Tag: sports science
-
56 Hours, No Sleep, One Sea: What Kubkowski’s Baltic Swim Act Demanded
Bartłomiej Kubkowski became the first person to swim the 160km Baltic Sea route between Sweden and Poland, in roughly 56 sleepless hours. This article uses his crossing to look at what continuous multi-day endurance actually requires: sleep deprivation as a safety issue, cold-water thermoregulation, and fueling a body that can’t stop moving.
-
When RPE and Readiness Scores Disagree, Which One Do You Trust?
RPE and wearable readiness scores measure different things, and expecting them to always agree misunderstands what each is built to do. This article covers where they typically diverge, why, and a practical framework for what to do when an athlete’s self-report and their device disagree.
-
What Pogačar’s Fifth Tour de France Win Actually Required
Pogačar’s fifth Tour de France win ties the all-time record, secured from stage 6 onward. This article uses his race as an entry point into the fatigue-management and load principles behind holding peak performance across three weeks, not just reaching it on one day.
-
The Talent Identification Trap: Relative Age Effect
An eleven-month age gap in youth sport can look exactly like a talent gap, and coaches consistently select for it. This article covers the relative age effect, why the resulting skill gap often isn’t real, and the specific point in elite development where the bias quietly corrects itself, too late for many of the players…
-
What 507 Athlete Cohorts Tell Us About Somatotype, and How to Use It
Somatotype scores physique on three components: fatness, muscularity, and linearity. Drawing on a reference dataset of 507 athlete cohorts, this article shows how builds converge by sport and position, from the most muscular powerlifters to the most linear volleyball players. It then separates the trainable components from the fixed ones, so the method can be…
-
Zone 2 Is Having a Moment. Here’s What the Evidence Actually Supports.
Zone 2 went from a quiet endurance-training foundation to a full wellness trend. This article separates what it reliably does from the claims that outran the evidence, and covers how it fits into a week for someone who isn’t a full-time athlete.
-
Muscle Memory: What Actually Stays When You Stop Training
Muscle memory, the fast comeback after a training layoff, has a genuine cellular explanation involving retained myonuclei, and a competing explanation involving the nervous system. This article covers both mechanisms, what animal and human research actually show, and what it means for programming a returning client.
-
The Off-Season Is Not Optional
Skipping or shortening the off-season carries a measurable physiological cost. This article covers what the research on detraining shows, how much recovery time athletes actually need, and how to structure the off-season as its own periodized phase.
-
The History of Interval Training: From Gerschler and Zatopek to Modern HIIT
The structure of interval training is nearly a century old, established by coaches through observation long before the physiology was formalized. This article traces the arc from fartlek and Gerschler’s Freiburg method through Zatopek and Astrand to the modern HIIT research of Tabata, Gibala, and the Norwegian 4×4.
-
Electrolyte Supplementation: Who Needs It, and When
Electrolyte powders have expanded from an endurance product into a daily wellness category. This article sets out why routine supplementation adds little for most people, the specific conditions under which replacement is worthwhile, and where the evidence remains contested even within endurance sport.