On a treadmill launched at more than 28 km / h, at the Center of Performance Expertise (CEP) in Dijon, Sacha Cultru tears himself away. The middle distance specialist over 800 meters must hold the distance for one minute with a mask over his nose and mouth to measure his oxygen consumption during the effort. Result of the sprint: one minute of effort at 28.5 km/h. “What gives you an idea, it makes you go to the 400m in 50 secondsexplains Hervé Assadi, his trainer. You don’t do that twice on an 800 because it’s better than the world record!”
Hervé Assadi is also a researcher and teacher at Inserm. After the treadmill, Sacha must sit down so that the researchers place patches on his thighs, which send him small electric shocks for two minutes. It’s not painful: it allows them to measure muscle fatigue. “Here, with the device called the Myocene, we’re going to come and measure muscle fatigue on the same day, we’re going to see where I’m atanalyzes the athlete who hopes to qualify for the Paris Olympics in 2024. We will be able to adapt the training. Maybe we’ll lighten it up a bit on a day when I’m more tired. If it’s okay, we continue, and that allows us to manage all the training and competition periods as well as possible. Like a Formula 1: it’s every day, with ‘plus plus’ precision, the center really allows that.”
In another room full of weight machines, screens and sensors, it is Alexis Miellet who trains. A specialist in the 1,500m, he qualified for the Tokyo Olympics. Alexis comes to the center twice a week to improve his performance, especially on the hamstrings, the leg muscles. “I already feel an improvement on my stridehe remarks, I feel much stronger on the support, it’s advantageous afterwards to run fast. There, we really try to optimize all the little details, that’s what makes the difference.”
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In order to obtain these results, the researchers of theNational Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) work in their laboratories next door. From their discoveries on the functioning of the brain and muscles, they develop machines that they test on these great athletes, and everyone wins. “We have this originality of having on the same site a fundamental research laboratory on motricity, on the mechanism, and a platform of high-level athletes who can, on the same site, apply this researchrejoices Charalambos Papaxanthis, director of the Caps laboratory at Inserm. Once we understand how the brain controls the muscle, and what are the benefits of electrical stimulation, for example, we can very well apply this method to a patient who has mobility problems to improve his muscular strength.
This research on top athletes also benefits people who have difficulty walking. Inserm researchers have developed a somewhat special rowing machine, full of sensors and electrodes. “We can of course see the muscles above contracting”, shows us Dani who has been using it for three years. This 70-year-old woman suffers from a kind of multiple sclerosis and she comes to this laboratory once a week for rowing sessions combined with electrostimulation. She receives small electric shocks in the legs. And the result is obvious. “From the first year, I felt a big evolution, I went up and down the stairs normally whereas it was step by step, beforesays Dani. I went a lot in the woods, I needed two sticks. Today I go into the woods without sticks, pick my mushrooms, come back comfortable. I found everything, a joy of living, it’s great.”
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The dream of the Inserm researchers: that this rower equipped with the electrostimulation device be available in all hospitals in France.