"Sean McMullen - Pacing the Nightmare" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

We are doing pushups.
 "Pushups are done with a straight body, and on the top two knuckles of your fists," I tell the beginners.
"I don't care if you can do only two or three at first, just do them properly."
A few of them can indeed only do two or three proper pushups. The sensei counts. Five groups of ten,
ten, ten, rest. I do fifteens. Melissa does twenties.
Melissa is good, but her excellence did not come without hard work. Exercising at one's limit always
hurts, and it is during the pushups that I can see her under the most strain. I see her arms, her whole body
shaking with effort, but she persists until she has done whatever she has set for herself. I also do more in
each bracket, pushing myself until a small intense ball of pain flares at the core of my biceps. She is so
fresh and I am so tired, yet I must spar with her tonight.
***


I began to develop an academic curiosity about Melissa's condition, and after several months of being
her private and unofficial sensei I asked her to come to the laboratory for some tests. Athletes doing
training in extremis to break world records often have lowered resistance to disease, so I expected to
find Melissa's immunity level depressed. It was normal. A CAT scan revealed that the section modulus of
her bones was normal too, although the muscle attachment was unusually deep. The cells of her muscles
were where the really dramatic differences showed, however, and this was my speciality.
In weightlifting one's muscles must provide the maximum force possible, but in sprinting the rate of
doing work is more important. Thus speed sports do not require the large cross-sectional area of muscle
of a weight-lifter, it is the rate of contraction that is critical. Muscles generate maximum power when
contracting at an intermediate rate-- but not Melissa's muscles. I found that they worked in an optimised
dual mode, so that they could generate close to maximum power at a very high rate of contraction.
Physiologically it was a contradiction in terms.
I did biopsies of Melissa's small, hard muscles, and these indicated that membranes called the
sacroplasmic reticulum were releasing calcium faster than in normal muscles. The calcium is what causes
muscular contraction, and its release is triggered by a protein. With Melissa the protein was chemically
different, and its interaction with the membranes caused a faster outflow of calcium. Thus both her muscle
structure and chemistry were enhanced, so that her muscles were small and light for speed work, yet very
powerful when sheer strength was required. Tiny, dense muscles: that was why she looked emaciated,
yet was in perfect health.
I told Melissa little of what I was learning, only that I was working out why she looked the way she did
while remaining healthy. She seemed relieved, if only because it might pacify her parents.
***


There is a short rest before the formal training begins. Tonight an orange belt is due for an upgrade to
green, and for the final test he has to break a 3/4 inch board. Two examiners hold the board as he
squares off for a gyaku-tsuki punch, then snaps his whole body behind the leading knuckles of his fist
and shouts his kiai. The board breaks, everyone claps.
I am reminded of the night that Melissa broke her first board as part of her green belt tests. She had
everything mastered and passed easily, yet there was a subtle imperfection with the flow of her
movements in katas and sparring. She was smoothly mechanical, more like a perfect computer simulation
than a human.
"Your style is too mechanical," I said abruptly as we worked alone after training. "For gradings and
competitions it's fine, but not in a life-and-death situation."
"So what can I do?" she asked, very concerned.
"Just keep training. Some things only come with time."
I was saying this for myself, not Melissa. I was years ahead of her, but she was closing the gap too