Careau Vincent, Wilson Robbie S
Canada Research Chair in Functional Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia.
Proc Biol Sci. 2017 Aug 16;284(1860). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2017.1048.
The mechanistic foundations of performance trade-offs are clear: because body size and shape constrains movement, and muscles vary in strength and fibre type, certain physical traits should act in opposition with others (e.g. sprint versus endurance). Yet performance trade-offs are rarely detected, and traits are often positively correlated. A potential resolution to this conundrum is that -individual performance trade-offs can be masked by -individual variation in 'quality'. Although there is a current debate on how to unambiguously define and account for quality, no previous studies have partitioned trait correlations at the within- and among-individual levels. Here, we evaluate performance trade-offs among and within 1369 elite athletes that performed in a total of 6418 combined-events competitions (decathlon and heptathlon). Controlling for age, experience and wind conditions, we detected strong trade-offs between groups of functionally similar events (throwing versus jumping versus running) occurring at the among-individual level. We further modelled individual (co)variation in age-related plasticity of performance and found previously unseen trade-offs in throwing versus running performance that manifest through ageing. Our results verify that human performance is limited by fundamental genetic, environmental and ageing constraints that preclude the simultaneous improvement of performance in multiple dimensions. Identifying these constraints is fundamental to understanding performance trade-offs and predicting the ageing of motor function.
由于身体大小和形状限制了运动，且肌肉在力量和纤维类型上存在差异，某些身体特征应与其他特征相互对立（例如短跑与耐力）。然而，表现权衡很少被检测到，而且特征往往呈正相关。这个难题的一个潜在解决方案是，个体表现权衡可能会被“质量”方面的个体差异所掩盖。尽管目前对于如何明确界定和考量质量存在争议，但此前尚无研究在个体内和个体间层面划分特征相关性。在此，我们评估了1369名精英运动员在总共6418场全能比赛（十项全能和七项全能）中的表现权衡。在控制了年龄、经验和风速条件后，我们在个体间层面发现了功能相似项目组（投掷、跳跃与跑步）之间存在强烈的权衡。我们进一步对表现的年龄相关可塑性中的个体（协）变异进行建模，发现了投掷与跑步表现之间此前未被发现的权衡，这种权衡通过衰老表现出来。我们的结果证实，人类表现受到基本的遗传、环境和衰老限制，这些限制使得在多个维度上同时提高表现变得不可能。识别这些限制对于理解表现权衡和预测运动功能的衰老至关重要。
