Has nothing to do with finally seeing the light. Muscule fiber is just one
of those things, like height, that you can not change. You can train the
fibers to act more slow or fast twitch, but they are still what they are.
So in that sense, yes runners be it long distance or sprinters are born.
When you are on top (World/Olympic medalists) you need it
all: genetics, training, luck, etc. But to win a few good races: Boston,
Falmouth, European Track, etc I think you can get by without a serious
genetic gift. It's only when you are racing THE VERY BEST that you lose
out,
because the
The %slow twitch vs. %fast twitch is interesting in another way as well:
it shows how important some other factors must be (though they are still
probably genetically determined for the large part). For example, what
sort of muscle composition would explain Said Aouita who ranked #1 in the
world
On 5/25/01 2:33 PM, alan tobin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Has nothing to do with finally seeing the light. Muscule fiber is just one
of those things, like height, that you can not change.
And like basic physique, ability to process energy, etc., phenotypes that
are distributed differently in
This is interesting given that my understanding of studies conducted in the
U.S. on a group of marathoners including Shorter et al. The single, best,
correlate with performance was the number of years of marathon training -
not mucle fiber composition, not VO2, not mileage, not efficiency, etc.
Came across this summary of Saltin's work which I thought would be of
interest to the list:
***
Even wonder what makes a great athlete? Why did Marion Jones of the
U.S.A. win the gold medal in the 100m sprint in Sydney in a time of 10.75
seconds? And how did Japan's Takahashi run
There are 3 different types of heavy chains or isoforms: I, IIa, and IIx.
The type I isoform is referred
to as a slow fiber and the IIa and IIx isoforms are called fast fibers.
it seems that through a weight training regiment, some fast IIx fibers are
converted to IIa fibers.
Oddly enough, no
This is where I agree with genetics 100%. If you are born with an abundance
of fast twitch muscle fibers you will never become a very good distance
runner, although I could see this person become a good middle distance
runner (400-800). From what I've read you can train fast twitch fibers to
