Bonk training?

Bonking is something you'd never want to do on purpose. Or would you?

Believe it or not, one highly respected exercise scientist has suggested that it may be beneficial to bonk regularly in training. Her name is Bente Klarlund Pedersen, Ph.D., and she's a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Klarlund recently explained her rationale for "intentional bonking" in a lecture entitled "Signaling the Muscles to Adapt: Train Low, Compete High?" which was delivered at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine.

In this provocative lecture, Pedersen made the case that athletes -- and especially endurance athletes -- stand to gain greater fitness by performing some of their workouts in a glycogen-depleted state than by trying to perform all of their workouts in a glycogen-replete state.