Supertraining

In a message dated 5/19/2008 1:15:22 PM Central Daylight Time,  
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

There  will never be fatigue in the prostheses, which, all else being equal, 
gives  him an advantage.

***
Perhaps these researchers were going back to some foundational principles  
involving limb mass and metabolic cost. Weighing and reduced gravity research  
that goes back to 1980 supported the conclusion that the metabolic importance 
of  swinging limbs is small.  If the kinetic energy required to swing limbs was 
 responsible for a significant portion of the metabolic energy expended, then 
 by unloading a person (or animal) by a percentage of body weight, (like a  
light prosthetic instead of a human foot), this should alter the cost by some  
lesser factor.  However, it doesn't.   At least  this is the conclusion that 
Dick Taylor reached back in the  70's.  In testing animals of the same weight 
but different distributions of  that weight between the limbs and the torso 
(like goats, cheetahs, and  gazelles), one would expect to find that the 
energetic cost would be  different.  A more massive leg should  increase 
metabolic 
cost, but it  doesn't. The cost is identical.  Taylor found this to be true  
despite vast differences in the amount of work necessary for a gazelle to swing 
 
its slighter limbs compared to a cheetah, who has much sturdier limbs.  If the 
work of swinging the limb demanded metabolic energy, we would  expect that the 
cheetah would incur a higher metabolic cost.   Again, this is not the case.   
  
 
Ken Jakalski
Lisle High School
Lisle, IL USA