Rational Exercise wrote:
The correct school of thought on exercise was discovered by Arthur Jones, the inventor of Nautilus equipment. His theories are still widely scoffed at/ignored today. But he was right, and the world is missing out on the enormous value of his discoveries because.
because.....???
Bump
Rational Exercise is a perfect parody of Rational Economics. Love this thread.
the one and ONLY way to train is to find out what works best for YOU and you alone, everyone is different and training can have different effects on people mentally and physically.
But the only way to find out which training is right for you is through trial and error, and an open mind
hmmmm wrote:
What got me thinking about this was reading about Walter George. Over 120 years ago he trained by doing "100-ups" (which is basically running in place) for a short time once a day, and set the mile world record at 4:12. I'm sure he did a few other things in his training but it's not very well documented. Some people said that the record would likely never be broken. Obviously we've come a long way since then and there will not be nearly as drastic of a change in the next 100 years. But it would be pretty arrogant of us to believe that everything we think we know about training is actually correct. A lot of ideas get passed along just because "that's the way i did it and the way my coach did it". There are also things that we just don't know yet and research has pointed multiple directions. For every theory and research paper there seems to be another that says something different within a few years. So what are we wrong about?
Roger Bannister is a modest kind of chap. He believes that the World Record for the Mile will go down to 3.30. Will the training be much different from what he was doing in the 40's and 50's? Not much I don't think, and neither does he. He believes that going faster is mostly in your head.
J.O. wrote:
Roger Bannister is a modest kind of chap. He believes that the World Record for the Mile will go down to 3.30. Will the training be much different from what he was doing in the 40's and 50's? Not much I don't think, and neither does he. He believes that going faster is mostly in your head.
Sure there are mental barriers but that's not what is really holding us back. I fully believe I am capable of faster times than my pr's, everyone does. So why, if going faster is "in your head", have I not reached what I believe I can do? The answer is because I have not had the correct training. Bannister/Landy broke four because they had better training than their predecessors and more talent than their contemporaries.
Yes, you have to do better training. Of course. And the talent thing is the mental part. You have physical talent, but how much mental talent do you have? How good do you really want to be?
The distinction between the mental effects of training and physiological effects of training often impedes intelligence. You don't train muscles and cells and capillaries. You train a self, a runner, a person. That's part of the reason why physiological views of training are so misleading.
I'm not sure why so many people want to make the physical/mental a primary and fundamental distinction when they talk about training. It's like they cut the act in half from the beginning and then waste all their time asking themselves the question of how to stitch it back together.
Well that was the whole idea of this thread (the better training part). How much will training progress from here? How much are we doing wrong?
Explain to me how "the talent thing is the mental part". What is mental talent? That is a new concept to me. Maybe if I had it I would have broken 4 already.
hmmmm wrote:
Explain to me how "the talent thing is the mental part". What is mental talent? That is a new concept to me. Maybe if I had it I would have broken 4 already.
Mental talent is the self belief and the determination to succeed, plus the intelligence to train and race well. There are fast runners who can't win races because they fear their rivals, or because they enjoy the acclaim of being fast, but can't handle the real fame they would get from winning the biggest races.
deleuze wrote:
The distinction between the mental effects of training and physiological effects of training often impedes intelligence. You don't train muscles and cells and capillaries. You train a self, a runner, a person. That's part of the reason why physiological views of training are so misleading.
I agree. But a lot of runners and coaches get extremely obsessive about what they consider to be 'scientific training' when really they are just kidding themselves and trying to impress others with their fizzyology.
J.O. wrote:I agree. But a lot of runners and coaches get extremely obsessive about what they consider to be 'scientific training' when really they are just kidding themselves and trying to impress others with their fizzyology.
I think that's right. It's important not to take the reactive view and over-emphasize an abstract notion of "the mental." The game is already lost when it becomes a parsing out of the proportions of "mental" and "physical" because these concepts can't be clearly distinguished to begin with and often refer to nothing concrete.
Training, running, racing, these things always involve both mind and body. Instead of getting caught up in a metaphysical dispute about which is more essential, it's best to talk about the specific and concrete mental and physical capacities that are addressed by a specific training act and to relate the need for these capacities to the history and goals of the athlete in question.
coach d wrote:
training ... at St. Patricks ... was 30mpw for 800 people to 60mpw for long distance.
Yes. And they were in high school - a pretty serious one. And when they finished, and were a bit older and could afford to sleep all afternooon (not even encumbered by lectures nor xboxes), they did more miles.
Why is this surprising?