Olympic training, old and new: uncovering the secrets of ancient Greek athletes. From the article: 

The first fighters and runners of the Olympic Games had only rudimentary technology and scant physiological knowledge, but their methods were more sophisticated than many might assume.

The first Panhellic contest, the Olympics, dates to 776BC. It began with foot-races, but later the Ancient Greeks added jumping, boxing, wrestling, and the now-forgotten brutal fighting technique pankration, whose modern equivalent might be Ultimate Fighting. It often ended with mutilation or even death….

Historians have had to piece together how competitors prepared for these events from very few sources, says Clayton Lehmann of the University of South Dakota, who has studied the athletic training of the period. “We have to use very scattered literary texts,” he explains, as well as more indirect approaches. “Pot paintings are really useful, because they give rather vivid images of how training and competition took place.”

One of the only specific sources about athletic training is called Gymnasticus, written by the philosopher Philostratus the Athenian around the 2nd Century AD. Philostratus didn’t go into that much detail about everyday methods – mainly writing about sport as a noble endeavour – but occasionally he remarks on how some athletes would do curious things like chase animals, bend bars of iron or swim fully armoured in the ocean….

Other tricks included holding four horses at the same time, resisting the effort of someone’s push, or gripping their fists closed. Fighters also pulled, punched and chest-bumped filled bags: the weaker athletes used flour and fig seeds, while the stronger ones used sand.

Wrestlers threw the discus, which were much heavier back then, and lifted weighted rocks with handles. On Thera, a black volcanic stone taller than most men and weighing 480kg (1,060lb) was discovered with an inscription naming the strongman wrestler who lifted it off the ground….

Athletes trained in gymnasia and outdoor palaestra, but unlike the present day, these settings also featured libraries and lecture halls. The Ancient Greeks believed it was the duty of citizens to perfect mind and body together. Athletic activity was seen as another form of wisdom (sophia), comparable to the creative arts, philosophy, mathematics or astronomy, so it made sense that exercising the brain and muscles was performed in the same place….

The Ancient Greeks knew what it took to grow stronger, but their ideas about the body’s physiology were a little mystical. They believed in harnessing an ethereal substance called pneuma, a bit like the Chinese chi. This involved suspending and holding the breath, tensing all the muscles of the breast and relaxing the stomach and diaphragm, therefore “pushing the excrements” down, according to [Lucas] Christopoulous.

Using this pneuma technique, one boxer supposedly used his outstretched fingers to hit his opponent’s abdomen so hard that it pierced the flesh, and tore out his entrails. Another was known as “Fingertips” because he would break his opponent’s fingers at the start of a match….

Outside the gymnasium, some athletes used their physical surroundings to train. Philostratus wrote about the techniques of climbing trees and ropes, or pulling carts. Some ran on soft or firm sand to prepare their legs. One boxer from Thanos apparently swam around his island birthplace, a distance of 50km (31 miles), while another was famous for carrying a bronze statue from the temple back to his house when he was only nine years old, according to Christopoulous….

Known for their strength or prowess, many Ancient Greek athletes were widely admired stars. But as well their victories, their fame also came from the ideals they espoused, according to Reid.

“The ethos of modern athletics, aided by the easy electronic measurement of heart rate, oxygen uptake, watt production, and other performance metrics promotes the pernicious idea that the goal of sport is just the perpetual improvement of those numbers,” [Prof. Heather] Reid writes. But she argues that the Greeks knew that a star athlete could represent more, becoming an embodiment of virtue. This was called kalokagathia: an attribute that combined beauty and goodness. “Although sport has changed since ancient times, what is good and beautiful about athletes remains the same. It is not the money, or esteem, or even victory that is good – it is the ideal.”