The Good and the Bad of Endurance Sports

When people see or hear the word sports they tend to think of athletes.  This usually causes images of great bodies with lean muscles.  But participating in sports doesn’t just give you an athletic body, it gives you a healthy one too.  In all sports there are skill related fitness components, these are components that vary from athlete to athlete and from sport to sport.  Some athletes can jump higher than others, or might be able to sprint faster than others.  These are all great things for the body to possess, but there are other components necessary for overall health.  These are your health related fitness components.  As with skill related fitness components, the levels of health will vary from person to person, but with the participation in endurance sports, some components will overall stick out more than others.  The five health related fitness components are: Cardiorespiratory Fitness, Muscular Strength, Muscular Endurance, Flexibility, and Body Composition.  The components typically seen in endurance athletes are cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular endurance, and body composition.
According to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is related to the ability to perform large muscle, dynamic, moderate-to-vigorous intensity exercise for prolonged periods of time1.  I think it’s safe to say that “endurance sports” probably have cardiorespiratory fitness down to a T.  CRF usually goes hand in hand with another health related fitness component, muscular endurance.  Muscular endurance, unlike strength, is the ability of a muscle to make repeated contractions over a period of time.  Again, endurance sports have this nailed down.  One has to possess great muscular endurance to cycle for approximately 100 miles in an Ironman Triathlon, do they not?

The last component for endurance athletes is body composition.  Body composition can be expressed as the relative percentage of body mass that is fat and fat-free tissue, or in other words lean muscle mass, bone, cartilage, etc.  Anyone seen a picture of a marathon runner?  Those athletes are very lean, which is typical of endurance athletes as they are using the oxidative system more than power athletes.  There are no universally accepted “norms” for body composition.  However, according to the American College of Sports Medicine Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription text, a healthy range of body fat for males and females is 10%-22% and 20%-32% respectively.
                                                                                           
So, endurance athletes strongly possess three of the five health related fitness components.  That should be good enough to be a healthy individual, right?  Not necessarily.  Muscular strength can be defined as the ability of a muscle to exert a force to overcome a resistance.  Muscular strength is vital in everyday life, it helps us avoid injuries and maintain good posture.  Endurance athletes are strong, but sometimes not strong enough.  What generally happens with endurance athletes is a focus on their CRF and muscular endurance and not their basic strength.  Without strength the increased chance for injuries skyrockets.  This could be detrimental to an endurance athlete's career.  Another health component that is generally lacking in endurance athletes is flexibility.  Flexibility can be defined as the range of motion (ROM) available at a joint2.  With the increased focus on endurance comes the chance of tight muscles, tight muscles in turn raise the injury rate.

For all athletes, possessing the skill related fitness components is essential to do well in their specific sport, but it is also essential and a bonus to possess high levels of health related fitness.  With endurance athletes it is obvious that they have vast amounts of these components, however some components might be lacking or not as good as they should be.  It is important to have a well-rounded program that always covers all health related fitness components.



References:
1.  Swain, D. P. (2014). ACSM's resource manual for Guidelines for exercise testing and prescription. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
2.  Baechle, T. R., Earle, R. W. (2008). Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning 3rd Edition. Human Kinetics: