When I was younger I used to bonk more than my fair share. I noticed that after recovering from said bonk there was a definite increase in fitness. Now that I am older and somewhat wiser I have learned to carry plenty o’ water and fuel to stave off the bonk but I do not feel the same increase in fitness from training rides. It got me wondering if bonking can be beneficial if is used in a controlled fashion and accounted for in subsequent training sessions.
It would seem that there is some supercompensation going. What do you all think?
Me thinks I did. Symptoms include; chills, headache, lethargy and EXTREME irritability. Think throwing bike in ditch or attacking the chihuahua that comes out to greet you.
Takes days to recover from the pain in the legs and the lack of energy… Whattaya think?
I thought a bonk was what fulla described. A low-blood sugar condition that makes you a little woozy, loss of energy, and gets cured a few minutes after taking a GU.
I don’t know, I’m getting more confused about this the deeper we go.
FWIW, I’ve always been under the impression that bonking is a bad thing, to be avoided. Not least of all because of the missed training opportunities while you recover.
But if all it takes to recover is a good snack, that’s a whole different story, I guess.
Me thinks I did. Symptoms include; chills, headache, lethargy and EXTREME irritability.
Something like this just happened to me at the end of a sprint distance race. I had really bad cramps during the run and about 30 minutes after the finish I starting shaking and wicked chills. I thought it was dehydration not a lack of glucose.
I think it’s good to do it once in a while to teach your body a lesson in fat metabolism. I think the body is pretty lazy and will only spend the energy for some adaptations under rather extreme duress. Like digesting food while exercising fairly intensely. If you never force the issue your body will just stay status quo.
Mine has been trained to digest or die after many years of death rides and now when I don’t exercise my digestion slows down (I am diabetic so it’s easy to tell how quickly the food is being processed), rather than the opposite like all the texts tell you.
To each his own - but I had a nightmare experience two years ago where I went out running in only a t shirt, ran out of food, it got cold and the wind picked up, and by the time someone came to get me three hours later I had mild hypothermia. I stopped shivering etc pretty fast, but the result of it was a SEVERE cold that lasted about six weeks.
Suffice to say that now, I try really hard not to bonk. Training is enough stress on your body as it is. IMHO you’ve got to keep the fuel coming.
This dreaded condition occurs when an athlete completely runs out of energy, usually a result of failing to suck down GELs or drink enough electrolyte replacement. A bonking athlete has HIT THE WALL, and it takes a SHOT of gel, energy BAR or perhaps a RED BULL to get the legs turning again.
***“Bonking” or “Bonk” is the term used to describe the feeling of running out of energy. It’s the point where your body has depleted its glycogen reserves and it feels like you absolutely have no energy or fuel in your body at all. Most triathletes have great “bonk” stories…just ask them. The best way to not bonk while you are training or racing is to eat often. Your body has about an hours worth of glycogen stored, its important to not deplete all of this reserve while training or racing cause once its gone, it will take a long time to restore your depleted tank. The best way to get in calories while training and racing is by drinking a sports drink or using energy gels or both. Sunrise Cyclery has a wide variety of nutritional products. ***
This term was coined by marathon runners who would run out of energy, or hit the wall, between the 18-mile and 20-mile marks in marathons. It was later discovered that these athletes had simply run out of muscle glycogen. When you bonk during exercise, you literally feel like you’ve run out of gas.
When you bonk, you simply can’t carry on at any speed over “very slow”. I guess one big reason not to do this is that at “very slow” you aren’t getting much training done. Then, there is the question of protein catabolism…the opposite of what we usually seek to achieve…you’re risking breakdown of proteins in your muscles/joints/connective tissue, and that ain’t a good thing. I’d say, as a fellow sometimes bonker in the past…don’t do it. More bad than good involved in it is my guess.
Its not all bad if you want to lose weight,–just keep going at that slow speed, and your body has to rely only on fat metabolism. I’m sure at some point it is unhealthy, though, as you say.
What I have read in a few places, and been told by a coach I worked with, is “don’t bonk.” Fat metabolism needs a little carbohydrate to really get going, hence the phrase “fat burns in a carbohydrate fire.” In the absence of carbohydrate, our systems go after our lean muscle for fuel instead of the fat. Self-destruction becomes a literal term.
Monk wrote: I’m sure at some point it is unhealthy, though, as you say.
The philosophy I have to training is: to get as much work in as you are able to do without adversely affecting your recovery and therefore subsequent workouts.
You don’t get stronger when you are exercising. You get stronger when you are recovering. Exceeding your energy system’s ability to adequately fuel sufficient muscle activity, and, it seems to me, you are then exercising at a rate that does little (if any) good from a standpoing of building strength due to a training adaptation.
That’s a fancy way of saying, OK, bonk today. What can you do tomorrow, or the next day, or what can you do over the next week following your bonk? Compare this to not bonking today…what training can you do tomorrow? How about the rest of the week? I’ll bet you get more work done, and at a higher power level, on the non-bonk training plan. If you get more work done, at higher power outputs, AND you recover better…bonkless seems, logically, the way to go.
Plus, bonking seems to do several not-good things related to your ability ward off disease…even if the disease is an increase in the numbers/severity of the simple “cold”. Having a cold can be more than just an annoyance…it can decrease your training stimulus that week because you just don’t feel good enough to work as hard.
I don’t know at what point it becomes unhealthy…bonkless training can be unhealthy, too. I just don’t think bonk-training is worth the risks, compared to training in a bonkless manner.
I would like to clarify the condition that I felt which was; GU would not help and speed was low cadence granny and anything over a slight incline would require a rest before continuing.
Ive now tried to “bonk” as close to home as possible so as not to prolong the agony and to not waste training time as well.
I do agree that this is probably not something to be practice very often.
with my diabetes, ive trained through periods of being low in blood sugar to just see how i’d react. i had a bad one on the weekend (unplanned) where i went low in blood sugar 1 hour from home, and had to suck back 3 gels, which have equiv energy content to lunch. still this didnt raise my level high enough. i did blood test regularly on the way home. once i got to a dairy i had a 600ml bottle of coke, and it was only then my blood sugar rised back to normal. if i wasnt doing any exercise that amount of carbs would have made my blood sugar VERY high. i skulled back the two gels and then cruised the rest of way back, trying to coast as much as possible.
Don’t fuel your training rides - only replete your glycogen immediately upon completion. This will train your glycolytic systems to conserve your glycogen supplies and preferentially use as much fat as possible.
But don’t bonk - if you do the training that you conduct in the bonked state will be damaging, unproductive and difficult to recover from.
Don’t fuel your training rides - only replete your glycogen immediately upon completion. This will train your glycolytic systems to conserve your glycogen supplies and preferentially use as much fat as possible.
You sure about that?
Metabolism is strictly chemistry and thermodynamics. You don’t ‘train’ your body to conserve glycogen by not fueling it… You ‘train’ it to conserve glycogen by raising lactate threshold, thus reducing metabolic stress at any given sub-max workload. Holding back on carbs will simply diminish the quality of your training during sessions lasting more than 60 to 90 minutes or so.
