WHAT IS THE BEST SPORT FOR FITNESS?

Read the following passage. Choose the one best answer, (A), (B), (C), or (D), to each question. (The answers are at the end.)

Which sport requires the greatest fitness? That question can prompt arguments that ramble on for hours.

The first triathlon event, which involved swimming 3.8km, cycling 179km and then running a marathon, was held after just such an argument between a swimmer, a cyclist and a runner.

All sportsmen and women – footballers, oarsmen, skiers – maintain that their sport is the best, but it has always seemed the debate could never be resolved. However, some years ago, Dr. Craig Sharp, co-director of the Human Motion Performance Laboratory at Birmingham University spoiled a million barroom arguments by analysing top performers in 33 different sports and working out, on the basis of tests, exactly which sportsmen were the fittest.

Dr. Sharp tested up to 100 practitioners of each sport for six different attributes. Most of the athletes tested were internationals. All were leading performers: about the lowest level tested were rugby players from first-class clubs.

Each athlete was assessed against six categories of test. The categories were:

• Cardio-respiratory fitness that tested aerobic fitness: the ability of the body to deliver oxygen to the muscles.
• Muscle speed that involved testing the time it took the athlete to reach peak power.
• Local muscle endurance, which tested the amount of work an athlete could do before collapsing from the effort.
• Flexibility, which involved various kinds of bending and stretching.
• Body fat percentage tests which measured the thickness of the skin at various sites. The body fat for young males averages around 14% of body weight and for females about 26% of body weight. (Sportsmen normally have around 10% body fat and sportswomen around 22% body fat.)

The best three sports for fitness out of the 33 tested, taking into account all these categories, were (first) Olympic gymnastics, (second) stage dance and (third) karate.

1. Dr. Craig Sharp has spoiled a million arguments about what is the ‘best’ sport by…

 (A) Testing 100 athletes        (B) Analysing athletes from 33 different sports

 (C) Testing six categories of exercise                       (D) Working for Birmingham University

2. Approximately how many athletes did Dr. Sharp test?

(A) 33             (B) 100                        (C) 500                        (D) 3300

3. Which category of test would have involved touching your toes?

(A) cardio-respiratory                        (B) strength                (C) flexibility             (D) body fat.

4. How much body fat do young sportsmen normally have?

(A) 10%          (B) 14%          (C) 22%          (D) 26%

5. Which category of test measures the efficiency of the athlete’s heart and lungs?

 (A) cardio-respiratory fitness           (B) strength     (C) muscle speed        (D) local muscle endurance

6. Approximately how many individual tests in total did Dr. Sharp carry out during his research?

 (A) 19 800                 (B) 9 900                                 (C) 3 300         (D) 600

 (The photograph shows the late H. Kanazawa (8th Dan), Chief Instructor of Shotokan Karate International, delivering a mai-geri (front kick).)         

ANSWERS

1. B    2. D        3. C        4. A        5. A        6. A