The muscle fiber composition of skeletal muscle as a predictor of athletic success

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Abstract
Human skeletal muscle is composed of varying percentages of fiber types. This percent composition varies widely between muscles and among individuals. The fiber composition of some skeletal muscle could be construed as being advantageous to successful performance in selected athletic event. However, this relationship is not sufficiently close to warrant the conclusion that the fiber composition of the muscle per se is the determinant of the superior performance of elite athletes. Reasonably good evidence exists to support the position that the fiber composition of a muscle is the result of a genetic endowment. Although muscle fibers are mutable, present evidence is equivocal as to whether habitual participation in given type of physical activity is responsible for high percentages of a given fiber type being present in the muscles of some athletes. Although considerable knowledge has come from the study of muscle samples obtained from sedentary individuals, athletes of a wide range of performance capacity, and individuals before and after training, a considerable gap remains for a full understanding of how the characteristics of muscle are related to performance capacity. The observation that considerable variation exists in the percent distribution of the fibers within a muscle and that athletes with a wide range of fiber populations in their muscles can be successful in the same athletic event cautions against the routine application of the biopsy technique to estimate the fiber distribution of muscles and also to use such data as a routine screening procedure for predicting athletic success. The point, as was made in an earlier paper, that the biopsy technique for studying muscle is a research tool, will probably continue to be true for the near future.