Without belaboring, I’m just trying to make the point that moderate excercise makes you more fit; extreme exercise in the pursuit of “fitness” makes you less fit, and one of the primary mechanisms by which it does that is skeletal injury.
Looking at cohorts of long-term marathoners is a poor way of deciding how damaging marathon running is to the population at large because the population at large damaged by extreme running are already eliminated from the marathon group.
Only a prospective study which begins with a randomly-selected group, and arbitrarily assigns them running or not running will be sufficient to elucidate the net benefit of extreme running.
What happens in practice is that, in an effort to attain fitness, many of the public are persuaded to take up running, and many of those are persuaded that more is better. The drop-outs who quit because of damaged skeletal systems are not counted in studies looking at marathoner “benefits” and become instead fodder for the orthopedist’s mortgage payements.
As to the general health of NFL players, or modeling that sort of “fitness,” I don’t recommend it (and I doubt you do, either). Sure; they may be the strongest and most athletic folks you know. But they tend to croak around 55 years old or so. That’s the sort of “fitness” cult that needs to be stamped out, replaced by a cult of staying thin with at least a modicum of moderate aerobic conditioning and no concern at all about upper body strength.
I certainly agree with the idea that extreme exercise can cause more problems than benefit, but of course the conundrum is where to draw the line as to what is “extreme”, eh?
There is overtraining, for sure, which results in fatigue, decreased immune competence, poorer performance, etc. … if you hit that you are too extreme, that’s for sure.
And some become obsessed with exercise, or “exercise dependent”, although that seems to be mostly part of an eating disorder spectrum more than anything else.
And injuries acquired in pursuit of fitness are indeed associated with poor joint outcomes - and many sports do place people at risk for those injuries, especially football.
But again, I had the same thought you have at the start of this thread, that prolonged running would put the joints at risk, and after that cite looked into it on my own and found out that there is no evidence to support that belief and some that contradicts it.
Nevertheless, you are right: there is no need to belabor the point.
Instead perhaps we can talk about your proposal for ideal general fitness: “staying thin with at least a modicum of moderate aerobic conditioning and no concern at all about upper body strength”
How thin is “thin” to you? The lowest mortality rates have been found in those with BMIs in the upper “normal” to lower “overweight” range - 24 to 27. So why “thin” per se?
Moderate aerobic exercise I can certainly agree with, although again, I know of no evidence that more extreme aerobic exercise causes harm (short of overtraining syndrome or as part of an eating disorder pathology).
Why “no concern at all about upper body strength”? It seems to me that having some upper body strength is needed to perform physical tasks that may present themselves, be they climbing a tree with your 8 year old, moving your older kids into their dorm rooms, or rearranging the living room. And as you seem to focusing on the long term health outcome aspects, weight bearing exercise is vital to building strong bones and preserving long term function. In fact the 2007 joint statement of the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine (pdf) added it to their official list as an important part of exercise for long term health:
And pertinent to the previous point, they also state:
And monstro, pertinent to our discussion, that guideline says this:
But should the definition of fitness be based on its long term health effects only, or on current function?
Because I hate being tired, and I don’t like work-out programs that leave me exhausted and achy. Also, pragmatically speaking, I’m more likely to need the ability to “keep going when the going gets tough” than I am to flee from pouncing predators or chase after prey. Like Scylla’s Tarzan. I think modern-day people in general need endurance more than speed or strength.
So yeah, I will probably not be able to catch up with the bus that goes past me. But my body has the endurance to walk home…even in the cold and the heat and the rain, all the way uphill. So why should I care that I can’t catch up to the bus?
I can’t find a good cite (there are numerous websites that talk about this but I wouldn’t consider them cites, as such), but I recall reading about a study done on healthy long-lived people all over the world where the researchers found that one of the commonalities was that these folks are not “exercisers”. That is to say, none of them run marathons or go to the gym on a regular basis. But they have low amounts of muscular inactivity. That is to say, they aren’t couch potatoes; they are always busy doing something, whether it be gardening, cleaning, shelling peas, fixing furniture, or walking to the market. In other words, constant but low-intense work. Not surprisingly, these people are not found in the most industralized countries, but rather places where people are expected to keep working even into old age.
I like running a lot. That is my focus for fitness, because I believe that a lot of other stuff comes out of the base that running gives you. There’s no need to take it to the extreme that i do. When you get to the point where you are running fifteen to twenty miles a week, you gain about 90% of all you are ever going to gain from it. There was a whole episode of Nova about it.
I believe in a pretty general level of fitness. Core, upper body, chin ups, the whole deal. Crossfit is excellent. I did it for a while myself.
In point of some of the facts that other people are saying, I took up running specifically because I was about as far from being a natural runner as I could be. I was more a burly weightlifter type, played football and such. After I’d been married for a while and drank and smoked and ate like shit for a while, I’d get out of breathe going up stairs.
I look a lot less muscular after 10 years of dedicated running, but the fact is that I’m much stronger in all ways (I’ve kept up the weight work.). I used to have big showy muscles. Now I’m pretty wiry. I guess I’ve gone from being a piece of marbled prime beef to a rangy piece of gristle. I’ve dropped from two fifty, to one hundred seventy five pounds. Suit jacket went from a 46 to a 42.
The point is that people who tell you that running can be bad for you if you are not the type are full of shit. Running makes you the type. The trick is to go at it really slowly at first and not get yourself hurt. People tend to jump up in mileage way to fast because the cardiovascular system improves much faster the muscles tendons and bones. Than, they get hurt by running too far, too fast, too soon.
They way I look at my fitness is like this. There are people that are a lot faster and there are people who are a lot stronger, but the faster ones aren’t stronger, and the stronger aren’t faster. I can put out a tremendous amount of energy over a very long period of time in a variety of different ways. That’s fitness, I think. Anyway, that’s what I strive for.
For a man to call himself fit, I think he needs, at a minimum, to:
Be able to run 5 miles in under 45 minutes.
Do 10 pull ups (any hand position)
Be able to bench press his weight 5 times
Be able to do 25 real pushups.
Be able to touch his toes with his knees straight.
Be able to 50 crunches followed by 50 flutter kicks
Fully close a #1 iron mind gripper
The last one is kin of interesting. Something that’s really neglected these days is hand strength. Yet, it is just about the, most massively useful type of strength you can have. It makes a huge difference in all types of activities, in ways you wouldn’t think of. Hand strength gives you control. You can be sub par in a lot of areas but if you have superior hand strength it will make up for a lot, and, if your reasonably strong and have superior hand strength, it turns you into superman. Golf, tennis, all improve. You can lift heavier weight because you can control the weight better.
I can sometimes crack a walnut in one hand, and vie been working on hand strength for fifteen years.
I knew a guy ( and I saw this with my own eyes,) who could do a chin up with one hand on a rough 4 by 4 by grabbing it fro underneath, pincer style. He was a jockey, and just about the fittest guy I’d ever seen. Yes, he was light, but he was wicked strong, too.
Why did 3 and 4 both make the list? They’re pretty similar, but 3 is a lot harder than 4, in my experience. I’ve worked on pushups in spurts for kicks, and can get up to about 75 within a couple weeks. I’ve been bench-pressing for 13 years and have only occasionally been able to do my weight 5 times (always able to do it at least 2 or 3, which is what I could probably do right now.)
5 is ridiculously easy for me, but I guess it’s pretty tough for some who aren’t so well-rounded. I knew a big endomorphic guy who was adamant that any guy who could touch his toes was a “fag”.
6 seems disproportionately easy compared to 1, 2, and 3.
7 . . . ah, 7 . . . I’ve been literally a millimeter away from closing my #1s for 5 years. Same distance I was the day I got them. I keep them in my car and work them almost every day. I do reverse curls and wrist curls frequently. I can close the Trainers 12 times. I apparently just cannot build grip strength. Nothing I have done has paid off one bit. I wanna throw the fuckers out the window sometimes. My paternal grandfather had forearms like Popeye and could rip a Los Angeles phonebook in half with ease well into his 60s. I got my mom’s @#$%ing skinny weakling genes.
Meanwhile, my brother - who hasn’t spent half the time or effort working out that I have - closed them 18 times the first time I handed them to him.
Not to speak for him, but I would say that number of push-ups is a test of muscular endurance, and pressing your at least your own weight five times more one of strength.
Well, maybe you’re really strong in the core, or, maybe your form isn’t perfect. Nice slow crunches, hands behind the head, up for a 2 count, and down for the same. Flutter kicks happen with heels starting 6 inches off the floor, legs out straight, arms at sides. Then, lift one leg up 6 more inches to a count of one Mississippi. Repeat. Oh, and you do it immediately after the crunches.
Hmmm. There’s a tranition you kind of have to do when the trippers are about 3/4 closed. You kind of have to roll the deeper into your palm. Maybe you are not doing that. That last millimeter is mostly about form. Probably, your working with them means you can close the to within that last millimeter more times then you would have before hand.
My advice? Watch some videos of guys closing them on YouTube and check your form. Then, maybe buy a pair of no. 2s. You may be plateauing. If you work with the twos for a while, then you may step down to the 1s really easy.
Then again, maybe you just have sissy hands ;).
As to “overtraining” I’d say if you are looking to develop muscle mass and strength you aren’t doing much for “fitness” other than becoming temporarily stronger; if you are exercising moderately with non-impact aerobic activity (non-impact especially if you are large-frame) you’ll get the benefit of aerobic conditioning without the drawback of skeletal injury. For some body types, running a couple or three miles a day is fine, and for almost all body types a vigorous walk is helpful. Some degree of stressing the skeleton and joints strengthens bones and doesn’t injure joints. What’s reasonable depends on your genes (read: body type), and it’s sorta like porn–I know it when I see it. The big old ex-footballer clodding to the finish in the Chicago marathon has advertised his virility at the expense of his knees and hips and will not be running marathons in ten years, nor is his “fitness” a reflection of his overall health and longevity.
The problem with using terms like “strength-training” and “higher intensity” exercise is the way the lay public interprets and applies the concepts. It’s a fabulous idea to get geezers off the couch and doing all sorts of strength-training and higher-intensity exercise when they are sitting in their WalMart scooters and rotting on their couches. The dilemma comes in when the young buck decides to devote 6 hours a day to become buffed or takes up marathoning without regard to his body type and genetic heritage.
See my original post for what I consider to be a definition of a reasonably physically fit person. YMMV and you are free to encourage your patients however you like. In this culture of excess I see blunders made in both directions and I consider the toll of fitness excess vastly under-reported, probably because the toll of the fat-assed over-eating and under-exercising is even worse. But even if the cure of exercise is not worse than the disease of obese lassitude, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a large group of folks damaging their health by pursuing fitness in excess of moderation.
Got to call bullshit on this one. It’s just wrong. Read Born to Run. The author is a huge big guy, who couldn’t run at all. He was the exact stereotype of the “no running gene, bad body type” that you are arguing. At the end of the book he completed a 50 miler.
Similarly, “marathon challenge” on NOVA took 12 people “extremely unlikely to ever run a marathon” and signed them up for Boston. They put them through a battery of exhaustive tests, and gave them professional training. One of these guys was an ex-linebacker turned color commentator, and he fit your stereotype, too. He had no problem.
What you are thinking of as the wrong body type/wrong genes for running is really symptom of not running. I had that body type, too. After running for ten years, I don’t.
You’ve already conceded studies that show running actually appears to help joint/skeletal strength over time, why are you trotting out the read herring that it damages these things again?
I agree that if you spent a lifetime not running you are likely to injury yourself picking up the activity if you are not careful, but that’s more a factor of paying for previous neglect.
On another note, a lot of joint injuries aren’t due to running, per se. The real culprit seems to be shoes.
I know my form is good. Remember, I can crush the Trainers 12 times. I have some even lighter ones that I do sets of 100 on. My forearms must just be incredibly resistant to hypertrophy. I recently got my own full set of dumbbells so I’m going to up the frequency of my curls, reverse curls, and wrist curls now that I can do them at home. Maybe that will make a difference.
I was just doing some dumbbell work out in the garage. I think I got a little adrenaline buzz because I got all pumped up, and decided to grab my hand grippers. I growled at them and smashed the trainers several times in each hand to warm up. Then I went inside and started jumping around like a mental patient, playing “Mama Said Knock You Out” in my head. I did a few jumping jacks to get my heart pumping. I then took the #1s into the bathroom so I could make angry faces at myself in the mirror. I thought: damn, I look fucking ripped (I just started running again because it’s been too hot all summer). Now I was playing Dragonforce in my head and this whole scenario started to feel like an epic climax of destiny. I turned the ends of the gripper toward the mirror, clenched my jaw, and proceeded to smash, hot with anticipation to hear the clink of the two arms toasting my achievement.
I didn’t even get down to the 1mm benchmark I usually hit :o
Not quite sure why you think those cites are meaningful answers to my question of “How thin?”
No question that there is an obesity problem in America and that being obese is both a risk factor for bad outcomes itself and a symptoms of inadequate physical activity and of poor nutritional choices, which are also independent risk factors whether or not you are obese.
And if by “thin” you mean “not obese” then sure. Thin usually means a lower than normal BMI though and even a low normal BMI has a worse mortality rate than a high normal to slightly overweight one. Oh, not by much, but “overweight” (BMI 25 to 29.9) was indeed slightly lower. And “thin”, if that means less than “normal” was a greater mortality risk than obese was at all age groups and for some even than was significantly obese (BMI over 35).
So a cult of “thin” may in fact be quite harmful.
As to the need for muscle. Here’s a website article review that actually cites some important studies aimed at cyclists. Aerobic aint enough.
I’ll speak only for myself. I am a 51 year old Jewish guy. My youngest is my 9 year old daughter. One of my fitness goals is that when she gets married in maybe 20 years, that I won’t only still be around to celebrate, but that she’ll feel confident in having me be one of the people lifting up her chair above our heads and dancing around, or maybe even her husband’s. If I am going to have enough strength and endurance to do that at 70 plus, then I’ve got to work on preserving or increasing it now. Moderate aerobic alone won’t be enough to have me be that obnoxious proud 70 year old father, embarrassing his daughter one more time.
Speaking up alongside Dseid against the cult of thin. In “Marathon Challenge” a couple of the women were thin and attractive by today’s standards. Physical tests showed them to be what is called “technically obese.”
Yo-yo dieting and poor exercise habits meant that they were just bones covered with a layer of fat. “Thin,” by standards.
Paris Hilton would be a good example of technical obesity. Just bones covered by a layer of fat. I guess it looks ok while you’re relatively young.
Ah, yes. Skinny-fat. You can be quite aerobically fit and still fall victim to this phenomenon - running and cycling don’t build muscle except in the thighs, especially if you don’t eat many calories or consume much protein.
I have a lot of young, slender female friends (they are vegetarians too and eat mostly junk by my definition) who fit the description. Poke them and your finger sinks right in, these girls don’t have a scrap of muscle and they are either too lazy to build any, or they are too afraid to lift weights as they think it will make them look unfeminine.
I lift weights and eat tons of meat and I am getting cut although I still have a low-normal BF%. But they still don’t listen to me.
I was a skinny fat guy right before I had my “come to Jesus” moment about giving up cigarettes and Taco Bell and getting serious about my health a little over 4 years ago. I was 6’4", 190lbs. Now I’m about 196lbs but very noticeably more muscular.
I was a hot mess. I think I’d rather be fat fat than skinny fat. It’s the worst of both worlds.
Preach it, brother. I was only about 3-6 lbs less than my current weight (and I’m still underweight) in my skinny-fat days, but the difference between this body on a proper whole-foods diet compared to my old ‘eat garbage non-stop because I need to gain weight anyway’ regimen has been wonderful. I look better (less bones showing is nice, muscle tone is nicer, and I don’t have acne anymore), but mostly I’ve had an incredible turn-around in general health which is the reason I started researching nutrition.
Sadly most people who are genetically predisposed to being slender never have the incentive to much care about what they eat or what they do with their bodies. But we aren’t at much less risk of getting sick from preventable conditions caused by poor habits than people who are visibly overweight, and we are more likely to die when we do get sick because we’re small.
I’m talking about this, not handstand pushups. I can do hspu, but my flexibility and core strength is still just shy of letting me get into the right position for a planche to handstand.
If you think Crossfit is all about endurance, then you’re skipping around looking for those kinds of days. On the main page right now is a max-effort day (snatch balance, one rep, seven sets). The day before was Tabata sessions, which are basically anaerobic threshold training. Before that was a skill/conditioning session (100 m handstand walk), another max-effort (front squat 1x7), and a strength-endurance session (21-15-9 reps 24 kg kettlebell snatch L and R arm, pullups) that would also be considered a mixed anaerobic/aerobic workout at the intensity and duration you’re expected to perform.
In five exercise days right off the front page you’ve got two heavy lifting days, one straight gymnastics day, bodyweight calisthenics done at high intensity and short duration, and one mixed protocol (weightlifting, gymnastics) session with a moderate load and an expected duration of less than 10 minutes with proper scaling. Now, some of this stuff affects endurance, but it’s nothing that would be considered endurance training by any stretch of the imagination.
Besides which, if you think your weak point is lifting heavy, you’re encouraged to program your own sessions to address that weakness. Just don’t favor your strengths too much because it doesn’t do you any favors. Even some of the high-performing people who think they knew better found that training skills, putting in time doing things they hated, or directly addressing weaknesses paid large dividends. One guy wrote an article about how his skipping double-unders to do more heavy lifting (which he was already good at) screwed up his overall performance. When he got knocked out of the running for a CrossFit competition due to being unable to finish the exercise, he worked on double-unders and found that he was able to perform other exercises more proficiently, including pure strength efforts.
That’s part of the point of CrossFit; a lot of these things are synergistic. Why does doing yoga, or gymnastics flexibility and core exercises, improve most people’s max lifts? Could be more prioperceptive awareness or better positioning due to better flexibility and improved core strength, but that’s just a wild-assed guess. We don’t really know. We do know that it works. Is jumping rope aerobic? Yeah, but it also improves your vertical leap, and you usually find that you can crank out an extra few pull ups if you’ve done a couple of rope sessions in the last couple of weeks. How? Dunno. But it happens.
