Hues of Performance

Geoffrey Handsfield, PhD (University of Virginia);

Katherine Knaus, Graduate Student (University of Virginia);

Silvia Blemker, PhD (University of Virginia)

 

Competitive sprinters dedicate years to developing their muscles for high-speed running. The way that their muscles respond to the hours and hours of intense training varies from athlete to athlete, and highlights what strategies the athlete uses to generate fast movement.

In this work, the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) was used to image the muscles of a number of competitive American sprinters. The size of their muscles were compared to healthy non-athletes. In this image, the strong muscles are depicted in blue, while the weak muscles are depicted in red.