8. Be More Athlete

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BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

I'm Hannah Fry.

And I'm Dara O'Brien.

And this is Curious Cases.

The show where we take your quirkiest questions, your crunchiest conundrums, and then we solve them.

With the power of science.

I mean, do we always solve them?

I mean, the hit rate's pretty low.

But it is with science.

It is with science.

Welcome back to another episode of Curious Cases.

We've got a sporty question today.

Oh, see, okay, I think that suits because it's Saturday morning.

This thing is on that.

I feel there's people in cars driving their kids to sports events right now.

So

a sporty question would be perfect.

Or, think big, let's assume that we're on in the coach in the Arsenal football team.

They're on the drive.

Hey, everybody.

Hey, guys, I know that we normally just wear our big headphones before the game, but I wanted to watch some popular science.

I thought that'd be, we'd get us in the zone.

What could be more motivating than the question that we have today?

Because today we've had a question in from Ivy, who is 12, who asks, What makes a good athlete?

Something to ponder on your way to the match, isn't it?

Isn't it?

But imagine if you go, maybe it's not me.

Imagine what we're doing is shattering the self-belief of a football team on the way to a game.

Hey.

Am I though?

And they're staring at their own arm going, is this the arm of an athlete?

Oh, no.

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's some real existential dread that could come from the word good there, isn't there?

Okay, so we're recommending today's episode for Enun Barr, professional athletes.

of a delicate mental composition.

And is Ivy a sports person herself?

She is, yeah.

She's a swimmer.

Hopefully not of a delicate composition.

Yes.

Do you do any sports?

You know, do I look like somebody who's like doing

endurance events?

Maybe.

I was, and then I got bounced out of it by a bad knee.

I've got a dodgy knee.

I've got a hole in my knee.

Like, it's pretty dramatic.

Like, there's a bitch.

An actual gap where there should be more knee.

Where did the more knee go?

The more knee is outside.

It's sitting in a jar in my office at home.

Did it remove itself?

No, it rattled around and had to be opened up and it had to be taken out.

And then I had a bit where somebody sat me down and said, Never run again.

Okay.

Which is a thing to be told.

At 33, 33.

Turns out I'm entirely ceramic.

And that if I were to land, if I'm running for a train or something and land the wrong way,

the whole thing would shatter into a million pieces.

So, you know what?

There's actually a test to find out what sports you could be best at, even taking into account your knee.

So it's quite

a test that's been done by the BBC.

Okay.

And I would say it is more cute than definitive.

Okay.

We'll start off.

How tall are you, Dara?

Tall or short?

I tall.

I would say you're very tall.

Yeah, I'd be very tall.

Are you most like a rhino or kitten?

I think this is in power terms rather than bodybuild.

Oh, look, you'd have to say rhino rather than kitten.

Sure.

Did you say so?

Hang on.

Is this test how you are or how you see yourself?

You would love the thing.

That's the thing.

Because if I'm quite kittenish in other ways,

I carry some heft.

Let's say more rhino than kitten.

Yeah, you're built for the plow.

Yeah.

Okay.

If you're a curry, how spicy would you be?

Is it like in terms of like how.

I think it's aggressiveness.

Medium spicy?

Medium.

Do you catch more balls than you drop?

Catch them.

Yeah.

Nothing gets past me?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Eight, nine, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Goodness.

Okay.

And body fat.

Are you thin and crispy pizza or a stuffed crust with extra cheese?

I'm the guilty pizza.

I'm the one you're hanging out for when you've had.

Squidgey around the edges.

I would say there's stuffed things are stuffed into the crust.

There's extra mozzarella.

There is, yeah, yeah.

More like a tortoise and more like a hare.

Is this like am I faster or am I.

I think it's about endurance.

No, never great for that.

Always short distance.

Exhausted already.

Oh, I'm done.

And we've only done, we haven't done all the questions.

We've got one to go.

Yeah.

Do you move like a cat or sloth?

Agility, this is

midway.

Midway.

Okay, here we go.

Okay,

what should I be doing?

How should I be saying my Saturday mornings?

Are you ready?

I'm looking forward to it.

Your number one closest match star.

Netball.

Wow.

Netball.

Number two, hockey.

Did you is there...

What?

I did mention that you were a teenage girl, is that?

But am I supposed to just turn up at a netball thing?

Look, it says here, height is a big deal in netball.

Oh, height's hugely important.

The taller the better.

Coordination and communication, the two big C's.

But I'm that's genuinely really disappointing.

I'm afraid this this test is based on science so okay so well I better get a singlet

and and a short skirt and take up and start my netball career could you imagine if you ran out onto the netball and I'm there what are you doing here I know I'm so sorry it was a BBC website that sent me here

In the studio with us today we have Dr.

Polly McGriggan who is a biomechanist from the University of Bath.

And Dr.

Mitch Lomax who specialises in exercise physiology at the University of Portsmouth.

Mitch, can we have a more general question then?

What makes a good athlete?

Yeah, I mean, that's where'd you start with that?

I guess the first thing is you've got to have a really, really good support network.

So let's just get that out there.

But I guess dedication to training, lots and lots of training.

When you're training, when you say training, what are you looking to do, looking to achieve?

What are you trying to achieve?

Yeah, so it depends on what sport you're doing.

So if you're, say, an aerobic athlete, so someone who might run or swim for, I don't know, more than a few minutes, you've got to have a really good aerobic system or aerobic capacity because you've got to just keep going and keep going and keep going.

If you're more of a power athlete, so you're doing really short, sharp bursts of activity, then you've got to have high levels of strength, good power, those kinds of things.

So it depends on the sport.

Are you a swimmer yourself?

I am.

I'm a returning to competitive swimming swimmer.

So yes, I've been out the sport for a little bit, but my research is mainly all in swimming.

Right, okay.

Ivy, our question is also a swimmer.

So it's really dependent on what sport you're doing.

And even within sports, I presume you can break it down that like somebody doing an 800 meter versus somebody doing a 50 meter sprint, they're going to have a totally different schedule.

Yeah, for example, if you take, say, someone like Adam Petey versus Rebecca Adlington, which is essentially the sprinter versus the middle distance runner.

Yes.

So with Adam Petey, who's a sprinter, so he'll do 100 meters, he did a lot more strength training than Rebecca Adlinton.

So he'd spend a lot more time on dry land training because he needs to build strong muscles.

Whereas Rebecca Adlinton did less dry land training and would do more of her training in the pool.

So he was trained to be explosive shortburst and she was trained for more endurance.

Yeah, but the distance that they swam per week was actually

relatively similar.

So I think Rebecca Adlington typically would swim about 45 to 47 kilometers a week.

Adam Petey does around about 50 or he was doing around about 50 kilometers a week.

So he's still doing lots and lots of distance work.

It's just that the tailoring of that training differs for the different athletes.

That's a lot of moisturiser and targeting powder, isn't it?

Isn't it?

By the way, there'll be more serious questions in this, but

how far into it before the water stops going up your nose?

I mean, do they,

is that like, is that presumed?

Or how much, because that just and that spin that turns I mean do they learn not to have water go up their nose well there's a very easy way to stop that is you just hum

seriously if you just hum in the water you can't get air up your nose.

I do feel like nothing we say over the next 26 minutes is gonna is gonna land as much as really as when you're doing the kick thing at the end.

Well you generally hold your breath when you're turning so most of the tumble turn you'll be actually just holding your breath.

So if you're holding your breath you're not gonna get water up your nose.

But if you hum particular tunes or

anything that makes you happy I want to know though okay so when you're building up this this this tolerance for for stamina as it were yeah and what actually happens inside the body what's different to somebody who has that stamina versus versus somebody who's just not like like me and Dara yeah the key changes that happen with that kind of stamina change is really related to the lungs and the cardiovascular system things like the amount of blood going to your working muscles you get better at delivering that blood.

So you're better able to take away blood from inactive regions and give it to the active regions.

So you've got oxygen, you've got nutrients, and then you can also get rid of the byproducts.

We also see things like capillarisation and that helps again get oxygen into the muscles and get the waste products out of the muscles so they can be moved away.

And when you say capillarisation, is this actively more capillaries?

Yes.

Or is it that they dilate?

Yeah, no, actively more.

And you get that really quickly.

It's actually one of the first adaptations that occurs.

So there's some of the key endurance adaptations.

And if you're doing, say, strength training, you'll see that with the muscle fibers that are really good for kind of anaerobic events or power and sprint events.

Well, we're going to come back to that in a minute because I just want to go on to running, if I can, Polly.

Because, okay, so how is everything that we've described for swimmers, how does it differ for runners?

So in terms of the the physiological adaptations you're looking for similar things you are looking for that ability to deliver blood to the muscles that are powering the running i guess the difference is around that specificity of training so being able to train the neuromuscular system to activate muscles at the right time in the right coordinated manner to make the best of what you've got.

You see really quick adaptations in that neuromuscular control.

So when people get stronger and faster earlier on in training, a lot of that is due to improved coordination of their systems, improved technique.

And then the added benefits of years and years of training become less and less over time.

And they are all about sort of those fine 1% that make the difference between winning and not winning.

The coordination of the system though, is that not just you sort of you get what you're given?

Or is that something you can improve?

You can undoubtedly improve it.

So

there is a hugely important element of your genetics, of your morphology, and you're not going to be able to make huge changes in that, but you can very definitely train what you've got to be able to do what you want to do better.

So if we're thinking about muscles specifically, a sprinter wants to be able to generate a lot of force and generate force very quickly.

They do that with the fastest twitch muscle fibers.

And what training aims to do is focus on those muscles to make those muscle fibers bigger that actually don't use oxygen.

They produce force in an anaerobic way and then they recover from it afterwards.

Whereas an endurance athlete uses different types of muscle fibers.

They use slower twitch muscle fibres that still generate a lot of force because endurance runners are still running very quickly compared to mere mortals like us, but they do that using muscles that require oxygen and a steady supply of that oxygen.

I think I worked this out once when Paula Radcliffe did the marathon.

I worked it out that to run at the same pace as her, you'd have to be at level 20 on the treadmill.

Jesus.

But for like two hours solidly.

I mean, if you pause for one second, you're in the wall.

Gamer.

You're flung to the back of the room.

Gamer.

Absolutely.

I can't get past level 11 at full sprinting, I've got to be honest with you.

So, in terms of the men's world record marathon pace, that's the equivalent of running 100 meters in 17 seconds.

For two hours.

For two hours.

I mean,

they're not like us, are they?

No.

That one thing you said about running efficiency is interesting, though, because I did get once.

I was there when Mo Farrell was doing a group run.

Lots of people were allowed to go on a run with Mo Farrell.

And the thing that was particularly noticeable was that his feet did not make a sound as they touched the ground.

I mean, he was doing it at about a tenth of his normal pace.

But yeah, it was incredibly efficient running.

And actually,

the noise that your feet make is used as a training tool, as a really useful biofeedback training tool of sort of imagine that you've got a credit card between your heel and the ground and you don't want to squash the credit card.

That kind of thing is actually quite a powerful training tool as you are helping people to adapt their technique and things like that.

So, when I run the noise is FIFO54, that's what I should be here.

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be heard.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs.

Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

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Okay, well, some people, you say bolt, won the genetic lottery.

But of course, genes are going to be a really big part of this story.

So we asked Alan Williams, who is a professor of sport and exercise genomics at Manchester Metropolitan University, to give us an example of the differences that just one gene variant can make and whether or not you can test somebody's genes to work out whether they'd make a good athlete.

When it comes to elite power athletes, the best example is the gene ACTN3 and it stands for alpha-actinin 3.

So the gene, as most genes will do, codes for making a particular protein and that particular protein is found only in fast twitch or type 2 muscle fibers that we have and there's a common variant in that gene

where some people will have two effectively non-functioning versions of that gene so they are lacking that protein in their fast twitch fibers but it doesn't affect them massively it doesn't affect their health they can still be quite good athletes but in the extremely competitive environment of of high level sport then if you are missing that protein, then it seems to limit your sort of speed, power, performance just a little bit,

maybe only by 1%.

But obviously, at the elite level, that can be really important.

The reality is that while we know about certain genetic variants, the vast majority of genetic variants that are influencing physical performance are as yet unknown.

I think it would be wrong to make a conclusion about an individual's potential based on genetic tests given the current state of knowledge.

It's like

looking at a jigsaw with, I don't know, six pieces in, but it's 500 pieces and trying to make a conclusion about what the picture is at the end.

I don't think you can do that realistically.

Okay, so if that there is an example of a protein that's used in fast twitch muscles, are you sort of locked into what you've got or can you change this?

You can change your muscle fibers.

It's not easy to do, but

if you've got, say, a lot of fast twitch fibers and you're dedicated to doing endurance training, so that more kind of slow, repetitive training, those

that kind of exercise mainly uses your slow twitch fibers.

So, what you can do over time is you can convert your fast twitch fibers to slow twitch fibers, and you can go the other way as well.

But it's not easy to do, it's not one of the first things that happens, it's one of the much later training adaptations.

So, you can't rewrite your genetics, but you can modify your fibre makeup or your muscle makeup to a certain extent.

And then, what about the other way around then?

If you could, I mean, okay, fine, genetic testing at the moment, we don't know everything, but do you reckon there will be a point in the future where you can just like run someone's DNA and be like, You, my friend, you are the hobby horse champion of the world to be.

I think

we will

be able to advance talent identification in sport in ways that we're only teetering around the edge of at the moment.

But

that still doesn't take into account

the

kind of ability to train, the ability to push yourself mentally and physically

and that X factor that brings it all together.

Let's bask in the factor that Sylvia are just built for the sports they compete.

And so Michael Phelps is a perfect example, he's a legendary swimmer.

Yeah, if you're looking for the ideal male swimmer's body, Michael Phelps is your man, definitely.

And if you kind of look at his body proportions, he has a long torso.

In fact, his torso is longer than you would expect for a man of his height.

So I think he's about six foot four.

And his torso is the length of someone who you'd expect to be about six foot eight.

But if you actually measure his legs, his legs are about the length of someone who's six foot.

Now, in something like swimming, that's ideal because you want a nice long torso, you want very long arms, which he also has, and you want slightly shorter legs because you want powerful legs, but you've got to drag those legs through the water.

So, with swimming, long torso, long arms,

shorter legs, and lots of flexibility.

Does he also graze his knuckles on the floor sometimes?

I wouldn't go that far, but yeah,

he has what we call a high anthropometry index, which means his arms are longer than his torso.

Big hands, like shovels.

Big hands, yeah, big hands and big feet.

I know it sounds like we're painting someone who's very absolutely.

Yeah, homunculus.

It's a very weird creature,

there's a really nice photodynamics fact about how closely your fingers should be together.

So I think that you're sort of taught, certainly I was taught

when I was learning how to swim that you kind of keep your fingers closed.

But actually, if you separate them slightly, then you get so many eddies and little bits of turbulence between your fingers that it adds to the size of your paddle.

Yeah, it's yeah.

Swimming's amazing, and particularly from the biomechanical aspect, it's a phenomenal sport.

When you add the biomechanics and the physiology, because you're horizontal, you've got all this extra pressure of water pressing down on you.

You can't breathe when you want to breathe anyway.

And then on top of that, you've got water that's trying to compress your lungs, and you've got to fight with the water.

There's loads of unique factors which make swimming very, very useful.

Well, a lot of swimming is ridiculous.

I think we should just go on.

The breathstroke is ridiculous, quite frankly.

Butterfly is amazing.

Come on, it's ridiculous.

And then, because I,

not to, again, but I had this knee thing.

And the weirdest thing the doctor said after the operation was, oh, don't do the breaststroke kick.

You're literally trying to kick your own leg off or kick your foot off your leg.

The breaststroke kick is such an unnatural thing.

I mean, I think breaststroke's an unnatural stroke.

I'm not a breaststroke swimmer.

I'm a butterfly swimmer, so I like butterflies.

Sorry, she thinks breaststroke is unnatural.

Yeah, I know.

And does the thing with your hands come swooping out of the water, swooping out of the water and hooshing

neck off as high as you

huge.

You just like making a splash.

Just a big splash and then down again.

A lot of it is wrong.

But also the decision of when you're underwater and when you're at the interface between water and air and when it's better to use those.

Higher is better of it, presumably.

Yeah, the more buoyant you can be, the better.

So again, what you see with someone like Michael Phelps is his center of mass is very close to his lungs.

So when he's flat on the water, he's nice and buoyant.

The fact that he's got lovely, nice, long hands means that he can catch and it stops him from sinking because he's also quite muscly.

So the more muscular you are, the harder it's going to be to float.

So good swimmers, the really good swimmers, we tend to see their centre of mass is much closer to their lungs.

And again, that gives them a bit of a natural advantage as long as they don't stand still for too long because they will just start to sink.

Can we measure your wingspan?

Because we're thinking of this as best.

I'm six foot four.

Okay.

I've got fairly long arms, but...

Should we measure out?

Go on.

I mean, there's no great science.

Presumably you're just using a tape

of some sort.

We're going to measure a tape measure.

So we're going to measure from the tips of your left fingers to the tips of your right fingers.

And straight out.

Straight out from above.

Yep, so straight out.

I'm going to guess that there's still seven or height.

Are you?

So this is...

191.

Oh, that's very close.

I'm about 100.

I think I'm 195 centimetres in height.

What's the opposite of Neanderthal?

Are we or are we?

Which direction are we going?

T-Rex.

Well, I'm not like, I'm.

Little hands, big buddy.

Yeah.

Return to this being impressive.

Do you know what, though?

It worked great for netball.

Oh, yeah.

See, that's my sport, apparently.

Yeah, according to the website,

that's the one I should try.

Not good for knees, though.

Oh,

yeah.

Okay, fine.

I was panicking in a quite static way and basically using my heft to you know shield shield a lot of shielding

goal defense.

That's exactly it.

Just block the net.

Goalkeeper.

Goalkeeper.

Go defense.

You're right.

That's right.

Yeah.

So

is your wingspan normally around the same as your?

So swimmers will have a large wingspan.

So Michael Phelps again has, I think his anthropometry index is something like 1.08.

The ratio of your height to your wingspan.

Yes, that's right.

So his wingspan wingspan is his height plus another 8%.

His is 1.052.

There we go.

1.052.52 points.

Mine is

9899, would have said.

Yeah.

Yeah, let's say that.

So he's got an advantage of zero, don't you?

0.9 something.

High 90s.

That's fair enough.

We have to move on to general.

I know, because we focus very much on the biology, but sticking with the training, enduring the ups and downs, managing nerves and all of that, was very much about mindset.

So we spoke with sports psychologist Dr.

Josephine Perry about some techniques that our listener Ivy might be able to use.

One thing you might do in order to really focus on your strengths is to create kind of mantras.

So we often talk about kind of positive self-talk.

There's instructional self-talk.

So Ivy, when she's

dived into the pool, she's really pushing at her 50-meter free.

She really needs to think about what's the technical thing she needs to do to perform really, really well.

But if Ivy were to get really nervous beforehand and she'd be getting all the butterflies in the tummy and the feeling of I don't want to do this, what if I fail?

What if somebody judges me or they might laugh at me?

And that would be embarrassing.

What we would have Ivy do is focus on her motivational mantra.

So, her reason for doing it.

What does she love about swimming?

Where does she want to go with it?

How will this race help her get there?

One of the things as a sports psychologist I do is try never to ask the athletes I work with their results.

So when they come into a session, I have to sit on my hands not to do it because it's so tempting to do it.

And you want to know how somebody's done.

But also deep down, I don't want to know what their result was.

I don't know what time they did or where they came.

I want to know, did they follow the processes that make them proud?

Did they follow all the tasks that they needed to do in order to be a more expert athlete?

And if they did that, then actually they've done the right thing and they're much more likely to do well overall.

And it's about a journey that can be very up and down at times, but it's a journey where they're constantly improving.

It's not about individual results along the way.

So I suppose it's not about focusing on a stopwatch.

It's just about in the training.

Is it maybe...

This time I'm going to swim to improve my stroke, this time I'm going to swim to improve my breathing, this time I'm going to focus on a different thing and then let the overall picture not quite sort itself out as it were.

Yeah,

it's an interesting one because, as a physiologist, I do look at those things.

So, the way in which I can tell that a training program is working is by seeing, right, have you actually shaved a second off of your time?

So, when we've helped to put your training program together, we are looking for particular gains at certain periods of time.

So, have you achieved that?

If you haven't, haven't, then we would go, okay, let's go back and look at what's happened with the training.

Maybe you were injured, maybe you were ill.

So I would approach it slightly differently, but again, it depends on the level of the athlete and what they're hoping to get out of it.

Certainly with maybe younger athletes, people that are starting out, I mean, enjoyment is always key, but a psychologist would probably approach things very differently to me, which is why sports brilliant, because it is a multi-disciplinary activity.

You're not going to perform well if you only have a physiologist or you only have a psychologist.

We need all these different disciplines coming together to try and optimise our athletes.

I mean, I suppose what you're saying there is you're looking for a greater sense of purpose for it all rather than it being just about a race or just about a time.

That it be an enjoyable thing in itself.

Yeah, it should be.

It should always be enjoyable, but at the elite level, there's so many pressures for you've got to do this time because funding is dependent upon where your athletes come gets quite quite complicated but fundamentally yes you you need to be enjoying it if you're not enjoying it then

why do it you do hear that though of people who take penalties of people who are sort of in those extremely high pressure moments in training trying to go through that process of like making it feel like it's second nature so that when the real pressure is on that the psychology of it actually supports them in that moment rather than counts them.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

You need to prepare for absolutely everything.

And there's a good example again with Michael Phelps when he was younger.

Periodically his coach would rip off his goggles just before a race and say this could happen.

You could dive into a pool and you see it.

Your goggles could come down.

You need to know how to deal with that.

So I'm not suggesting people go and do that, but the point is, yeah, you need to prepare in training for probably things that are going to happen that you you don't want to happen when you're racing.

It's the idea that he goes, ah, the water's in my eyes, oh, the chlorine.

And then you carry on swimming with the game.

Basically, yeah, it's so that it doesn't affect his performance.

So that rather than doing exactly that, which is what you're going to do, he just plows through and goes, oh, well.

Was his trainer previously a Russian genius?

I do not know.

Yeah, it's not a bad mess.

I know that for me and the girls of the Netball, we just do it because we love it.

We just do it because just for the joy of the game.

It's just for the joy of the game.

It's for the love of the game.

That's why I'm such an enthusiastic gold defense.

Gold next.

So thank you very much indeed to our guests today, Dr.

Mitch Lomax and Dr.

Polly McGriggan.

Well, there we go.

Solved it.

Done.

Ivy's going to be grand.

Ivy's going to be fine.

I think swim lots is the...

That seems to be, that seems to be the key thing.

But when you're swimming, do it in a way you enjoy it.

I mean, that's mainly the message that I'm getting with this.

And the message you should take take away for your netball.

We're always like this in the netball.

I'm always saying, Are we having fun?

Are we having fun, yeah?

I say to the girls.

And they're going, stop.

You're not on the team.

Stop using the word we.

Re, you're not part of this, they keep saying.

And I'm going, Jenny, Jenny, Jenny, Jenny, I'm clear.

I'm open.

I'm open.

I'm open.

I'm open.

Jenny never passes.

Jenny.

Oh, come on, Jenny.

I'm trying here.

Subscribe to Curious Cases on BBC Sounds and make sure you've got push notifications turned on and we'll let you know as soon as new episodes are available.

It's the 1980s and a young bodybuilder named William Dillon leaves rural Illinois behind for sun-drenched California in search of a supersized American dream.

To get absolutely jacked.

When you're muscular, when you're big, you get respect.

But he's about to discover the secret to why so many of the bodybuilders around him are getting ripped quick.

This is the story of the biggest illegal steroid operation the United States had ever seen.

Literally, hundreds, if not a thousand needles came down like the heavens were falling.

I'm Natalia Petrozella from BBC Radio 4.

This is Extreme.

Musclemen, listen first on BBC Sounds.

Sups!

The new musical has made made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be hurt!

Winner, best score!

We demand to be seen!

Winner, best book!

We demand to be quality!

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

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Hurry in now through July 31st.

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