Marathoning and Bodybuilding Considered Harmful

As a follow-up to my entry on Art De Vany, I have to link to a couple of his posts I particularly enjoyed: Top Ten Reasons Not to Run Marathons and This Body is Not Made for Sports. Lots to agree with in there, although I was puzzled by this bit from his bodybuilding post:

All the problems come down to the same thing; nearly everyone who participates in competitive sports (or glamour contests) is over-trained. I think modern life has enough stress in it and I fail to see why someone would load the stress of over-training on top of it.

I vaguely recall him praising professional basketball players as a fitness ideal. Ah yes, here it is, in Evolutionary Fitness (PDF):

NBA basketball is an example of power law variation. Pro basketball is not an aerobic sport, it actually is an anaerobic sport full of power moves, quick bursts, sprints, and leaps mixed in with half time rest, quarter breaks, pauses, free throws, time outs, and bench time. What NBA players have is the ability to use these brief intervals to quickly recover their phosphate energy stores (they use the alactic pathway discussed below). NBA athletes and NFL defensive backs provide evidence that power law training makes you powerful and lean. NBA players are the leanest and most powerful in any professional sport (their body fat is around 5 to 7 percent).

I suppose those two statements are not contradictory, as I guess NBA athletes can be "the leanest and most powerful in any professional sport" and still be overtrained, but it still struck me.