IN PURSUIT OF THE EDGE

THROUGHOUT the first half of the 20th century, the idea that anyone could run a mile in under four minutes went from preposterous to remotely feasible. By May 6, 1954, when Roger Bannister ran the mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds, breaking the hypothetical barrier had gripped the world’s imagination.

Just 46 days later, John Landy of Australia broke that record by six-tenths of a second. In the years since, no fewer than 964 men from 60 countries have beaten the four-minute-mile barrier. Today, the record -- held by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco since July 7, 1999 -- stands at 3 minutes and 43.13 seconds.

But the records are tumbling at slower and slower rates, not just in running times but also in weight lifted, laps swum and heights jumped. When new records are set, they’re not smashed, but rather tweaked by a fraction of a second. The decimal point, set at a 10th of a second for Bannister’s record, now measures one-hundredth of a second.

“Soon, we’ll have to go to a third decimal place, and then a fourth,” says Alan Nevill, statistician with the University of Wolverhampton in England.

But even as human beings approach optimal performance, elite athletes can still shave fractions of seconds off existing records.

“We’re certainly at a point of diminishing returns,” says Mike Saunders, director of James Madison University’s human performance laboratory in Virginia. “We’re getting closer and closer to our species’ physiological peak performance all the time. But the peak is theoretical, and it’ll take infinity to reach. The closer you get to perfection, the harder it is to make improvements.”

In a May 2005 paper in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, Nevill created a flattened S curve representing humankind’s capacity for performance. A second line plotting improvements in performance would get ever closer to the curve without reaching it -- a concept known in mathematics as an asymptote. Both lines could go on forever as people get better by a hair, then half a hair.

The sports in which athletes will have the most difficulty beating existing records, says Nevill, are those in which the athlete has to power his or her own body weight -- running, walking, high jumping -- without the buoyancy of water or the aid of equipment.

For those sports, it’s probably going to be a long time between records. “And the records will be beat by one-thousandth of a second rather than a second,” says George Salem, codirector of the Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Research Laboratory at USC. “Improvements are going to be hard to come by.”

The sports that still experience sporadic bursts of record-breaking are those that can boast improvements in fields and equipment, or because of new entrants into the competition. Running tracks aren’t covered with crushed cinders anymore. Swimming pools have wave suppressors. Bicycles are lighter and better balanced. Whole populations from Third World countries have only recently begun showing up at starting lines, some influenced by practicing in extreme climates or on hilly or sandy terrain.

Women likely have more surge years ahead of them than men, largely because they entered the competitive arena later. It wasn’t until Title IX, the 1972 federal law requiring that girls get the same athletic opportunities in American schools as boys, that females in this country began to get the same level of sports training and opportunities as males.

But just because the measures of success in some sports are increasingly imperceptible to the naked eye doesn’t mean athletes will quit trying. It’s like, after shedding 30 pounds, trying to lose those last five pounds.

The most promising avenues for making humans better, faster and stronger lie in the areas of nutrition science and biomechanics technology, performance researchers say. The research is sport by sport, movement by movement, limb by limb.

Scientists are concocting beverage brews, adding or subtracting dashes of carbohydrates and protein, tinkering with diets three days or six days before a race. Researchers are putting high-tech scales in starting blocks, then showing runners how various footholds or body positions -- often unique to an individual -- can get them to explode out of the block. Video cameras are capturing the swinging techniques of right-handed cricket players and the stroke velocity of table tennis players, all looking for ways to make minuscule improvements.

Optimal nourishment

Nutrition science led one of the first revolutions in enhancing performance with something utterly basic. Water.

A high school or college football player in the 1960s would typically be told not to drink water during workouts or games. “It wasn’t science,” says Saunders. “It was macho.” Then came the proof that not only did dehydration harm performance, it could be dangerous -- even deadly.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, it was further established that dosing the water with carbohydrates during prolonged physical activity improved performance.

But there’s more to add to the sports water recipe. On the cusp of hydration research is the increasingly promising evidence that adding a dose of protein to those athletic drinks gives people an additional boost.

Saunders has shown it with cyclists. He had 33 male and five female athletes get on exercycles and drink half to three-fourths of a cup of water every 15 minutes as they pedaled as hard as they could until they could pedal no more. Half the cyclists drank water with about 7% carbohydrates added. The other half drank the same water/carbohydrate mix but also with protein added, in the form of whey powder. All cyclists did the test twice after ample days of rest, switching what they drank, so each was measuring the effect of different drink formulas against his or her own performance.

With protein added to the mix, all the riders trained harder and lasted longer. And they had less muscle damage afterward, which meant they could work intensely the next day.

Saunders can only speculate about why that is. “The protein could be providing extra fuel. Or it could be helping the uptake of other fuels, like carbohydrates,” he says. It could even be that the amino acid in protein could slow down the brain’s ability to signal the muscles that they’re getting tired.

Running in the desert could require a different drink, specifically one containing 5 grams of glycerol per 100 milliliters of water. That’s a concoction developed by Robert Robergs, professor of physical development at the University of New Mexico. The glycerol allows the body to retain ingested water longer, so it improves hydration before, during and after exercise. It’s especially useful, he said, at improving thermoregulation during exercise when it’s hot.

Researchers are still seeking the optimal mix of carbohydrate and protein -- as well as when and how much to eat before a competition.

Scientists are testing nutritional variations on heavyweights, on lightweights, on people whose race is over in a dash, and on those who will run or cycle for hours. Each of them likely needs a different menu.

Research in action

Water and nutrients are the body’s fuel. Movement and force make up the torque.

Here, technology enters the field -- from such areas as the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and university biokinesiology programs. In this realm, research results can develop generalized benefits or highly individualized ones.

Athletes can wear portable units to measure, for example, oxygen uptake. Then his or her unique physiologic response is the measure of whether a slight modification of position or timing is working.

Video cameras, long part of exercise research, are now aided by computer technology. Using strategically placed reflectors, the cameras capture movements and, as in cartoon and video game technology, they are transferred to a computer and superimposed on top of a skeletal representation of the athletes.

In that way, someone getting ready for a 100-meter dash can learn whether raising or lowering the butt an inch or slightly changing the bend of a knee can save time when the starting gun sounds.

As a doctoral student, Loren Chiu’s research is broad and personal. Studying biokinesiology and physical therapy at USC, he’s hoping to qualify for the 2008 Olympics, representing his native Canada in weight lifting.

For the competition called the snatch, or lifting the bar directly overhead from the floor, his personal best is 341 pounds, compared with the world record of 469.578 pounds for his weight category of 231-plus pounds. For the clean and jerk, or two-stage lift to the chest and then overhead, his personal best is 407 pounds, compared with the world record of 579.8098 pounds. He’s a long way from a record but hopes to be among Canada’s best. In the meantime, he collects data on himself and other weight lifting students.

“We re-create the segment mathematically and then measure the angular displacement of the hip, the knee,” says Chiu. “I’ve used it to change the angles at the hip and to put the knee in a more efficient pattern in lifting the bar.” And with those slight changes, the weights feel lighter, he says.

In Chiu’s heavyweight class, Hossein Rezazadeh, aka the Iranian Hercules, set the records in 2003 and 2004 respectively, and Chiu expects they’ll hold for a long time. But he still works at beating his own personal best. “I don’t believe I’m at my peak. If I believed that, I wouldn’t continue training,” he says. “There would be nothing to shoot for.”

Researchers can also learn how to improve performance and reduce injuries from run-of-the-mill athletes.

At any biokinesiology lab, an athlete might be supported in a harness hooked to the ceiling, then placed on a treadmill to run. Results can show elite athletes how to better position knees, ankles or hips, and they can also help teach stroke patients or victims of Parkinson’s disease how to better keep their balance.

Christine Pollard, assistant professor of biokinesiology and physical therapy at USC, is studying girls and young women from ages 10 to the early 20s to see why female athletes have four to eight times more knee injuries than their male counterparts. Participants run to a force plate, then cut and turn as a camera tracks light sensors on their knees and feet.

“We can use these force plates, really just fancy scales, to measure the force front and back, and side to side. Then we take angular measures and calculate torque,” Pollard says.

What that adds up to is a way to fine-tune training to help females reduce knee injuries.

Meanwhile, the number of experimental contraptions to improve performance may rival the number of sports seeking improvements.

Take the Wearable Accelerometric Motion Analysis System, a gizmo developed by Eric Sabelman, a researcher at the VA Palo Alto Rehabilitation Research and Development Center. It has sensors that attach to eyeglass frames to measure head motion and others that hook on a belt to measure body motion. He is measuring the amount of needless motion exerted by cyclists.

Such movement can’t be eliminated because of the leg movements of pedaling. So cyclists want to sway just enough -- not too much. “When you’re trying to put your effort into a forward-moving straight line, all the extra side to side motion is wasted effort,” he says.

After a threshold of sway is established, cyclists can wear other sensors to alert them -- through beeps or vibrations -- of excessive sway. “The idea is to minimize the time you get that beep and use it as a teaching tool,” says Sabelman. The device, still experimental, could also be used to aid balance-impaired elderly people.

What science learns about human biomechanics filters into training programs. An athlete’s knee-hip alignment might some day inform coaches about how to help athletes increase flexibility and strength and to avoid vulnerable positions.

In sports medicine, says Saunders, this trickling down of information from lab to training field can often happen faster than the dissemination of findings in general medicine.

That’s because in athletics, the search for an edge is so highly competitive.

It’s in the genes

Regardless of humankind’s theoretical optimum, the toughest competitors are most interested in beating actual human beings running, swimming, cycling or leaping in the same competition. “In the end,” says Nevill, “you just want to beat the guy in the lane next to you.”

But just maybe, some day, that person in the next lane will be the world’s newest abnormal wonder. Basketball star Larry Bird, for example, was cited by psychologist Howard Gardner in “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences” as possessing exceptional bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, enabling him to intrinsically keep track of the whereabouts of the ball and other players on the court. And whatever it was that made Michael Jordan appear to defy gravity as he floated toward the basket was well beyond the boundaries of normal human capacity.

There will continue to be people born with extreme physical gifts, natural accidents of unique genetic pairings.

“In the next decade, we might see a kind of genetic freak, a mix that is ideal, combining the right physiology and psychology,” says Robergs of the University of New Mexico.

And then ... who knows what records could be broken.

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The harder they fall

Setting new individual athletic records has become increasingly harder as performances reach the limits of the human body.

Men’s world high jump records: 0.15 meters gained in 20 years

*--* Name Country Jump (in meters) Date Dwight Stones United States 2.30 July 11, 1973 Dwight Stones United States 2.31 June 5, 1976 Dwight Stones United States 2.32 Aug. 4, 1976 Vladimir Yashchenko USSR 2.33 July 3, 1977 Vladimir Yashchenko USSR 2.34 June 16, 1978 Jacek Wszola Poland 2.35 May 25, 1980 Gerd Wessig East Germany 2.36 Aug. 1, 1980 Jianhua Zhu China 2.37 June 11, 1983 Jianhua Zhu China 2.38 Sept. 22, 1983 Jianhua Zhu China 2.39 June 10, 1984 Rudolf Povarnitsyn USSR 2.40 Aug. 11, 1985 Igor Paklin USSR 2.41 Sept. 4, 1985 Patrik Sjoberg Sweden 2.42 June 30, 1987 Javier Sotomayor Cuba 2.43 Sept. 8, 1988 Javier Sotomayor Cuba 2.44 July 29, 1989 Current record: Javier Sotomayor Cuba 2.45 July 27, 1993

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Women’s world high jump records: no new record since 1987

*--* Name Country Jump (in meters) Date Iolanda Balas Romania 1.91 July 16, 1961 Ilona Gusenbauer Austria 1.92 Sept. 4, 1971 Yordanka Blagoeva Bulgaria 1.94 Sept. 24, 1972 Rosemarie Witschas East Germany 1.95 Sept. 8, 1974 Rosemarie Ackermann East Germany 1.96 May 8, 1976 Rosemarie Ackermann East Germany 1.97 Aug. 14, 1977 Rosemarie Ackermann East Germany 2.00 Aug. 26, 1977 Sara Simeoni Italy 2.01 Aug. 4, 1978 Ulrike Meyfarth West Germany 2.02 Sept. 8, 1982 Ulrike Meyfarth West Germany 2.03 Aug. 21, 1983 Tamara Bykova USSR 2.03 Aug. 21, 1983 Tamara Bykova USSR 2.04 Aug. 25, 1983 Tamara Bykova USSR 2.05 June 22, 1984 Lyudmila Andonova Bulgaria 2.07 July 20, 1984 Stefka Kostadinova Bulgaria 2.08 May 31, 1986 Current record: Stefka Kostadinova Bulgaria 2.09 Aug. 30, 1987

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Men’s world 1,500-meter run: 6.1 seconds faster in 19 years

*--* Name Country Time (in minutes) Date Sebastian Coe Great Britain 03:32.1 Aug. 15, 1979 Steve Ovett Great Britain 03:31.4 Aug. 27, 1980 Sydney Maree United States 03:31.2 Aug. 28, 1983 Steve Ovett Great Britain 03:30.8 Sept. 4, 1983 Steve Cram Great Britain 03:29.7 July 16, 1985 Said Aouita Morocco 03:29.5 Aug. 23, 1985 Noureddine Morceli Algeria 03:28.9 Sept. 6, 1992 Noureddine Morceli Algeria 03:27.4 July 12, 1995 Current record: Hicham El Guerrouj Morocco 03:26.0 July 14, 1998

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Source: Infostrada Sports