The Effect of Training.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 13, 29 September 1909, Page 50

The Effect of Training.

A bulletin recently issued by the United States Department of Agriculture sets forth the results of a long series of experiments carried on by Dr. Benedict and Mr. Carpenter with the remarkable respiration calorimeter at Wesleyan University, which in the hands of Atwater and Benedict has added so much to our knowledge of metabolism. As a result of these investigations, it seems that the human body is a machine of such'wonderful efficiency that one-fifth of the energy expended by it can be utilised as work, and that this efficiency is more or less the same in men of all types. The longest and most thorough training dogs not change this ratio. The professional athlete, if he is able to outstrip the novice, does so, not because he has better muscles but because he is able to put more energy in the shape of tissue change into action. Training, besides preparing the heart to stand great strain, acts to increase the subject’s power of using up his tissue, and by giving him more muscle tissue to use rather than by teaching him to conserve his energies. In other words, the professional has a more powerful engine because he is able to use more fuel, and not because he wastes less steam, if we may employ a mechanical simile.