Alex Hutchinson Explores the Limits of Human Performance

 

Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance – Alex Hutchinson (2018)

            I love Sport, and always have.  From my early youth in Puerto Rico watching ABC’s Wide World of Sports, (I can still hear these words in my head, “The Thrill of Victory…the Agony of Defeat”), to my obsession with the Summer and Winter Olympics, I have relished human athletic competition.  Athletic achievement is as grand to me as any artistic, literary, or musical achievement.  It is a human endeavor where we seek constant improvement, whether to defeat an opponent, or to outdo one’s own personal best.  This specific topic of surpassing one’s limits, and the inherent limits of the human body, is what scientist, author, and competitive runner Alex Hutchinson explores in this intriguing book.

            Even the most cursory sports watcher has seen the way runners often collapse after they cross the finish line.  It is an engrossing, if somewhat traumatic event, and underscores just how close to the limit these athletes pushed themselves.  Before the first sub-4-minute mile, many people thought a human being would drop dead if they ran that fast.  Since that time, the science studying human athleticism and the possibilities thereof has grown exponentially.  From the study of human anatomy, to the exploration of performance-enhancing drugs and the constant improvement of equipment have come countless record-breaking performances. 

            Alex Hutchinson breaks down his exploration of human endurance into several sections.  The first part covers the way we have come to understand the human body as a machine.  It also explores how our brains interact with the body to govern our physical exertion.  It seems that it is not the body signaling defeat to the brain, but the brain telling the body that defeat is imminent.  It is so complex.  Not only is achieving good scientific results difficult with athletes, but the inability to replicate competition conditions makes it difficult to apply the lab findings in the real world.  The main thrust of the section is that, in order to improve and to become great, the ability to suffer is paramount.

            The second and longer section of this book explores the current limits of human endurance, with chapters exploring each aspect.  The first chapter delves into Pain as it applies to human performance.  Do we stop because of pain?  Does our brain tell the body to ignore the pain?  When does pain itself form a limit to our endurance?  Hutchinson describes a specific Bicycling record, the Hour, which consists of a single cyclist racing around a track for exactly an hour, with the record going to whoever travelled the longest distance.  It is an hour of pure pain, pure suffering.  The cyclists that have attempted this have described the excruciating pain that hits them the moment they end the race.  It is as if the brain managed to pump endorphins into the body long enough to complete the task, instantly crashing at the end, and forcing every pain receptor in the body to scream in agony.  Brutal.  The same type of exhaustion occurs in ultra-marathons, super-long swims, and mountain climbing.   One of the considerations of mountain climbers is to know when the pain is bad enough that they must turn around, for there is a point of no return.  Death awaits those who push on. 

            In that same manner Alex Hutchinson digs into the limits of our Muscle, our Oxygen intake and use, the body’s Heat and the way we regulate it, Thirst and its influence on exertion, and the ways our body uses Fuel of all types to extend our endurance.  I learned quite a lot from these chapters, including how the human mouth contains some sort of organic carbohydrate sensor, informing us that food energy is on the way to the stomach.  The studies showed that athletes imbibing carbohydrate-rich drinks did markedly better than those with just water did.  However, athletes that simply swished a sports drink in their mouth and spit it out did just as well as those who imbibed the product.  This and other results lead the author to the third section of this book, exploring the role of the Brain in human endurance.

            This was the most interesting part.  We have all heard stories of people achieving near-impossible physical feats, simply because they willed themselves to do so. This section of the book seeks to understand the role our will, our Mind, plays in athletic achievement.  Countless studies show that, whether through a placebo effect or pure willpower, the athlete’s mind can be trained to improve performance.  Whether the training is repetitive, mind-numbing tasks, aimed at strengthening the individual’s ability to endure crushingly boring situations like a 27-mile race, or electrical stimulation of the brain in order to somehow extend the body’s limits; it seems that sports scientists are trying anything and everything. 

Hutchinson’s final chapter, focused on Belief, describes the way that our ideas about our bodies and our abilities influence the outcome.  For example, runners that told they were doing better than expected, actually showed a bump in ability, whether they were really doing better or not.  Those that trained their mind and body to accept pain, to accept severe discomfort, to expect suffering, were better able to cope with it when the time came.  When it comes to determining the very limits of our physical ability, our minds are the ultimate athletic tool.  This is why we watch sports competitions.  If the athlete that trained the best, with the most expensive equipment, always won then sports would be boring.  However, very often the athlete whose willpower pushes past the pain, doubt, and boredom is the one who succeeds.  Runners from Kenya and Ethiopia train in the most rudimentary way possible, yet they hold most of the long-distance running records.  Their belief in themselves and their running skills is what drives them to victory.  It also drives the many underdogs that make sports such a thrill to watch.  My admiration for these athletes has only grown after reading this book.  

(This book can be purchased here: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/endure-alex-hutchinson?variant=32127167561762 )

The Best Book About American Football I Have Yet to Read

A Thinking Man’s Guide to Pro Football – Paul Zimmerman (1970)

Man, I love NFL football.  I once read an article on the New England Patriot’s coach Bill Belichik which described his vast library of books about football, many of which he inherited from his father who was a head coach at the US Naval Academy for 34 years.  His library contains books on football history, tactics, coaching methods, and training techniques.  I bet he has this book in his library. 

The previous book I reviewed was a first-person diary of the life of an NFL offensive lineman during a full season.  This book is told from the vantage point of a sports journalist who has made his career covering the pro football ranks.  Paul Zimmerman is a bit of a legend in sports writing circles (known as Dr. Z for the past couple of decades), since he has first-hand knowledge of the last 50-60 years of pro football.  His writing is always incisive, humorous. and informative.  He rarely veers into sentimentality or nostalgia.  The best part of this book is the detail that Mr. Zimmerman provides regarding the specifics of playing each position on the field.

There are glory players in football.  The receivers, running backs and especially the quarterback are all glamorous, flashy positions, with thousands of words written about every single detail of their practices, and game-day performances.  However, the meat and potatoes of American Football takes place in the trenches, in the pit, in the shit, as players describe it.  This is the collision zone between the offensive and defensive lines.  This is where the fates of the quarterbacks, receivers, and runners hang in the balance.  If the offensive line does not hold, the passes will not be successful.  Either the QB will be rushed in his throw, or he will be crushed by 300lb behemoths coming full speed.  If the offensive linemen do not block properly, the runners can gain neither yardage nor glory. 

Because of their anonymity, these linemen seldom get recognition for their work.  They are scorned when they fail an assignment, but rarely are they praised if they did their jobs well.  Mr. Zimmerman goes into great detail about how the different line positions must function, what coaches look for in a player for these positions, and who has been a great player at each position.  His discussions get very specific partly because he was an old offensive lineman in his youth, and partly because these positons are so much more complicated than the average fan understands.  This allowed me to better understand the roles these giant men play as the team seeks victory.

Another area that Mr. Zimmerman sheds light upon is the worlds of the coaches, scouts, and general managers.  The coaches are responsible for game-plans, and tactics.  The scouts have the task of seeking out new talent.  The general managers are the men who make personnel decisions at draft time, trade time, and when the teams have to make the dreaded “cuts.”  Their world is at once simple, and exceedingly complex.  They spend untold hours scrutinizing every last detail of an opponent, watching reel after reel of game film, and then trying to put everything they have learned into a game-plan which they then have to teach to their players.  This happens week in, week out.  It is an exhausting life.

As a lover of pro American Football, the parts of this book that most resonate with me are when I can feel Mr. Zimmerman’s enthusiasm as a fan of these athletes.  The sections where he discusses the greats of the game, or the legendary coaches, or the early stars of the sport all fill me with a deep admiration for the men who helped create this game which I so love now.  The final chapter of this book is dedicated to the player whom Mr. Zimmerman, as well as many others, considers the greatest football player they ever saw.  That would be Mr. Marion Motley, a monster fullback who also played offensive line and defensive linebacker.  The only person who could compare is the great Jim Brown, who played almost a decade later.  Mr. Brown did not play both ways though, and was not feared as a maniacally powerful hitter.  The old days when the players played both ways will never come again, but they still inspire.

A few years ago Mr. Zimmerman suffered a series of bad strokes which caused him to lose his ability to speak, and much control of his body.  He had to stop writing.  He lives with his wife (who he would affectionately refer to as “the Flaming Redhead” when he mentioned her in his columns) and has had to go through rounds of physical therapy.  He may never again regain his ability to speak or write, but he has given the world decades worth of high-quality writing and analysis.  He has written several books.  He has shared his deep passion for the sport with all of us lucky fanatics.  Thank you Dr. Z.

(This book can be purchased here: AMAZON  )

A Year in the Life of an NFL Offensive Lineman

Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer – Jerry Kramer, Dick Schapp (1968)

            I have loved the sport of American Football, specifically the National Football League, ever since I was a youngster.  It was one of the first “American” things that I fully embraced after my family moved to Houston, Texas from Ponce in Puerto Rico.  I remember the bike I got for Christmas that year.  It was a Houston Oilers BMX-style bike.  I loved that bike!  The Oilers were my favorite team right away, even though it took me quite a few years to actually understand even the basics of the sport.  In fact, to this day I still watch games and learn something new nearly every single time.  The complexities involved have kept me deeply interested.  Even though I have loved football for over 35 years now, I never took much interest in reading about the sport itself.  I read magazine articles and articles online, but I never dug into the vast library of published work on American Football. 

            What I have seen countless times are any and all NFL Films programs put together by the Sabol family.  I learned the game’s history from these films.  I appreciated the stories about teams that won championships when my father was only a decade old.  I especially loved seeing the yearly re-runs that ESPN would air before the Super Bowl.  They consisted of 30 minute highlights of each Super Bowl leading up to the current one.  I saw the great Vince Lombardi and his Green Bay Packers win the first two Super Bowls.  I saw Broadway Joe lead the Jets to a guaranteed victory.  I saw the shots of what seemed to me to be grizzled old men, fighting it out on the gridiron for the championship.  These men were younger than I am now, but to a young kid or teenager, they were ancient-looking warriors!  I learned not only about the past greats, but also the lore of each team, of the league itself, from the Doomsday Defense to the Purple People Eaters.  I learned about players and teams from before the Super Bowl era.  I memorized the names of the great coaches and the great athletes, and I dreamed of seeing my team win the big one.

            Out of all those films, none made the impression on me that the Green Bay Packers’ films did.  There was only one reason for this, and that was Coach Vince Lombardi.  Here was a man who seemed on the verge of a histrionic fit, screaming at his men, shouting about their mistakes and errors, but his men all loved him, admired him, and would do anything to please the man.  He seemed, and still seems, like the epitome of a great coach.  His voice alone was thrilling.  In 1967, the Green Bay Packers won their second consecutive Super Bowl and their third consecutive NFL championship.  Coach Lombardi retired after that year.  In reading articles from sportswriters, they would sometimes quote a book by Green Bay offensive lineman Jerry Kramer.  Mr. Kramer was asked before the season began to use a tape recorder to take down his thoughts daily as the preseason and then the season progressed.  This is the book that resulted from those recordings.

            A wonderful aspect of this book is that it is purely episodic.  It is a nearly daily diary of the events that occurred in Packers training camp and during the season.  There are eleven positions on both the offense and the defense of a football team.  Mr. Kramer played Offensive Line, specifically Left Guard.  That not only meant that he had to block the most fearsome lineman of the opposing team each week, but that he did so in obscurity and anonymity.  O-line players do not accrue stats.  They do not touch the football.  Their work is not glamorous and highly violent.  Anyone could have written a relatively entertaining account of what a quarterback’s season was like, or a running back, or a star defensive linebacker.  It is beautiful how this year’s tale is described by one of the men in the trenches.  This shines a light on a world that even a die-hard football fan sees little of and hears even less of. 

            Mr. Kramer discussed the doubts that come in training camp, whether he is willing to abuse his body once again, whether he can escape injury and make it through the whole season, whether or not he should just quit while ahead and leave the game behind.  He fears for the jobs of the marginal players, as the team rosters must be cut down by the start of the season.  He details life outside the game, and how little things like a group of teammates going to the local bowling alley to have a bottle of “pop” after brutal practices allowed them to feel human.  He describes his relationships with his teammates, with his coaches, and with the other NFL players.  He recounts his most fearsome opponents, men like Alex Karras and Merlin Olsen, huge brutes who were as fast and intelligent as they were massive and violent.  Greatest of all, he describes Coach Lombardi, with unflinching words.  He states flatly at times that he has hated no one more than Coach Lombardi, and then he describes how much love he feels for the man when Coach Lombardi breaks down sobbing after trying to announce his impending retirement.  He paints the full picture, and quotes the great coach liberally.  It is like being there in the locker room.  I got amped up at times just hearing Lombardi’s words echo in my head.  Having seen him on film so many times in my life, I carry his loud, Italian New Yorker voice in my brain with me.  I would guess anyone who worked for him or was coached by him has the same.

            One cool thing about the 1967 Green Bay Packers season is that the NFL Championship game that year was and is remembered as the “Ice Bowl.”  American Football has quite a few legendary games, each with their own nickname, and the Ice Bowl was one of the first I ever learned about from NFL Films.  The Dallas Cowboys and the Packers met in Green Bay and played a game in a temperature of 14 below zero, the coldest game on record at the time.  The game was evenly fought and was won at the last minute by the Packers who, after a masterful drive by QB Bart Starr, plunged into the end zone on a QB run with Jerry Kramer providing the lead block.  It was so cool to read Mr. Kramer’s descriptions of that day as I had seen it on video so many times. 

(*side note, in 2006 I drove by myself to Canton OH to see my old Oiler’s QB Warren Moon get inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame alongside other greats.  The day after the ceremonies, I headed to the Cracker Barrel to go get some breakfast and who should I be sitting next to but the great one himself, Mr. Bart Starr and his wife enjoying some fried eggs.  It was like eating with royalty for me.  I did not bother the man, but wow.)

            Now I am hooked on reading books about American Football.  I hope they are all this great.  Mr. Jerry Kramer went on to have a great career as a TV analyst for games, and wrote one other book also.  I am glad he wrote this one.  As he describes in the end, the one thing he would miss upon leaving the game would be his teammates, his coaches, the people who he lived and fought and suffered with.  That is what brought him back year after year. 

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )