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I'm Not Training; I'm Exercising

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I'm Not Training; I'm Exercising

Old 07-30-22, 01:09 PM
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Originally Posted by DiabloScott
Structured training is for anybody who wants to improve.

Low-intensity exercise might be enjoyable, but pushing yourself is better for health, and being faster and stronger makes riding MORE enjoyable.
Consult your doctor of course.
Boy is this true. Did a hill climbing challenge ramping up gains over time. When the challenge was over (3 months) climbs I found originally daunting and too much work to bother were almost a pleasure to climb. Having the legs to climb, since this is a hilly area, made all my rides so much more pleasurable.
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Old 07-30-22, 01:34 PM
  #52  
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Originally Posted by rsbob
And what is exactly wrong with pretending? If it makes them happy then it makes them happy.
Perhaps I'm becoming an old curmudgeon. But yes, if that is what someone enjoys about cycling they should do so. I will admit that even though I try to disable Strava live segments on my Garmin, when they pop up anyway, I try to beat them.
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Old 07-30-22, 07:36 PM
  #53  
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Originally Posted by Carbonfiberboy
So who got Afib? The fastest climbers in the group. Why? They either did more high intensity riding than anyone else or they were k-hounds and they aged out of being able to keep that up without damage. It's rather a time-in-grade issue. And then there was the wonderful person, fastest current climber, who went BC skiing, came home, cooked dinner for his wife, watched a movie, went to bed and had a fatal heart attack with never a symptom That's not good, either. I organized his memorial ride.

The high intensity folks would go out and do long, steep climbs several days a week. The k-hounds had a great pile of distance medals, starting with 10,000 k/year of strictly brevet riding. Brevet organizers publish rider times on the web, so it's not just riding long distances, it's racing to see who can ride a brevet, especially PBP, the fastest, etc. All that takes a toll over the decades. I'm not aware of anything of this nature being investigated in the literature, but it's obvious if one rides with a lot a very fast long distance riders who've been at it a long time.

I think if one did enough HIIT to be able to ride PBP in under say 70 hours, that might just do it, and probably before that target date - or maybe one has to do that for a few years for enough damage to occur. As far as I can tell, no one really knows what's too much of what. There's some chance it might be individual, but I rather doubt that. The Afib-ers I know are a rather diverse lot. They just have that one thing in common, too much total time at high intensity.
But the big question is, what is the mechanism that causes a-fib?

It appears the most common factor is atrial scarring, caused by inflammation. It's also known that intense exercise causes inflammation, but the inflammation resolves itself after adequate rest.

So if one were to make a hypothesis of how exercise induces a-fib, it's not the exercise intensity that causes the damage, but intense exercise separated by insufficient rest and recovery.

If this hypothesis is correct, the safe way to perform HIIT is to schedule enough truly easy days between the hard days, so there's adequate time to recover.
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Old 07-30-22, 10:35 PM
  #54  
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Originally Posted by bruce19
Train? For what? A Strava post? I fight with this instinct all the time as an ex-college jock. I keep telling myself that eventually I'll free myself from the mindset. OTOH I'm 76.
Some people never do.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/shes-al...er-11659146814 (paywall protected)
Extract:
The Workout
Ms. Higgins works out seven days a week. Every morning, she spends 20 minutes doing yoga-based stretches including cat cow, child’s pose, figure-four pose and reclined twists.

“My physical therapists have taught me the wisdom of stretching,” she says. “It was hard for me to embrace something that didn’t feel like real work, but if I start the day with this routine, it loosens up my back and my body feels better,” Ms. Higgins says.

She bikes daily, usually logging three-hour rides around Marin County. She admits her Peloton, a pandemic purchase, has been collecting dust. “It is my backup plan for when it is too cold, wet or dark,” she says.

With Covid-19 still a risk, Ms. Higgins says she remains hesitant to return to the gym and instead works out at home. She recently started to train for her September half-marathon and will often run outside with her partner.

Three to four days a week, she uses her Tonal digital weight machine to perform upper-body strengthening exercises including lat pull downs, rows, triceps extensions and rotator-cuff drills. She has a Pilates reformer machine and does private workouts with a trainer via Zoom once a week. The Diet

Philosophy: “At home, I eat healthy, but an active life allows me to enjoy good food without the guilt,” she says. “When we were hiking six to eight hours a day on the Tour du Mont Blanc, I could eat anything I wanted. I had great bread and butter and a lot of chocolate mousse,” she adds.

Grazer: Ms. Higgins snacks on nuts and cashew Tosi SuperBites granola bars throughout the morning.

Lunch: Romaine lettuce, topped with croutons and dressed in olive oil and white balsamic vinegar.

Dinner: Salad with salmon.

Abstains from: Red meat and alcohol.

Splurge: After a long bike ride or half marathon, she treats herself to pancakes.

Essential Gear

Home gym: During the pandemic, Ms. Higgins invested in a Peloton bike ($2,000), a Pilates reformer ($3,000), an elliptical machine ($2,000), and her partner gifted her a Tonal for Christmas ($3,700).

Sneakers: Brooks Hyperion Tempo ($150) for road running and Salomon Speedcross 5 ($130) for trail running and hiking.

Bike: She rides a Trek Domane SLR 7 ($8,350). “The disc brakes and electronic shifting are great for arthritic hands and justify the cost,” she says.
To each their own, eh?
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Old 07-31-22, 04:10 AM
  #55  
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Originally Posted by terrymorse
But the big question is, what is the mechanism that causes a-fib?
.
Doing too much HITT too frequently....It's faulty logic to think that if a small dose of something is effective then a bigger dose will be even more effective...
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Old 07-31-22, 09:02 AM
  #56  
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Originally Posted by terrymorse
But the big question is, what is the mechanism that causes a-fib?
Originally Posted by wolfchild
Doing too much HITT too frequently.
Probably true, but doing HITT is not a mechanism -- what's going on inside that human machine to produce the damage.

I suggest it's atrial scarring caused by inflammation.
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Old 07-31-22, 09:53 AM
  #57  
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Originally Posted by terrymorse
Probably true, but doing HITT is not a mechanism -- what's going on inside that human machine to produce the damage.

I suggest it's atrial scarring caused by inflammation.
You're probably right it's inflammation...but too much HIIT is what causes metabolic damage which will cause inflammation.
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Old 07-31-22, 11:34 AM
  #58  
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Originally Posted by wolfchild
You're probably right it's inflammation...but too much HIIT is what causes metabolic damage which will cause inflammation.
Agreed, and this brings up the big question:

How can you tell when you are doing too much intense training?
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Old 07-31-22, 12:03 PM
  #59  
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Originally Posted by Carbonfiberboy
Personally, I ignore the medical studies because all them which I've read contain either implicit or explicit bias in the direction of "more is better." .
True medical studies are scientific studies that are required to be designed to avoid bias, usually by being singly or doubly blinded and controlled for confounding variables. What you are describing is apparently not "medical studies". Perhaps you are confusing "studies" with "opinions".
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Old 07-31-22, 12:25 PM
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Originally Posted by davester
True medical studies are scientific studies that are required to be designed to avoid bias, usually by being singly or doubly blinded and controlled for confounding variables. What you are describing is apparently not "medical studies". Perhaps you are confusing "studies" with "opinions".
Sorry to pop your bubble, but you haven't read anything like enough studies. Go read every study you can find about Afib. Compare that to my "longitudinal study" . You'll see they all contain implicit bias, sometimes admitted. A study of scientific nutritional studies over the past 10 years found that 85% of them were researcher biased.
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Old 08-01-22, 07:11 AM
  #61  
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Originally Posted by terrymorse
How can you tell when you are doing too much intense training?
So I started doing some literature digging on this subject. I found this:

Biomarkers in Sports and Exercise: Tracking health, Performance, and Recovery in Athletes

That looks promising, maybe it describes a way to tell if your exercise is doing damage.

The answer appears to be "it's complicated":

A single measurement of a biomarker does not allow for precise determination of an individual’s health status.

Of course, it couldn't be that easy:

Data on multiple inflammatory cytokines, endocrine markers of long-term dysregulation and overtraining like testosterone and cortisol, and muscle damage markers like creatine kinase (CK) can be integrated to provide precise and accurate information about an athlete’s health and overtraining status. Relying on a single marker to sensitively and precisely detect overtraining is overly simplistic given the pleiotropic nature of most biological markers.


So if you can find a sports doctor that understands all these biomarkers, and if you get periodic blood testing, you ought to be able to detect when your exercise is potentially harming you.
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Old 08-01-22, 08:16 AM
  #62  
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Originally Posted by terrymorse

So if you can find a sports doctor that understands all these biomarkers, and if you get periodic blood testing, you ought to be able to detect when your exercise is potentially harming you.
Since the mechanism which produces AF in athletes is unknown and there are no known associations between AF and anything measurable in blood, that's a ways off.

Also, the role of inflammation in the response to exercise stress is complicated. For example, inflammation is intrinsic to the mechanism of muscle strength gain and acutely damaged muscle floods the circulation with cytokines after hard workouts. Since the immune system is one of the two main ways the body has of communicating stress, inflammation is likely to play a role in other adaptive processes as well. One of the noticeable effects of cytokine release is the drowsiness general fatigue that can overcome an athlete after big days, similar to what happens in viral syndromes and other inflammatory states. Is that "normal?" Does it increase overall inflammatory burden the way pathological inflammatory processes do? Can we distinguish "bad" inflammation affecting the heart or other organs in adverse ways against that background? I haven't seen too many great answers to those questions.

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Old 08-01-22, 09:32 PM
  #63  
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If you would like read an extremely well researched and annotated book on the dangers of pushing yourself too hard too many times, I would highly recommend this book available for download from Amazon. It really goes into the electro-physiological and chemical impacts of exercise to the limits. There are several bios of people who have survived and not survived extreme efforts. There are illustrative stories of endurance athletes: cyclists, marathoners and ultra-marathoners and the challenges and their medical procedures. I found it very eye opening.

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Old 08-02-22, 08:06 PM
  #64  
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Yep! Preaching to the choir Brother.
I'll never be fast but hills are fun.

Originally Posted by rsbob
Boy is this true. Did a hill climbing challenge ramping up gains over time. When the challenge was over (3 months) climbs I found originally daunting and too much work to bother were almost a pleasure to climb. Having the legs to climb, since this is a hilly area, made all my rides so much more pleasurable.
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Old 08-02-22, 08:19 PM
  #65  
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Originally Posted by terrymorse
Agreed, and this brings up the big question:

How can you tell when you are doing too much intense training?
This is just my personal experience but I once had bouts of chest pain in my early 40's, had the range of tests including a stress test and the only thing they told me is that it was possible that overtraining caused it. They were brief but somewhat intense shooting pains experienced at a time when I was doing plenty of HIIT and also lengthy high zone training. This stopped when I backed it off somewhat.

My advice would be to check out articles from exercise/health pros out how much time is typically safe in the various zones based on overall health, age and training status. Listen to your body. It IS possible to overdo it and that can have consequences.
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Old 08-02-22, 08:28 PM
  #66  
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I get it, I really do, I just ride, I don't care how fast I go or how far I go but the more I do it I seem to get a little faster, and I seem to go a little further. It is mostly fun but sometimes it is really hard, torture comes to mind, but in the end I enjoy the ride. My bike is really the only serious exercise I am willing to do, I'm not going to walk 20 miles, and I sure as heck am not running anywhere, the gym, no way. I'm gettin old I am not getting fit to impress the ladies, I have one already, I just want to grow old gracefully.
I will never win a race but I can ride all day now if I chose to, I can't tell you how far I went or how fast I went because it doesn't matter to me. I am just proud of the fact that I can.
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Old 08-03-22, 05:55 AM
  #67  
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Originally Posted by terrymorse
Agreed, and this brings up the big question:

How can you tell when you are doing too much intense training?
Personally, I view HIIT in the same way as I view spice in chili. It is not the main component of an exercise program.

When I overdo it, I see the following

1. increased morning heart rate
2. increased morning heart rate variability (overly sympathetic)
3. Seems the low frequency to high frequency is very high, too
4. I sleep poorly
5. Moody
6. Sugar cravings
7. Unresponsive aerobics. Once warmed up, I know what my aerobic power should be at 120 bpm and the heart should respond reasonably quickly too changes in power output.
8. If I have really overdone it, the morning heart rate is much lower than normal
9. If I am not hungry to ride the bike, it is usually too much intensity.

I saw 4 different cardiologists including a specialist who works and researches ultra endurance types. Does science know how much intensity or training volume is too much? For the very fit? For the young? For 50+ riders? No, they do not.

The principle that I follow now is simply to rest if I am unsure. My Doc has me take DHEA, supposedly helps with oxidative stress. Per the cardiologists, I have no fibrotic cardiac tissue. Probably all coincidental.
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Old 08-03-22, 08:59 AM
  #68  
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Anyone, especially an alter kacker, who wants to train or just ride at a competitive or quasi-competitive level—which necessarily means some amount of high intensity work—needs a reliable physiological measure (biomarker) of stress, e.g. HRV, or the rare ability to introspect accurately and honestly about their physiological state. Because overtraining is what most of us will do and, yes, it might shorten our lives. On the other hand, so might conservative training and fast is fun.
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Old 08-03-22, 11:37 AM
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Originally Posted by MoAlpha
Anyone, especially an alter kacker, who wants to train or just ride at a competitive or quasi-competitive level—which necessarily means some amount of high intensity work—needs a reliable physiological measure (biomarker) of stress, e.g. HRV, or the rare ability to introspect accurately and honestly about their physiological state. Because overtraining is what most of us will do and, yes, it might shorten our lives. On the other hand, so might conservative training and fast is fun.
Crotchety old man? Evidently Yiddish. Had to look that up since nothing about those words made sense to a gentile.

My understanding is that if you have an elevated heart rate in the morning before caffeine, versus your normal base line, that is a pretty sure sign you over did it the day before - or else you may be severely dehydrated or both! My test is walking up a flight of stairs and if my legs don’t hurt by the last two stairs or dragging the garbage can up our steep driveway and regretting it. Then there is also a quick heart rate check before coffee.
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Old 08-03-22, 12:34 PM
  #70  
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Another marker is simply a drop in power and speed. I noticed that 2 days ago, legs didn’t have the same oomph as a few days before, my pace up Mt Hamilton dropped, as did heart rate. GARMIN performance condition was low, FWIW. And I had a low grade fever that night. A few warning signs.

I took a rest day yesterday, ate everything I could get hold of, went to bed early. Today’s “easy-ish” ride is feeling better.
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Old 08-03-22, 01:46 PM
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Originally Posted by rsbob
Crotchety old man? Evidently Yiddish. Had to look that up since nothing about those words made sense to a gentile.

My understanding is that if you have an elevated heart rate in the morning before caffeine, versus your normal base line, that is a pretty sure sign you over did it the day before - or else you may be severely dehydrated or both! My test is walking up a flight of stairs and if my legs don’t hurt by the last two stairs or dragging the garbage can up our steep driveway and regretting it. Then there is also a quick heart rate check before coffee.
Literally, "old crapper."

Yes, agree, I track a.m. and overnight HR too, because I wear a gizmo 24 hrs. and it is elevated after too much intensity or other stressors and pretty much inverse-parallels HRV, but with a much smaller dynamic range.
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Old 08-03-22, 02:20 PM
  #72  
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Regarding training vs. exercising...In my younger days, I spent a dozen years racing bikes - road, MTB, and CX. For almost all of that, every non-race ride was training to go faster and/or farther. It was all about improving performance. Sure, it's fun to go fast, and I enjoyed high-intensity, competitive group rides, but it started to become a grind to stay motivated to suffer on every ride. I hung up my bikes in '04, and shifted my focus to other things in my life. When I started riding again a couple of years ago, I've had to learn how to ride for just the fun of it. Since I still have the urge to return to a level of fitness where I feel strong and fast(ish) again, and be able to ride with my friends who didn't quit riding, I do incorporate training intent on some of my rides, but I also make a point to ride sometimes without a performance goal.
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Old 08-04-22, 06:34 AM
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To me at least, "training" is just exercising to a plan. If calling it "exercise" sounds less intimidating, then go for it!
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Old 08-08-22, 12:09 PM
  #74  
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Originally Posted by Ttom
I get it, I really do, I just ride, I don't care how fast I go or how far I go but the more I do it I seem to get a little faster, and I seem to go a little further. It is mostly fun but sometimes it is really hard, torture comes to mind, but in the end I enjoy the ride. My bike is really the only serious exercise I am willing to do, I'm not going to walk 20 miles, and I sure as heck am not running anywhere, the gym, no way. I'm gettin old I am not getting fit to impress the ladies, I have one already, I just want to grow old gracefully.
I will never win a race but I can ride all day now if I chose to, I can't tell you how far I went or how fast I went because it doesn't matter to me. I am just proud of the fact that I can.
Right on, man! Do what makes you happy. Love this post.
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Old 08-08-22, 01:09 PM
  #75  
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I know what you mean. If you have a specific goal, then I understand working to numbers. If you need to lower cholesterol, lose weight, increase muscle mass, etc. If you weight is good and your cholesterol and other numbers are OK with your dr, then have fun. Why not?
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