record for men.  1140 points in the 800m would be 1:37.7!  1140 points in the marathon would be 2:02:09!

The final point I want to make today is that Peter Snell, who won the 800m in Rome and 800/1500 double in Tokyo ran 1:44.3 on a grass track in 1962.  On a synthetic track that would convert to an estimated time between 1:41 and 1:42.  Below is a brief video on Snell with some footage of his races.

There is a lot more I could discuss related to Snell including high mileage training for 800/1500m runners but that can wait for a series of longer posts I am planning on training.   Here is a link to a longer documentary on Snell and his revolutionary coach Arthur Lydiard.  Like the Kenyans who have followed, Snell led an active life from a young age and the hill running and training long runs had to help.  In comparison to the East Africans, only the altitude was missing.   I wonder what would happen to the 800m record if a good (45 second personal best) but not great 400m runner followed the Lydiard plan used by Snell.

A couple of days ago Emily Sohn of Discovery News called to chat about why and how world records continue to fall.   Here is a short version of our discussion:

1.  Multiple incremental improvements over time.  A good example is swimming and contributing factors include: better and deeper pools, wave suppressing lane lines, high tech suits, and technical advances like better turns.  Better pool architecture and lane lines reduce the chop and turbulence in the water and my bet is that the availability of easy to use video equipment has also helped coaches tweak technique.
2.  Major technical breakthroughs.  Two examples that come to mind are fiberglass pole vault poles and more recently “clap skates” in speed skating.   The skates provide essentially an extra lever and when they were introduced there was a record breaking spree.   In sports like golf and tennis there seems to be a continuous march of improved clubs and racquets.
3. More and better competition.  For all sorts of reasons including more money in more sports and the end of amateurism people now compete for longer.   Top athletes in many sports can now make a living doing their thing.  Elite sport used to be mostly for people from wealthy countries and that is not longer the case either, so the talent pool has expanded and is likely to continue to expand.
4. Better medical treatment helps people recover from what were once career ending injuries.  While it was a motorcycle accident, the fact that Hermann Maier came back in skiing after almost losing his leg, proves the point.  The skill of my orthopedic surgery colleagues, the rehab physicians, therapists and trainers is incredible.  Orthopedics has also been aided by improvements in materials science and high tech replacement parts and less invasive techniques.   In the last 30 years I have personally seen orthopedic surgery move from essentially medieval carpentry to one of the most tech driven and creative areas of medicine.
5. In sports like figure skating, diving and gymnastics that include acrobatic “tricks” there has to be an element of world wide “double-dare” going on.   In other words the world sees someone do a “triple” whatever and people start to think about how to do a quadruple…….
6. There are no more secrets, training techniques and technical improvements in equipment diffuse rapidly and the rate of adoption of new ideas is now essentially instantaneous due to the electronic environment we all live in.
7. Depending on how well you believe that drug testing works, there is always the issue of doping. So undetected doping is a possibility.  As I have mentioned before, while drug testing is not perfect, it is better than it used to be.  The fact that a number of records in track and field date from the 80s and 90s (especially for women) suggests that testing is getting better.  So hopefully doping is less of a factor, but healthy skepticism is always a good thing on this topic.

As I said to Emily, I am not sure the underlying human motor has gotten any better, but when you add the factors listed above up improvements continue to pile up.

Enjoy the next to last day of London 2012.

A few days ago I wrote about East African dominance in distance running and discussed the “talent” issue vs. the environmental and cultural factors that make the Kenyans and Ethiopians so good.  However, for people like me who were living and running competitively in the American Southwest in the late 1970s there is an alternate answer to “who will beat the Kenyans?”

In the late 1970s a few of my friends and I traveled from Tucson to Albuquerque, New Mexico to participate in the La Luz trail race up Sandia Peak.  The race was won by Al Waquie of the Walatowa Pueblo of Jemez tribe.  As I recall, he defeated Ric Rojas by 2-3 minutes in a race that lasted about an hour (I think I finished about 15^th).  At the time Rojas was among the top ranked 10k runners in the US and seen as a potential heir to Frank Shorter.  Waquie dominated the classic mountain climbs in the West and also won the Empire State Building ascent numerous times.

Waquie is not alone, Native American kids from selected high schools in the Four Corners region like Tuba City have done very well in high school distance running.  And, this is nothing new; in 1912 the great Hopi runner Lewis Tewanima won a silver medal in the 10,000m in an era when runners from Finland were as dominant as those from Kenya and Ethiopia are now.   Like the Kenyans and Ethiopians, the tribes that live in the Four Corners have lived at high altitude for centuries.

Al Waquie is perhaps the most impressive runner I have ever seen and that includes the likes of Alberto Salazar, Frank Shorter, Henry Rono and Bill Rogers.  Most people who saw him in action or raced in the same races he competed in still can’t believe what they saw or what he did.