Optimization of Human Performance

• Published in: Kinesiology review (Champaign, Ill.) Ill.), 2020, Vol.9 (1), p.1-3
• Main Authors: Hatfield, Bradley D., Lu, Calvin M., Zimmerman, Jo B.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Human performance; Kinesiology; Optimization; Reproducibility; Sports injuries
• ISSN: 2163-0453; 2161-6035
• DOI: 10.1123/kr.2019-0065

The papers in this issue of Kinesiology Review collectively constitute the bulk of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Kinesiology (NAK) and are expansions on a series of presentations given at the 89th annual meeting held in Bellevue, WA, September 12–14, 2019. The theme of the conference was the “Optimization of Human Performance,” and 13 scholars who are internationally recognized leaders in kinesiology and beyond presented their views on this topic from multiple perspectives spanning the historical and philosophical to the biophysical and sports-medicine dimensions. We now present full papers from 10 of those presentations in this issue. The highest levels of human performance are inspiring and captured by the Olympic motto Citius, altius, fortius (Faster, higher, stronger), which characterizes the beauty of the moving body at its limits or capacity. Remarkably, the highest-level performance of an athlete is sometimes associated with an apparent ease of exertion in such exceptional performers as Wilma Rudolph, who won gold as a sprinter in 100-m, 200-m, and 4 × 100-m events at the 1960 Rome Olympics and was affectionately referred to by European press as the Black Gazelle, while Red Grange, the outstanding football halfback nicknamed the Galloping Ghost, who played at the University of Illinois in the 1920s and went on to star with the Chicago Bears, also moved with apparent ease. Grange’s movements during game performance, similar to those ascribed to Rudolph, were also described as beautiful, fluid, and graceful and akin to that of nimble deer in the woods by his college coach Bob Zuppke. As such, human performance can embody both beauty and functionality. In this vein a subtheme of the conference was, in fact, that of efficiency or economy of motion for optimization, and it certainly applies, beyond the speedsters, to the endurance athletes and all who must sustain their efforts on the job, as well as on the field of play, since economy of movement preserves the energy substrates that fuel the human machine. Although these examples capture the movements of superior athletes, the arena of human performance also includes the actions of first responders and soldiers in highly stressful environments and extends to the movements of those who are challenged by age, infirmity, and disease who are doing their best to execute their activities of daily living and achieve the goals that are meaningful to them (e.g., rising from a chair and walking to th