Quote:
Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall
First, no one puts their height, weight, age, and sex into those machines. If they did, yes, the read would be more accurate.
|
For some machines (a treadmill, e.g.), I get why you need weight, but I don't get why you need the other characteristics.
Quote:
|
Second, I don't know how you can write the last two sentences next to each other. The better athlete you become, the fewer calories you will burn (workouts being equal). I have been doing a lot of HIIT workouts. If you and I did the same exact workout, I would burn far fewer calories than you. If I did the same distance run as Coltrane, he would burn far fewer calories than I.
|
Honest question: Is this true? Do individuals get more efficiently at converting stored calories to work produced?
Quote:
|
If it were a simple matter of if you go X fast for X amount of time you will burn X amount of calories if you weigh X amount and are X tall etc., athletes would not plateau. As the body gets more efficient it needs fewer calories to do the same amount of work. This is why athletes will throw sprints in on a distance run to force their bodies to work harder (even while reducing the total number of miles run).
|
For some aspects of biomechanics, I get that improving one's form will make you more efficient, particularly for sports where the form is much more complicated. But for a stair master or a exercise cycle, is there really much to that? And is it just biomechanics, or does the body actually do better at the biochemistry?
Not arguing -- just something I would like to understand better. Also, was trying to make a distinction before between the work performed (your output, measured in energy) and the calories burned (how much stored energy your body needs to do the former) -- seems like the former should be easy to measure, the latter not so much. Maybe I didn't make that distinction clear.
