When does cardio become sub-optimal?

Don't think too hard. :)

I am not arguing that long distance cardio doesn't have health benefits or even physique benefits.

I am arguing that it isn't applicable to the gen pop, hence, my original comment about you not making a good trainer.... even though that is NOT what you are trying to do.... I am well aware of. It is just an observation I am making b/c......

You offer advice often on this forum, which is fantastic. A lot of it is good. But you seem to always get hung up on "intensity" and opposing the "norm" when it comes to the fitness industry recommendations with regards to cardio.

And the reason is, you continually compare the gen pop to long distance people. I guess it's b/c that's what you're into. Which I honestly don't have a problem with.

It's just that when I see you trying to establish these relationships, I am probably going to open my mouth. I hope you don't take it to offense.

What you are forgetting, or don't know (doesn't really matter which is the case) is that MOST individuals can get a vast majority of the health benefits I listed above doing drastically less work than you like to speak about.

Thus, there is no need to go beyond this point.

Sure, if you are on a cycling forum or a distance athlete forum, talking about this stuff is relevant and applicable. But unless you have someone on here who is interested in these activities, it isn't too relevant.

That is the point I am trying to get across to you.
 
Steve said:
What you are forgetting, or don't know (doesn't really matter which is the case) is that MOST individuals can get a vast majority of the health benefits I listed above doing drastically less work than you like to speak about.

Thus, there is no need to go beyond this point.
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Yes, sure, but, this whole thing came up because somebody thought they were doing something wrong by going past a certain time threshold... even though they WANTED to. They felt good, wanted to keep going, they were pumped due to a good song... yet all this conflicting and confusing crap from all these studies made them feel like it was wrong, and that just ain't right.
 
corndogggy said:
Yes, sure, but, this whole thing came up because somebody thought they were doing something wrong by going past a certain time threshold... even though they WANTED to. They felt good, wanted to keep going, they were pumped due to a good song... yet all this conflicting and confusing crap from all these studies made them feel like it was wrong, and that just ain't right.
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To an extent, maybe not.

But muscle maintenance is a concern, don't forget that. Sure, extending your cardio session here and there is not going to have a great impact. Chronic longer than recommended distance running will lead to muscle waste.

I don't need any "science" (although there are studies) to prove that. I have seen it first hand time and time again.

We are arguing semantics at this point. My only issue is your correlation of long distance people to gen pop looking to improve physique.

That is all. Since it appears to be moot point, carry on. :)
 
heated argument. :boxing:

Well, I do both interval and low intensity. For interval training I do it for 20min and the low-intensity 40min. Well, guess what ..I do read a book while I'm doing my low-intensity exercise :p. However I kept my heart rate to be at 60-65%. And I enjoyed them coz they are "breaks" from my intensed one where I'm clinging to the handle of my stationary bike.

Actually most of this is dependent on your own goal and your progress like some have already mentioned. Do what you need to do to get the results! :)
 
FAR from heated. Corn's my bud and I like having him around here. We just debate quite often.

Well, not even that. Quite often for this forum I guess. Debate is a daily occurrence on most other forums.
 
Steve said:
But muscle maintenance is a concern, don't forget that. Sure, extending your cardio session here and there is not going to have a great impact. Chronic longer than recommended distance running will lead to muscle waste.

I don't need any "science" (although there are studies) to prove that. I have seen it first hand time and time again.
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If this in general is true for long cardio sessions and not specifically running... well... have you ever heard of Robbie McEwen? Stewart O'Grady? Erik Zabel? Or, any high level sprinter in long bike races such as the Tour de France? These guys don't have the build you want, but it's on purpose, because consider their legs, and especially their thighs. They're quite large comparatively, but more important than that is that they're insanely strong.

Put it this way... when I was in the best cycling shape in my life and was on a $2,500 road bike, if I was going down a long steep hill (at least for western Kentucky) in an aero position and pedaling my heart out as hard as I could while being fresh, I was lucky if I could get my bike above 35 mph. These guys can hit 49 mph, on flat ground, with nobody in front of them blocking the wind, after riding unbelieveably hard for 5 or 6 hours, after they've already done that every day for over 2 weeks. That is insane. However, it's not like this is just a one time event either, they have to put in an incredible amount of training time to even be there.

So anyway, if the muscle wasting after 40 (or whatever) minutes is true, how are these guys so incredibly strong? Why aren't their thighs the size of toothpicks? Why aren't they incredibly weak? There is no way that I can ever be as strong as they are, yet they're putting in hours upon hours on the bike, day after day, for years. They would say that it's because they're putting in hours upon hours on the bike, but you're saying that should hurt them.

Now, I know I'm back to comparing the general population to distance athletes, but, there's lots of people in the general population who could do these things if they trained properly, so I would think that the theories would be the same. What exactly is the difference? Why would "normal" people get muscle waste with longer aerobic workouts, yet cyclists seem to benefit from it? Are cyclists somehow blessed by the gods or something? ;)
 
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This discussion is getting old.

Dude, you are comparing elite level athletes to gen pop. Have you ever heard of an amazing thing called genetics.

Plus, this is their JOBS man. Try and understand that. They live to train. The gen pop does not. When you have that kind of time, you can really work in some creative stuff.

You seem to think people in the gen pop should be able to run/cycle for long periods of time. Throw the studies out that show catabolic effects out the window for a sec. (plus I don't think anyone said the max is 40 minutes, I know I didn't at least).

The time it would take for recovery AND proper planning so that you could fit in the other components of "fitness" that are necessary for overall health would be impossible for someone in the gen pop to handle.

Take bodybuilding. Here, you have some big ass dudes that train like idiots. Blanket statement, there are actually some very smart ones. But I have met a lot that train using very sub-optimal protocols. I am talking about drug free bbers. But they still look amazing.

If I followed their protocols, I wouldn't look half of what I look like now. Genetics are a major contributing factor with regards to your response to training.

What do you want out of this debate? Give me a short, concise answer so that I can give you a short, concise reply. I know you don't want me to give you studies showing the catabolic effects of long duration cardio, b/c that would just be stupid. You would simply "book mark" some elite long distance cardio guy who looks "good" and say science doesn't match reality. Which, in your book marked case it doesn't. So what do you want? For me to say that the gen pop should be able to train like these elite athletes?

If that is the case, you won't get it from me b/c it is not the truth.
 
Steve said:
What do you want out of this debate? Give me a short, concise answer so that I can give you a short, concise reply.
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Forget the pros and elitists, I'm just trying to figure out why everybody I personally know gets stronger, loses more weight, and looks better with the longer they work out, yet apparently that's dead wrong. And no, I'm not meaning the skinny-ass marathon runners.

I have no doubt whatsoever that for most people 40 minutes is plenty, because the reality is that most people cannot or will not do that much. I'm not saying that at all. Yes, for most people, you can get the majority of all of the benefits in this amount of time, assuming the proper intensity.

My problem is saying that going beyond that is detrimental, period, because I know a heck of alot of people who are into the endurance thing, and I simply haven't seen this muscle wasting, all I've seen is people getting stronger and faster. If it were that big of a deal, how is this possible? I'm not talking about pros whatsoever, I'm talking about buddies of mine.

Personally, I think the difference is how you are built in the first place. If you're all beefed up with big fast twitch muscles then start doing nothing but cardio like crazy, it wouldn't surprise me one bit that you'd lose muscle mass. Also depends on what exactly you're doing, and how you eat. I do know that muscle wasting can occur in anybody if you don't eat right. If you don't eat protein before and during long and hard cardio sessions, your muscles will break down. I've always heard that it would take more like 1.5 to 2 hours of a race type of effort while biking for this to happen though. But yeah, this is exactly why Accelerade has protein in it.

But anyway, there just seems to be too many variables to issue a blanket statement specifying a certain timeline for everybody and every activity. Yes, muscle wasting can occur. Will it happen right at 40 minutes for anybody and everybody no matter what they eat, what they weigh, what they're doing, how they're built, what shape they're in, or how hard they're going? I seriously doubt it.
 
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I would concur. And you don't see me, except in this thread, going around spouting off about doing too much cardio will expend muscle.

Truthfully, it is over-hyped IMO too.

However, the science behind it is really born from this:

Go to any gym. You will see people like me who work on overall health and look "good." There won't be many of them.

Then there will be you sad weight lifters who don't know ANYTHING about exercise and/or fitness and go in and do stupid stuff, realizing no results. They look weak b/c they are.

THEN, go to the cardio room. 9/10 people that come walking out of there will not look "ideal." There is scientific reason for this. If all you do is run, a lot of it, one of the outcomes is catabolism of muscle.

If you are cycling a lot, which really isn't the same as steady state cardio anyhow, plus working on other areas of fitness, more than likely you are going to be fine, and eating right, you will be fine!

If you have buddies that ride at steady states on flat surfaces and keep it strictly aerobic (opposed to anaerobic) and don't lift weights, chances are, they are genetically blessed.

If you have buddies that cycle, varying intensities, tapping into your anaerobic thresholds, living balanced lives, and looking good.... that makes sense too.

If you are basing this off the people that make the statement, "doing too much cardio will burn muscle," you are going against a futile debate. B/c they more than likely don't know what they are talking about. They are basing this off of bro-tology (the science of bodybuilding myths that infect all aspects of fitness).
 
As a representative of the general population I'd just like to say:
I feel like training hard and long SOMETIMES. Most of the time I just train on the level which is considered to help my cause (weight-loss, muscle maintaining).
I neither want to be told NOT to train hard EVER, nor TO TRAIN EXTRA HARD&LONG if I can get the same/healthy/sufficient results for less time and effort.
To me weight-loss cannot be a temporary diet&exercise regimen, it needs to be a permanent life style change. The thing is, I don't see extra hard/long training as something I would be motivated or able to keep up for the rest of my life, whereas moderate training I can and want to maintain.
I feel I need to find the kind of training level where both the physical and the psychological strain on me is such that I keep on wanting to train regularly. If I kill myself training today, it'll take both my body and mind a week or two to be willing and able to train again. I'm guessing one of the biggest rookie mistakes on weight-loss related exercise is overdoing it in the beginners enthousiasm and not ever wanting to exercise again! There I think is the trainers place to give the trainee limits to what, how much and how often.
I'm a classical musician, so believe me, I've encountered most of the problems of regularly training your body and mind hours and hours daily through my work. I don't want another job, so I need my exercise to be compact and as efficient as it can be timewise. I have no doubt I could be some kind of an athlete if I wanted to, I just don't want to.
At least to me it's uncalled for to compare us here on WLF to world class athletes. Let us be the competitors and winners in our own lives.
Juliette

PS. To answer the original question on this thread on my part, I'd say cardio becomes sub-optimal, when you find yourself doing it less and less regularly. It might not be optimal always, but if you want to keep on doing it, you must be doing something right. :)
 
Oh my goodness, 3 pages in only a few hours!

I don't understand all this talk of long distance running. At this stage in my development the thought of something like that is pretty scary.

Lace mayhem, I wouldn't say you're not taking it seriously enough. You're just doing what's good for you and that's the way it should be, I think. My goal is weight loss and muscle tone, so I'm approaching it slightly differently. I wish I was at that ideal weight where my focus was on just being healthy and fit...

Steve, thank heavens for that! I also believed you were the HIIT guy (you're touted as quite a lot of things, aren't you - the responsibility must be gargantuan). It's nice to know I'm doing okay with my steady state cardio. Hell, my sessions are twice as long as yours so I should see the results pretty soon!

Thanks Juliette, you captured the point perfectly. I may not want to do 60 minute cardio sessions ALL of the time, but it's good to know that I can up it and down it so I can kep my enthusiasm up.

If I'm to be perfectly honest, I like the idea of reading while working out, but I use the X-trainer quite a lot and the constant up and down isn't great for reading.. As Juliette said, to each one his/her own...
 
Let me just add 2 things:

Corn, again, I hope you know we weren't butting heads IMO. I like discussing/debating stuff about fitness. Sheds light for others, and even myself at times.

Secondly, people who actually ENJOY long duration activity such as cycling and running for multi-hour bouts usually like those things b/c they are preset naturally to do so via the various physiological mechanisms (e.g. slow twitch muscle fibers).

People with predominantly slow twitch fibers naturally won't be your big and strong individuals. They are built more for endurance.

So while I like power activities such as explosive weight training, sprinting, fast paced sports, you have to remember that I am built for that naturally.

I would fail miserably in long distance type of training. Could I get better at it from where I stand currently? Certainly. Could I become elite? Most likely not. Naturally anyhow.

So as I said before, genetics play a huge role here.
 
Steve said:
Corn, again, I hope you know we weren't butting heads IMO. I like discussing/debating stuff about fitness. Sheds light for others, and even myself at times.
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Oh I know, I don't care, I've had a big grin on my face the whole time. Might not look that way to others though.
 
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