Morphology of Athletes: Peak performance comes in all shapes and sizes
After our dive into ancient humans in the last Tech Corner, I’m moving back into the modern era. Last time I discussed how our ancient ancestors adapted to their environment, evidence of which shows up in body morphology (shape) of the fossils we find. Switching to a modern lens, we’re still physically adapting to our environment and the tasks we need to perform! The Olympics are coming up, and if you’re watching, pay attention to the different body types and shapes that show up in different sports. Take gymnastics as an example; you pretty much never see a 6 foot (183cm for those of you in metric) tall gymnast. The average height for a female gymnast is around 5ft 1in (155cm) and average height for a male gymnast is around 5ft 6in (168cm). They’re small, compact, and stocky. On the other end of the spectrum, rowers tend to be tall, with long limbs. The average female Olympic rower is around 6ft (183cm) and the average male Olympic rower is 6ft 3.5in (192cm)*. You can argue that sports self-select for body types, which is true, but you also see changes in the structure of bones and soft tissue in response to different activity types. For most of us non-Olympians, one of our primary activities is sitting, likely at a desk. If you’ve worked in corporate, you may have had an in-house ergonomics manager (at least we did in the semiconductors manufacturing plant I worked in) who comes around and fusses at you about posture and desk set up. Turns out our spines aren’t super happy when we hunch over a desk all day. Even this “activity” has an effect on how you move when you finally walk away from your desk. All of this is to say that we have all adapted to our own “habitual activities”, so it’s critical for the next evolution of healthcare to take this individuality, whether it’s the Olympic rower or desk warrior, into account. We have the wearables saturation and the computing power, but the data processing hasn’t changed since the 70s. High time for the next era of personalized healthcare 🧠
Body variations of Olympic and Professional athletes captured by photographer Howard Schatz
*For those of you who have met hominin’s founding team in-person, you know I’m the short one of the bunch, even though we’re all rowers - Marcus is 6ft 7in (201cm), Brandon is 6ft 4in (193cm), and I’m all the way down at 5ft 11in (180cm). A hobbit in the rowing world!
Brandon Note: The Tour de France is on right now (props to Mark Cavendish on #35) and I am absolutely devastated that as a 100kg 6’4” male I will never be a cyclist.
Want to know a bit more about my background and inspiration? Check out this segment from my interview on the Tech Business Podcast with Paul Essery! The full interview is here.