Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/198

186 drawing the thigh bone back and out. The hamstring muscles (H) have a similar action, with addition of flexing or bending the knee joint. As the stroke consists in a straightening of this joint, the skater uses the powerful extensors (E) to counteract this latter action of the hamstrings (H).

The extensor muscles (E) are tremendously powerful, and from their double origin on the pelvis and along the front of the thigh bone (femur) they are inserted into the knee-cap (patella), which changes the direction of their pull to a right angle by carrying them over the knee joint to their final insertion on the tibia, just as the wire of a door-bell is carried round the corners on its way to the kitchen. As the only function of the calf muscles (C) is to raise the heel and bend the knee, they will hardly be used at all in skating with long, flat racing skates.

In a speed skater we would look for a strong back and broad neck, due to his attitude while at work. His arms, which are kept idly folded on his back, would be small and weak, as would be his chest muscles. His abdominal muscles would get some work from the constant swaying, and he would have powerful, vigorous gluteal and extensor muscles, with sinewy hamstrings but undersized calves.

An examination of the measurements of some of our most noted skaters will show this special development even better than their photographs.

In the accompanying charts each measurement is compared with those of nearly three thousand Yale students, whose average, or more correctly whose "mean," measurements are inclosed in the two heavy lines, and may be said to fairly represent the proportions of the average young man. The variation from this average, or mean, is marked in percentages in the extreme left-hand column of the chart.

John S. Johnson, of Minneapolis, has had a somewhat meteoric athletic career. Although he has been wheeling and skating for nine years, he has been heard of only about three years, when his phenomenal time was at first scarcely credited. His decisive defeat of the hitherto invincible Joe Donahue in Montreal, February 3, 1894, in all distances up to five miles, brought him up to the top of the tree, where he has remained perched on its topmost branch till the present hour, unquestionably the best man up to five miles on ice. He holds nearly all the records in speed skating.

His trainer never allows him to tire himself, but starts him with short spurts and an easy pace; so that, although he had been eighteen months in training when I examined him (February 5, 1894), he had in that time gained twenty-six pounds. He was then twenty-two years of age, and weighed one hundred and forty-four pounds. While in his sitting height he is surpassed by