Have you got what it takes to be an Olympic athlete?

High tech fitness tests in a lab can work out which sports you are most suited to - and where your weaknesses might lie. Kate Carter is put through her paces to discover her potentialIn a gleaming white lab kitted out with props straight out of science fiction, I'm pounding a treadmill in a mask seemingly designed to protect against a nuclear disaster. A man in a white coat stares at a bank of screens, shouting at me to keep up the effort as I pant into the tubes.Not so long ago, identifying a potential sports star was a matter of how far you could sprint around a track, or kick a football. Now, sports scientists are routinely using advanced tests to determine fitness, agility, body composition, reaction times and much more. But how does an average recreational athlete compare? A recent convert to running, I'm at the Gatorade Sports Science Institute lab (GSSI) at Loughborough University, which has gathered statistics on everyone from Victoria Pendleton to Tim Brabants, to find out my potential.First, I'm weighed and measured. Disappointingly, it turns out I've been kidding myself about my height for years. Or I've shrunk. Weight, though, is less important than body composition (a distance runner will weigh less than a heavyweight boxer) and it's the latter that the first of a series of hi-tech tests will assess.I am made to sit in a BodPod, and given a full body Dexa (dual energy x‑ray absorptiometry) scan that uses low energy x-rays to examine bone density and create a pi...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: The Guardian Fitness Health & wellbeing Features Life and style Science Source Type: news