JB's Fitness Things

Overtraining, like riding your bike… Overtraining… one of the most overused words in the fitness world. Plenty in the fitness industry use it as a mechanism of criticism towards an athlete’s methods or a coach’s training techniques… but only a percentage of them can tell you what the phases of overtraining are, what the physiological impact is, and why it’s important to know the signs and symptoms. I’m going to do my very best to make you an informed, critical thinking athlete, that will be able to make educated decisions about their own concerns with overtraining. Think of us like a little kid on a bike; the first thing our parents tried to do is get us off the couch and on to the bike, then they give us a few pointers, and BOOM they roll us down the hill! I don’t know about your experience with learning how to ride a bike, but mine was filled with bumps, scrapes, and bruises… and maybe a few tears. Which has not been that dissimilar from my experience with fitness J . Once...

Laying on the ground in a pool of my own sweat, grasping for air like I just completed an Ironman triathlon. I’m probably being semi-dramatic, but I had just finished a 30-minute bike for total calories, which might as well have been a 100-mile run through the desert. As I’m slowly able to peel my weak, overheated body off the ground, I take one last glance at the screen I had just been peering at for what felt like three days. 481 calories. I felt good about that, but the more I got to thinking about it, did I really accomplish that much? I mean 481 calories, basically I burned off enough calories to eat a couple hot dogs, or a king size candy bar… THAT is how hard I have to work just to burn 481 calories?! I think we’ve all felt that way at one time or another, well I’m here to explain the process behind the “afterburn effect”. Otherwise know as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC. To understand how EPOC works, you first need to understand what homeostasis means. H...