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Ocacia · (#1 (**permalink**))

The physical characteristics of the West African type today manifest very markedly in sport activities that predominantly rely on anaerobic metabolism. During the era of the slave trade, it was mostly blacks from West Africa that were brought to North America and today utterly dominate highly anaerobic athletic disciplines like sprints (100-400 m) and jumps.

These physiological traits are clearly evident as early as during childhood (Malina 1988, Milne et al. 1976, Ponthieux, Baker 1965). It was documented that this is due to the higher activity of key anaerobic enzymes and predominance of fast-twitch muscle fibers in thigh muscle (see muscle fiber), whose percentage is about 15% higher than in Europeans (Ama et al. 1986) and slightly less in African-Americans, who have approximately 20% white admixture (Duey et al. 1997). The combination of massive thigh muscle with slender calves ensures minimal intertia during fast movement (Rahmani et al. 2004), and the narrow hips minimize pelvis rotation and loses of energy. On the other hand, West Africans generally perform very poorly in aerobic activities, which results from their low VO2 max. values, lower concentration of hemoglobine, smaller lung capacity and too high percentage of fast-twitch fibers (Ama et al. 1990, Andreacci et al. 2004, Skinner et al. 2001 and others). Hence the athletic prominence of West Africans falls very markedly in the 800 m, where aerobic metabolism slightly predominates, and virtually disappears in the 1500 m. The athletic history knows no (full-blooded) athlete of West African origin, who would perform well in races 1500 m and longer, where aerobic metabolism prevails. Thus, the West African type is the exact physiological opposite of the Nilotic type that excels in long distances.