Fitter.
You know, create fatigue and things, recover-be-stronger-keep-doing-it or recess, again, axiom (it's an axiom now).
The body adjusts sometimes fairly quickly, it's pretty simple, stress and recover, repeat.
Nearly 100% of non-endurance based athletes, when heading for a workout requiring aerobic fitness, will say something to the effect, "I am going to go work on my cardio." What they are saying is, I don't really know exactly what I am doing, but I want to be 'fitter', whatever that means.
They are partly going in the right direction, but they are also misdirected a little and like a scope of a gun off by a millimetre, the bullet ends up well off target.
The mitochondria in the specifically used muscles for THAT specific exercise develop, recess and develop again depending on demands. Mitochondria extract oxygen from the blood of the working muscles.
Damn if I don't hear someone say something to the effect, "I am going to cycle, to improve my running cardio." This is misdirection, not by a lot at first glance, but when the bullet hits the bone, it kills the wrong animal (cryptic I know).
Listen DAWG! The major muscle groups that are engaged during cycling build new and re-activate dormant capillary beds to those specific muscles, as does the oxygen sucking-from-blood mitochondria. So while large quads, jacked full of oxygenated blood are tuned to the exercise of going nearly round and round in motion. The up and out and down and back exercise of running, where foot-plant and toe-off and stability in-between are different and require greater development of the lower leg and the hamstring - when you go a little faster, are specific and different than the former. Still reading along?
So next time you say to me, I am cross training. I may say something like, "ohhhh good for you." But I am thinking, 'there is no such thing as cross-training, as a means of exercise that is better than the specific exercise for which you are foresaking."
Stop bullshitting yourself with this crap.
Cross-training is good for when you have done everything you possibly can have done specifically to develop your body for THAT exercise. It will help you to keep weight in check, if you need that. It will help off-set injuries in some cases. Cross-training will help you keep a well-rounded physique if this is what you want. Some exercises are there for a runner to improve the core. And good for them.
Take the top 1000 (arbitrary number I know) long distance runners in the world (or top Rowers, Cyclists, nordic skiers etc) and compare their amount of exercise-specific exercise to their cross-training exercise.
Automation is the term used to describe muscle motor and skill development and refinement for athletes wishing to perfect, if you will, their appropriate specific skill. A tennis player will for example get the backhand just so and will practice moving that damned arm back and forth, gripping the racquet a very certain way and will move that arm a bazillion times to create 'automation', where the exercise becomes automatic and exact. Yes this requires information to be exchanged between the brain, the arm and the nerve axions to communicate, to create correct and automatic movement - "I am moving arm into backhand direction, to nail that ball, the way I have done a bazillion times already."
THAT is happening, as well as....wait for it....wait for it....the requisite capillary development, strengthening of heart and development of cardio-vascular system to supply oxygenated blood to the area so that THAT mitochondria can extract the oxygen from the blood and supply it to the specific working soft tissues.
Now apply this science-non-science to everything you ever do that requires movement and stop, for the love of science (and non science) bullshitting yourself about cross-training directly benefiting a specific exercise. Does a bread maker make quiche Lorraine in the spare time to get better at making bread? Does a tennis player, play cricket to get better at tennis? Does a massage therapist practice surgery to get better at massage (and never mind the legal ramifications)? Does a hockey player snowboard to get better at hockey? No!
Cycling and swimming and rowing and dancing are as different from running as is swimming to tree-climbing (which is a lost art, I miss dearly).
Sorry, ranted...feel better now.
And am slightly fitter for typing these words ....'fitter' for 'typing' that is.
Fine print, but big enough so you wont miss it: Typing this blog post wont make me better at finger puppets.




















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