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Olympics 2024: physicists are improving competitors' abilities

“Sport brings as much to science as science brings to sport”

avec Vincent Nougier, Professor at Grenoble Alpes University and former Head of the CNRS Sport & Activité Physique research group
On April 30th, 2024 |
5 min reading time
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Vincent Nougier
Professor at Grenoble Alpes University and former Head of the CNRS Sport & Activité Physique research group
Key takeaways
  • Paradoxically, while performance in sport is constantly improving, physical activity worldwide is steadily declining.
  • Scientific studies on sport have a number of aims: optimising performance, identifying the health benefits of sport and understanding the physical characteristics of the earth.
  • Increasing physical activity worldwide is a major current challenge, since physical activity is essential for good health.
  • In some sports, optimisation can have such a significant impact that the rules need to evolve.
  • Optimising performance takes place at several levels: improving training, equipment and mental preparation.
  • The knowledge gained from studying sport is then applied to other sectors, such as space exploration and physiotherapy.

Sports per­for­mance seems to be improv­ing year after year, with records being bro­ken all the time. On the oth­er hand, world­wide phys­i­cal activ­i­ty is steadi­ly declin­ing. This decline is gen­er­al­ly linked to inno­va­tion and is present in almost every aspect of soci­ety. For exam­ple, farm­ing requires less and less phys­i­cal effort, and the sim­ple act of walk­ing or cycling is becom­ing rar­er. One study even points to a 10% drop in the phys­i­cal fit­ness of teenagers worldwide.

In sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies of sport, it is there­fore impor­tant to dis­tin­guish between phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and sport. “In sport, there is phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and sport­ing activ­i­ty,” explains Vin­cent Nougi­er, pro­fes­sor at Uni­ver­sité Greno­ble Alpes. “So it’s not just high-lev­el sport, but sim­ple move­ment. Walk­ing, at its sim­plest, is already a form of phys­i­cal activity.”

The two are per­haps inex­tri­ca­bly linked, and the study of each is of dif­fer­ent sci­en­tif­ic inter­est. “The first area of inter­est, which is quite triv­ial, is of course in improv­ing the per­for­mance of sports­peo­ple,” con­tin­ues the pro­fes­sor. “A sec­ond area of inter­est is in the field of sport and health, where ques­tions revolve more around phys­i­cal activ­i­ty. The final area of inter­est, which has been some­what side­lined, is that sport remains a com­plex mod­el, bring­ing into play many of the phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of our world. Study­ing it also helps us to under­stand them bet­ter.” As research in the field of sport is not very well devel­oped at the CNRS, the Sport & Activ­i­ty Research Group was set up to address these three issues.

From sporting activity…

With the arrival of the Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games in Paris, research is nat­u­ral­ly focus­ing on opti­mis­ing the per­for­mance of ath­letes. There are many ways in which research can have an impact on per­for­mance. “The most obvi­ous is through tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion,” adds Vin­cent Nougi­er. “Such as improv­ing the mate­ri­als used in equip­ment to improve its weight, aero­dy­nam­ics and so on.” By under­stand­ing the phys­i­cal ele­ments involved in per­for­mance, it is pos­si­ble to opti­mise sports equip­ment. From run­ners’ shoes, which incor­po­rate new, high-per­for­mance tech­nol­o­gy every year, to ping-pong rack­ets and their spe­cial-pur­pose foam. These devel­op­ments can even be applied on an indi­vid­ual lev­el. “I often use the exam­ple of wind­surf­ing foils,” he explains. “Although their man­u­fac­ture is stan­dard­ised, their phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics are not exact­ly the same. The point is to bring togeth­er the athlete’s impres­sions regard­ing their pre­ferred foil with the foil’s objec­tive indi­ca­tors, which give it its phys­i­cal characteristics.”

In some sports, opti­mi­sa­tion can have such an impact that the rules have to evolve. Today, lawyers spe­cialise in sports reg­u­la­tions to deter­mine the lim­its that must not be exceed­ed, inevitably lead­ing com­peti­tors to want to get as close as pos­si­ble. “The recent exam­ple of François Gabart’s boat is a case in point,” notes Vin­cent Nougi­er. “The boat’s archi­tects thought it com­plied with the rules, but the Ultim class didn’t think so. This sto­ry went all the way to court, and end­ed up with the boat in ques­tion being mod­i­fied.” This opti­mi­sa­tion pushed to the lim­it is not lim­it­ed to the equip­ment used, it can also be found in the train­ing ses­sions. “Cer­tain train­ing meth­ods seem to be more effec­tive in cer­tain respects. Train­ing at alti­tude allows the body to adapt to phys­i­cal activ­i­ty in an envi­ron­ment with less oxy­gen. Even if this sub­ject is not yet ful­ly under­stood, research shows that it can have a num­ber of pos­i­tive impacts on performance.”

So train­ing is anoth­er way in which sci­ence can opti­mise per­for­mance. “Then there’s every­thing to do with the human being, the ath­lete,” says the pro­fes­sor. “A bet­ter under­stand­ing of phys­i­o­log­i­cal mech­a­nisms for phys­i­cal prepa­ra­tion, but also a bet­ter under­stand­ing of men­tal prepa­ra­tion.” Because, although sport is appar­ent­ly based on the phys­i­cal aspect, and sci­ence is also pro­vid­ing bet­ter con­trol over poten­tial injuries to the ath­lete, the hid­den part of the ice­berg remains the men­tal aspect. Psy­chol­o­gy is there­fore becom­ing a key area of focus. “From there, many dif­fer­ent aspects emerge in the stud­ies,” he reports. “How do we deal with stress, pres­sure and even fail­ure? How does our brain coor­di­nate our move­ments? How can we make it more effi­cient, so that it learns faster and bet­ter?” All these ele­ments are still rel­a­tive­ly unknown today. While work­ing on it offers bet­ter phys­i­cal prepa­ra­tion (avoid­ing injury and get­ting the best out of the ath­lete), bet­ter men­tal prepa­ra­tion enables them to per­form at the high­est lev­el. “Today, at the high­est lev­el of sport, it is the men­tal aspect that makes the dif­fer­ence,” he insists.

… to physical activity

“Aside from per­for­mance, a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the health ben­e­fits of phys­i­cal activ­i­ty is cru­cial these days,” adds Vin­cent Nougi­er. “All the more so in a soci­ety where the population’s lev­el of phys­i­cal fit­ness declines dras­ti­cal­ly every year1.” Among oth­er things, one study high­lights the fact that reg­u­lar phys­i­cal activ­i­ty reduces the risk of devel­op­ing a chron­ic dis­ease. In addi­tion to the known phys­i­cal ben­e­fits – improved phys­i­cal con­di­tion, bet­ter sleep, etc. – it also boosts the immune sys­tem and improves men­tal health.

“At the same time, there is an increase in the num­ber of chron­ic dis­eases,’ adds the pro­fes­sor. Whether it’s dia­betes, obe­si­ty, car­dio­vas­cu­lar or res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems, prac­tis­ing sport is impor­tant and we need to encour­age it.” The only prob­lem is that there are a lot of soci­etal costs involved in doing so. “We there­fore need to bet­ter under­stand how this “med­i­cine” [editor’s note: phys­i­cal activ­i­ty] can be admin­is­tered, and also bet­ter under­stand the aspects of sus­tain­able region­al devel­op­ment and education.”

In this respect, the study of sport is mov­ing away from an inter­est in tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions to focus on the levers that will increase par­tic­i­pa­tion. “Under­stand­ing the indi­vid­ual mech­a­nisms that dri­ve peo­ple to take part in phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, such as moti­va­tion, and opti­mis­ing region­al plan­ning are two angles of attack for encour­ag­ing peo­ple to do so,” says Vin­cent Nougier.

A two-way street

The last point is the one that often comes to mind at the end of a debate on the val­ue of sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies on sport. How­ev­er, a whole host of exam­ples come to mind upon fur­ther reflec­tion.  “There are cer­tain issues relat­ed to the prac­tice of sport, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the high­est lev­el,” says Vin­cent Nougi­er. “Even con­sid­er­ing the tra­jec­to­ry of a ball or javelin makes sci­en­tif­ic sport com­pli­cat­ed to man­age and explain.” Opti­mis­ing per­for­mance, as demon­strat­ed above, requires us to under­stand and tack­le these issues as effec­tive­ly as pos­si­ble. And, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, once the knowl­edge has been acquired, it can ben­e­fit oth­er sectors.

“When it comes to the ques­tion of ‘how are we going to get to Mars’, one of the issues to con­sid­er is the reduced phys­i­cal activ­i­ty of astro­nauts over an extend­ed peri­od of time,” he argues. “As humans can­not remain inac­tive, the knowl­edge we have devel­oped about the phys­i­cal prepa­ra­tion of ath­letes is par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful.” Sim­i­lar­ly, mus­cle recov­ery tech­niques have been adapt­ed for patients under­go­ing reha­bil­i­ta­tion after injury or surgery[1]. Pros­the­ses and ergonom­ic work equip­ment are also opti­mised through sport. Tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions result­ing from com­pe­ti­tion, such as the light­weight mate­ri­als used in For­mu­la 1 cars, their aero­dy­nam­ics and inno­va­tions in dri­ver safe­ty, are just some exam­ples. Many of these inno­va­tions are spread­ing to oth­er sec­tors. For Vin­cent Nougi­er, it’s obvi­ous: “Sport brings as much to sci­ence as sci­ence brings to sport.” 

Pablo Andres
1Ander­son E, Durs­tine JL. Phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, exer­cise, and chron­ic dis­eases: A brief review. Sports Med Health Sci. 2019 Sep 10;1(1):3–10. doi: 10.1016/j.smhs.2019.08.006. PMID: 35782456; PMCID: PMC9219321.

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