I use to be a professional cyclist. I would do 5-6 hour rides at times. We would do races that were 117 miles in four hours. In America, there are some sprinters/track racers who can keep up with these long pain-throbbing races without doing much cardio. The winner of the national criterum championship last year did 12 hours a week of riding plus lots of weights. People with lots of fast-twitch can hold their own in any of these races. Racers like these only do two to three hour rides. Training strength, power and speed will also impact your levels of cardiovascular fitness and endurance. Like Steve writes in his training article says “Maximal strength will create maximal endurance.”
To clarify, (LSD) is long steady distance. HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) provides much better results. It burns fat and gains some muscle. VO2 intervals are not LSD. Still for parkour it's not necessary unless that person has trouble with endurance and the traceur can't get the full benefit out of sprints, or the Traceur needs to focus on cardio for medical reasons.
The difference from recreational riders and serious riders is the interval intensities. Some serious riders you might think do long rides, but if they do this it's either to enjoy themselves or they are making the mistake common in many endurance athletes of adding too much volume. Serious endurance athletes do intervals. Endurance athletes just don’t run. Steve explains this in his article, here: <
http://www.americanparkour.com/smf/index.php/topic,9469.0.html > Read about the energy pathways and the stuff under it.
Parkour, a sport where the longest run might be 15-20 minutes if that, is not as constant as cycling or running. In those 15 minutes of running you will probably have to stop countless times and figure out what you’re going to do. You will have to stop and think at a barroer because many techniques require proper positioning. If you can run 15-20 minutes at a constant hard pace you (1) Know your way around, (2) Considering it is 15 minutes of parkour, there are probably a lot of various and some difficult obstacles to go over so you would have to be well trained. Consider that as you run the odds will only increase that you will see harder and more various number of barriers and challenges and finally (3) especialy if you're to consider 1, you've practiced a lot. If you can deal with a number of different obstacles, and you can accomplish many physically daunting tasks, you are well trained. And if we’re considering the points made in the paragraphs above, running 15 minutes should be no problem to someone of this nature. In addition, you will HAVE to take time to rest while you’re running so you can save energy for harder parts of the course (I learned this by TTs, Cross races and MTB races).
You might be doing parkour for 2-3 hours but with that being said, a lot of that time is spent resting. Recovering quickly is a lot different than endurance and will benefit you more in parkour. If this is a problem for you, you can do this by sprinting intervals with little time to recover. You won’t find much help through constant endurance. Endurance is constant controlled speed while parkour is very dynamic. Running won’t get much done for you.
Running LSD will also take away from your fast-twitch muscles converting more of them into slow-twitch. If you want to do high-jumps and movements that take A LOT of power than you’re going to have to train for that.
Gymnasts, as you can infer from above, not only just don’t need endurance, but it won’t help them, it will waste energy on other things you could be doing and most importantly, it will take away some of their fast-twitch muscles
With all that being said, running for 5-10 minutes won’t hurt you too much and I wouldn’t consider that LSD. Don't do LSD unless if you're working endurance. Endurance is measured by time and not by miles. So if you're training to run or bike once a year in your base period do that period once with tempo.
---
As for LSD stripping away muscle mass it’s true if you do it a lot. You’re chances to bonk will go up, and it will use energy from your muscle mass instead. In addition, protein is used for LSD as an energy source and that protein being used won’t be used for muscle mass.
Quote by Steve
Sorry terry, marathon runners don't really have different needs as opposed to the rest of us. Due to particular genetics? Sure. Due to the fact they run marathons? No. (if you're talking about carb loading that is).
Most of the energy during extended runs comes from oxidative phosphorylation and at an extended runs the main source of fuel for this is metabolism of fat through B-oxidation. Eating a diet higher in fats and lower in carbs will actually help speed up the process (or rather make it more efficient) for long distance runners to switch over to B-oxidation after starting a run thus making it more sustainable.
p.s. same thing occurs in the tour de france especially by the 3rd day or so.
When Caloric intake falls, protein is broken down and is converted into gluscose. This impedes growth and repair tissue.
---
Recommending for someone to gain weight isn't bad if that person is thin. Most sprinters, gymnast have a BMI on the normal/somewhat high side.
As a matter of my opinion, proper strength training makes you put on an ideal amount of muscle mass. This amount of muscle mass is necessary to be optimally strong, powerful and graceful. However, most people train for the mass itself, which does not allow for the same level of strength.
Focusing on strength training while in a caloric surplus puts on the exact right amount of mass for as strong as you are looking to become...this amount of mass just happens to make you look bigger than your average joe.
---
IRT, Matt Z
Are you referring to isolating those muscles?
Well, if you’re not, you should be doing weighted pull-ups/ (possibly negatives at the top) and in addition, do weighted dips full ROM as well. Planche work can also augment your muscle-ups. Finally, do muscle-up negatives.
And again, as I explained above, protein can help repair injuries. Protein has a lot of functions in the human body. Eat a lot OF PROTEIN FOR EVERYTHING!
I have no idea why you asked us that question and you’re not even listening.
---
Guys, most of this stuff I found in the search function and a lot of it were in the stickies. Feel free to correct me I’m sure a couple of things I said were wrong. However, I at least used the stickies in the search function.