Instant Genius - Peak Performance: Have we reached peak human athletics performance?

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

These days, top athletes are breaking fewer and fewer world records. But why is this occurring, and does it mean that we are close to reaching the limits of human sporting performance? In this episode, we catch up with Dr Jonathan Taylor, a senior lecturer in sport and exercise at Teesside University. He tells us the role our genes play in our athletic performance, the limits our musculature and cardiovascular systems play, and why it’s unlikely to mean that we’ll lose interest in playing and watching sports anytime soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Over the course of four episodes, we'll be delving into the science of all things related to sports and fitness. whether you're looking how to get the most out of your gym time or for the most effective ways to recover after you may have pushed yourself a bit too far. We've got you covered. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor, a BBC Science Focus.

These days, top athletes are breaking fewer and fewer world records. But why is this occurring? And does it mean that we're close to reaching the limits of human sporting performance? In this episode, we catch up with Dr. Jonathan Taylor, a senior lecturer in sports and exercise at Teesside University. He tells us the role our genes play in our athletic performance, the limits our musculature and cardiovascular systems play,

and why it's unlikely to mean that we'll lose interest in playing and watching sports anytime soon. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for joining us. Thanks a lot for having me. So first of, can you introduce yourself, you know, what's your background and what do you do? Yeah, so I'm currently a senior lecturer in Sport and Exercise at Teesside University. And I did my PhD at Teesside as well. and that was focused on sport and exercise science, specifically physiology.

So I've got a PhD and I'm a basis-accredited sport-tionist. I guess to go further into my background around sort of why I got into sport and sport science in particular. So growing up, I was pretty typical. I wanted to be a footballer. Ended up playing in football academies and so on. But then realized as I was going through secondary school, I was quite talented at athletics.

So I ended up forming at national level as a middle, long-distance runner, so 5K and cross-country. And that really shaped where I was going with sports science. So I thought if I go to university and I study an area that I'm really passionate about, that's something that I'll enjoy. And I've worked in academia, which I do now, but I've also worked in professional football. So I've got a bit of experience of sports science in different environments, both we say your endurance athletes, team sports athletes and so on.

So that's a little bit about me. Yeah, all good stuff. So today we're talking about sort of people. peak athletic performance, how far can human beings go? So you hear a lot that world records aren't being beaten as much as they used to anymore. I mean, is that true? Yeah, I think it is true. So the margins are getting smaller, you know, that's maybe due to the sort of short direction of records have been recorded in history. And, you know, you can look at sort of trends of records over time. There's a couple of ways that you can look at it as a sort of linear trend

and predict off that. But I think in terms of where performances are going, it'd start to level off in terms of the curve that we're on. So, yeah, I think it's fair to say that they aren't being beaten by as much as they used to be. There's been a bit of a plateau, particularly in the last 40 years and some events more than others. And if we take athletes, for instance, there's certain records, like say, the men's and women's 100 metre records.

So the men's record hasn't been broken for 15 years, and the women's, we're talking like 40 years. So it's definitely a bit of a sort of leveling off in those events. Yeah, so why do you think that is that it varies from event to event? I think a lot of it is to do with sort of the length of time that the events being competed over. So, for example, in the women's events, there's less leaven and off because potentially like social factors over time.

So especially in the endurance events for women, they've been less able to compete in those. So the first women's marathon was only in 1984, for example. so we're starting to see a lot of progression over time in the women's events. The men's sort of more stagnated. But I think there's a few factors really. So I think the length of the event, so for example, if you're on a marathon, there's a lot more scope to improve performance because there's a lot more time to intervene.

Whereas into the short events or the 100 metres, you know, there's not a lot of time to make changes. And that's really down to just raw physiology without any pacing and so on. So I think that's probably the reason why we're seeing some differences over time between events. And again, I guess I think over time you're starting to see, I guess the best way to describe it is you sort of square pegs, square holes. So the right athletes or the right genetics are getting into the right events over the last 20, 30, 40 years. And that's meaning that they can really maximise what they've got in terms of training and produce based on that. So you mentioned physiology a couple of times there.

So obviously this is key to this argument. So what sort of limits to things like human muscles have? How do they work? And is there a limit to how strong or how fit someone can be? Yes, I think there's a few factors to look at. So you can look at muscular, as you mentioned. You can look at cardiovascular. So lungs and heart.

You can look at metabolic factors as well. So if I talk first about muscle development, generally the basic contractile characteristics of the muscle, so all the muscle contracts is altered fairly little by training. And if we're talking about sprint performances or explosive performances, which are based more on muscular contraction development, we're really looking at sort of how much force you can exert and not only how much force you can exert from the muscle development,

but also how much force you can exert in a really short period of time. I think in terms of the scope for muscle development, I think we're probably not far off in terms of with natural resources, people training and being able to reach natural limits. It's all about sort of refining the balance between how much force you can exert and how much time. And I think it's to do with essentially,

so if we're looking to develop more power for sprinting events, essentially to build more muscle mass. So more muscle mass equals more power. But the problem with that is more muscle mass equals more weight, which means a high range of air cost of movement. So it's not like we can just say

the biggest bodybuilder in the world could sprint the fastest because of they've got to carry that muscle mass as well. So in terms of muscle development, I think we're not far off, sort of the limit in terms of contractile processes and all those things. But it's all about balancing that great power production through and that's muscle mass versus the body mass that somebody puts on and having to carry that body mass. Yeah, so let's stick with muscles for a minute then. So people talk about fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibres, I guess they're called. So what's the difference there? So your fast-twitch muscle fibres,

the fibres where it can produce force quickly, essentially anaerobically, so without the use of oxygen. They're more suited to your explosive events. So you'll see that the best sprinters in the world have a high percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibres. In terms of slow-twitch muscle fibres, your best endurance athletes will have more slow-twitch muscle fibers and something that's in between.

So we've got your fast-twitch and fast-twitch oxidative. and the fast switch oxidative are ones that benefit that middle ground in terms of your middle distance performance but your endurance athletes will have some of that I guess it's easier to convert muscle fibers from

fast switch to slow twitch but not the other way around so for example if you're an elite sprinter the chances are you've been born with genetic factors that allow you to do that if you're an elite endurance athlete you've probably been born with some of the genetic factors allow you to do that but those factors are probably more

trainable than if you're in the lead sprinter. So let's move on to the cardiovascular system then, another really important aspect of sports performance. And, you know, people talk about things like resting heart rate or whatever, but, you know, what is there that we can drill into? Yeah, so when we talk about cardiovascular fitness and influences that really influences endurance performance, unsurprisingly, and in terms of the determinants of endurance performance is a few different cardiovascular and metabolic factors that sort of influence how well someone can perform in endurance events. So the one that people have probably heard most about is something called V-O-2 Max or maximum oxygen uptake. And that essentially the most amount of oxygen you can take in and utilize for energy production at the working

tissues within a minute. So I would explain that. We've then got a few other sort of parameters. So you've got exercise efficiency or economy. And the way I like to explain this is by looking at sort of a car, for example, right? So, VO2 Max is like your engine and how powerful your engine is. Your economy and efficiency is essentially sort of your fuel usage, so your miles per gallon, for example. And your thresholds as well, which are another physiological concept, where we start to build up by products that sort of limit muscle contraction. So people have probably heard of lactate and lactate thresholds.

And essentially, it's not necessarily the lactate, the influences performance. It's the hydrogen ions that come along with that, which make your muscle pH more acidic and that's less favorable for muscle contraction. So they're the things that would essentially determine endurance performance. You know, there is a ceiling on those things. So, for example, the highest V-O-2 max recorded was in the mid-90s, which your average person off the street were looking at 30 to 50, probably as being their V-O-2 max. It's quite well accepted that in some athletes, things like V-O-2 max, mitochondrial density

or mitochondria which are another sort of powerhouse of cell where aerobic. energy production occurs, sort of developed as far as it can to some extent. So it's the other factors, so your threshold development and your economy, which may be the real keys to improve an endurance performance further. So let's have a look at training methods, obviously since sports became professional and, you know, there's lots of money and lots of science in them. So how has that changed and what impact has it had? Yeah, well, I think in terms of training methods, there's really a cocktail of factors which contribute to the impact of training on performance. And I think specific training methodologies are something that have really influenced performance.

But I think, for example, the growth and availability of digital media and that's influenced knowledge of not only your person off the street, but elite athletes take and see what other athletes are there competing against the doing. I guess a common or a good example of this most recently is sort of Norwegian athletes have been doing. very well in Scandinavian athletes, particularly in 1,500 metres and triathlon they've had success. They use a method called double threshold training, and it's a means of training where you do two sessions in the same day or two interval sessions are submaximal,

but that allows the amount of high-intensity work you can do, and that's become more commonplace over the last sort of five years because of the rise in sort of Scandinavian athletes' success, but that's being carried out in Scandinavia, probably for the last 25 years. So I think what happens with training methods is, essentially the best athletes, people look to them and see what they're doing and try and imitate what they're doing. And I think obviously the refinement of sort of environmental factors around

training methodology are important. So nowadays it's almost mandatory for elite endurance athletes to go and train at altitude, for example. And that is because there's essentially less oxygen in the air, so you have to become more efficient. So that goes back to increasing exercise efficiency that I spoke about. There's enhanced knowledge around strength and conditioning people are understanding that you can't just train your sport. There is sort of supplementary things that you can do that can almost supercharge your performance level. For example, for endurance athletes, you might not expect that going in the gym and lifting heavy weights might be the best way for them to get better. But there is quite a lot of evidence out there that if you lift heavier weights, it can increase your efficiency and it can increase your durability over the sort of duration of a long event.

There's knowledge around recovery. So sports technology is sort of linked to that as well, I guess. So people are understanding the principles of recovery and things that they can do to enhance recovery, which essentially means they can train more. You've then got an enhanced knowledge around injured prevention. So people understand more about your training load monitoring. So nowadays there's lots of online platforms, so common ones like Strava and training peaks and things like that, which people use to monitor training load and essentially ensure that they are

building training load progressively and not eliciting any training spikes. So large increases in volume, which might leave someone more open to getting injured. And if you can reduce the risk of injury, essentially it means that you can train more consistently. More training is going to allow you to perform better. Essentially, and I think that's one of the areas that there's been improvement around. So it's not per se training methods, but it's things around train that would help improve that. professionalism. So as you mentioned, since the 1970s and 80s, it's slightly contributed to improvements and performance because now you're getting, certainly in athletics, you're getting

groups of elite athletes training together under the umbrella of a certain sports brand. And that's sort of iron, sharpens iron type thing. So people are training harder with people at their level. And I guess in terms of other things that might have contributed around training methods and it's a bit of a taboo subject essentially is obviously the topic of dope and how that can allow people to train more and train more effectively over time. Those are some of the real things that are happening around training and training methodology. I think people have got a greater understanding of all those areas really. Yeah, so you mentioned performance-enhancing drugs there.

Obviously, it's a very controversial topic. But, you know, what do they do? How big of an effect do they have? And, you know, is the sort of doping control system doing its job? Yeah, so I think, obviously with different activities or events, people might take different performance and ads and substances. So I think if you look at some of the athletics records and some of the other records from different sports, there's a period in the 90s and early 2000s where a lot of the endurance records were smashed, and some of them are still standing now, and that's often known as sort of the EPO era,

which to EPO essentially the substance people can take that will allow them to develop more red blood cells, which increases their oxygen carrying capacity, which is obviously really important in endurance events. Now, if we're talking about sprint performance, you'll often see sprinters getting done for certain steroids or growth hormones, and they're more simple for them in terms of allowing great developing in muscle mass, allowing people to recover quicker so that you can train. So I think there's a misconception broadly in the public that if someone takes performance-enhancing drugs that they don't train hard, it just allows them to be good. But it's not like that. It just allows you to train harder.

So, you know, every athlete, if they could, would love to go out and train hard every single day. But if you did that, you would end up in a sort of state of overtraining and it would affect your general health, no mind your athletic performance. generally athletes tend to employ a sort of hard easy hard easy sort of pattern to the training. Now if people are taking performance ads and drugs, it might allow them to do more hard work across the week and sort of supercharged their performance gains. So yes, I think it's a really controversial topic and there's certain records in Afflex, for instance, that have stood since the 70s and 80s. So for example, the women's 400, the women's 300, the women's 3,000, the women's 100 metres.

there were times when there was less control. Now, with regards to doping control now, I think the techniques that any doping agencies are using are sort of advancing, and they are limiting what people can do. But is it possible to stop? Probably not because you're always chasing the next method that people are using.

So I know most recently, one of the most recent, big innovations for endurance athletes in particular was the blood passport that they use to test people's blood. and look at the sort of red blood cell count and things like that. And that has limited. Certainly the number of doping positives that we've seen reported in the media,

but then people will always find a way, instead of taking larger quantities of these substances now, people are often using microdose and approaches to sort of circumvent testing windows and so on. So it's a controversial topic, but yeah, but I think it would be naive to think that that's not something that still happens. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen

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So let's have a look at another big thing then that's changed over recent years, not just for athletes, but for everyday people as well, which is nutrition. So what role has that played? Yeah, so I think nutrition, there's probably three ways that nutrition has contributed to improve performance for me. So the first thing would be fueling. So for example, people understand the fuel requirements of marathon nowadays more so than they used to.

So that means that athletes can refine the fueling. strategies and so try to avoid hitting the wall, as people have probably heard of in the marathon. So that's the first way. The second way would be probably recovery. There's all kinds of recovery products out there on the market now. And people are starting to understand more around carbohydrate availability, protein synthesis or muscle building repair, and nutrition timing as well. So there's a lot of researchers came out over the last 20, 30 years in these areas that have sort of allowed people to understand the recovery process more and how. they can benefit the recovery process.

Then there's also ergodenic AIDS, I guess, and the best way to explain that is a strategy it would enhance performance by taking a certain substance. There's research around caffeine. So caffeine's a common one that people use. Beat root juice. People probably had of beetroot shots. People use to improve endurance performance because it has effects on blood flow and circulation. Tart cherry juice is another one that's common.

people use to enhance recovery. Then there's other things like creating supplementation, which might be used to improve explosive performance. And there's various other supplements and things that people now use to boost immune system function. If we can boost immune system function, we can reduce the risk of picking up illnesses. And again, that can allow people to train more consistently over time and more training equals more opportunity for improvement and performance, I guess.

So another big one these days is sort of, technology. So I'm thinking about specifically with trainers, people are saying that the trainer technology is improved to a point where actually you can cut your times down. Yeah, no, that's true. Yeah. So I think within any sport, sort of innovation can lead to really large progression steps, I guess, is the best way to describe it. I think until fairly recently, athletics was one of those sports where technology didn't have that much of an impact. And then in 2016 that all changed. For those who don't know, in 2016, there was a sort of introduction of this new shoe technology, and that consists of the inclusion of a new type of form that was used in

the sole of the shoe, combined with a carbon plate and a sort of scoop shape that was more favourable to get improvement. And so that came on the scene in 2016, and ever since then, we've seen a topling of a lot of athletics, endurance event records. And then in 2019, we started to see some of that technology that was in running trainers, which predominantly affected the marathon and 10K road running times and so on, translated into the track. So we started to see these so-called super spikes, where they integrated some of the same technology,

so the same form in the sole of the shoe, the carbon plate. It was quite interesting to see at the time because anyone who'd been through endurance races would see that to that point, people would wear running shoes where the soles were as thin as they could possibly be. the spikes were as thin as it could possibly be for weight and then all of a sudden people are walking around in shoes where they've got a two inch sort of sole or on the track people are wearing a sole that's a lot thicker

in terms of what that's done to track performance times so there was a study that came out recently they looked at comparing the top 100 track and road performances between 2010 so pre this advanced footwear technology to 2022 where we'd had this technology in place for maybe three to five years, depending on what I'm looking at. And they found that it was beneficial across the board.

So for 100 metres to 400 meters, so what they're terms as sprint events, they're seeing around about a 1% improvement in performance for men and women, which I speculated was due to the shoe tech. For middle distance events, again, we're seeing anywhere from 1 up to 2% for some athletes. And then for longer distances,

we're seeing gains where, could be 2 to 3% in women and sort of 1 and 1.5% in men. And that's a significant change. So, you know, we're talking about over a one-mile race, a three-second improvement in performance or over a marathon. You're looking at a minute a half to two minutes for the top guys. So we're starting to see big changes. And the shoe tech's led that.

But there is other innovations that came in, particularly in athletics, which I think have changed the sport as well. Could you speak about those a little bit then? Yeah, so for anyone who watches Athletics on TV, so your Diamond League on BBC, you'll often see in the distance events. They have these lights now going along the inside of the track, and that's called Wavelight,

and that's a means of pacing the race, so that only came in place probably the last four or five years, sort of widely used. And what that does is essentially the variability in, say, for example, if we look at a 5K or 10K world record, the variability in kilometre to kilometres has decreased significantly so it means these athletes

are now able to run this flat pace which ensure is that none of these fluctuations in pace which costs energy and essentially cost you in the later part of the race are happening. So I guess Wavelight is one of the sort of most prominent ones

and then you've also got things like in athletics track surfaces so the track surfaces that are used nowadays is a totally different from probably 15, 20 years ago, let alone when Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile in 1954, and a cinder track in essentially a pair of leather shoes with pins in the bottom.

And I think this, to be fair, this whole sort of area of sports technology does cloud the sort of view around have we reached peak performance, because it's quite difficult to tell whether there is a change in physiology or that change is predominantly due to technology. So we've covered an awful lot there, sort of by way, ending, I've got a sort of philosophical question. So do you think now that we're in this situation, there's kind of a danger of interest in sports dying off, you know, due to this fact that we're

reaching the peak, you know, not only with spectators, but with youngsters wanting to get into athletics and sports, they're like, well, I'm never going to beat the world record. No, I wouldn't say so. I think what we're starting to see is, so, okay, so the world records and the improvements in world records is slowing down a little bit but what we're seeing is a lot more depth at the top of the sport

so you've got a lot more people around those world records in athletics for a long time we didn't see many world records before this advanced Chew Tech and it was still doing really well I mean look at the London Olympics in 2012 we haven't seen a lot of world records

for a while in many events and that was really well attended and potentially the biggest games it's ever been so I wouldn't say that I think it's going to happen at some point but then also I don't think even though we might be hitting the physiological peak at some point in the near future, there is still the technological advancements which allows people to run faster. And I think that's something now that's difficult, certainly in Netflix,

when you're watching it and you're seeing these performances where it's almost, for those who were around in the sort of early 2000, you're seeing performances where it's almost too good to be true, and you think I can't believe this is what's happening. Yeah, I wouldn't say so. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Dr Jonathan Taylor,

a senior lecturer in sporting exercise at Teaside University. To find out more about the science of all things sports and fitness, check out other episodes in the Instant Genius Pete Performance miniseries special. If you liked what you just heard, please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform. The current issue of BBC Science Focus is out now.

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