Is it desirable to train myself to run with my feet flexed (ankles at acute angles)?

you've lost, so all you can do is attack the messenger.

fact: having more red blood cells improves your performance.

you can't prove this is wrong. there is no debate. this is a fact.

I can tell you that Lance Armstrong and his team did not suddenly improve their biomechanics so much that they dominated year after year. it was the drugs and blood doping. having more rbcs. applies to other endurance sports.

don't be a child and prove this is wrong. once and for all.

Jon Orange wrote:

What I said about improving foot work refers to using more elastic energy return in all of the skeletal muscles. This has to start with the feet. Can you use your feet more elastically to run at an easy effort but faster pace? How long can you keep that going before your feet fatigue? Something to work on if you have the interest.

As to your second point, just what the heck are you on about?

My feet don't get tired and have plenty of elastic energy. We are not kangaroos though.

The rest should be easy for you to get. You repeat that constantly as well.

Your feet don't get tired?

Ok, see you in Rio.

sjzjananjz wrote:

fact: having more red blood cells improves your performance.

Mythology. A healthy body produces the right amount of red blood cells.

Why wouldn't it?

It's easy to be misled by misinformation. And once you believe it, you have to defend it right?

Jon Orange wrote:

sjzjananjz wrote:

fact: having more red blood cells improves your performance.

Mythology. A healthy body produces the right amount of red blood cells.

Why wouldn't it?

It's easy to be misled by misinformation. And once you believe it, you have to defend it right?

Aaaaaand you can't disprove it.

what does having a "healthy" anything have to do with performance?

you said that more rbcs do not benefit PERFORMANCE. not health.

Having an unhealthy amount of red blood cells can FL give you better performance than a healthy amount.

having an unhealthy level of Testosterone can give you better performance than a healthy amount.

Being at an unhealthy weight can benefit performance.

You've lost.

drugs work. you cannot and will not actually disprove it with any facts. this you are childish and cannot engage in intelligent debate.

You mean homeostatis is a more narrow sense than I was picturing. Dropping the homeostatis bit from my question, I still have the same concerns. You originally wrote:

and followed it up with:

You are saying that through training the body optimizes red blood cell levels. This is a reasonable hypothesis, however, it is certainly not self-evident. Can you justify it? I ask because the human body does not optimize many things when trained. Anabolic steroid levels in women for instance are lower than in men and are a large part of the reason for the performance differences between genders. Other examples can be given but I come back to this one because it is so stark.

I'm going to put words in your mouth again, Jon, so please correct me if I'm wrong. Your starting assumption is that the aerobic model of endurance exercise where performance is limited by the body's ability to accept, transport and use oxygen (as well as buffer or discard waste products) is irrevocably broken and should be replaced by a neuro-centric model focused on muscle fiber recruitment and the efficiency of gross skeletal movement. Further you reason that because the aerobic model is wrong and the neuro model right, something like EPO can't help because it affect a variable (red blood cell count) that only matters to the aerobic model.

I agree with the need for a better neural model of exercise, however, new models rarely completely invalidate all predictions of older models. VO2_max, for instance, is imperfect at predicting performance among world-class athletes, however, it does have some predictive power as world class performances simply to not come from athletes with merely average VO2_max. Even in a new paradigm where efficiency is king, increases in aerobic function will have incremental benefits.

You're missing the point. A healthy body produces all the red blood cells and testosterone you need.

It's not difficult to understand. More is not better, that's the mentality of an insecure person who lacks self belief.

I can't change the mindset of a drug obsessive. I can inform a rational person, but only if they want to understand.

Jon Orange wrote:

You're missing the point. A healthy body produces all the red blood cells and testosterone you need.

Really? Can you supply any evidence for this? Give me an argument why this is true.

Jon Orange wrote:

Irrational thinking that doesn't answer my question. If it was an advantage to have more RBCs as you train more, your body would produce more.

you are 100% wrong.

it is an advantage, which is why people force their bodies to produce more or blood dope.

you can't explain how lance and USPS dominated based on their pedaling technique.

it was drugs and blood doping.

healthy has nothing to do with it.

cyclists die from too much EPO. bodybuilders and lifters die from heart disease due to drugs. NFL players have shot out knees and joints from taking pain killers and playing.

you are wrong. you have no proof. that makes you childish and incapable of intelligent debate. saying "myths" and "irrational" is not proof or debate.

Thanks for the input.

Yes I was using a narrow definition of homeostasis to illustrate the point about the natural hematocrit being the optimal one for endurance athletes. Because the belief that more RBCs allows more oxygen transport ignores this fact. Adrenaline will increase oxygen uptake to the natural peak. I would like to see more studies into the effects of adrenaline on performance.

Yes women have lower testosterone than men, but even steroid using women are/were the same 8-10 slower than men. I find it strange that many of the women's records are very old. I think there is a lack of belief that they can be beaten, which needs to be addressed.

Yes VO2 max varies a lot in elite athletes, but those with the highest oxygen uptake have the lowest oxygen economy and vice versa.

I don't believe that a well trained runner can increase oxygen uptake, because the heart can't keep growing beyond the normal hypertrophy, which I think is a misnomer, the word should be normotrophy, because athletes do not have super enlarged hearts, that is an old myth. They have normal sized hearts.

I think that people also mythologize about capillarization, since it is an ongoing process throughout our lives, and surely the extra cardiovascular stress of elite sport demands a greater amount of angiognesis just to maintain cardiovascular function. Thus new capillaries have to be produced.

I think that a great deal of mythologizing has also been done about mitochondrial density too. Some ridiculous claims have been made for increases and decreases due to training and detraining.

explain why lance armstrong and USPS dramatically improved performance and dominated year after year based on your theory and not drugs.

they had the best doping program. period.

not talking about v02 max. talking about hemocrit.

more RBCs improve performance generally. you are wrong.

test2 wrote:

Jon Orange wrote:

You're missing the point. A healthy body produces all the red blood cells and testosterone you need.

Really? Can you supply any evidence for this? Give me an argument why this is true.

Extra training beyond the well trained level of the average runner/cyclist will not produce extra red blood cells. It should however make you more energy efficient if you do it right.

Testosterone production is know to go down when an athlete over trains or when anyone over works themselves. Injecting testosterone will not reduce their fatigue. That is one of the causes of 'roid rage' consult your local ex roidhead bodybuilder for more detailed accounts. They will tell you about the depression, anger, mood swings, strange behaviour etc.

snsnsksknskns wrote:

explain why lance armstrong and USPS dramatically improved performance and dominated year after year based on your theory and not drugs.

they had the best doping program. period.

not talking about v02 max. talking about hemocrit.

more RBCs improve performance generally. you are wrong.

Best doping programme? Lots of teams could make that claim. They had the best riders.

Lance's power outputs were what you would expect for an elite cyclist who weighed 75 kilos with 6% body fat.

Jon Orange wrote:

snsnsksknskns wrote:

explain why lance armstrong and USPS dramatically improved performance and dominated year after year based on your theory and not drugs.

they had the best doping program. period.

not talking about v02 max. talking about hemocrit.

more RBCs improve performance generally. you are wrong.

Best doping programme? Lots of teams could make that claim. They had the best riders.

Lance's power outputs were what you would expect for an elite cyclist who weighed 75 kilos with 6% body fat.

you've lost.

Jon Orange wrote:

You're missing the point. A healthy body produces all the red blood cells and testosterone you need.

It's not difficult to understand. More is not better, that's the mentality of an insecure person who lacks self belief.

I can't change the mindset of a drug obsessive. I can inform a rational person, but only if they want to understand.

There you go again. Being aware that something works does not make you obsessive about it.

The sky is blue. I am not obsessed about it by making that observation.

I haven't lost anything. You are living in the past. It's 2016, some people are better informed than your average internet misinfomation supplier.

If you really want answers, you will have to do a lot of work.

dope works wrote:

Jon Orange wrote:

You're missing the point. A healthy body produces all the red blood cells and testosterone you need.

It's not difficult to understand. More is not better, that's the mentality of an insecure person who lacks self belief.

I can't change the mindset of a drug obsessive. I can inform a rational person, but only if they want to understand.

There you go again. Being aware that something works does not make you obsessive about it.

The sky is blue. I am not obsessed about it by making that observation.

The human body works too. Much better than you realize. This is a self esteem issue and an awareness issue.

Let me tell you something I haven't said before. I figured out when I was about 9 years old that adults had a rather naive belief in drugs and a lack of belief in their own body's ability to repair itself.

A lot of people think like you. I understand that. If I can't change your views, it's not my lack of understanding that is the problem.

you've lost

science:

EFFECT OF RECOMBINANT-HUMAN-ERYTHROPOIETIN TREATMENT ON BLOOD-PRESSURE AND SOME HEMATOLOGICAL PARAMETERS IN HEALTHY-MEN

By:BERGLUND, B (BERGLUND, B); EKBLOM, B (EKBLOM, B)

JOURNAL OF INTERNAL MEDICINE

Volume: 229 Issue: 2 Pages: 125-130

Published: FEB 1991

read it and prove it wrong.

you can't.

you lose again.

Jon Orange wrote:

Let me tell you something I haven't said before. I figured out when I was about 9 years old that adults had a rather naive belief in drugs and a lack of belief in their own body's ability to repair itself.

So you've admitted that you stopped learning after 9 years old?

That sounds about right.

Fortunately, we have people who are called scientists and continue learning past grade school. They tend to disagree with you.

you've lost again.