Question: Does science help you understand sport more and improve at it?

LauraAnne Furlong answered on 14 Nov 2016:

Absolutely! Science can tell you what makes someone a super athlete, what might be likely to make them get injured, what happens to their body when they exercise, what happen when they get tired, what happens when they get hit. We can figure out how the brain controls these things and why muscles grow strong or weak, and how the body adapts to conditions like heat, extreme cold, being up on Mount Everest. Understanding each of these things can help us get better at what we do, figure out what not to do (also very important), how to change training, how perhaps we can improve ways of training, encourage more people to take part, design better protective equipment and design better robotic arms and legs, and prosthetics.

Interesting end results of some of this knowledge are that rules may need to be changed to take account of our understanding of what happens, e.g. there was a lot of controversy in the late 2000s when athletes who ran with a prosthetic wanted to compete against able-bodied runners, as it was thought that the prosthetic gave an unfair advantage because of its mechanical properties. Similarly, the scrum in rugby was changed in the past 3 years based on biomechanical research done at the University of Bath which showed the new crouch-bind-set sequence decreased the forces on the players necks by 25% and improved the angle the two scrums met each other at which made it safer. Understanding the best angle for two scrums to hit each other at is important to maximise the success of the scrum – the one who has the biggest forces has a very high chance of winning it.

If we discover that running on the balls of our feet makes us run faster, that can help us in preparing an athlete for a sprint race for example. We know that faster runners do run on their balls of their feet, but we also know that this means there is a lot of force in your calf muscles and Achilles tendon for example, and that over time how you strike the ground changes. Both of these factors mean that we know that if we train someone to run that way, we also need to make sure they are strong and trained enough to not get injured.

The success of Team GB in the Olympics has had a lot to do with science, the cyclists have full sport science support teams in place all year around constantly adapting and tweaking the bikes, bike design, athlete positions and athlete preparation to ensure they can perform at their best when they have to (and it has clearly worked very well!).

Psychology is also very commonly used in both endurance sports like marathon running and in sports like rugby union where an athlete needs to be able to ignore all the excitement of a big situation and be able to focus on the task in hand. Johnny Wilkinson very famously used lots of psychological techniques to make sure he performed at his very best when England won the World Cup