Sunday 17 April 2011

Who’d you rather be – Usain Bolt or Keneninsa Bekele?

Here’s an article dedicated to athletics fans. Typically athletes don’t have the best diets, Usain Bolt has been quoted as regularly dining on chicken nuggets – though I find this to be a slight exaggeration – however, let’s compare two of athletics’ finest icons of all time.

Usain Bolt, muscle bound and the dominant king of the sprints. By contrast, Keneninsa Bekele is diminutive, he still rules over long distance and is Bolt’s equal in long distance running, but the reality is, so many more people have heard Bolt’s name than Bekele’s even though as athletes they are more or less synonymous in their greatness – though of course this is debateable.

Let’s not beat around the bush. Both are relatively lean specimens, but any man would prefer Bolt’s muscular physique than Bekele’s muscle depleted version. There’s also something evidently more masculine about sprinting as opposed to endurance running and it’s true as sprinting once in a while will create far better gene expression than chronic cardio believe it or not. It will raise testosterone whereas long – distance running will decrease testosterone levels.

I suppose that’s why our fitness should not be geared towards cardio. Why spend ages doing cardio, when we can get better results in a fraction of the time. Similarly with bodybuilding, its excessive exercise which is in fact detrimental to health in the long run and the Paleo diet is all about optimizing health and besides (you’ll still get a ripped and toned physique) I don’t think those over exaggerated Michelin style figures are necessary neither are they particularly aesthetically pleasing. Remember Arnold Schwarzenegger’s steroid use has led to heart problems in later life – I’m no doctor but it doesn’t take in expert to know it’s much harder for the blood to get pumped to all those muscles and thus provoke health problems.

Perhaps the debate between the two sprinters may be open to scrutiny and debate. So I ask you again; given the choice, who’d you rather be Bolt or Bekele?

Usain Bolt below and Keneninsa Bekele bottom.