Does Muscle Type Determine Sports Ability?
Wednesday August 1, 2007
Are you a better sprinter or distance runner? Many people believe that having more fast and slow twitch muscle fibers can determine what sport an athlete will excel in and how they will respond to training. Traditionally, fast twich fibers are found in higher concentration in those who excel in speed and power sports and more slow twitch fibers are found in those who excel in endurance sports.
There are even genetic tests offered that claim to tell you if you are more suited to endurance or power sports. Genetic Technologies will test a cheek swab for a specific gene (the R577X variant of the ACTN3 gene) that normally produces the protein (actinin-3) that helps produce the fast twitch muscle fibers.
However, some are worried about that this test has ethical implications and could increase the pressures parents may place on children to pursue a give sport. Read more in the British Journal of Sports Medicine online.
Dr Emma Rich and I have an article on this subject published in the refereeed journal ‘Sport, Education and Society’ this year (2006). the details are as follows:
Miah, A. and Rich, E. (2006) Genetic Tests for Ability? Talent Identification and the Value of an Open Future, Sport, Education and Society, in press.
Its hard to imagine that this genetic test would get out of hand and become an ethical problem.
Of course genes and physical appereance (phenotype) are closely releated as in other metabolic pathways in our cells. But the mechanisms (esp. genetic)of our cells are still unclear and it is too early to find a relation between performance and a single gene. It may cause big problems to families deciding what kind of sport can their children have capacity.