Some Practical Advice

[Morphous01]

I have read all the post and a few people have said something about spam but over all the post are negative. I find this attitude is pretty common on Citydata which is why I'm weening myself off this forum.

I don't expect everyone to grasp the seriousness of my post but it took me two years of study and searching to find those two websites due to my efforts to secure some kind of shot at an Olympic team. Some of the best diet, training, and restoration info can be found on those websites for FREE, as well as access to "real" elite trainers and athletes who would otherwise charge you for their time; but instead I'm greeted with people who leave unintelligent, nasty, pointless comments. Nobody even asked me for any references to anything that I stated in my post so it's just obvious that no critical thinking was involved.


There is just way too many negative people on this forum who wish to pass the negativity around like a disease which is why people post to stir up trouble instead of trying to learn something new. I was just trying to bring information to the table to show you all how it's really done; no personal attack on ANYONE in particular!!

But hay, if you want to run 15 miles a day thinking you are getting in shape, then stuffing your face with subway sandwiches thinking you are eating fresh, then by all means go right ahead.


For all you smart @&& posters, I doubt it any of you have a body like this.. ( this was my former roommate/training partner)

http://www.iballer.com/models/aa_malemodels/malemodels_MR/moore_carlos/images/carlos_moore7_jpg.jpg (broken link)

[lola8822]

lol.....look sweetie....that's great your happy with what your doing and all....the pt in me would say "awesome! good for you, whatever works for ya' and keep up the hard work" but the girl in me wants to slap ya'.......talk about being negative??? and condecending????? did ya' read your own post??? geezuuuss cry me.

The body in the pic is nice....a little too thin for my liking but that's awesome....you look healthy and that's great....that's all that matters....

hey....good luck weining yourself off

[streetscenes]

Originally Posted by Morphous01

Well let me tell you what the biggest thing that I see done by the general masses that needs to stop! Please, for the sake of humanity STOP running all these marathons and long, slow distance running!! This hole idea of running 8 miles a day or however long is SO old and outdated!!! It's about circa 1950.

For females, long distance running has scientifically been proven to be bad for your joints and bones. I read a hole article about it. If you look at an X ray, a woman has very narrow hips and becasue of this it causes problems when you run for long distances over a period of time. Ladies, if you MUST exercise for a long period of time; ride a bike, or swim but please stop jogging! Your bones will thank you! And no, you don't need to drink milk to keep your bones strong; it's just another ploy to take your money.

For you men, all this long distance, slow running has been proven to LOWER your testosterone levels! Also, it makes you WEAK like a 10 year old school girl. Your body can't build two things at the same time and this is why. And for the love of God I hope you don't drink soy milk PERIOD becasue it will lower your testosterone levels even more! Drinking soy milk is the equivalent of taking birth control pills as far as what it does chemically to your body.




We are much like animals (tigers, lions) were we eat, sleep, sprint, have sex, sleep, eat, walk; ect, ect. But notice you don't see land animals just running for 10/20 mile stretches...lol People started doing it because somebody got the bright idea that it was healthy and now that we see other people doing it it only reinforces that behavior. But at some point in time we haft to face the music and say; "is this REALLY working?" Because as we go into this 24 hour non stop world if we are going to stay healthy we need to stay on top of our health.

Sorry we all rained on you little weight lifting parade. It's just when you post paragraph after paragraph of nonsense it's hard not to. Lots of us run for excercise and enjoy it immensely. It gets us off the couch, gets us outside, keeps the pounds off and keeps us healthy. Running can be hard on your knees and legs but if you do it correctly and with moderation the benefits far out weigh the potential set backs. I'm glad you read a "hole article" about it being bad for women, you must have skipped the rest of the data out there that says otherwise. And as far as it making us men weak like little girls, all I can say is that with running I feel better and have more energy and strength than ever before.

And we are not the equivalent of lions and tigers and bears (oh my!). We are bipeds with a body designed for long distance running not crouching in the grass and waiting to spring on our prey. Our head with binocular vision is perched up high to track prey at a long distance. Our chest is upright and we sweat through our skin, all designed to keep the body cool while running long distances. Our ancestors tracked and chased down large prey by chasing them for long distances until the animals collapsed from exhaustion.

The photo you posted is nice, I guess, but not all of us want to spend every waking moment in the gym trying to sculpt some sort of statuesque physique. We want to get up, go for a run and get on with the rest of our lives.

[Morphous01]

To the above post; I have to give credit to where credit is due; that's not me he is my former training partner. Currently he is one of the fastest humans in the world. Ran 9.9 WA in the 100m dash

Oh and lola822, come on baby, let that woman out and slap me; it's ok I get turned on by that kind of stuff.

[Alexis Scott]

help your child achieve proper levels of strength, endurance, body composition, and flexibility; • meet your child’s nutritional needs with realistic diet recommendations;
• become an advocate for effective physical education in your child's school;
• make the most of community sports programs to get your child involved in physical activity; and
• choose and work with a physician to keep your child healthy.

[ogre]

Well okay, time to play guinea pig and tell more of my own fitness story:

I was a really skinny little kid. Seriously. I mean, I've seen pictures of myself at the age of ten, eleven, twelve or so, and we're talking skin and bones here. I was active, though. Spent a lot of time outside, running around, climbing trees, riding bikes, etc. By high school, I was still really slim, but I mean "slim" or "lean" or the like, not downright scrawny the way I had been as a little kid. Not surprisingly, given my lean build, my sport was track. I ran middle distance, sometimes long distance. We did a lot of interval training, most likely similar to what the OP has done with his Olympics goal (probably not as much, but that type of training), not as much non-stop long-distance running, though we did some of that here and there. I did not look feminine or weak, or fail to develop secondary sex charactristics at the usual age (I started shaving and my voice changed at normal ages), or show any other sign of low testosterone. Nor did I lose weight. I remained slim, not skinny. Of course I ate like crazy. Wonder sometimes why it didn't put my parents in the the poor house keeping me fed, but anyway, the point is that I maintained my weight, and grew at a normal rate, by eating enough to counter my high caloric expenditure.

So here's where it gets a little complicated, because in my late teens and early twenties I continued growing. I grew at a slower rate than I had in my mid teens, but I still grew about an inch and a half between the ages of eighteen and about twenty-one, even though you usually figure a boy is finished growing by eighteen. I also filled out some in my late teens. Grew to my final height of right around six feet tall, and went from about 150 pounds to 165 or so. Where it gets complicated is that I chose not to continue with track in college, at least not beyond freshman year. It's possible that the OP might suggest that all that running in high school had affected my develpment, so that I gained physically when I quit the intense running, but it seems to run in the family for the men in the family to reach their full physical size a bit later than usual. My father was the same way, from what he tells me and from what I've seen in pictures.

Around the age of twenty, I decided I was getting too little exercise and needed a fitness program. I read some old books on fitness which I found in the library, and began a regimen of lifting and running. Now, the running part did not involve the kind of long distances you would put in while training for a marathon, but I did run about three miles at a time, usually four days a week or so. All that my small college had in the way of weight-lifing equipment at the time was a couple of Universal Gym weight machines, so I worked out on those three or four days a week. I think I started out bench pressing 120. The books about fitness I had read were dated, and didn't go into a lot of detail, so I sort of made up my own workout. I didn't know anything about sets or anything, so I did only one set of each exercise per workout. Even so, I was able to work up to bench-pressing the entire stack on the Universal, which was 255, and I could do reps with that.

Eventually I had access to a more versatile collection of equipment, and began using free weights as well as machines. I could bench press 215 with a free weight, and at that time would leg press 400, and do reps with that, like ten reps at a time. Four to five years after I had started my fitness program, I had gained thirty-plus pounds, all muscle, and weighed in at just under 200, maybe 197 or so. By the way, I did not use any, um, enhancements. This all gets a little complicated because of the tendency toward continued physical development at a somewhat later age than usual. There is no way to know how much of the bulking up I did would have happened naturally as I continued to develop. Still, it's clear that my three-mile runs did nothing to hinder my muscular development. I realize that this is way less running than a serious competitive distance runner would do, but this does seem to support the idea that steady running at a moderate pace does not undermine physical development.

Over the years since, I have done a variety of exercises, but these have always involved some combination of strength training and various aerobic exercises. To minimize the pounding on pavement, I eventually switched from running to power-walking, and have often mixed in stair climbing, hiking, and, during the summertime, swimming, all at steady, endurance paces and distances. None of this steady endurance kind of cardio work seems to have hindered development of a muscular physique. Over the years, I've continued to gradually add muscle.

Okay, since we're showing pictures of the results of various kinds of training, I don't have a picture of myself shirtless, nor would I be inclined to post one on here if I did (besides which I'm not very computer-literate and wouldn't know how to upload the pic if I did have one ). And then there is the fact that I had an extended injury layoff a while back and gained 25 pounds, so right now I couldn't show a picture of myself in my best shape. As a substitue, I've borrowed a link from another thread on here, the thread about "The Benefits of Pushups" that was current a couple of months back. Here's a link from that thread: http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_mar2004/NavySeals.jpg. I'm not bulging like a bodybuilder. Instead, in my trim condition, I'm built more like a lot of the guys in this SEALS pic, muscular but smooth. It's difficult to estimate weight in a photo, and of course there is no way to tell these guys' heights, but the best that I can tell about physique from a picture, I'd say that my build when I'm in good trim would be most similar to that of the guy who is third in from the right in this pic (or second in among the guys in the very front row, since the guy next to him is half a step back or so). I'm talking about the guy in the front row who has the small speck of white--maybe a logo or something--on the lower part of his left shorts leg. Not a bodybuilder's bulging physique, but not too shabby for a guy (me) who probably weighed 150 soaking wet at the time of high school graduation.

Again, it's tricky, because I clearly grew some at a later age than usual, which must have accounted for some of that development, but it's clear that a solid amount of steady, endurance-style aerobic work, including running, did not hinder my development. Consider that, and take a look at the guys in the SEALS photo, keeping in mind how much swimming AND running those guys do, and it's clear that LSD--long slow distance--does not have to have the detrimental effects the OP warns about.

Sorry about the novel here, but I think it's important to get as much good information as possible out there when making sure to work out the right way will affect people's well-being.

[#Littledog]

Whew, these are some long posts! I want to thank the OP for taking the time to share his information. I don't know much about training but I've done some research in the internet and a lot of what the OP said is what I've also ran across from other experts. Now if I could only out all of these suggestions into practice....

[karuna95]

Originally Posted by jimboburnsy

Different strokes. Some people are born with a body for distance running, some people are born with a body for terrorism. Just depends.

I was born with a body for Net-surfing!