Um, the sprinters aren’t really all that big in the upper body. However, you don’t have to buy that. You can just consider that Usain Bolt, the ultimate sprinter, is 6’5" and only 210 pounds. When you consider that he also has extremely low body fat, that means he is a freakin’ skinny dude! I’m 6’2" and 200 pounds, and many people say I look skinny and need to gain weight.
And even then, your body will repair damaged muscle as long as you don’t overwork it, which is how I have always heard it - otherwise, how would ANY exercise increase muscle strength/mass, and your link says that anaerobic exercise releases far more cortisol than aerobic exercise, hence a higher potential for muscle breakdown. Similarly, the article I linked to showed that muscle mass was only lost in the legs of ultra-marathoners; here is a more detailed description of what happened from one of the cites:
Again, there were people running 2,800 miles in 64 days; I’m sure that a more typical runner (just doing it for daily exercise) wouldn’t see any muscle loss because their body would repair the damage, and even gain muscle if they started from none at all (e.g. couch to 5k program). The same is also said with respect to weightlifting - you need to rest to allow your muscles to recover.
Key word here being “read the link.” Which you’re not going to do, so I’ll narrate it for you.
(italics mine)
And finally:
(again, italics mine)
So there you have it… you’ve been educated, there’s no more excuse for spreading fallacious gym rat mythology.
I never made any sort of claim that it was impossible to build muscle while doing cardio. Please go back and read my posts. What I said was aerobic exercise always has a degree of catabolism (muscle burning), or muscle tissue used for fuel; regardless of the stage in which the body is in as far as energy utilization. Even when glycogen levels are full, the body uses a small amount of muscle for fuel sources. However, the glycogen is the primary source. When those stores are empty, the body moves to fat for that primary source. But muscle will still be part of the total energy used. Just a small amount. That is until one has gone long enough (in excess of an hour) and the body then goes to muscle for it’s primary source.
But for MOST cardio, this small amount of muscle being burned for energy is EASILY overcome by various means in order to become anabolic. Usually it just takes eating more. But my original point was that marathon runners, who chronically engage in this high-calorie burning exercise, can’t eat enough to “get out of that metabolic hole” and build muscle while continuing to run marathons.
And I’m saying that’s wrong, but I’ll reconsider if you can provide a link from a reputable source that says otherwise. The body defends muscle; it does not want to use any of it for fuel while glucose is available.
Ok, here. It clearly shows that even during bouts of aerobic exercise less than an hour, the percentage of fuel coming from muscle tissue is greater than zero (less than 2% but still some). Of course, this percentage increases as the time exceeds an hour.
The problem with this sort of thinking is that it just isn’t true. I am a gym rat, I’m one of the bigger guys in there, and I see plenty of other big guys. I’ve seen some of them accused of using steroids; some of them do, and some of them don’t.
For instance, there is one guy in the gym I see regularly who is more or less my size, give or take 5-10 lbs; he has said he uses steroids, I never have. Yet, to an outside observer, yet someone like you would think both of us do. The difference is, his natural size without it would be considerably thinner and he needs that to reach what I have naturally.
Similarly, two of the biggest guys I’ve seen in there who probably got as many accusations as anyone else in there definitely didn’t use, but I’ve known a couple guys considerably smaller than me that did use and I never heard them accused of juicing. And none of us are world-class athletes, yet there is that much diversity there.
When you get to world class athletes, you’re picking out of the very top of people naturally gifted among people who train to an enormous extent, where even a small can have a large affect on the outcome, where a Gold medal and no medal are separated by, at most, tenths of a second. That margin could be made up by PEDs, but even minor differences in genetic gift, training, or just plain feeling good that day. That’s not to say there aren’t PEDs, I’m sure at least some of them are, and the testing definitely isn’t rigorous enough to catch them all, but it’s ridiculous to say that you can just look at them and tell. Hell, take a clean Olympic athlete, even one that had no chance of medalling, so no one even thinks twice of accusing him of cheating, throw them in a typical gym around normal people and I guarantee you he’ll be accused of PEDs to a ridiculous extent.
Sure, there’s other things to look at like, famously, seeing images of Barry Bonds over the course of his career, along with measurements of his hat size indicating his head was growing. But it’s not the same as looking at a kid and going “he’s high on pot/acid/ecstasy”, but you can’t just say someone has a big head and say he’s used HGH, some people just have big heads. That’s something that would need to be sussed out with careful measurements over time, rather than just a urine or blood test a couple times.
The comparison to pot is completely irrelevant. The type of doping these athletes do is refined and monitored to the highest degree to increase their performance in the specific event. Heck, the comparison to doping for bodybuilders is not relevant either. Bodybuilders dope with the intent of increasing muscle mass on purpose. An Olympic athlete would dope with the intent of being 0.10 second faster in the 100 m for example, to fool the testers by using proper timing and peaking, and to keep muscle mass looking as normal as possible. With technology, all that is possible. The idea that doping automatically causes muscles and heads to swell is an ignorant notion.
The main incentive for an Olympic athlete NOT to dope is if the particular athlete values their personal integrity. Otherwise, the advantages are greatly in favor of doping.
Let’s see. An athlete who dopes can potentially have the accolades that Usain Bolt gets and the life that naturally comes with those accolades. A downside is the athlete may get caught and may even spend some time in jail. As the chances of getting caught have gone down, the likelihood of the athlete doping has gone up. Perhaps the doping causes long term health problems, but what elite athlete wouldn’t trade long term health problems to be a living legend right now?
On the flip side, if the athlete doesn’t dope, there may be no way even to be in the final with Usain Bolt. The athlete ends up being forgotten, retires, becomes an accountant, and can’t even get a job as a sports commentator. The burning desire to be center stage will be there for the rest of the athlete’s life, and the athlete will forever wonder what could have happened if he had utilized the services of that great chemist who hooked up other athletes.