>>Anyway, the phrase is a response to those who make it way more
>>complicated than it needs to be. Like obsessing about "the cardio zone".
>
>absolutely everything i'm reading about triathlon
ahh. I'm referring to the assheap of books and advice that tell you to shoot for "the zone" to burn fat. In BB communities, in order to gain muscle, you've got to overeat. You can't gain muscle when eating at/below your metabolic needs. So, they have to beef up and the cut, hence the obsession with dieting.
You're training for triath, that's different.
A body--and different types of bodies at that--only burns so much fat in that zone. (Ostensibly, this is a result of our evolutionary heritage where preserving fat was necessary)
After you burn a rate-limited amount of fat, you're going to burn glucose, derived either from dietary intake (carbs or carbs/protein or even protein alone [which yields glucose through gluconeogenesis]). Or, if you're dieting while training, then you don't get enough carbs or protein (unless you've shifted your metabolism to run on free fatty acids mainly, some ketones, and very small amount of glucose).
When you don't have enough carbs, bod goes after lean body tissue (unless running on trigs and ketones). Which is why people end up gaining weight after they diet alone on too few (1200 or less cals). Their metabolism ratchets down to adapt to super low caloric intake. You go back to eating a normal 2000 cal a day diet and blimpo again. A body that's adapted (by dumping LBM) to 1200, esp if you have a fuxored metab, will take a while to ratchet back up, if at all. But most people just get discouraged and don't realize that this is what is going on.
> training makes clear how much more effective and efficient training is
> with a heart rate monitor. you don't have to go back to the dark ages of
> training (you've seen "pumping iron" i presume? that was even after
> charles atlas) to avoid stupidly complicated training, or worse,
> overtraining, which is the real problem.
guilty! made myself sick for 6 weeks. which is why I know all this crap, now.
>most professional triathletes and distance cyclists, for example, are
>almost certainly perpetually overtrained, and that's even eating right for
>the training they do (which amateurs often will not). thus, the "sleep" in
>your mantra, above, to which you could add, "rest" -- not training as a
>training activity, iow.
sleep: growth hormones are released during delta wave non REM stage of sleep. this is why some bb's get up in the middle of the night to eat. to take advantage of that.
but yes, rest. in hypertrophy-specific training the principle is strategic de-conditioning.
uneducatd, i tend toward overtraining. i have a weird response to endorphin and adreneline: the hormones suppress the signal that cortisol is surging. i.e., i don't get tired and don't notice the effects of lactic acid. instead, i get more energized and i keep on going. i'd feel great for three hours and then bonk--literally fall asleep at my desk. which was a good thing: my body shut down so i could repair.
>imo, that's stupid, too. there are different quality carbs, and you know
>it. they'll burn the sugar in 2.5 pounds of those smarties within the
>hour, if not all of it.
oh, the point of a carb up is about creating the right hormonal environment to maximize muscle growth even while cutting (losing body fat). This is pretty much impossible, unless you're a newbie to training. Muscles grow under certain conditions and one of those conditions is that you are eating not just enough but more than you need. Most of what typical people think is muscle growth is really neural adaptations to training--which can account for strength increases for years, even among people who working hard at it.
carb ups are for loading glucose directly into glucose-depleted muscles, bypassing the liver, and avoiding an insulin spike (which would store extra carb cals as fat). This in turn helps pump up your leptin levels up. Leptin is another complicated hormone discovered in 1996 that regulates fat storage/fat dumping according to how much you're eating. When prepping for a contest, you cut and that can lower leptin becasue leptin is regulated, in part, by how much you're eating. If you're cutting, you're dieting: leptin levels crash.
>>http://www.stumptuous.com/ (she's an academented women's studies prof and
>>trainer. there's a great article on how she helped a body builder
>>train/detrain and diet in order to become a woman--as part of his
>>transgender therapy and surgery. heh.)
>
>wow. found trans-health [http://www.trans-health.com/Vol2Iss3/index.html],
>but haven't yet found that article. very interesting.
great stuff for chix. :)