Per olof astrand biography examples
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Nerd Lab: Dr. Véronique Billat – A Pioneer in Interval Training Research
Interval training is as fundamental to endurance sport training as putting on a pair of running shoes or clipping into a set of clipless pedals. Yet, many of us were born before the term “interval training” was even coined. It was only in the 1960s that Per-Olof Astrand started studying interval training extensively in the lab.
Back in the 1990s and 2000s, French researcher Véronique Billat was one of the pioneers of interval research, and today, she’s still publishing and hosting YouTube channel. At a time when the field was completely dominated by men and research about male athletes, Dr. Billat, more than almost any other researcher, defined what interval training was and how we research it.
Many concepts that we consider cutting-edge ideas like the importance of spending time at VO2max and the power of short intervals (like 30-30s) are concepts she helped pioneer or out-ri
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Erkki Vettenniemi
Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä
‘When it comes to scientific methods in sports coaching,’ the Swedish physiologist Per-Olof Åstrand boasted in 1964, ‘we are on a par with the Soviet Union.’ Åstrand had looked after Swedish skiers for about ten years, and his slightly smug statement was, in fact, a perfectly legitimate observation. It also justifies Daniel Svensson’s set of essays in which the author aptly explores the post-war modernization of cross-country skiers’ training in Sweden, one of the three Nordic powerhouses of this particular sport.
Entitled Scientizing Performance in Endurance Sports, Svensson’s doctoral thesis comprises five articles, three of which deal with training. As the two remaining essays have more to do with landscape studies than training studies, I happily note that Svensson’s supervisors did not protest at their inclusion in his PhD project. Until the introduction of machine-made ski tracks and artif
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Abstract
A fascinating chain of events led in 1941 to the formation of the Department of Physiology at the Royal Gymnastic huvud Institute (GCI) in huvudstaden, Sweden. Erik Hohwü Christensen, from the scientifically advanced Lindhard School in Copenhagen became its first professor. A huvud research question for him concerned determining the limiting factors for maximal physical performance in man. This was the academic setting where the sports interested medical lärling Bengt Saltin was introduced to exercise physiology. In the summer of 1959, he became involved in a study on intermittent vs continuous running. A doctoral planerat arbete , with Per-Olof Åstrand as his tutor, resulted in 1964 as the thesis “Aerobic work capacity and circulation at exercise in man. With special reference to the effect of prolonged exercise and/or heat exposure”. In the decade that followed, Saltin continued along that path. However, he also added a vital research line involving pioneering studies on skelet