Everyday Systems

I like this board a lot because there is so little attention on the craziness of diet and exercise, and because it's such a smart crowd, IMHO. However, though this kind of thing is not usually our focus, I thought someone here might know why track and field athletes I've watched on the Olympics have such different physiques from marathoners. They're so much more muscular. Is it that those with the physique become more successful in the sport or does the activity create the physique?

I've actually been surprised and even pleased that many of the female athletes, while definitely slim, do not look like they strive to be "cut," like a bodybuilder. Thank goodness, as that is such an unnatural look for the majority of humans.

But back to the original question...

I think it's both. Some bodies are built for shorter bursts of energy and some are built for endurance events. Plus, if you're running distance events, muscle weighs more. Lots of muscle mass would make it more difficult to run long distances in shorter periods of time.

I've heard athletes say that they were really interested in something, but they didn't have the body for it, so they were steered towards something which they could be successful doing.

I agree, there is a bit of both. At high school, I remember we were all reviewed by a rowing coach, who then told us who was likely to be an excellent rower given enough training. It had to do with height, build, arm reach, stuff like that.

Certainly there are people who put on muscle easier, or who find they have more slow (endurance) or fast (sprint) twitch muscle fibers. However, the body also triggers different developments depending on the stimulus you give it, so doing a lot of endurance running eventually makes you look like a marathoner. Swimming, for example, tends to give that "smooth" look, as being in the water for long hours every day triggers the body to create a thin layer of subcutaneous fat to insulate you. So, swimmers look very muscular, but never "cut".

oolala53 wrote:I've actually been surprised and even pleased that many of the female athletes, while definitely slim, do not look like they strive to be "cut," like a bodybuilder. Thank goodness, as that is such an unnatural look for the majority of humans.

I have friends who have been on stage body building, and then needed to put some fat back on in order to do their normal sports (running etc). The very low body fat ranges one sees on body builders (and models) are not actually conducive to "fitness", if by fitness one means "fit for a sport, or life activity".
There is a wonderful graphic I saw once linked on stumpuous (one of my fave fitness sites) showing women athletes from the US Olympic team. The range in sizes and builds was really interesting, and they were all perfectly "fit" for their chosen activity.

My son has been on the cross-country team for years but his physique has not changed from slim and muscular. The coach said he does not have a long distance running physique, unlike his best runners, which are long and lean with little muscle. He does okay on the team but he is a better wrestler than distance runner. Not sure why he has muscles, because he rarely lifts weights like the wrestling coach expects from his "boys".

typically long distance runners end up being on the skinnier side and sprinters on the more muscular side of things, at least in the legs. Same sort of goes for upper body... you work out more with aerobic exercise you will slim down since you are burning fat. Work out with weights, you gain muscle. You do a combination and you get in shape and slim down at same time. That's why I love workouts that mix the aerobic with the weights.

I did a few years in shot put and discus in track in high school and middle school. You could definitely tell difference between who was distance, who was sprinter, and who, like me, was on the heavier side since we didn't do much running, but enough to be in the team... The coach had discus and shot putters do one relay race just about every meet - the 'fat man's relay' it was called, lol.

I also did a semester in wrestling back in high school. Wrestlers are way more in shape than track and field folks because focus is on both the weights and the aerobics. We ran around the gym about 20 minutes before every practice with wrestling, and that was up and down stairs half of the time since the mats were up above the bleachers in the gym. We'd run up there, across and down around the basketball court over and over... was best shape in my life up to that point in time then... actually was not anywhere near that much in shape until recently doing the power 90... which I'm sort of going to start over next week since I made it to about day 60 before I cut myself and had to rest up a week. It's healed now, just giving myself the next few days to take it easy before getting back in to it.

While wrestlers have some good sides to them, they also have bad... many on the team tried to lose weight constantly through water loss... i.e. handfuls of jolly ranchers and a huge 2 liter soda bottle to spit in to all day. Water loss like that is dangerous and stupid but many did it anyways so that they could get down to next lower weight class before the next match. Theory was that if you went down a weight class you'd do better since your competition was smaller than you normally are... all it really did was dehydrate the hell out of a lot of idiots that did it. Some guys could lose 5 lbs overnight through this gross process of loosing water weight.

mastermash, that dehydration problem was prevalent during my husbands years as a wrestler in the 70's. My sons now have to undergo hydration tests. We are careful to let our sons wrestle close to their own weights, since they are slender. But there are normal weighted kids who starve themselves down to make the team or feel they will win more at a particular weight. Later on, too many of these boys are overweight and I hear their mothers blame the starvation days of wrestling.

Anybody that drops enough body fat with minimal exercise (i.e., NOS 14 minutes of shovelglove, calisthenics, weights, etc.) will have an athletic physique.

This graphic representation will give you an idea as to where you are:

http://bretcontreras.com/wp-content/upl ... atios1.jpg