Fascinating and insightful dissection of the running practices and biologic markers of east African runners. It suffers, unfortunately, from the reductionist view point of scientists and concludes with little by way of an explanation for why they're so successful.
The basic reason is numbers. Sport, like every other human v human contest, is a battle between participation statistics. Large participation numbers expand the possibility of genetic outliers and that's what's been happening in east Africa for 50 years now. What do I think the east African outliers are to explain their dominance? Psychological resilience and fractional gains in biomechanical efficiency. The Africans are very small and light, and have terrific spring at the same time. They produce easy power and they're extremely efficient. Superimpose these basic functional characteristics on high participation numbers in extremely demanding programs, and it's a certainty that you're going to strike genetic gold.
original article: africa-calling-runners-can-learn-east-african-masters/
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