History of sports medicine - 1960

1960

American sports physician Kenneth Cooper (1931-) of the eponymous Cooper Clinic in Dallas, Texas demonstrated the benefits of aerobic exercise for health, with the treadmill playing a prominent role.

1960

Without agreeing German Professors Herbert Reindell (1908-1990) and Helmuth Roskamm (1933-2018), German athletics trainer Woldemar Gerschler (1904-1982),

Danish Professor Erik Howhü Christensen (1904-1996) and Russian Professor Nikolai Yakovlev (1902-1982) compaired the relative benefits of interval training with those of continuous training to increase cardiac stroke volume and endurance.

1960

In the early 1960s, an Australian company built a rowing ergometer, with which the exercise capacity could be measured. It was a very large steel device with flywheels and leather straps for resistance. The American Harvard University and the Naval Academy purchased two each.

With these devices the output of a number of contenders was tested for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico and afterwards American Professor of Physiology Fritz Hagerman (1938-2013) used the device for the first aerobic tests on rowers. However, the rowing ergometers were humidity- and temperature-sensitive, so that the results could not be compared universally.

1960

The fact that movement theory gained more and more scientific and medical credibility was demonstrated in 'Science and Medicine of Exercise and Sports' by Professor Warren R. Johnson (1921-1982) of the University of Maryland.

1960

A pedometer from the 1960s, it was called the walk-a-matic.

1960

The external fixation of fractures was refined by American surgeons during the Vietnam War, but Russian Orthopedic Surgeon Gavril Abramovich Ilizarov (1921-1992) made an important contribution. To care for wounded Russian soldiers in Siberia with paralyzing disorders of unhealed, infected and malignant fractures, with the help of a local bicycle shop he designed external fixators which were tensioned like the spokes of a bicycle. With this equipment he achieved healing, rescheduling and extension. The Ilizarov device is still used today.