Should you Bonk on Purpose?
admin September 22nd, 2007
I say why not? Go ahead and bonk on purpose, in a controlled environment, where someone is with you or knows where you are if you don’t show back up. Here’s an article by Matt Fitzgerald that discusses a physiologic adaptation that occurs after bonking, which may make you better prepared to handle endurance sports.
I’ll let you read the original article here, entitled Should you bonk on purpose
An exerpt:
“Believe it or not, one highly respected exercise scientist has suggested that it may be beneficial to bonk regularly in training. Her name is Bente Klarlund Pedersen, Ph.D., and she’s a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Klarlund recently explained her rationale for “intentional bonking” in a lecture entitled “Signaling the Muscles to Adapt: Train Low, Compete High?” which was delivered at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine.
Benefits to under-fueling workouts
In this provocative lecture, Pedersen made the case that athletes — and especially endurance athletes — stand to gain greater fitness by performing some of their workouts in a glycogen-depleted state than by trying to perform all of their workouts in a glycogen-replete state.
In practical terms, she said, they should do some workouts within hours of having completed their last workout, such that there’s not enough time to replenish muscle glycogen stores between workouts, and they should also leave their sports drinks and gels at home for some workouts (that is, intentionally under-fuel their muscles during training).”
Read. Digest. Discuss.