What The Tour De France Does To A Rider’s Body - Cheddar Explains

nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride [Music] and that is a terrible scene for us these legs attached to pro cyclist pavel polyansky 16 stages into the tour de france are a glimpse of what the body endures at the most watched sports event in the world this is actually a sign of good fitness his blood vessels are dilating to help with oxygen flow and he needs all the help he can get because the tour de france is no joke stretching 3 350 kilometers over 24 days riders burn up to 8 000 calories every single day that's more than three times what pro runners burn in a marathon for the brave cyclists peak fitness is a professional requirement and beyond that pain is par for the course but there's been a crash there goers has gone down on the line that kind of extreme pressure is why doping the illegal use of performance-enhancing drugs is so prevalent in the race if athletes at their pinnacle use drugs to perform imagine what the tour de france would do to the average body they pick the hardest and the most dangerous and the longest distances that they could possibly can for a grand tour and it's part of the whole identity of the tour de france let's see how hard we can make it let's talk about what really happens to your body in the legendary tour de france if you're an enthusiast and you're a cycling buff you know you might do one of those stages i mean there's no way that you know the average person even of good athletic ability is going to be able to complete a tour de france hey eric you've worn those other videos about ski jumping in doubles luge what do you know about the tour de france well i've been modeling the tour de france since 2003 so the idea was to take terrain data that's available each year for the various stages and see if we can come up with a pretty good estimate for the winner we've done pretty well over the years now to give you an idea of what the body goes through in these three weeks of hell let's go week by week it's day one of week one and around 25 million viewers are tuning in to what you take off on the open road from copenhagen if you're fit enough your resting heart rate might be as low as 40 bpm next to the average person's at 60 to 100. if you're a full-time winner chris froome you're somehow doing 29 bpm your heart rate is gonna vary dramatically but the goal is to maintain the same body weight throughout and considering how many calories you're burning that's easier said than done in the course of a given stage their average burn might be something like 5500 calories well a 550 calorie big mac that's 10 of them of course they're not going to consume 10 big macs but that's the amount of food energy that they're burning each stage and they have to match that if you're the winner you'll likely get through the equivalent of 210 big macs throughout the event 118 000 calories in this first week you're burning about three to five percent of your protein stores your fuel to keep up with the pack the usual catabolism is in effect metabolism is a breakdown of tissue really and fueling so when you start pedaling you get into a catabolic state so your heart rate goes up you increase blood flow to the muscle it gets into the muscle causes the body to break down glucose glycogen and then fatty acids and that's all part of the normal exercise response the idea is to start repairing tissue and if they're not eating close to the end of exercise then they get into a whole muscle wasting because the body's like i need amino acids what's the first thing to go is muscle tissue because it's very active and very energy hungry the body's like i need something here and if you're not going to get it to me i'm going to make you stop so essentially catabolism is like that alien plant uh ordering two in little shop of horrors does it have to be human does it have to be mine if you can't keep it fed it's gonna eat away at you that is when you start bonking more on that later we're on week two now and somehow you're fitter than you were when you started but you're heading into the mountains now and those climbs are unforgiving obviously it's a stressful time sending your chord cortisol levels the stress hormone way up plenty of sleep between days will help immensely if not you guessed it lebron takes over i'll get to it as you tear through the root you're also tearing through red blood cells and red blood cells carry oxygen like the folks watching at home you're destroying two million red blood cells every second but while the average person will have no problem replacing theirs you're using more oxygen than your system can keep up with this puts you at risk of lower immunity and anemia translation sick and tired so you're on to your second week and your maximum heart rate while racing may have been up with chris froome's at 174 bpm in the first week by now it might be slowing growing weaker from all the hard work thankfully your first of two official rest days comes 11 days in just in time to hear the mountain ahead beckoning it's 2022 and your highest climb this year waiting for you at the 11th stage is the dreaded cold gallivia at 2 642 meters above sea level climbing this hill looks like you're breaking down more muscle than you're able to build up this is where your muscles are really put to the test tearing through muscle tissue burning all your diminished fat mass congratulations you're bonking so there's actually two ways right we have a dehydration we have a low fueling when you are low from hypoglycemia and low fueling it's like this tunnel vision and you're right on the edge of feeling like you're gonna hit a wall where you'll see someone and they're starting to drift off the back i think in fact armstrong has absolutely hit the wall then they eat and then all of a sudden boom they can go like 20 minutes later they're fine but people who are dehydrated they'll drift off the back and you get really angry because you have a lot of aldosterone that's coming out and aldosterone induces aggression and anger [Applause] like in 2010 when australian cadell evans ran out of steam on stage 9 after dominating the race up to that point cadell evans has cracked in the yellow jersey here you can see it here too on this pom date camera the spanish miguel endurane winner of the last five tours struggling and desperate for hydration this is a sign of a man suffering like we've never seen before he's calling for a drink but he can't take a drink if he gets a drink it gets penalized the penalty is for the last 20 kilometers of the stage when riders are too packed together for their teams to supply them you reach your second rest day just after the tame flat at the 15th stage from stages 19 to 21 just be relieved to bid the pyrenees of your heading full speed for the glorious chonse elizae finish as you revel in your victory over this year's route don't stay off the bike for too long or even sitting still can cause damage it tends to be the result of injuries repetitive motion excessive stress or the ingredients that make up the tour de france as your muscle tissue repairs itself mounds of collagen on your muscles develop scar tissue you'll feel so tense it'll be as if you're injured out of nowhere in years to come you'll look back fondly in your endurance cycling career reaping all those health benefits yeah i don't think there are any benefits oh really i don't because you think about the extremity of what they've put their bodies through for so many years and from an exercise and health perspective it's far beyond and above anything that the body should really go through we see a lot of cardiac problems see a lot of gut distress a lot of mental angst all these repercussions from a health standpoint of putting their body through the ringer for so many years in a row not to mention the osteoporosis from low bone density after years of sweating out all that useful calcium unfortunately the research from retired tour de france cyclists is muddied a little thanks to three notorious words performance enhancing drugs the cigarettes and the methamphetamines that they would have on the corner before they have to do a big hill climb like drugs have always been part of it the drug most commonly used by athletes is anthropotene uh anthrop erythropoietin erythropoietin or epo remember that when competing almost every day for weeks a cyclist can struggle to produce enough red blood cells epos help to produce more increasing oxygen and as a result performance but epo can thicken your blood some call it sticky blood over time risking heart disease strokes all kinds of life-threatening side effects and it's endemic in almost every sport but cycling really got caught because you would see guys that would never have a bad day famously lance armstrong won every tour de france between 1999 and 2005 before being stripped of his titles for doping in 2012 but in that same time period 87 of those placed in the top 10 were also confirmed or suspected of doping it was the culture then but i find the racing more interesting now because people have bad days but stacey is it still there definitely how is it being caught it's not a report from the cycling independent report commission showed anywhere from 20 to 90 percent of writers doing it in the present day eric why is this why is there doping well i think the tour de france is in the top three of the most grueling sporting events that uh someone could do i mean when we had the cold war and you're seeing like at the olympics and how people are coming out and just being so much better that of course it filters out to some of the other professional sports but there's definitely a push for clean sport you see a lot of the younger guys it's the guys that are starting to question like what are you giving me and why are you giving me this it's no secret that cycling has has been through a very dark period in in the last decade but that the sport has changed and it's of course questions need to be asked that's that's normal but it should no longer be met with the same kind of hostility that it has been in the past whether you're blazing ahead or way at the back the best way to endure the physical pain and pressure of the tour de france is to embrace it mentally they are like ironclad they get on the bike and they're just like focused greg henderson is one of my good friends i've known him forever i've talked to him since he's retired i'm like what was that mental state he's like you know what stace you get on the bike and you don't even see anything you don't feel anything all you do is you look and you see where the guy is in front of you and you want to move forward this all goes to show the incredible feats the human body and mind can achieve for glory five hundred thousand dollars and the iconic yellow jersey if you've ever pondered the physical limits of the human body beyond throwing someone in a black hole it doesn't get more extreme than the tour de france if i were you i wouldn't try at home but if you do set your peloton to what the [ __ ] [Music] you

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 1,719,156

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar explains, cheddar explores, explainer, tour de france, cycling, cycle, bicycle, bike, racing, race, sports, athletics, anatomy, bonking, pain, endurance, tour de france 2022, workout, lance armstrong, icarus, doping, steroids, france, yellow jersey, paris, pyrenees, Eddy Merckx, climb, catabolic

Id: tGCG9NMD5QQ

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022