(Sorry, this post has gotten very long. I hope it's not just keyboard diarrhea.)
The mechanics of muscle contraction are quite elegant. The amount of force a muscle fiber can generate is proportional to its cross-sectional area. While you can gain some strength improvement without much increase in muscle size, the effect is probably limited. It comes mostly from training the nervous system to simultaneously activate more motor units (a group of muscle fibers activated by a single neuron). My guess would be that most world class sprinters already recruit their motor units nearly maximally. So if Joe Doaks is going to make big strength improvements, I'll wager he's going to need bigger muscles. I have no trouble understanding an argument that Alain Bernard might be using PEDs. The argument is less convincing to me for Eamon Sullivan.
What are the progression of swimmers' personal best times over, say, the last five years? Poking around I found swimrankings.net which allows you to graph a swimmer's time progression in various events. Here are graphs of Sullivan and Bernard. As long as I'm having fun displaying progression graphs here are a few more: Alexander Popov, Gary Hall Jr, Pieter van den Hoogenband, Michael Phelps, Libby Lenton, Dara Torres and Inge de Bruijn. I found Inge's progression most interesting. Must have been taking gelatin supplements there for awhile to grow her fingernails faster. :D All the graphs are for 50m free except for Phelps. That's for 200m fly. It appears the 50 free is about the only event he doesn't swim!
One thing I think would be kind of cool is to compare a swimmer's time progression across two or more events. For example, compare the progression of their best 100m free and 100m fly times. If the swimmer was focusing on a single event you'd expect it to improve more relative to the other event. If, on the other hand, their time improvements were (largely) drug-induced you'd expect all events they were swimming to benefit. Of course, that's kind of hard to determine. Many current sprinters seem to swim 50 and 100 free and not much else. At any rate, it looks like the raw data are at swimrankings.net if someone wants to do the study.
Sullivan has had multiple surgeries. Here's a fluff piece from Fox Sports Australia that discusses his "fragility" and surgeries. It offers no explanation other than that he's "accident and injury-prone".
Finally, one last statistic: Wikipedia lists him at 189cm and 78kg, roughly 6'2" and 171 pounds. Hardly a gym rat's physique.
Skip
P.S. Damn! Davidson is really putting the screws to Wisconsin!
(Sorry, this post has gotten very long. I hope it's not just keyboard diarrhea.)
The mechanics of muscle contraction are quite elegant. The amount of force a muscle fiber can generate is proportional to its cross-sectional area. While you can gain some strength improvement without much increase in muscle size, the effect is probably limited. It comes mostly from training the nervous system to simultaneously activate more motor units (a group of muscle fibers activated by a single neuron). My guess would be that most world class sprinters already recruit their motor units nearly maximally. So if Joe Doaks is going to make big strength improvements, I'll wager he's going to need bigger muscles. I have no trouble understanding an argument that Alain Bernard might be using PEDs. The argument is less convincing to me for Eamon Sullivan.
What are the progression of swimmers' personal best times over, say, the last five years? Poking around I found swimrankings.net which allows you to graph a swimmer's time progression in various events. Here are graphs of Sullivan and Bernard. As long as I'm having fun displaying progression graphs here are a few more: Alexander Popov, Gary Hall Jr, Pieter van den Hoogenband, Michael Phelps, Libby Lenton, Dara Torres and Inge de Bruijn. I found Inge's progression most interesting. Must have been taking gelatin supplements there for awhile to grow her fingernails faster. :D All the graphs are for 50m free except for Phelps. That's for 200m fly. It appears the 50 free is about the only event he doesn't swim!
One thing I think would be kind of cool is to compare a swimmer's time progression across two or more events. For example, compare the progression of their best 100m free and 100m fly times. If the swimmer was focusing on a single event you'd expect it to improve more relative to the other event. If, on the other hand, their time improvements were (largely) drug-induced you'd expect all events they were swimming to benefit. Of course, that's kind of hard to determine. Many current sprinters seem to swim 50 and 100 free and not much else. At any rate, it looks like the raw data are at swimrankings.net if someone wants to do the study.
Sullivan has had multiple surgeries. Here's a fluff piece from Fox Sports Australia that discusses his "fragility" and surgeries. It offers no explanation other than that he's "accident and injury-prone".
Finally, one last statistic: Wikipedia lists him at 189cm and 78kg, roughly 6'2" and 171 pounds. Hardly a gym rat's physique.
Skip
P.S. Damn! Davidson is really putting the screws to Wisconsin!
