Hey PS+R Community! Hope you’ve been enjoying an incredible summer of travel, sports, family and fun! This month we welcomed Steve back to the clinic after his travels with the USMNT. Although the team didn’t have the results everyone hoped for, they will reorganize, regroup and move on to preparations for the 2026 World Cup right here in the United States— exciting times to come for Steve and USA soccer in the next two years.
As we gear up for the beginning of the Olympics next week, have you ever wondered what separates these most elite of athletes from the rest of us?
There are all sorts of interesting factors which make you more likely to be an elite athlete from your genetics to environmental factors—like being the youngest sibling in your family— to just plain luck!
First, your geographic location during childhood is a factor (a medium sized town has a greater chance of developing an elite athlete) as is the luck to be close to a coach who has the skill to develop your technical, physical, and emotional skills. Being lucky enough to have parents that can get you to the coach regularly also is a major boost – but- helicopter parenting tends to be detrimental to developing elite athleticism. Early sport specialization has also consistently been shown to hinder elite athletic development because the cognitive, physical, and social/emotional development that comes with exposure to many different sporting activities helps in developing more well rounded athletes during the period of youth development.
But beyond luck, geography, genetic, and environmental factors, what physically makes elite athletes different from the rest of us?
In the anaerobic (power-based) athlete, maximal power production that can be performed repeatedly is strongly correlated to elite performance. Power is the amount of work you can do divided by the amount of time it takes to do that bout of work (Power=work/time). The ability to produce more work, or force, in a shorter amount of time increases your power. While there are many sport specific factors in this equation, when we are more efficient in creating the work of our sport, then we can learn to do it more quickly to develop greater sport specific power. Taken together, elite anaerobic athletes that move the most efficiently and the fastest using a combination of inherent genetic and training specific factors (such and tendon stiffness- a good thing for power based athletes!) are those who rise above their non elite peers. In addition, these athletes have unique cognitive abilities that help them process visual and spatial information more quickly than their non elite peers.
Elite endurance athletes can be differentiated from their non-elite peers primarily by their VO2 max, a measure of the rate that oxygen can be taken up and transported to cells for cellular respiration during physical activity. About 20-25% of an athlete’s VO2 max is explained by genetic factors while the remaining variability is accounted for by other factors including training. Running economy, anaerobic threshold, height, weight and body fat percentage account for much of the rest of what separates elite endurance athletes from the rest of us.
An interesting link between both the power and endurance based athlete is movement efficiency- something we can all improve on by understanding our own movement profiles including our mobility, motor control, strength, speed, power, and movement skill capacity (all things we measure obsessively during a performance evaluation!)
Read on below for more learning about a key driver of our movement efficiency- how we breathe and coordinate the muscles of our core.
Where in the world is Steve and the USMNT?
We are glad to welcome Steve home in July after the COPA America tournament. Steve will be back in action with the USMNT in fall with three friendlies versus Canada, New Zealand, and Panama this fall.
Stone Running Club!
Interested in progressing your long distance running? Come join the crew at Stone Climbing on their pursuit of the Ameris Bank half and full marathons this coming December. Join us for the intro session where we will talk about what it takes to enjoy running longer distances in a safe and healthy way.
PS+R Client Spotlight | Barbara Blonder
This month’s client spotlight is Barbara Blonder. Barbara is a straight bada** in all aspects of life. As a leader, an educator, an environmental activist, a city commissioner and an athlete- Barbara puts action to all her dreams for herself, her community and the world. We had the privilege of helping Barbara recover after a difficult knee fracture which required surgery and a very long period of non weight bearing. She was not only able to maintain her fitness and strength while enduring a devastating amount of time off her operative leg (see the one-legged rowing set up below), she came back in record time to hike and mountain bike on her second trip to Africa this summer. For perspective, most people with a similar injury would still be struggling to walk and exercise, but Barbara took her family to task on some massive climbs on the mountain bike just 8 months after her original injury. We are so proud to be part of your journey Barbara! Thanks for inspiring us all!
Why does your breathing and pelvic floor have to do with Athletic Performance? Isn’t this just a “women’s problem”?
Chances are by now you’ve heard of the “pelvic floor”— a term almost universally used in the context of women’s health. But! Men have a pelvic floor too and how we coordinate this deep sling of muscles with our breathing is one of the key pillars of athletic performance. The center of our bodies, which we often heard referred to as our “core,” is so much more than just our six pack muscles. It’s actually a canister whose top and bottom is our diaphragm and pelvic floor. When we have good postural strength and we can stack our diaphragm directly over our pelvic floor, we use this system optimally to create power and stiffness during movement much like a piston in a car’s engine. Learning how to improve your diaphragmatic breathing, and coordinating it with power from our pelvic floor up not only improves efficiency and athletic performance, it also can be the key factor in solving many chronic pain conditions. Not sure if you’re optimizing your core through use of your diaphragm and pelvic floor? Come on in for a visit to learn more about how to optimize this system with your specific performance needs in mind.
Thanks for staying connected with us! See you around!!
