Tag: sports technology

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My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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A few more volleys have been fired in the escalating Compression Garment Wars. Australian researchers have just posted a new study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research that gives a thumbs-up to whole-body compression garments for the repeated-sprint activity typical of soccer and other field sports. Meanwhile, researchers at Indiana University have reached the opposite conclusion about the ability of compression leggings to help running endurance and jumping ability.

First the Australian study: they used full-body Skins compression suits — yep, that’s long sleeves and full leggings. The test was a treadmill simulation of the demands of a typical soccer game, with a mix of walking, jogging, running and sprinting for 45 minutes; the more distance you cover, the “better” you’ve done. They had volunteers do the test twice, once with Skins and once without, and found a “moderate strength likely improvement” in distance covered (5.42 vs. 5.88 km), and similar “likely” improvements in muscle oxygenation, but no changes in heart rate and VO2.

(This “likely” business means they didn’t find statistically significant differences — not surprisingly given the small sample size — but still have reason to believe that the difference is big enough to matter to athletes, if I understand correctly.)

Now, I believe the oxygenation stuff. No doubt that if you cram yourself into one of these suits, you are affecting your physiology in some way. (For example, as the authors note, similar previous studies have found that — surprise, surprise — full body suits “may have some thermoregulatory effects.” In other words, they make you hotter.)

But the question is, are these small physiological effects translating into meaningful performance changes? On the surface, you might think this study answers yes. However, it absolutely boggles my mind that anyone could write a paper like this and not even mention the possibility of a placebo effect. Really? You put one group in a $100 spacesuit, the other group in a cotton undershirt, and you’re surprised to see an 8% improvement in a very “soft” measurement with a 12% error bar? And then you conclude, with a straight face, that these things will make you a better soccer player because you’ll have more oxygen in your lower limb muscles, even though the increased speed was only seen during the jogging portions of the test and not the fast running or sprinting?

Okay, so on the other hand, two new studies from Indiana. One tested lower leg compression garments on 16 distance runners, and found no changes in muscle oxygenation, running economy, or mechanics. The other tested the upper thigh compression shorts that basketball players love, using three sizes (Goldilocks style: one that was a size up, one that was a size down, and one that was just right). Vertical jump was the same in all three cases.

The most interesting point in the Indiana studies may be the following:

Although overall the study found that the compression garment had no effect on running mechanics and economy, there was some variation. Four subjects had an average of greater than one percent increase in oxygen consumption — their economy worsened — while wearing the compression garment. However, four other subjects experienced a greater than one percent decrease in oxygen consumption — their economy improved — while wearing the compression garment. Laymon had her subjects complete a subjective questionnaire about their feelings toward compression garments before completing their tests. It turned out that the subjects who experienced improvement in their economy were more likely to have a favorable attitude toward compressive wear and believed that by wearing the compressive garment their racing would improve.

“Overall, with these compressive sleeves and the level of compression that they exert, they don’t seem to really do much,” [researcher Abigail] Laymon said. “However, there may be a psychological component to compression’s effects. Maybe if you have this positive feeling about it and you like them then it may work for you. It is a very individual response.

Two important points here. First, it looks like if you believe they work, then they will. (See my post last week confirming that superstitions boost performance!) Second, there’s significant individual variation. As I said at the top of this post, there’s no doubt that compression does something to the body. But these studies, and the others that continue to pile up, do nothing to convince me that we’ve figured out how to harness those effects in a useful way (at least for performance enhancement — recovery from soreness looks a little more solid at this point).

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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Further to yesterday’s post about the incredible amount of work ski technicians do to squeeze an extra half-second out of downhill skis, a reader sent me this link to an article in the L.A. Times titled “Have Olympic athletes done all they can?”:

Some scientists say so. Papers published in the last few years indicate that human performance has already peaked, and the only way to improve is with technology — or cheating.

The article takes a look at the various biomechanical and statistical arguments suggesting that world records aren’t going to progress much further. There are, of course, some holes we can poke in those studies. For instance:

A French researcher who analyzed a century’s worth of world records concluded in a recent paper that the peak of athletic achievement was reached in 1988. Eleven world records were broken that year in track and field. Seven of them still stand.

It’s hard to believe anyone could write this with a straight face. Of the seven records still standing from 1988, four of them were set by women from Eastern Bloc countries with well-established state doping programs, and two were by Florence Griffith-Joyner. If the year 1988 represented the “peak” of anything, it was unfettered doping, not human performance. Not coincidentally, that was the year Ben Johnson was busted, and authorities, however reluctantly, started tightening doping controls.

But to be honest, I think poking these sorts of holes in the article is missing the broader point. Are we reaching a regime of diminishing returns in terms of performance? Of course! In 1900, the world record for the men’s mile was 4:12.75; 100 years later, it was 3:43.13. Unless we expect to be running two-minute miles in 300 years, it’s obvious that the curve has to gradually flatten out.

Does this mean we’re reaching “The Limit” of human performance in the mile? This is where I think the conceptual framework of the L.A. Times article is a little shaky. There is no limit, there’s just statistics. The farther we push towards the extreme edge of the distribution, the less likely we are to find an outlier with even better characteristics, and the smaller the margin of improvement will be. But the distribution never just stops. Even if Usain Bolt turns out to be a once-in-five-generations talent, there’s still the possibility, 10 generations from now, of someone just like him but with, say, slightly quicker reaction time.

Training and technology are the two other X-factors. In a sport like swimming, if you reinvent the swimsuit, you’re essentially moving the finish line. Is Michael Phelps better than Ian Thorpe? I have no idea, because they’re competing under different circumstances. To me, the resulting debate is less interesting, because we end up discussing the rules and bylaws of sport rather than human performance (which is why, as I argued here, I think sports governing bodies should be reactionary and conservative in their approach).

As for training, it’s impossible to separate training from talent. (One major aspect of talent, after all, is having an abnormally large response to training.) It’s advances in training, far more than track surfaces and better shoes, that separate today’s milers from Roger Bannister. Have we optimized the science of training? Far from it, though we’ve certainly picked most of the low-hanging fruit.

So if the message of the Times piece is that humans have reached their “peak,” I think they need to revisit their statistics. If it’s that athletes, especially in “mature” sports, will improve less frequently and by smaller margins than in the past — well then, yeah. Of course.

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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From a nice, detail-packed two-part post at Wired’s Playbook blog about how Matthew Schiller, the head technician for the U.S. Ski Team, prepares ski bases and edges for downhill competition, a lovely kicker that sums up the technological arms race:

After all this work, the endless coats of wax, the scraping and filing and polishing — what’s the difference between a perfect ski and one that’s totally missed the mark?

About half a second, according to Schiller.

Months and years of work to find a half a second? That’s the Olympics, and not just for the athletes.