Somebody needs to tell Niki Gudex that she doesn't need to ride for more than 40 minutes... she's looking so sickly looking these days.

The Official Site of Pro Mountain Biker Niki Gudex

Niki Gudex : Model Gallery

Niki Gudex : Mountain Bike Gallery

Haha, that answers my question.




You are the one who brought up distance athletes. Most distance athletes run for more than 40 minutes.


Sure, more intensity is better. That is why you won't find me recommending something without saying PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD IS A CRITICAL COMPONENT OF ANY FORM OF EXERCISE.

This is NOT why I commented with regards to your post anyhow. My point was, people are concerned with losing fat and preserving muscle, for the most part. Long distance running is not the most conducive method of exercise for this.

hahahahahaha

I could read you like a book. I was going to say in my original post, "go ahead Corn, go find a picture of a "jacked" long distance athlete to complete your side of the debate."

n=1 is not good debating skills.

That is why I said the AVERAGE distance athlete.

And no, I did not click on any of your links b/c it is irrelevant.

Your loss.

I've really been trying to think hard here.

As for running, personally I don't know many female runners other than my wife. She won't go past a half marathon. Actually the maximum distance she'll train at is 10 miles, but that's still well over an hour. I consider that a distance runner, and no, she is hardly the sickly type at all. Quite honestly most women on this board would absolutely love to look like her.

But anyway, I really know more girls who are into cycling. A 40 minute or even 60 minute cycling workout is really not much. They will usually go for at least an hour and a half of pretty hard pedaling between 20 and 27 mph, usually about 22-23 on average. The local ones do this for 3 days in a row, Monday through Wednesday, with increasing difficulty and speed. That's just the workouts, they'll go further on the weekends if they're just messing around and much further on the weekends where a race or ride is organized, with some of them doing multiple 100 milers throughout the year.

Yet, and I'm being totally honest here, I truly can't think of a single serious female rider who DOESN'T look GREAT. The legs of women cyclists are typically amazing. Yet, every last one of them are going to blow right by the time limits mentioned here. It makes no sense.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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).

Actually I do, but, those are the ones who look the worst.