Athletes: Fit but Unhealthy?
“1. Fitness and health can be defined separately: fitness describes the ability to perform a given exercise task, and health explains a person’s state of well-being, where physiological systems work in harmony.
2. Too many athletes are fit but unhealthy.
3. Excess high training intensity or training volume and/or excess consumption of processed/refined dietary carbohydrates can contribute to reduced health in athletes and even impair performance.”
2 Likes
Gratefully I am the reverse, healthy but not fit!
Work in progress…
1 Like
Phil Maffetone (author of the posted paper) was a thought leader in his time. He transformed the training of triathletes. Plus he is a very nice person.
But he is talking about people who train 20-40 hours a week at high intensity over 3 disciplines: running marathons, swimming miles at a time, and biking over a 100 miles at a time. People who are or want to be professional endurance athletes.
This is the far end of the extreme condition. I doubt anyone here does now or ever trained over 20 hours every week for years at a time. It’s not a good idea, I agree.
I train at the gym 8 hours a week plus I walk (not exercise) for 5 hours a week. Maffetone isn’t talking to people like me.
