Modelling to decipher physiological determinants of improved muscle endurance

Excerpt

The Summer Olympics receive most attention worldwide, and this year’s games in Paris were no exception. The performance in key sports in the Olympics, such as running, swimming and cycling largely depends on muscular endurance, which in turn depends on athletes’ aerobic capacity. If we exclude pure sprinting events (e.g. 100 m running), a central aim in the training of athletes in these sports is to improve their aerobic capacity to increase the likelihood of receiving an Olympic medal. However, tactics has become increasingly important in many endurance-type events, and races in primary championships tend to be relatively ‘slow’ and concluded with high-speed sprints. In simplified terms, a few hundredth of a second difference in reaching the finish line cannot simply be related to differences in aerobic capacity, whereas being part of the group that finally compete for the win can. …