Athletes in this country and abroad have believed that there is no better way to get into top condition for a sport than by playing that sport. In recent years, however, close study of training methods, increased intensity of national and international competition, and a developing interest of medical scientists in sports conditioning have brought coaches and trainers to a recognition that conditioning exercise of various kinds supplementing playing in a sport is highly desirable.
Evidence of this is seen in the widespread participation in weight training, the development of interval training as described elsewhere in this volume, and the principles of circuit training widely used in England. All of this has encouraged those in Yale swimming to believe that they have been on the right track in their training methods.
In Bob Kiphuth’s forty-two years as the head coach of swimming at Yale, he required eight weeks of body-buildng exercise by squad members prior to the beginning of their training in the pool.
This training, still carried on, consists of one hour of exercise a day five days a week for the eight-week period. Included in this hour are:
- twenty minutes of calisthenic exercise,
- twenty minutes of pulley weight exercise,
- and twenty minutes of work with the sixteen-pound medicine ball.
By the end of the eight-week period, these swimmers are capable of doing sixty minutes of continuous intensive exercise without signs of undue fatigue. At this point they are obviously ready to enter the water with sound basic muscular strength and endurance and, above all, with a cardiac and respiratory efficiency that makes them ready for any kind of demand that can be put on them in competitive athletics.
As I have said, most of the leading athletes in international competition today follow some form of supplementary conditioning work whether it be of the type I have described in Yale swimming or some form of weight training or circuit training.
All of this has meaning for the age group to which Dr. Guild’s excellent book is directed. The exhilaration, recreational value, enjoyment, and physical benefits to be derived from active participation in games are of utmost importance to the adult. The lesson learned by the young athlete, however, is also relevant to the adult. There should be included in any exercise routine some supplementary conditioning work. As Dr. Guild suggests, this may be in calisthenic exercise, which he describes so clearly and extensively.
For many years at Yale, every freshman has been required to take a basic fitness test which examines his capacity in upper arm, abdominal, and hip flexor strength, together with agility, coordination and muscular explosiveness.
A study of the results reveals that an increasing number of entering freshmen are incapable of passing the test. Over a ten-year period, for instance, the percentage of freshmen capable of passing the test dropped from 51 to 34 percent.
It is encouraging, however, to find that an intensive thirteen-week course of developmental exercise, including three forty-minute periods of activity a week, makes it possible for 80 percent of the class to pass the test.
The lesson is clear that well-thought-out exercise regularly undertaken quickly increases physical capacity.
Even more interesting perhaps, is the fact that when this group laid off regular exercise for some time, retesting showed that they had reverted to the position where again only slightly over 30 percent could pass the test.
It might be assumed that even though this is true for the general undergraduate body, it surely would not be true for the athletically inclined student.
We have clear evidence, however, that our best athletes fall off in their physical capacity out of season in just as marked, dramatic, and rapid a way as the general undergraduate body if they do not participate in regular exercise.
Within a matter of weeks after his season, the athlete has lost much of his muscular tone, his endurance and stamina. It is true, of course, that he can usually get himself back into shape quickly but again it is clear that regular exercise in the form of games, supplemented by brief periods of intensive conditioning regularly taken, is an essential for good health and physical capacity.
