Anon–, I don’t think there’s any argument at all that being lighter will improve performance in many sports. I have never argued that weight is irrelevant for performance. Of course it’s relevant, and I’m annoyed at myself for somehow not making that clear in my posts. So here goes, I’ll make it clearer:
Consuming unsustainable and downright puritanical diets will not ultimately lead to better long-term performance. For the vast, vast majority of athletes (and the general public) simply training/exercising hard regularly and eating more simple food and less processed junk is the solution, just as it always has been. Some times the truth is really boring.
Focusing excessively (and if you regularly need to carry tupperware because you “can’t find anything to eat and are over three years old that’s excessive) is counter-productive at best, and downright damaging at worst., The diet game has a million new suckers a minute.
Let’s look at the older athletes who have won or performed at top level over years or decades in contrast to this week’s “Get real skinny and win!” book.
In general successful athletes focus on performance/winning, and then look at the pathways necessary to get to that point. Many amateur athletes look at the pathways more than they do at the goal. Do you want to be five percent BF for two months and place third in a local age division before blowing up or do you want to start at 12 percent, eat decently for a change, drop to 11 percent, place fourth in a local race, get stoked, train for another year, place 22nd nationally, notice you’re now down to 8 percent because you’re training like a fiend even though you eat the occasional banana split, and then win nationals the next year because you trained right (and holy shit, you did it at 7 percent, who knew!)? Or sit there worrying about whether or not to eat a piece of bread?
I see far too many athletes trying to control their performance by controlling their diet. Diet is simple to control short-term. So a bad race means a bad diet… No it doesn’t, it most likely means the athlete didn’t train well, or had a cold, or is distracted by a psychotic relationship or any of the other millions of things that can go wrong… But with the diet-based trainers it’s always about the food, because they can control that (short term–long term they’re gonna lose unless they’re eating sustainably). Based on more than 25 years of competing in various sports where weight matters the diet-obsessed are not going to be the people on the podium in the long run. Nor are the 300 pound coach potatoes. Simple.
Diet is important, but performance is everything. Don’t confuse the two, they are not interchangeable terms for god’s sake! Read, understand, think, apply, train, adapt, understand, think some more, but do not become a victim of the diet is everything cult, it’s a losing headspace.
Enough of this topic, my views are hopefully clear enough. There will always be a salesman with a new plan for getting skinny etc., learn to ignore them and focus on getting out the door as it’s now time for me to do. Let’s go get active, yeah!
I can’t decide whether to climb, paraglide, mountain bike, run, kayak, or go speed flying. Hell, the skiing is still pretty good too! And there’s a fence to paint, winter debris to pick up, plus some office work I haven’t done, etc. Rather than actually doing any of the above I’m on the computer. This is what Seasonal Confusion Disorder, or SCD, can do to you. The weather isn’t really perfect for any of the above, so it’s easier to spin in circles than settle on any one activity. SCD is serious, ha ha!
I think I’ll ride my bike to the post office the long way, send the books out to people that are overdue, continue on to the climbing gym (I need a savage bouldering style workout) and finish it all out with some mobility/WOD stuff. Happy spring, hell YEAH!
Here are a few things I find interesting lately:
Training types: I’m starting to think there are a few different types of people who “train.” There’s the “trainer” who is training purely to train, or perhaps to look better in a tight T-Shirt. There may be excuses made about training for other sports etc, but really “trainers” are just training to train. Bodybuilders, most big-box members and most people who even go into a gym of any kind are in this category. Even Crossfitters to a certain point; that’s the point of a generalized training program. Then there are the Sport-Specific People, or SSPs. These are the actual athletes who want to be better at a sport, whether it’s at an amateur or pro level, they are training to be better at a sport or activity. Then there’s the Participation In General people, or PIGS. I’m mostly a PIG; I go kayaking, climbing, mountain biking, whatever, and that’s 75 percent of my activity. About 25 percent is “training” for one activity or another, often a blend at the same time. Note that rehab etc. fits into SSP guidelines.
I break out these slightly tongue in cheek classes of people who train to maybe help people think about their own training. Are you a “Trainer,” “SSP,” or “PIG?” Because I see a whole lot of “Trainers” who think they are SSPs… If you don’t do your sport more than you train for it then you’re a Trainer. If there’s not an end goal to whatever it is you’re doing for training then either you’re a Trainer or a PIG. And that’s cool as long as you understand what’s going on and are into it, but it’s not cool when you’re claiming to be training for sport X while doing something that is useless for doing sport X better, at least as measured on a time-invested basis. Training for a SSP must be measured in performance; does it help the person perform better? Otherwise it’s just Training for the hell of it, and that is not worthwhile unless it’s the goal… Just something to think about, I can fit into all of the categories above at various points of my life, but I do better when I understand the different stages of training and why I’m training for what, when. I also see a lot of what I would call confused people in the gym…
Nutrition: My last post was all about wasting energy by thinking about what to eat instead of how to train or actually training. Eating well is a good idea and may help performance to some extent, but eating and performance are not the same thing even if some people want them to be. Performance is what counts. Crossfit (which I support but have no formal relationship with) workouts are great, but they don’t burn much energy compared to most of the exercise I do. If you sit on your ass 15 and a half hours a day and only workout for for 5 to 30 minutes then you are going to have to be a little more discerning about what you eat than someone who goes out and hikes around in the mountains all day, or trains like hell for two hours or whatever. Most of the really lean athletes are in aerobic sports, and they eat whatever the hell they want. But if you want to be ultra-lean and only work out 30 minutes a day then it’s not going to work without strict dietary control, which where the whole neurotic Zone and other whacky diet action came from in the fitness scene. “Paleo” is a less restrictive and all-around better idea, but even one of the leading lights of Paleo (and a guy who knows more about nutrition than possibly anyone) says that if you’re going to actually exercise hard for longer periods of time then you’re going to need more carbs. Most of the athletes I hang with aren’t just working out for 20 minutes four to six times a week; that’s only two hours of activity, or one decent after-work mountain bike ride. So, if you’re just doing short workouts and want to be really lean (for why I still haven’t figured out, nor can anyone tell me why other than to look good nekkid) then by all means eat a convoluted diet that I guarantee will “fail” in a timespan of weeks, not years, but certainly within years. Or accept being somewhat higher in body fat, enjoy life, eat relatively simple foods, great. Or do higher-volume aerobic sports and eat whatever the hell you want, be reasonably lean, enjoy life. The only “losers” I see here are those who spend more time worrying about what they are going to eat than training and doing what they love in life.
Bad-ass people in the local gym: Yesterday I did a sort of “WTF + rehab” workout in the gym because I’m having some knee and back issues, it was raining and cold outside, so into the gym. My local gym (other than the garage, where Cultfit Coyote Way is back in action after the coach took a break for kidlet delivery) is Athletic Evolution. There are some good athletes who train in there for sure (Canmore Eagles, hockey team here), but there were two guys in there yesterday just giving it. One guy was doing deadlift sets of three with 325 pounds, maintaining absolutely beautiful form. Plus some other solid stuff. Another guy was throwing down some really clean heavy squats, bend the bar kinda shit. This amazes me because most of the “heavy” stuff I see in gyms all over the world is just piss-poor. I’m used to seeing no-name climbers do incredible stuff in the climbing gym, but in the weight room it’s generally a gong show of technique (often including mine, no pretensions there). Really good form with heavy weight is an absolute rarity, I don’t know who those guys were but it was cool to see. It’s just odd how little really amazing ability I see in regular gyms compared to climbing gyms, on the river, mountain biking, whatever. I don’t know what to make of this disparity; maybe the sport-specific athletes do their sports for longer and get better? Even without any formal coaching a kid can climb 5.14 and have amazing technique, but I rarely see anyone do a half-solid squat in a gym anywhere, even with “coaching.” Something weird in all of this…
