When is a man too fit?

Daveysil15 wrote: »

And in some cases photoshopped too. It's not just women that are airbrushed and made to look slimmer. I remember seen a documentary where the retouchers made a fitness models shoulders wider and his waist smaller. And he was already is excellent shape.

Body make up too. Even before all the fashion tricks of the trade/deception, unless a guy had seriously good genetics and kept a serious eye on his environment(food/exercise) and was kicking the right hormones(so basically under say 35 and/or adding some into the mix) it would be very difficult to sustain anything like the levels you'd see in magazines for very long.

I'd say - and I might get slated for this - harder to sustain than what female models have to generally do. Yes they have the genetics for tall and narrow frames, but sustaining the look would mostly be down to serious calorie deficit compared to normal*. EG I'm skinny and long limbed for a bloke. A mate of mine would have the same basic frame as me, but he's also well muscled. Wiry as it were, six pack and the like. If we were an ad in a man's mag I'd be the before shot in the scrawny to brawny sales pitch. For him to look like me, he'd basically have to eat, or not, like me. For me to look like him, I'd have to eat much more with a better balance and put serious work in with weights like he does.

Physiques like that are hard to achieve and sustain in the modern world environment anyway. If you look at blokes living neolithic "stone age" cultures, a fair number of them have well impressive physiques. And keep them for longer as they age too. They've generally better hair and teeth too and bone densities well above average office worker who puts in three nights a week in the gym. The crossfit guys and gals are onto something on that score IMHO. Though personally my theory would add in that in the western world we're buggered on one score, your neolithic guys and gals are rocking far lower levels of cortisol as a near given(Low levels of insulin and cortisol = long, healthy life. Cholesterol etc just follow on from those two.). They live stressful, sometimes very emotionally stressful lives, however their stress is more acute, it comes in peaks, the community and culture soaks up the most of it and then they go back to baseline. In modern western life stress is a near constant, a chronic presence. A tinnitus of the soul. A background "noise" we get inured to. To the degree that few of us experience daily and actual calm in ourselves(unless blessed with a mind that deals with it better). Even when we forget diabetes and heart disease, rates of depression, anxiety and suicide spectrum illnesses are very low in such cultures.





* while obviously peoples metabolic rates can vary and obviously medical conditions can cause weight gain or loss(I'd bet the farm that clinically it's more the latter in %), the "heavy people get that way by eating more" idea(oft thinly veiled insult) goes for the reverse too. Runway models that claim they chow down on burgers and chinner dinners daily are 99% of the time lying for the sake of PR. Maybe "daily" means once a week and champers and ciggies the rest of the time.

YFlyer wrote: »

Lance Armstrong running the ING marathon the 1st time only managed 2:59 and stated 'the race was extremely difficult compared to the Tour de France.'

Yes the impact nature of the sport is a biggie, no argument there, but IMHO more likely said for effect and PR TBH. He's not exactly a stranger to winning Ironman triathlons after all. Though to be fair to you a very good biker has the best opportunity to gain time over the other disciplines in a triathlon.

YFlyer wrote: »

Yes that is true. A brillant swimmer would gain very little in an Iron man.

Yea the other disciplines are fairly hampered, the swimmers most of all. If you took our own Sean Kelly at his peak, roped him to the back of a rowboat for the swimming section, once you popped him on the bike the rest of the field would be reeled in in short order(monster time trialler that he was). He could damn near walk the marathon section and still best the swimmers who started out.