Originally Posted by
fiddlesticks
This is an extremely interesting topic to me because there are definitely lots of misconceptions about it in general, I'll share some tricks ive learned, its very very important to understand this topic since it pretty much 100% determines how much you can train and also feel. This post will be an absolute mishmash and probably messy as hell, fair warning.
Bodybuilders often times will sweat alot, mainly on their upper body and will say that it's from the high metabolism but this is only partially what is happening and usually the cause of this is actually incredibly simple and important to resolve, before I talk about that I want to say some random important facts related to this topic:
* Calories are a unit of heat, anything that burns has calories.
* a very large portion of your oxygen consumption is for maintaining a high body temperature, during training this portion is incredibly high especially during a warming up phase.
* the higher the body temperature the better blood circulates and how the body works in general to an extent, an example being that a fever occurs mainly to improve white blood cell transportion to the emergency, it's literally harmful to attempt lower a fever in any shape or form unless it goes like 109+..( bless those children that are given ibuprofen and ice packs by their parents lol )
* the main location that an average person will lose the most body heat from is not the head, hands or feet but actually the tracheal area mainly because the aorta is located very close to it and the skin is so thin on top of the fact inhaling and exhaling is how the body loses the most heat. in a healthy person this area is notorious for being in general pain alot and it's an attempt of the body trying to get you to put your hand over it in an attempt to retain heat.
* the most important thing I want to discuss is the difference between SWEATING and actually having a high body temperature. When you are in the gym in a tank top training you are losing tons of heat to the environment ,this heat will rise and that's why you notice your head and shoulders being so sweaty even if they are not under any kind of training. A very dumbed down thing to say is that if the skin is purple and you are sweaty, the core temperature isn't raised and the muscle/skin is not getting sufficient oxygen.
* if you are wearing a typical hoodie or sweatshirt it's not going to do much because its unlikely that its going to be taught around the tracheal/neck area, you'd be better off wrapping a shirt around your neck. This is also why you can wear massive heavy coats in winter and notice your arms sweating like crazy but not feeling warm at all.
* the fuller your stomach is the more heat it makes and this will also make training much easier compared to no food, if you pay close attention you should notice you don't notice your breathing as much when calories are higher, a huge factor of that is your body simply becomes less sensitive to lower temperatures when body temperature is high and unsurprisingly your entire respiratory system absolutely fucking hates not being warm enough.
If we are going to boil it down really far this entire sport is really based off of manipulating the body temperature. The bigger the muscle, the more blood is required 24/7 which also means more heat is required which translates to more calories. When you are on low calories maintaining muscle is very hard and the whole system of how your stomach generates large amounts of heat is the #1 factor for that, the body simply doesn't generate sufficient heat to maintain the limb circulation.
So if you find yourself feeling cold but sweating at the same time the most likely scenario is your body is losing heat, mainly through the neck area and that is rising to your head which creates this really uncomfortable annoying feeling of shittiness. The average bodybuilder is being fucked from multiple angles really bad here, their bodies are in an energy saving state so the core temperature is going to actually be colder than usual but their upper body will sweat like mad from the heat rising to it especially during training, not to mention the average person in general assumes any sweating = hyperthermia basically and will drink cold water or something which just makes the problem way worse.
It should be noted that your heart / left part of chest loses lots of heat as well but a good amount is prevented by everything insulating it including the fat pad in your nipple. You might feel warmer quick doing chest exercises while wearing clothes around that area/ neck. Personally I feel way better sleeping on my left side due to this.
Wrists, neck, shoulders feet are all very commonly complained about in regards to pain and this is a massive reason why, a gigantic aspect of pain are simply heat retention tactics the body is trying to tell you, these thin skin areas are the easiest to lose heat from.
So tldr?
Your body needs a certain amount of heated blood to transport blood to the muscles and even in hot temps most of the time you really aren't going to retain enough heat made from the muscle unless the respiratory/tracheal area is covered. More calories consumed = easier the process is. Cover the respiratory area/ trachea.
Sweating absolutely does not instantly mean you are hyperthermic and are about to melt to death, your body would have 0 issue (and would actually very much prefer to) lose 0 heat from a decent amount of training, sweating is usually caused by releasing rising heat.
There are more things like how heat dilates fat tissue and causes fat loss but this post is already too long ..
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. Oh and pee, breath & pee it out.
