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SYMPOSIUM
Bengt Saltin and exercise physiology: a perspective1
Michael J. Joyner

Abstract: This perspective highlights some of the key contributions of Professor Bengt Saltin (1935–2014) to exercise physiology.
The emergence of exercise physiology from work physiology as his career began is discussed as are his contributions in a number
of areas. Saltin’s open and question-based style of leadership is a model for the future of our field.

Key words: work physiology, thermoregulation, muscle glycogen, exercise capacity, muscle plasticity.

Résumé : Cet article souligne quelques-unes des contributions essentielles du Pr Bengt Saltin (1935–2014) à la physiologie de
l’exercice physique. On analyse l’émergence de la physiologie de l’exercice issue de la physiologie du travail au moment où sa
carrière commence en plus de ses contributions dans plusieurs domaines. Son leadership axé sur l’ouverture et le questionne-
ment constitue un modèle pour l’avenir de notre domaine. [Traduit par la Rédaction]

Mots-clés : physiologie du travail, thermorégulation, glycogène musculaire, capacité d’effort, plasticité musculaire.

Introduction the early focus on economic as well as biomedical issues. In this

This perspective is about the impact and career of the Scandina-
vian physiologist Bengt Saltin (1935–2014). It is based on a presenta-
tion given at the 2015 Canadian Society of Exercise Physiology
meeting that was part of a symposium that included lectures on
Professor Saltin’s larger scientific contributions and his interac-
tions with Canadian scientists. That having been said I want to
frame the perspective via 3 main questions: First, what was the
exercise physiology world like and where did it come from when
Bengt Saltin started in research in the early 1960s? Second, what
do the highlights of his career tell us about our field and what
lessons do they offer today? Third, what can we learn about the
leadership of scientific enterprises from reviewing Bengt Saltin’s
career?
Exercise Physiology before 1960
When I talk to students about where exercise physiology came
from, I always emphasize our links to what might be described as
industrial or work physiology. Starting in the late 1800s and well
into the 1900s, there was great interest in these topics because
many humans in the “developed” world worked at jobs that re-
quired extensive manual labor. As the world industrialized there
was an economic and political need to understand the energy
requirements of this work, how it was fueled, and how it was
affected by environmental conditions. At the same time there was
a larger hygiene movement focused on improving living and
working conditions for the masses. Additionally, heroic feats of
physical endurance, such as polar exploration and mountaineer-
ing, captured the imagination of the general public as mass com-
munication emerged.
The names of 2 of the earliest North American programs on
topics related to our field reflect these trends. At the University of
Toronto there was a department of Physiological Hygiene and the
Harvard Fatigue Laboratory was founded in Boston in the 1920s
(Best 1928; Scheffler 2015). That the Harvard Fatigue Lab was lo-
cated in the business school and not the medical school highlights
context, an outstanding example of classical work physiology is a
study on thermoregulation and adaptation to heat stress con-
ducted by Sid Robinson at the Harvard Fatigue Lab during World
War II. At that time there was concern that soldiers from cool
climates would not be able to deal with the heat in tropical envi-
ronments. This study showed that several weeks of daily exercise
in a warm environment evoked marked improvements in thermo-
regulation and blunted some of the concerns about tropical envi-
ronments (Robinson et al. 1943).
The central role of work physiology in our field is further high-
lighted by the title of one of the foundational texts in our field, the
Textbook of Work Physiology (Åstrand and Rodahl 1970) was first
published in 1970 and coauthored by one of Bengt Saltin’s teach-
ers and early collaborators Per Olaf Astrand. It should also be
noted that the pre-World War II “Work Physiologists” were cer-
tainly interested in exercise and incredibly insightful studies on
topics, such as maximal oxygen uptake, exercise metabolism, and
human performance were well underway during that era (Robinson
et al. 1937). These studies also set the stage for what followed espe-
cially in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. It is important to note that up to
that time a lot of attention had been paid to the role of the heart and
cardiac function as a key determinant of exercise capacity.
Lessons from Saltin’s contributions
I like to say that I first met Bengt Saltin in the late 1970s. How-
ever, that meeting was really a meeting of his ideas and occurred
via reading and discussing his papers with fellow students in a
journal club at the University of Arizona that was led by Jack
Wilmore. Three of the major themes of his work were already well
developed by then and they include thermoregulation, maximal
oxygen uptake, and regulation of skeletal muscle metabolism.
One of his earliest papers on the impact of dehydration on maxi-
mal oxygen from 1964 was discussed (Saltin 1964). The paper
shows that dehydration had a much bigger impact on time to
exhaustion than maximal oxygen uptake. It remains a classic and

Received 6 June 2016. Accepted 1 September 2016.

M.J. Joyner. Department of Anesthesiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN 55905, USA.
Email for correspondence: joyner.michael@mayo.edu.
1This paper is a part of a symposium entitled A Tribute to Bengt Saltin: The use of Exercise to Study Integrative Physiology.

Copyright remains with the author(s) or their institution(s). Permission for reuse (free in most cases) can be obtained from RightsLink.

Appl. Physiol. Nutr. Metab. 42: 101–103 (2017) dx.doi.org/10.1139/apnm-2016-0314 Published at www.nrcresearchpress.com/apnm on 12 September 2016.
102
has all of the hallmarks of his later work, including a clear hy-
pothesis, straight forward experimental design, and a highly in-
formative and succinct discussion. Typically, figures that were
simple but elegant reinforced the key findings and interpretation.
By the late 1960s Bengt had begun to focus on muscle metabo-
lism and he was one of the authors along with Bergstrom, Her-
mansen, and Hultman on the effects of diet on muscle glycogen
and performance. This study leveraged the muscle biopsy tech-
nique and showed that muscle glycogen stores were a key deter-
minant of endurance time during cycling at about 75% of maximal
and set the stage for practices like carbohydrate loading and feed-
ing during exercise (Bergström et al. 1967). In addition to spawn-
ing a vast array of science, this study (and others) was critical in
sparking the whole field of sports nutrition and the downstream
commercial efforts to improve performance via various drinks,
gels, and supplements.
In 1972 Bengt presented the first Wolffe lecture at the American
College of Sports Medicine. The title of the lecture and subsequent
paper published in 1973 was Metabolic Fundamentals in Exercise
(Saltin 1973).
Figure 1 is simply a listing of the subheadings of that paper. I
include it to show the breadth of Bengt’s thinking and to high-
light that many of the topics he discussed remain vibrant areas of
ongoing research in our field. The paper is also worth rereading
from time to time as a reminder of what we do and do not know
and as a reminder of the timeless nature of good questions. Here
is a quote from the paper that I particularly like:
It is tempting to suggest that the relative muscle fiber com-
position be used as a method for identifying early in life
those able to compete successfully in different physical ac-
tivities or to predict the potential to adapt to training that
the muscles and body may have. Such identification in no
way, however, obviates the need for intense training.
This quote anticipates by about 40 years the current focus on the
molecular and other omic factors that along with concepts from
traditional integrative physiology explain inter-individual differ-
ences in the responses to exercise training. It also anticipates the
rise in things like direct to consumer testing for talent identifica-
tion (Webborn et al. 2015).
The next big wave of innovative ideas from Bengt Saltin’s fertile
mind came in the 1980s with the development in Copenhagen of
an improved thermodilution technique to measure leg blood flow
in combinations with “1-leg” kicking exercise. These techniques
essentially permitted the quadriceps muscle to become a human
bioassay system. This technique has been essential in understand-
ing the regulation of skeletal muscle blood flow. Most importantly
data collected with it showed blood flow to human skeletal mus-
cles could be much higher than previously accepted values (250–
400 mL·100 gm−1·min−1 vs. 50–100 mL·100 gm−1·min−1) (Andersen
and Saltin 1985). This observation was also central to raising and
addressing issues about the need for the autonomic nervous sys-
tem to control the distribution of cardiac output and skeletal
muscle blood flow during whole-body exercise for the purposes of
regulating blood pressure. The blood flow technique was also
combined with the muscle biopsy technique and microdialysis so
that complex issues at the interface of blood flow and metabolism
could be addressed. The advantages of this human model include
the ability of volunteers to cooperate while performing complex
tasks, studies in patients, and also the simple fact that the quad-
riceps is a big muscle that facilitates sampling. These issues and
the background behind them have been reviewed and discussed
in great detail in a recent Physiological Reviews on muscle blood flow
(Joyner and Casey 2015).
Leadership of scientific enterprises
In the early 1990s Bengt was asked to develop the Copenhagen
Muscle Research Centre (CMRC). In the wake of his death the
Appl. Physiol. Nutr. Metab. Vol. 42, 2017
Fig. 1. Key topics covered in Saltin’s inaugural Wolffe Lecture.
history and scientific legacy of the CMRC has been reviewed in
detail elsewhere (Joyner et al. 2015). However, as someone who
was not a member of the CMRC and never worked there several
things stand out. First, the CMRC was highly collaborative. On a
scientific basis this permitted collaborations in areas at the inter-
section of topics such as blood flow and metabolism to thrive. This
collaborative spirit also attracted top young investigators from all
over the world who came for training and collaborations. Second,
activities at the CMRC also led directly or indirectly to the gener-
ation of a number of outstanding international symposia and
courses. It was through these events that I got to know Bengt
Saltin personally and interact with him. Bengt was unfailing in his
inclusion and encouragement of young investigators from all over
the world. I also saw firsthand a leadership style that was open,
question-focused, and flexible versus excessively hierarchical and
bureaucratic. At some level the best labs are like Montessori
schools for bright young people. Bengt showed it was possible to
run a large and high-powered research center at a major research
university in the same way.
Summary
The career of Bengt Saltin highlights the emergence of exercise
physiology and sports science from its roots in work physiology.
His career also shows that it is possible to do mechanistic studies
in humans by combining a suite of techniques ranging from clas-
sical measurement of gas exchange to molecular signaling. To do
this requires a question versus technique centric focus. Bengt’s
career is also a testament to the power of collaboration with oth-
ers and facilitation of their work. In physiology we frequently
discuss feedback control. Bengt Saltin’s contributions, achieve-
ments, and leadership represent 50 years of positive feedback for
the field of exercise physiology.
Conflict of interest statement
Michael J. Joyner, MD, reports no conflicts of interested associ-
ated with this manuscript.
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