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Appendix A „h Physiologists have made several evaluations as to what makes the athlete perform better mentally. There are many different ways that an athlete can overcome mental barriers, one of which by using these four factors: Concentration (ability to maintain focus), Confidence (believe in one's abilities), Control (ability to maintain emotional control regardless of distraction), Commitment (ability to continue working to agreed goals). „h With many advancements in athletic equipment competitors have been allowed to perform to a higher standard and achieve improved times. „h For many years, physiologists said that it was inconceivable for an athlete to run under four minutes for the mile. Everyone began to think that a four minute mile would be a barrier that no human would be capable of breaking. Many world class athletes allowed the mythical time to rule them. „h Typical stereotypes have suggested that women are of a lesser athletic ability than men. „h Records, of course, are made to be broken. With more scientific training methods, records have consistently improved. „h Coaches also influence a personˇ¦s performance from the differential treatment given to training methods resulting in the level of developed physical prowess. „h It is a direct result of its sound knowledge of mechanics and effective technique „h The steady improvement in records of all sporting events may, at first glance, look like biological evolution, but this couldn't be further from the truth. „h Living as we now do, in large, increasingly homogenized populations, any mutation that might crop up and that could be of value for athletic performance (e.g. an enormously large lung capacity for marathoners) would quickly be diffused in the gene pool. „h That's not to say changes can't happen. Could a species stuck with our bipedal design evolve and someday run as fast as ostriches? Maybe we're still so unspecialized for the task of running that selective breeding could accomplish this. But even if we attempted that unthinkable experimentˇXif we bred humans like, say, racehorses, along lines of pedigreeˇXthe project would probably have to continue uninterrupted for hundreds or thousands of years. We have no idea what makes a Secretariat different from an also-ran, but if we want to beat a Secretariat, we begin with Secretariat genes. Still, if we did create human thoroughbreds, there's good reason to believe the physical "improvement" would eventually stop; despite selective breeding, thoroughbreds haven't gotten any faster in the last 100 years. Why should it be any different with us?
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