The Performance Gap in Sport Can Help Determine Which Movements Were Most Essential to Human Evolution.

Collin Carroll

doi:10.3389/fphys.2019.01412

Abstract

Men outperform women in sports that require muscular strength and endurance, but the magnitude of this performance gap (PG) does not appear to be constant; that is, the PG between men and women is greater in some sports than it is in others. Here, we examine the size of this gap within the realm of track and field by comparing the top 50 world-record performances of men to the top 50 records set by women in a number of long-distance running, medium-distance running, short-distance running, and jumping events. While women do not perform at the level of men in any track and field event, the magnitude of the PG trends up or down depending on the type of event. Jumping events exhibit a larger gap between the sexes than do running events, and short-distance running events show a smaller disparity between the sexes than do medium- or long-distance running events. This difference suggests that general sexual dimorphism does not explain why female performance is relatively closer to male performance at some track and field events than others. We hypothesize that this trend can be explained by the presence of sex-blind musculoskeletal adaptations (SBMA’s), which accumulate over generations to reduce the size of the PG in certain movements. We conclude that the selection trend favoring in humans should be explored further to determine whether the PG in sport can indeed be used to determine movements to which the human body is adapted.

Highlights

Movement is key to an organism’s reproductive success; better quality of movement allows an individual to escape predators and acquire food, heightening its reproductive fitness (Kuhn et al, 2016; Marck et al, 2016)
This stagnation of world records suggests that humans are approaching the apex of our species’ ability to perform, which makes current track and field world records a good gauge for the overall capacity of the human body at these established events
Whether it is due to a greater degree of neuromuscular control, more efficient muscular recruiting patterns, or some combination of other physiological factors, it appears that the human body is better equipped across sex lines for a movement like shortdistance running versus a movement like jumping

Summary

Introduction

Movement is key to an organism’s reproductive success; better quality of movement allows an individual to escape predators and acquire food, heightening its reproductive fitness (Kuhn et al, 2016; Marck et al, 2016). The human body is capable of climbing, short- and long-distance running, swimming, jumping, and many more movements, all of which can be assessed experimentally between individuals as sport. Performance Gap and Human Evolution achieved throughout the 20th century, but in recent years, the rate of new records has slowed (Matrahazi and Hymans, 2015; Marck et al, 2017). This stagnation of world records suggests that humans are approaching the apex of our species’ ability to perform, which makes current track and field world records a good gauge for the overall capacity of the human body at these established events. While the rate of new world records has slowed in recent years, a notable performance gap (PG) remains between top-performing men and top-performing women across all track and field events

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Conclusion