Actually, I agree with most of his points except the “not in shape” comment. He comes off as an ass for it. Seems like “piling on” to me.

But I also know from my own very amateur weight and triathlon days that sometimes you have to push beyond them, the question is how far. It’s also difficult in the moment to know where your perceived limit is and where your actual limit is.

I’m sorry, but the notion that not pushing your physical limits is unnecessary simply doesn’t produce elite athletes. Ask Lance Armstrong (we won’t talk doping yet) ask Usain Bolt, Urlacher, etc. I’ve exceeded my physical limit, and all I got out of it was a 5min seizure from dehydration and Potassium deficiency. When I recovered I was in better shape. If I hadn’t exceeded that limit I wouldn’t have known my actual boundaries and I aslo wouldn’t have found out I could push myself beyond my mental limitations.

I also think that IF it turns out that there’s a correlation between athletes who didn’t follow the training regimen over break/did activities over the weekend they shouldn’t have, then they do have some culpability in their own conditions. I’m not being an ass, but we don’t know yet what the time limit was (we claim we do, but we don’t have a definitive answer yet), all we know is the extreme speed some athletes did it in. Hopefully the report pieces out why they did it so fast.

The issue is the line between “total muscle failure” and “extreme failure”. You may feel it’s masochistic and creepy, but all bodybuilding is causing damage to muscle fibers and when done correctly they heal stronger, bigger, etc. So you could say all lifters and athletes are masochistic because they constantly push themselves beyond their limits and intentionally damage their bodies with almost every workout.

I’m trying to withhold judgment on this specific scenario, while maintaining that “extreme” workouts don’t have to be eliminated. And by withhold judgment, I mean speculating as to possible causes, with a full mind that my speculations are just that and don’t form a basis for a call to action.

Do extreme workouts need to be more carefully planned and executed by participants and trainers using the knowledge gained by studying cases like this? Probably. Eliminated altogether? No. We haven’t banned football because of concussions or spinal injuries, but we have changed the approach to protective gear and treatment. Using knowledge to modify practices should is, in my opinion, the wise move. Banning things because of statistical anomalies isn’t. Given the rarity of these outbreaks, they qualify as statistical anomalies, so just remember how I feel about arguing from anecdotes before you get huffy about the 13 young men in this case. Try to imagine the thousands of individuals who have done extreme workouts and realize how relatively rare rhabdo is.

Still traumatized

I was overly focused on his conclusion and wrote off most of his “reasoning” as more speculation by people like us who weren’t there, but with more arrogance and machismo than most of the people on here. I just brushed it off and saw that he hit some of the potential causes that may have preceded or followed the workouts that some people seem to want to gloss over to go after Doyle and Ferentz (mostly not on here).

I have no idea what happened with the medical journal thing, I think I made an editing error on my phone when I was composing the post. I think I meant to type “medical issue”.

I linked an article in another thread where a triathlete dropped one sport where she would work out 2 hours at a time and started another sport working out 2 hours at a time and came down with it. This is one weird fucking affliction that some fucking anti-Iowa God has decided to add to their arsenal…