This is a solid article, but the title is just wrong. "Free weights are better than machines" is not a "little known" fact, it's a well known fact by anyone who has cared to read the internet re:fitness since 2009. So is "lifting weights is much more efficient than cardio".
I say this only so that you don't read this and think these are some kind of fringe theories. They're widely, WIDELY known and 100% true.
Thanks for the crux of it. The first page was so much intro filler that I gave up.
Free weights as better than machines was fairly well known at least as far back as the early 90s. "Machines don't work your stabiliser muscles" was the phrase I generally heard.
Depends what you are trying to do and your situation. Machines are safer, so if this is a concern for some reason (injury rehab, age, etc.), then machines in some cases can be better for lifting heavy weights.
There's nothing wrong with machines, except being less effective than free weights. They're still solid though, I got in the best shape of my life one time only on weights because I worked really really hard at it. But I accomplish 80% now with 40% of the time with free weights and compound exercises.
I do something similar. Two days/week: heavy weights, primarily machines (+cardio). Two days/week: free weights, compound+core exercises. Much lighter weights- still a grueling work out.
One of the big criticisms Rippetoe makes of machines in the book Starting Strength mentioned in the article is that because they can cause unbalanced muscle development and increase the chances of injury over the long run.
Ha! Hard to argue with that because you pluralized 'definition.'
But what I mean is, (1) If I'm doing a chest exercise, for example, with 270+ pounds, and I fail on a machine, I can get out of it. With free weights, I need a spotter and it's much trickier. (2) Perhaps more important: If I'm doing heavy legs (450 lbs, for example), with free weights I have to load a lot of weight on my back for a squat. This is dangerous even for younger men (I'm 50 years old) because slight distraction and they can hurt their backs in a way that is really hard to get over. Load up a weight machine and I don't have to worry about it.
I hit the stabilizer muscles doing light weight squats on a bosu ball.
So, yeah, in a perfect world I'd be 25 years old and doing all free weights. But I've adapted to my circumstances in what I believe to be a reasonable way.
Yes. It's just that being hit by the weights is actually not the failure mode you should be worried about most. It's having the wrong stress on your joints for longer times.
It's a bit like barefoot running vs shod running. Shoes protect your feet, so they are ostensibly safer. But they also make it easy to have bad technique and wreck your joints, especially your knees.
> (1) If I'm doing a chest exercise, for example, with 270+ pounds, and I fail on a machine, I can get out of it. With free weights, I need a spotter and it's much trickier.
Depends on what you are doing, and how you are doing it. The only real need for a spotter is for barbell bench pressing. There you can bench press in a squat rack with the safeties set to the right level. But there are lots of other exercises that provide a similar benefit without trapping you. E.g. (weighted) dips (on rings), push up variations, hand stand push ups, standing overhead presses.
* It's having the wrong stress on your joints for longer times*
Yes, that was my point #2.
The only real need for a spotter is for barbell bench pressing
I was specifically thinking about the bench-press-like machine press, but also true for the dumbell fly exercise.
I do the free-weight lifts, just not with heavy weight. When I want to seriously stress my muscles I go to the machines.
I just started with the bosu-ball stuff last year and I have to say I like it. It hits stabilizers the squat doesn't begin to touch. I'm a sailor- just got back from a week-long bareboat charter in pretty choppy seas, and I really like the results. I'm not sure I can articulate it though- while it helped my balance, it also helped my strength while maintaining balance. For example, the task of picking up a mooring ball with the boat bouncing seemed easier. But that may just be a distorted perception.
Well I knew that machines are extremely ineffective. I also knew they have them there for their impressive looks. What I did not realize is the second reason gyms like machines: Liability.
While those of us who know how to wield the Internet wisely will have arrived at this conclusion, I still meet many people on a regular basis (especially women) that will try to challenge those ideas.
I don't blame them for thinking that way, the fitness industry has conditioned an entire generation into thinking cardio is the way to go and that high rep work with pink dumbbells is how you 'tone'.
The more articles there are like this, the more likely we will see a shift in how everyone tries to get fit.
I came here to say this. I read about all this stuff years ago on SomethingAwful of all places. If you've ever bothered to do any research rather than just believing whatever your gym tells you, you know all of this.
For life in general, or at least the things that matter in life, it's always a good idea to do your own research. Otherwise you end up going through life believing the half-baked stories people make up so they don't have to think, and the bullshit people tell you to sell you stuff.
Actually I think you'll find that they're not widely known.
(Sweeping generalisation) Most women avoid free weights because they don't want to put on muscle and look like a body builder. Doesn't happen. Hell, some men have that same attitude because "hey I don't want to get bulky". My comment is "well if you discover that secret, you should market it because millions of people will buy it"
2009 and the internet? This has been the dominant conventional wisdom in all fitness media for at least a decade. If you open any fitness or "men's" magazine in any given month you will find at least one article telling you that: strength training is better than cardio, free weights are better than machines, and lifts that use multiple major muscle groups in coordination are best. The funny thing is that every one of these articles acts like it is the first time any of this has ever been written down.
It's the exact same way with articles advocating diets relatively higher in protein and fat. An assertion of novelty seems to be a mandatory element of any attempt to market anything fitness related.
Agree, but you know who hasn't gotten on board? The people that design/fit out gyms. It's still all machines in the middle and a couple benches near the edges. I'd love to walk into a gym that is all or nearly all free weights.
That all depends on where you are in your information-gathering phase. And for many, many, many inexperienced lifters, as well as materials and recommendations promoting fitness and strength training will still recommend machines over freeweights.
Both have their place, though I put a heavy emphasis on freeweights.
Don't trash all physicians. We're not "in on it," we just have to target populations rather than individuals. It's a completely different ballgame. Plus we have limited training (or none) on these kinds of topics.
I break the mold all the time, but only when I think a patient is mature enough and enlightened enough to handle it. Otherwise it's completely pointless (and will fail to meet the "standard of care" in most cases).
1. explains the supercompensation period and how to time your workouts.
2. champions free weights and resistance exercise.
3. explains injuries and gives some practical exercises to strengthen the rotator cuff (frequent injury among bodybuilders)
However, I'm not sure if I agree with the "Fundamental Four" and him saying muscular endurance (low weights, high reps) "is great for endurance sports but tends to undermine the first three, shrinking your strength, power, and muscle size."
There's a recent paper refuting this theory, http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/h2012-022 . It basically says that low weights, high rep actually builds as much muscle mass as high weights, low reps... but both need to be done to the points of exhaustion, and that's they key.
Edit: Just wanted to give some more background on my thoughts on low weight, high rep. I became interested in this after I visited a trainer who suggested high reps (ie., 50+) with low weights. He demonstrated on me and made me do 25 reps of low weight bench press. At around 20 reps I couldn't do any more but helped me barely finish the remaining 5. His point was that you can do low weights, high reps but you need to work past what your mind is capable (and thus he suggests a personal trainer to push those limits). He also said with lower weights, high reps I could gain muscle mass and it's healthier (ie., less injuries) but if I wanted to be huge like a bodybuilder that lower reps, higher weights is better.
So, I've been trying this out on myself recently - doing low weights (30-40% of usual) and high reps (25-50), and doing each rep until the point of exhaustion (not able to lift any more). And then I take a short break (15-30 seconds) and do it again. Break, repeat, etc... until I do about 10 sets. Each set is to the point of exhaustion and I can't lift any more. The results is I'm super sore and it feels great. Prior I tried the StrongLifts 5x5 program (5 reps, 5 set) and also the typical 6-12 reps per set. But with heavier weights, I'm more scared of injury and it's harder to go to the point of exhaustion by myself. With lower weights, I don't fear injury as much.
I'm not trying to become a bodybuilder- rather just trying to bulk up a bit, lose fat and get fit.
"It basically says that low weights, high rep actually builds as much muscle mass as high weights, low reps.."
Interesting. But I would still be skeptical because of one thing: bone/tendon resistance
Not sure small weights/high reps can create the kind of bone changes (and tendon resistance) that bigger weights do. And this may be critical in some situations.
I would agree with that. I have daughters in gymnastics and they are all much more muscular than their non-gymnastics friends. That said, they tend to get injuries when they do high-impact gymnastics skills. They do not do weight-training, which, from my experience, I suspect would help minimize the injuries.
That's an interesting paper. I'd like to see more research done on this as I think being able to minimize injuries (which I suspect are more common when you're lifting 80+% of your max) while still gaining muscle mass would be the holy grail for those of us in middle age. :-)
Except many gyms have strict "no video" policies because of pervs. Quite frustrating to not be able to video yourself.
I requested an exception once at a 24 hour gym and they had the most inane excuse. They said "there may be witness protection people here that could be compromised". I really had no response to that one...
Note that the paper you cited measured protein byproducts, not strength. Running six miles a day will not radically improve your 100m dash time. Low intensity, high rep walking 15 miles a day isn't likely to help either.
If you want to get better at something, do the something you want to get better at.
Exactly this.
What most people fail to understand about fitness is that over time, your body adapts to whatever you make it do. Whatever you want to get better at, just do that thing over and over, and you will get better at it. There is no shortcut or "hack," it's just practice and adaptation over time.
Mark Rippetoe (author of the Starting Strength book recommended by the original article) actually says that an untrained subject will improve their performance by doing any exercise.
That same Rippetoe reccommends high reps if your goal is hypertrophy and you are past the novice stage. Check his book Practical Programming for Strength Training for more.
Higher reps for hypertrophy is around 8-12 I believe, not 50+.
The problem with reps at that level for me personally is that its very difficult to know where your limit is. With failure around 5 reps it's very obvious which is your last possible rep.
Also 50 reps is just much more pain for the same (or less) gain as I see it. I can do 60-70 press ups which would be in that range, but it's significantly harder work than 5 reps near my max bench.
Agreed. The problem with 50+ is that the weight is so low that depending on how you pace yourself, and your pain threshold, and how mentally prepared you are, you might end up at 50 or 200 on different sets, and you pretty much always can force through one more rep...
A while ago someone posted an article on Reddit about a group of 5 people who had tried a 1000 kettlebell swings per day for 10 days challenge, and about the outcomes. The discussion turned to whether it'd be possible to get close to that with squats or various other execises. So I figured I'd see how close I'd get with squats.
I didn't finish a full 10 days, and I didn't reach 1000, but I did ~400 bodyweight squats a day for 5-6 days in sets ranging from 20 to 100 at the time. It'd not be that hard to do more if you have time, after the first few days of soreness.
What I learned (apart from how funny you'll walk the day after 400 squats) was that the difference for me between 20 and a 100 squats was whether or not I drew my focus away from the burn, and how I counted, coupled with pacing. When I counted towards 20 and then at 15 said to myself that I'm halfway to 30, so I might as well continue, and kept going like that, meeting 100 was "easy" and I probably could do more. But I'd slow down substantially towards the end, and I'd get more done in less time by confining myself to sets around 5 0 reps.
But I could just as well reach 20 and feel my legs were on fire and I needed a break, if I didn't pace myself properly or didn't "tricky" myself into moving the goalpost.
I honestly don't know what my actual failure limit is for bodyweight squats. I just know that it's somewhere beyond 50 and likely beyond 100 depending on what restrictions I were to set on pace. I thus also don't know, without experimentation, how many reps I'd need to see growth that way... Too much hassle to try to find out.
That is pretty much the same technique I would use to get through long pieces on the Erg (rowing machine). Continually breaking down what I had done, how far through I was, % left, how many strokes left at 24 rating etc.
If I remember right he specifically mentions the insane hypertrophy bike riders get in their quads due to going well-beyond 50 'reps' in pedalling sprints, etc.
You highlighted the key point of going to exhaustion. No matter how much weight you lift you need to lift it to exhaustion to get the best results. You will get results no matter if it's light or heavy weight.
TL;DR Bunch of already known facts strewn together in one article that will get lost in the millions of other articles about how to stay in shape. People, it's easy, eat natural and stay as primally (free weights, free running) active as possible. Done.
IMO, body weight training has a big hole- it's very difficult to progress when you don't have a minimum level of strength to perform a given movement.
With weights, you can just use lower weight, and can thus freely work your muscles to exhaustion. With body weight movements, you can try negatives, but again- much more difficult.
While I generally think progression is more straightforward with weights, this claim isn't true. With bodyweight exercises, one typically progresses by making it more difficult via leverage.
Thanks, yummyfajitas - exactly what I would have said. If you can't do a pushup, then can you do a pushup against a wall? When you can do that with good form, then you lower the angle so you're pushing more of your bodyweight.
The logic works the other way, too, for increasing difficulty. Can you do 3 sets of a hundred one-armed pushups? Well, start climbing your feet up the wall!
If you can do free-standing one-hand vertical pushups without strain, I've got nothing for ya. Go ahead and start vert pressing 600 pounds. Also, try out for the Olympic weightlifting team--the gold medal should be easy!
If you are interested in free weights, Starting Strength is the best book out there. In free weights you have to be extremely careful about your form otherwise you could seriously injure yourself. This book goes deep in the human anatomy and mechanics to teach you how to approach free weights.
This article and this DVD really set my fitness regime over the last two years.
The DVD is a great guide to the six or so major movements in weightlifting and I found it was much easier to visualise what I was meant to be doing.
I got serious in May '11 and by Jan '12 my personal bests were a massive improvement over where I had started, and I found that I was really enjoying tracking my progress and getting strong and fit.
I'd gone from benching 80 kgs to a 1 rep max of 120kg, and squatting 90kg a 1 rep max of 160kg.
I found the major contributor to my improvement was
- consistency (3 times a week, every week), and
- focussing on getting the biggest impact for your time in the gym.
Even if you just squat and deadlift, I believe you're doing much more for yourself than by focussing on what most people do - tricep pulldowns and bicep curls.
At Betable, four of us do CrossFit. It's not sadistic as the title says, though I'm sure that can depend on the gym. The one in SOMA is pretty supportive and accommodating, probably because they deal with a lot of startup engineers :)
Anyway, was struck me about CrossFit and really any group exercise routine is how much more it makes you tax your own body. When you're at the gym, you don't push yourself. You run comfortably fast on the treadmill, lift a comfortable amount of weight, and do it at a comfortable pace. Group exercise is great for breaking you out of that habit and making you push your limits. It's too easy to pretend that 45 minutes at the gym, 15 of which is "cardio" and 15 of which is "cooldown", is going to change anything.
A roommate of mine (former D1 track athlete) loved to do CrossFit solely because the group atmosphere forced him way beyond his boundaries. The first 4 times in a row that he went, he pushed himself so hard that he threw up. He could not stop raving about how it got him back into such relatively good shape so fast.
I think he meant that, if you're not careful, you'll lapse into going through the motions without pushing yourself. In other words, you need to push yourself. And he says being in a group will help you actually push yourself.
Personal experience (his and mine). Same basic principle explains why people work together in offices instead of at home: peer pressure prevents you from slacking. And personal trainers take this up yet another level, because it's a lot harder to give up when somebody's in your face telling you that he knows you can do one more rep.
And yes, of course there are people who can put in supremely productive 9-to-5 days at the home office and/or whip themselves mercilessly in solo workouts. But they're a minority.
A really good way to counter this, at least for me, is to keep track of your progress in a notebook or on your phone. It helps a lot to be able to say "oh, I was able to do 2 more reps than average this time" or "Hmm, I've been on this weight for a couple of months, maybe I should go up." Plus it's a good motivator -- it's a lot easier to go the the gym when you can see how much progress you've made.
Not the OP but worked out at United Barbell and they are phenomenal. I am no longer convinced that CrossFit is the right thing for me to keep doing so I stopped it and replaced it by running 5+ miles and doing the big 3, but it definitely is the best thing that ever happened to me fitness wise.
I was a crossfitter for about 2 years at the South Bay Crossfit gym (Jason Khalipa's).
My big takeaway from that was that olympic lifting is much more fun and rewarding than CF for me. (Note to HN pedants: for me.) The only problem is that it's hard to find a big box with a barbell, let alone two or three.
Huh, that's interesting. I go to a CrossFit affiliate that actually focusses pretty intently on olympic lifts. Each one hour session includes 20 minutes of practicing a specific lift. The two - olympic lifting and CrossFit - have become so intertwined in my mind that it's difficult to imagine one without the other.
I've been doing Crossfit for about five years, at multiple facilities. The really good CF facilities, including Crossfit Southie in Boston where I currently go, place a huge emphasis on powerlifting and olympic movements. Take a look at the Crossfit Games workouts (http://games.crossfit.com/), and you'll see snatches and deadlifts everywhere.
The problem with Crossfit is that it is an affiliated brand. Every CF facility pays about $5,000 per year to use the Crossfit brand, but each facility is independently owned and operated, and so the programming at each facility is usually unique. There exist a number of questionable facilities, especially out in California where the concentration of gyms is much higher.
The Crossfit affiliates need to start doing some quality control. As I've watch the program expand over the past half-decade, I've been excited at how many people the gyms have helped, but dismayed at how the trainers at some facilities don't share the same love or ability for the basic lifts.
Yeah that's the point I was trying to make. CF turned me onto Olympic lifting and after awhile, I just really learned to love Oly lifting but lose my devotion to CF.
I'm doing Crossfit for about 1.5 years and sometimes it's pretty tough. E.g., last week there was a workout that I was 100% sure I won't be able to finish, though eventually I did even though it took me 20 mins more than more fit people, and I had to scale down couple of parts from prescribed. But thinking back about it, I constantly realize there's no way I'd push myself so hard if I weren't on Crossfit program. And that's probably why previous years of "exercising" here and there did very little for me, but with Crossfit I am feeling real progress. I am still very far from where I want to be, but at least I am feeling some movement towards the goal. And while Crossfit can be very tough sometimes, right on the border of "are you kidding me? you want me to do whathow many times?", it usually works out pretty well.
If your gym only has a smith machine it certainly isn't dangerous to bench; dumbells also offer many exercises, you can even bench with dumbells. Needless to say though, if that's all your gym has, change gyms.
You can bench without a spotter pretty safely up to about 75kg, at which point the roll of shame starts getting challenging. It's different for women though, because rolling a large amount of weight over breasts is apparently quite painful.
Benching without spotting is easy if you aren't going to one rep maxes. If you are doing sets of 5, then don't do rep N if rep N-1 was too hard that you think you will fail the rep. Also, if you stop before the 5th rep, you should be doing sets at a lighter weight.
I bench 120kg+ without a spotter (at 95kg body weight). If I were to fail disastrously, I might have a broken rib, but without collars on the bar the chance of a severe failure that cause me to drop the fully loaded bar on my chest is pretty much 0. I've put it down on my chest and rolled it off more than once, and it only causes a light bruise that's gone in a few hours. I probably wouldn't do much more than 1.5 times body weight without a spotter, but I'm assuming you're not there yet, as I suspect you wouldn't be asking those questions if you were.
And use the dumbbells. You can bench with them. Do sumo deadlifts (legs flared much wider than usual, and lift the weight between your legs - you can start with one dumbbell, and increase to two). Learn to clean the dumbbells for overhead presses and front squats. Back squats are tricky with dumbbells, so there you'll have to resort to the Smith machine, thouhg it is considered somewhat evil amongst many lifters (it is easy to end up lifting with bad form and an unnatural movement, and very easy to fool yourself by leaning into the bar), but it is better than nothing.
Frankly, until you start getting to dumbbells that add up to more than your body weight on every main exercise, there's not much reason why the lack of a proper bar should impede you, and dumbbell exercises have much to be said for them for stability.
I'd agree with this. I've been pinned under 80-90kg weights a few times.
The first thing is, unless you're not concentrating, you don't really drop it. For me, it's normally not being able to lift the weight back up when I've brought it down to my chest. Without collars, you can just tip the weight to the side, the plates fall off, and the bar (fairly rapidly) pings upright. Makes a bit of a noise, and you feel like a fool, but that's all :-)
I've had my bodyweight (110 KG) stuck on my chest with no ill effects other than embarrassment. As the parents say, simply slide the weights off, or ask anyone nearby for a hand.
One thing that is extremely dangerous is using the 'suicide grip' when benching - i.e. having the thumb and fingers on the same side of the bar and simply resting the bar on the palms. It's stupid, but a surprisingly large number of lifters use it.
You don't need to bother benching without a spotter, if you feel uncomfortable. You can load those muscles with body weight exercises. (Push up variations, dips, handstand push ups, etc.)
Alternatively, benching dumbbells won't leave you trapped below a barbell, even without a spotter.
Consider getting the Free Spotter (http://www.shermworks.com). Its about the safest way to go, and is endorsed by a few professional lifters. Nothing in your way to corrupt the motion, and you simply let go if you get in trouble. You don't even need a rack for bench or shoulder press, as you can set the empty bar at your chosen height, load the weight, and lift!
Everything I know is a lie? So, eating huge amounts of fat and sugar, and never exercising is not less healthy than eating some vegetables and going for a run? I doubt it. So can we please stop with such ridiculous headlines?!
Yes, I have read it now. It was a nice article. I did not find out that everything I know about fitness was a lie. I found out that I don't know much, but what I did know was correct (and I learned a number of new things). No reason to hide a nice article behind a rude, condescending and incorrect headline.
> a miasma of lies and misinformation that we mistake for common sense, and that makes most of our gym time a complete waste
Well, it started off with complete bullshit like this. If we could get 10% of people to the gym (instead of their usual home-bound sugar-feast), it would be fucking wonderful. My gym time was never a waste, regardless of my form or which equipment I was using.
The rest of the article, however, I'm pretty in line with with. But it's preaching to the choir for the most part. We could make this article mandatory reading and it wouldn't make a goddamn difference. And that's the problem. Got a solution?
You'd get the Nobel Prize in EVERYTHING if you could figure out an effective way to get masses of people to effect these kinds of changes in their lives. That kind of science spans the realms of pyschology, sociology, medicine, biology, physics, and wizardry.
Actually, eating huge amounts of fat, with the absence of sugar and other carbohydrates can actually be very healthy. I've followed a keto diet for some time now and have much improved cholesterol, triglycerides, and I've lost > 30 lbs. Check out /r/keto on Reddit. Fat is not bad.
Yes, I'm aware of that, which is why I mentioned "huge amounts of fat and sugar" combined with 0 exercise. I know that the combination of those things does not lead to being fit (but the headline tells me that's a lie! so maybe that will lead to me being fit.)
I agree 100%. I would actually be interested in reading an article about fitness but I've decided to steer away from any articles with such bombastic headlines.
I think the author is targeting subscribers of health magazines and gym go-ers. For the average person getting health tips from google news, they probably are only filled with far less lies than the aforementioned group.
I was all ready to come on here and trash this article. The headline and the first few paragraphs had me rolling my eyes. But I kept reading and changed my mind. I've now bookmarked this article.
People seem eager to find some magic, half-hearted shortcut to reaching certain goals. There really aren't any. The best advice is often the kind you don't want to hear. To really improve, look at the people who are the best in their field and mimic them. Why would you blindly trust a magazine written by someone trying to sell you a product?
Look at any college gym to see how well the article's conclusion is supported. Women generally stick to cardio machines. The skinny guys trying to get strong are all on the weight machines, and the big guys are all using free weights.
Having recently switched from distance running to weight-lifting because of an injury, I've had a rapid improvement in a few months. The exercises recommended to me from a guy that benches 400 lbs (180 kg) include: squats, deadlifts, bench press, dips, chin-ups, flys, and ab-crunch machine (only machine he mentioned). Dips and chin-ups should have weight added when body-weight becomes too easy.
Also, since I've very paranoid about injuries now, I've been watching and reading as much as I can on proper lifting form. In this case, I would recommend against copying the strongest guys. I see some very strong people with bad form. All that means is that they've been lucky so far.
Women generally stick to cardio machines. The skinny
guys trying to get strong are all on the weight machines,
and the big guys are all using free weights.
I'm more interested in what exercises decagenarians performed.
> People seem eager to find some magic, half-hearted shortcut to reaching certain goals. There really aren't any. The best advice is often the kind you don't want to hear.
Often yes, and in this case probably especially so, but I'd like to make a general comment here as I hear this sentiment repeated in many other situations: in general, this is not true. The entire technological progress of humanity is based on this simple assumption: there must be a better / faster / magic way to do this, even a half-hearted shortcut, so that we do not have to work much to get what we want. That's why we invented... pretty much everything. We can call it "looking for half-hearted shortcuts" or "optimization", but it's the same process.
I went to a "big box" type gym in January 2012 and hired a staff trainer. I told her that I wanted to lose about 20 lb, get stronger, and start running in mud runs. She started me off with basic body circuit training, working with her once a week and doing 3-5 more workouts the rest of the days. During this period I also watched my calorie intake. By May, I reached my goal on all three accounts, so she switched me to a routine more focused on free weights. Around October, she signed me up with a "specialist": a USAW certified coach that worked outside the "big box" gym, to do some Olympic weightlifting. This was a great experience. Not only did I get a lot stronger, leaner and got a lot more endurance, but I also learned a lot. The best part for me was that I did not have to focus on any one type of exercise: I did not gain 50 lb of muscle and lose all my flexibility, and I did not lose all my muscle mass by focusing solely on cardio. I learned the proper form for doing back squats, clean & jerks, and snatches, and as of a month ago, I can run a 6 minute mile.
My point with all that is that a traditional gym and a staff trainer can work, provided the trainer knows what she is doing. Everybody is different. I have no particular athletic talent; my only advantage is that I am relatively young. However, what I have is time. There are 168 hours in a week. Devoting 5 of them to fitness is not a big deal. For me, finally getting a professional to train me was what I needed. This may work for others as well.
Edit: by the way, getting a trainer to work with you once a week is fairly expensive. I got a raise at the beginning of 2012 and thought that getting a trainer would be a wise way to spend that money. I do not regret a penny I spent. Looking back, the alternatives I considered (getting a loan on a new car, a new computer, etc.) would not have made me as happy as getting more fit than I ever was in my life up to this point.
Re: your last paragraph(the edit), I agree completely. I can think of few things that make me feel as good about myself as when I have a few-month-long streak going of consistently spending time doing physical activities. Gives me such a natural rush of happiness and confidence all day everyday.
Sounds great. The only unsolicited advice I would offer is that if it ever gets boring, I would look into doing some sport half of the time. It will give you social, technical and mental elements that weight training just can't.
Sports are great. Just make sure you stretch beforehand and only play with folks who take safety seriously - it can suck to lose a skiing season because your basketball teammate caused you to roll your ankle.
The philosophy of stretching changes every couple of years. One year, stretching before is the way to go. Then, stretching after sport. Then, no stretching at all.
From what I know: Stretching after doing a workout is bad, because it tenses muscles even more, stopping the flow of blood in the muscle and thus, making muscles more sore. But maybe that opinion is just the current trend.
The science on this one seems clear, stretching is only useful for increasing range of motion. It doesn't prevent injury ( in the studied contexts), it doesn't prevent DOMS, and it doesn't lengthen muscles.
The solid science has been pretty consistent for about 20 years: dynamic stretching can be helpful, static stretching much less so, and the best warm-up for an activity is doing the activity at a lower rate for a few minutes.
Sports are great but don't offer the easy progression in fitness that weight/fitness training offers.
For example you can make yourself steadily stronger by gradually increasing the amount you're squatting each week or by running longer distances. You don't have this level of control when playing competitive sports.
That said I agree with the social elements. Sports are great fun and joining a team sport would be worth it for the camaraderie alone.
One characteristic of aerobic athletics is that most individuals peak in their mid 20s to late 30s, after which raw capabilities typically decline (albeit gradually, less than 1% per year). There's some exception for endurance activities, in which maturity, pacing, training, and nutrition can provide gains until later years (highly competitive 40, 50, and 60-something ultramarathoners aren't uncommon). And for activities involving fine motor control or finesse, skills may be developed over a lifetime, though injuries can also accumulate: gymnasts, dancers, and football players often peak out young.
For strength sports, progress is cumulative over years, meaning peak strength may not occur until the mid 30s or early 40s.
In competitive sports, you're looking at a mix of skills and abilities. Individual progress is harder to measure as it's team results that are most evident, not that stats aren't available (how meaningful they are is another matter). High-contact sports tend to be games of youth, but this isn't always the case.
And for anyone, coming to an activity fresh means a lot of latent potential to unleash: you'll likely improve dramatically over the first few years of participation.
I paid about $25-30 per session. The difference was that at first I signed up for one plan, then switched. I also had to pay for the gym membership, another $40/mo or so.
I just picked up a couple of brochures of yoga and taekwondo classes near my home - each go for 150$ per hour (individual) and 100$ per hour(group) !! And crossfit is 200/month.
Yeah, martial arts are expensive. I was looking at the price per year for this, which works out to be quite a lot.
I am not a fan of CrossFit for many reasons. At best, you simply don't get your money's worth. At worst, it's a one-size-fits-all system with no structure to it. From personal experience, and word of mouth, it's also really easy to get injured doing it.
For most people, that doesn't really account for the travel time, fueling time, cooling off, and general gym fooling around, which there inevitably will be.
I still agree with his point that it's one of the best ways to spend that extra time, but I think it's important to acknowledge it and plan for it. The commitment of a one hour workout is quite different than one that's twice as long because you have to deal with after-work traffic. There's also the matter of which 5 hours, as not all hours are equal in value.
If you have running shoes and a weight bench that's really enough. In the city you can live close to the gym and that keeps the time down, for example I can leave my apartment, return, shower, and dress in under 1:15.
What do you need the bench for? If you only get one piece of equipment, make it a barbell (with some weights).
(Next you buy a squat rack. Or skipping rope, or pull up bars, or olympic rings. If you feel you need to use your triceps, buy olympic rings and do dips on them.)
Oly bar, plates, rack stand or power cage, adjustable dumbbells, chinning bar, dips bar / captain's chair, C2 indoor rower, pulley system, bumper plates & platform, ropes, kettlebells, would make up my essential gym. It's a lot cheaper (and more convenient) to pay someone else a monthly fee to manage and store all that than keep it on premises than accumulate and store it myself. Hence: a good gym is a solid investment.
I bought a Rogue S2, the matching bench and dip accessory, a set of bumpers, Pendlay Bearing Bar, and some rubber mats from the Tractor Store. Put it in my basement. Sure beats having to run to the gym or wondering if it will be open on certain days or the hours. I don't know why you would need or want all those other accessories you mentioned. I like to keep it simple though. It doesn't take up much storage either. Before I bought my current home, I rented out a climate controlled U-Haul to use it.
A bar stand is good, but (if you've got the space and budget for it) a full power cage is going to offer you additional benefits and flexibility. Most of my list actually attaches to that or is proximate to it, so it's not like you'd have a huge pile of equipment spread all over the place.
The cage itself is good for squats, rack pulls, shrugs, high-racked overhead press (as opposed to cleaned presses), and bench press, among others. The safety pins can be used for additional protection where the bar might put you at risk, especially in squats and bench press. Most cages will have a high bar suitable for chin-ups, if not one can generally be added. Similarly a dips attachment. An adjustable pulley gives you the added flexibility of a cable station allowing for pulls with resistance at different orientations (high, low, mid). With front racks, you can work outside the cage while still racking the bar onto it, much as you would with your bar stand. Bumper plates and a platform allow for Oly lifts, which are great for developing not just power but strength (you can do Oly lifts without these, but it's safer and easier on your equipment if you do have them).
An adjustable DB is just a bar, a set of plates, and a locking ring that you can set up for a wide range of weights, it's cheaper than buying a full set of DBs over the same range, and the manual ones will give more range than the adjustable DBs you can typically buy (usually 5-50# or so, not enough for the serious lifter).
A rope hanging from the ceiling for climbing is pretty minimal equipment. Kettelbells (even just 2-4 of a few weights) offer some increased variety to a workout, though most KB moves can be done with DBs.
A Concept2 erg is something I happen to like, and if I had my own gym it's what I'd want.
I could have gotten the cage, but it's larger, heavier, and takes up more space. Also, it's all I need. I didn't want to buy more than I wanted or needed. I don't need a cage to squat, clean, press, and chin. I went back and forth for a while, but those are essentially the only exercises I do. I have no interest in chains, bands, etc. This is fine and works for me. It's also cheaper, easier to take apart/together, and move to a different location if needed.
Most of my workouts were 30 minutes long, and most weeks I did 5 workouts. The other part of the time was spent on commuting to the gym (10 minutes) or getting ready, etc. This is an important point, as most of my weight loss did not come from the exercise: I burnt about 400 calories at a time and immediately replenished them after. The weight loss came from the calorie restricted diet (not overly so, I did create a deficit), which included lots of vegetables and fruit.
I have tried doing dieting alone but it never worked: I could lose weight, but then would gain it back within a year. Combining diet and exercise completed the feedback loop. Eating like crap meant feeling like I was going to die when working out. Conversely, eating well meant performing well. This clicked for me.
Yes. When I was at my strongest (max DL was 525lbs, sadly I'm only in the 400s now) I spent only that in the gym. Lifting weights is both a physical and mental exercise that most people can only continue for ~45 minutes. Anymore than that and it's often useless work because it's not at a level that's still challenging.
Powerlifting tends to make for longer workouts because I would take more rest between sets. When I would do BB or cut workouts I would be in the gym ~30 minutes. Keep in mind that this 30 minutes was full on balls to the wall intensity. It's the intensity that matters and not the time. Also, many people do not know true intensity. I know I didn't learn it until I started doing BJJ training and puking multiple times during 1.5 hour sessions. Protecting yourself and competition has a way of drawing people out to the very edge of what they are capable of.
There was an article recently in Outdoor magazine where even amateur marathon runners are training differently. Instead of slogging out many many miles, they have cut miles and are doing less work but at maximum intensity.
Bench was 325#
Squat was 380#
Weight at the time was 205#
My goals were 500/400/300 DL/Squat/Bench, but I could never get the squat. My legs are long and I do true ATG squats. My quarter and half squats were into the 400s though. My other problem with squats was that I tore my ACL wakeboarding and have had it surgically repaired. It feels great now, but the timing set me back on my squatting.
Benching in the 300s hurt my elbows too much so once I hit that number I backed way off. I rarely bench over 250# during a workout now.
I started with two days of cardio and three days of body circuits. Each workout was about 30 minutes long, though cardio sometimes would go to 40 or so. I kept doing two cardio days throughout, switching from circuits to lifting and back as the trainer told me.
I have, but I am not at that level yet, and trying to keep an even profile would likely prevent me from doing, say a 250 lb clean & jerk. Thanks, I didn't know about the subreddit.
Congratulations. You got lucky, and got a great trainer. The sad reality is this is the exception. I take my office gym for example - I don't go there, but a colleague does. We've discussed fitness over lunch a few times, he gets it.
Guess what the trainers in the gym think about him? They personally do his workouts. They take his advice. They are happy for him to go up to other gym users and coach them, because he knows more than they do about free weights.
They are professional coaches. He's a parts logistics troubleshooter. See the problem there? (And he said that the trainers we have are actually pretty good compared to those at the many commercial gyms he's used).
Thanks. Yes, I did get lucky. Same way I got lucky with the English teacher I had when I only knew Russian and was getting ready to come to the United States. I honestly had no idea how to tell a good trainer from a bad one, and got paired up with a person that knew what she was doing and also was passionate about her job.
However, that was the situation I envisioned as well. I knew how to run and how to bench press, but I didn't know when to do it. I am a software engineer, not a fitness expert. I pretended to be a fitness expert for too long, so I decided to hire someone whose job it was to teach me instead.
One small addition to my story is that my gym had a training coordinator who talked to me about my goals and evaluated my fitness level before pairing me with a trainer. So, you could say that it wasn't completely random that I got paired with my trainer, but a result of a deliberate process. Of course that would depend on how good the coordinator is, so the chain of random events goes on.
"Congratulations. You got lucky, and got a great trainer. The sad reality is this is the exception."
Ain't that the truth! My wife thought that personal training would get her motivated to lose weight and get in shape. Unfortunately the trainer was a complete jerk. He was inconsistent with making his appointments, to his credit though, he must have the unluckiest family ever because just about ever Saturday was a "family emergency" eye roll. But anyway, since he wasn't consistent with showing up and he didn't do much except count and look at his phone, my wife wasn't getting results. That's when he suggested taking weight loss pills. Actually he didn't suggest, he kept pushing them on her. She actually thought about it (to which I convinced her it isn't a good idea). There has been one good trainer at that place since then but he left for a better job (go figure).
I feel that if you go a big box gym, you are walking in to a personal trainer revolving door and that the trainers are sales people in disguise. I have notice that at the gym in my office building (which is an independently owned gym) the trainers seem much more knowledgeable and nobody I have talked to has had any complaints.
You may like the concept of a personal training studio. They are typically a bit more expensive, but the atmosphere is very different from what I hear.
As of now, my wife is just going workout with me and skip the personal training. She has had better results in the past by working out on her own, so we are going to revisit that. As for me, if I'm going to spend money on training it will definitely be with a USAW certified coach as I would just want to learn the Olympic lifts. Thank you for the advice though, if my wife does decide to get back in to see a trainer I'll definitely keep that in mind.
You're much better off finding a gym which specializes in training for strength or power sports (e.g.: powerlifting, Oly lifting, even a better Crossfit box) and signing on with a team. This isn't a group class, it's a team sport.
The cost-effectiveness is much higher than one-on-one training, the emphasis is on measurable results (higher totals, Crossfit games, etc.), and the group itself is competitive but supportive.
One-on-one fitness studios can be good, but it's a high-cost niche.
They are professional coaches. He's a parts logistics troubleshooter. See the problem there?
While your story is both anecdotal and second-hand, what you describe doesn't sound that remarkable: Information is largely free now. It is entirely possible if not probable that someone with an interest in a niche will learn more about specific subject matter than generalists who have to know about the whole field.
The danger for me was thinking that I knew more than the professional did. Yes, you can be more knowledgeable than the trainer, but would you expect them to know more about, say Ruby, than you do if they dabble in it in addition to their full time job? Seems to me like you can (and probably should) always find a professional who knows her trade better than you do. Otherwise, yes it's a waste of your money, time, and health.
I would absolutely expect to find people in other fields who know specific areas of my field better than me. This is the story of every single person "in computers" since the origin of the career, everyone who dabbles desperate to show that they know some specific better than you.
It isnt as though they were upset that their divorce attorney couldnt answer complex questions about patent law. Free weights should not be considered a niche for a personal trainer in a gym. Even just walking around a gym should show you that primarily you have 3 types of equipment, cardio, weight machines, and free weights, so it isnt as though there is simply too much to learn and understand for somebody whose job it is to be knowledgeable.
The issue with many personal trainers (and people you discuss fitness with in general) is that, for the most part, if your diet is good, doing pretty much anything in the gym will get you results. Many trainers have desirable figures and they know it and they constantly have people asking them for advice in their private lives and are paid to give it at their jobs. This causes many to simply assume that what they did is the "correct" way to workout when the truth is that had they dont most any routine with that devotion for many years, they would have gotten similar results.
This is much more similar to investing in the sense that the experts often give worse recommendations than you could find yourself with a few hours research. Im sorry this is too anecdotal for you, but if you walk into most gyms, talk to most people who have a clue about training, etc, then this is what you hear; people simply arent properly educated on personal fitness even when that is their job
> This causes many to simply assume that what they did is the "correct" way to workout when the truth is that had they dont most any routine with that devotion for many years, they would have gotten similar results.
This. A great example of this is Tim Ferris and The 4 Hour Body. That guy basically says "well, here is what I did, and here's what I look like now. Do exactly as I say and you will too." His "research" has a sample size of 1, yet he claims that his method will work for anyone in the world, from a skinny teenager to his overweight mother. True, it will work for some, further muddying the waters.
The thing is, if you work in a gym daily, I'd expect you to have intermediate knowledge of a lot of things: cycling, running, rowing, free weights, warm up exercises, safe stretching techniques, nutrition. The ability to perform assessments of form, fitness, give advice about contra-indicated exercises based on disclosed medical histories, and more.
It's when I see people completely incorrectly adjust their gym bikes, start stretching before they touch any equipment, etc. because their "trainer" told them. When I personally get "corrected" on my "bad" form by a gym trainer (at the time I was attending twice weekly sessions with a qualified amateur lifting trainer instructor), telling me to do the exact opposite of what I was taught. When I see trainers get on the rowing machine and demonstrate poor technique that could lead to repetitive strain back injuries... the list goes on, and it's depressing.
Yes, trainers in a "Globo" gym are incentivized on membership sales, repeat personal sessions, and importantly: running classes. The more classes they are "trained" to run, the more valuable they are as an employee.
I'm not sure anyone knows the answer to that question. My best first approximation is to just jump into an open-source project and try to fix bugs. It gets you to both read code by those who are (presumably) more experienced, while also working your problem-solving skills.
Classical CS education is also important; I went to a school with a fairly math-heavy CS program so that's how I learned it. Our algorithms text was pretty good, but it's on my shelf at home, so I can't recommend it by name.
It is said that Milo of Croton lifted a calf every day, growing stronger as it grew heavier. Perhaps it isn't very insightful, but I learned to program by trying to accomplish increasingly ambitious tasks. You'll succeed at some and fail at others. The failures are the price of your education, so it helps to choose tasks for which the price of failure is low. It also helps to choose tasks for which the reward of success is high, and to revisit your failures when you're ready to succeed. I always thought Steve Jobs' best talent was picking the right tasks to fail at, and learning to not fail at them the next time.
I never quite understood fitness. I bought some weights 2 years back and found a light exercise routine I like enough to do it daily. Works like a charm.
Working with free weights is amazing. After college I decided to get in shape and spent some time doing this: http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5-beginner-strength-tra.... It's just one of many perfectly good programs you can find on the internet, it just has the advantage of being free and pretty simple to follow.
What's really shocking about lifting free weights is how little time it takes to stay "acceptably fit" (not "ripped like Jesus" fit, but "looks pretty good in clothes" fit). It just doesn't take a long workout to work all your muscles to exhaustion, and since it's often counter-productive to work the same muscle group on consecutive days, you don't need to go to the gym every day.
Absolutely. It's amazing how time-efficient resistance training is. Strength training in particular where you're using the higher weights and lower reps.
Agreed. I have found a total of 10 reps (divided by 2 or 3 sets) or less for each lift is enough to see gains. The point is to keep setting a slightly higher max and go to failure.
That depends heavily on your traning status. As a beginner you will see gains with almost any routine.
If you progress enough, you will eventually need more complicated programming.
Going to failure is not a good idea in general. You do not want to train your body to fail. Going for slightly higher maxes each time is excellent advice for beginners, though.
An amazing free ebook called Brain Over Brawn is one of the best things I've ever read on this subject, and continues to include all the big conclusions articles like these come to: http://brainoverbrawn.com/get-the-book/
I highly suggest giving it a a read or scan. It's very well written (fun to read, he's a great writer), short, and very to the point. He applies the 80/20 rule to working out, your body, your diet, and so forth.
My favorite section is how to build what he calls an "engineer bag", which costs a total of around $10 and replacing pretty much all gym equipment.
While some are able to extract valuable benefit from gyms the vast majority are wasting time and money. In addition to that, most of these articles are very thin on reproducible facts and true research-based data.
This is, by far, the most interesting and useful resource I have found when it comes to fitness:
The author covers cellular biology and debunks ideas such as "cardio workouts", treadmill bunnies, jogging and walking around your neighborhood to loose weight with plain-old science. Here you'll learn about the cellular metabolic process, Krebs cycle, Insulin resistance, fatty acid synthesis, glycolitic cycle, Cori cycle, Bohr effect, glycogenolysis, amplification cascade and whole host of other topics that are important, relevant and reasonably well understood.
What's more important is that everything that is proposed in this book is backed by science and scientific studies. It's like open-source software. If you care to dive deeper into why something works the way it does the scientific references are provided. The book has over 25 pages of listed references (about 10% of the book is reference data).
Anyhow, one of the claims of the book is "12 minutes a week" every seven to ten days. In other words, that's the actual time under load you need every seven to ten days to affect significant changes in your body. This does not include time walking around, watching TV or resting. Time under load.
I have to say that it works pretty much exactly as advertised. After reading the book I tried it and had a friend try it. We'd spend about fifteen minutes under load at the gym once a week. For me it changed to fifteen minutes every 9 to 12 days (you track your data in order to determine frequency). I got stronger with every passing week. Something that I was not able to do without a ton more effort in the past.
If you are interested in learning about this, start with Dr McGuff's (the author) videos:
I wish there would be more studies done to support McGuff's theories. I find his ideas (including the ultra-high resistance machines) fascinating, and do hope they turn out to be correct, but I'm also really skeptical of anything that's not been proven by time.
This article is largely rehashing what everyone I know already thinks. BUT, if you are going to claim to contradict widespread views, you should appeal to evidence.
If I disagreed with anything in this article, there is nothing here that would make me change my mind. The author cites how bad he felt that some trainer calling him "little girl weak" as a reason we should lift heavy weights?
Honestly, I couldn't care less about the author's insecurities.
Being 'little-girl weak' after some time following a regime at a commercial gym sort of is evidence. And squatting 40lbs definitely is little-girl weak.
His claim at that point is that raw strength is more useful for general fitness and injury prevention than what he was doing before (which was stability ball training).
While his poor squat performance shows that his stability ball workout wasn't building raw strength, it's quite possible that doing squats wouldn't improve his balance. So which has the biggest benefits for injury prevention?
The article presents no evidence one way or the other. You (and I) may think raw strength is more important. But then we are agreeing with the author only because he's saying things we already thought.
So the article promises to show us why our beliefs are wrong. But we have no reason to accept the author's claims, except that they reinforce our current beliefs.
"he had a gift for building the injury-proof athlete and for reconstructing bodies badly broken on the field of play"
And the article then goes on to mention several elite athletes that have been able to return to competition at the highest levels after using strength training to rebuild their bodies.
The people who are inclined to follow up references to evidence supporting these claims wouldn't be holding these misconceptions in the first place - the research is readily available for those who cares enough to be prepared to look.
> I signed a 10-page membership contract at a corporate-franchise gym, hired my first personal trainer, and became yet another sucker for all the half-baked, largely spurious non-advice cobbled together from doctors, newspapers, magazines, infomercials, websites, government health agencies, and, especially, from the organs of our wonderful $19 billion fitness industry, whose real knack lies in helping us to lose weight around the middle of our wallets.
If that's not a CTA for startups, I don't know what is.
The real CTA would be for them to find a way to make guys like me _want_ to exercise (or find a way to get the benefits of exercise without exercise, which would be the real solution).
This is one of the best fitness articles I've read. Of course, that's me suffering from confirmation bias, because in 3 years of being on a health kick, I came to the same conclusions after talking to various people with a similar interest.
I have a wireless scale from Withings that logs my weight for me, and I try to stand on it every day or two. I think I should get a tape measure and start tracking that too.
Last comments! What I really regret not doing, was taking a daily photo.. I do have a couple of photos (by luck, not by planning), Also, get a tape measure!
starting point, began cycling to work about 2 weeks after this photo was taken (~118 kg, ouch)
Great stuff mate! SL says do front, back, side photos every 2 weeks, which I've been doing, but haven't been doing measurements. Think I'll start on that too.
One of the fun things about working out is it appeals to my love of keeping and viewing personal statistics :)
I've never tried a barbell, partly because people seem to have someone helping out when they use it. Would you recommend using one alone, or should I stick to dumbbells to avoid possible injuries?
I would recommend using one alone, because I do it all the time. Survivor bias! ;)
With SS/Stronglifts/Whatever, you begin with an empty bar, (or no bar if you can't squat at all), so the weight doesn't start out being something you need any genuine assistance with. With the power rack you have the safety pins. You adjust the safety pins to be at a point where if you are in the bottom of the squat, and you can't return to standing position, you just drop the bar off your back onto the pins (or lower it onto the pins)
With the bench press it's the same thing - you set the pins so they're below your lowest point in the bench press (bar touching sternum), but slightly above your neck level (I'm lucky in terms of bench / safety pin positioning, it's perfect for me) - when I fail a bench press, or can't push it off, I just let it hit the pins and slide out from underneath the bar.
If you don't have access to a power rack with safety pins I would not recommend doing the bench press without a spotter unless you back the weight off to something you will always confidently re-rack safely.
However a spotter with the squat is a recipe for ruin, best to just rely on the pins. Supposedly designed to handle 200kg+ dropped on them from 4+ft. Hopefully your gym hasn't bought a cheap shitty rack!
The thing I've come close to injuring myself the most with is the press. I was arching my back too much and putting a lot of pressure on my lower back - trick is to keep stomach tight when doing the press. Something I wasn't doing.
Dumbbells are definitely safer if you need to drop the weights and don't have a rack, but I find certain lifts (power cleans mostly) put stress on my elbows if I'm not using a bar.
I have found kettlebells to be very useful also. There is a sub-reddit on them: http://reddit.com/r/kettlebell . I will have to look into the Starting Strength book, I always had problems when trying to do squats before - perhaps bad technique.
This article is currently top1 of HN home. It relates with some male's obsessions with their bodies, but has nothing to feed to one's intellectual curiosity. Flagged.
What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
The fact that it is on top demonstrates that it is doing the trick.
> The fact that it is on top demonstrates that it is doing the trick.
Demonstrate? Really? What about the other possibilities?
- An uncatched click-ring pulled it up.
- The HN crowd has been tricked to upvote something that do not "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" (would not be the first time).
- This "intellectual curiosity" is misunderstood. I remember a friend's friend who had a big collection of porn. He told us blantly that he did watch them only out of curiosity and interest... Yes. But, you know, I also feel mildly titillated when checking gossips about some topic I am interested in, eg. Mr Facebook wedding pics, and could easily mistake this for "intellectual curiosity gratification", but it is not, or anything is and the filter becomes useless.
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[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 527 ms ] threadI say this only so that you don't read this and think these are some kind of fringe theories. They're widely, WIDELY known and 100% true.
Free weights as better than machines was fairly well known at least as far back as the early 90s. "Machines don't work your stabiliser muscles" was the phrase I generally heard.
Ha! Hard to argue with that because you pluralized 'definition.'
But what I mean is, (1) If I'm doing a chest exercise, for example, with 270+ pounds, and I fail on a machine, I can get out of it. With free weights, I need a spotter and it's much trickier. (2) Perhaps more important: If I'm doing heavy legs (450 lbs, for example), with free weights I have to load a lot of weight on my back for a squat. This is dangerous even for younger men (I'm 50 years old) because slight distraction and they can hurt their backs in a way that is really hard to get over. Load up a weight machine and I don't have to worry about it.
I hit the stabilizer muscles doing light weight squats on a bosu ball.
So, yeah, in a perfect world I'd be 25 years old and doing all free weights. But I've adapted to my circumstances in what I believe to be a reasonable way.
It's a bit like barefoot running vs shod running. Shoes protect your feet, so they are ostensibly safer. But they also make it easy to have bad technique and wreck your joints, especially your knees.
> (1) If I'm doing a chest exercise, for example, with 270+ pounds, and I fail on a machine, I can get out of it. With free weights, I need a spotter and it's much trickier.
Depends on what you are doing, and how you are doing it. The only real need for a spotter is for barbell bench pressing. There you can bench press in a squat rack with the safeties set to the right level. But there are lots of other exercises that provide a similar benefit without trapping you. E.g. (weighted) dips (on rings), push up variations, hand stand push ups, standing overhead presses.
Yes, that was my point #2.
The only real need for a spotter is for barbell bench pressing
I was specifically thinking about the bench-press-like machine press, but also true for the dumbell fly exercise.
I do the free-weight lifts, just not with heavy weight. When I want to seriously stress my muscles I go to the machines.
I just started with the bosu-ball stuff last year and I have to say I like it. It hits stabilizers the squat doesn't begin to touch. I'm a sailor- just got back from a week-long bareboat charter in pretty choppy seas, and I really like the results. I'm not sure I can articulate it though- while it helped my balance, it also helped my strength while maintaining balance. For example, the task of picking up a mooring ball with the boat bouncing seemed easier. But that may just be a distorted perception.
Interesting. How much do you squat in relation to your bodyweight? Have you ever tried slacklining?
I don't blame them for thinking that way, the fitness industry has conditioned an entire generation into thinking cardio is the way to go and that high rep work with pink dumbbells is how you 'tone'.
The more articles there are like this, the more likely we will see a shift in how everyone tries to get fit.
For life in general, or at least the things that matter in life, it's always a good idea to do your own research. Otherwise you end up going through life believing the half-baked stories people make up so they don't have to think, and the bullshit people tell you to sell you stuff.
(Sweeping generalisation) Most women avoid free weights because they don't want to put on muscle and look like a body builder. Doesn't happen. Hell, some men have that same attitude because "hey I don't want to get bulky". My comment is "well if you discover that secret, you should market it because millions of people will buy it"
It's the exact same way with articles advocating diets relatively higher in protein and fat. An assertion of novelty seems to be a mandatory element of any attempt to market anything fitness related.
Both have their place, though I put a heavy emphasis on freeweights.
Or anybody who picked up an issue of IronMan magazine, dating back to at least the late 80's or early 90's.
That's news to me. Not saying it is wrong, but if it is a fact, it's one even reasonably informed people doesn't know. Studies (http://jap.physiology.org/content/102/4/1439.long and http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311123639.ht...) suggest that High-intensity interval training is an incredibly time efficient way to get in shape.
The fitness "industry" like several industries out there is 80% "Fitness 101 that doesn't solve a thing"
Physicians, trainers, the 'food pyramid', Fitness magazines, etc, they're all in on this crap.
Not to mention most sports are more damaging (or just plain stressful) to the body than lifting weights.
Tour de France is only humanly possible because of the large amount of doping used.
http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1151309/
I break the mold all the time, but only when I think a patient is mature enough and enlightened enough to handle it. Otherwise it's completely pointless (and will fail to meet the "standard of care" in most cases).
1. explains the supercompensation period and how to time your workouts.
2. champions free weights and resistance exercise.
3. explains injuries and gives some practical exercises to strengthen the rotator cuff (frequent injury among bodybuilders)
However, I'm not sure if I agree with the "Fundamental Four" and him saying muscular endurance (low weights, high reps) "is great for endurance sports but tends to undermine the first three, shrinking your strength, power, and muscle size."
There's a recent paper refuting this theory, http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/h2012-022 . It basically says that low weights, high rep actually builds as much muscle mass as high weights, low reps... but both need to be done to the points of exhaustion, and that's they key.
Edit: Just wanted to give some more background on my thoughts on low weight, high rep. I became interested in this after I visited a trainer who suggested high reps (ie., 50+) with low weights. He demonstrated on me and made me do 25 reps of low weight bench press. At around 20 reps I couldn't do any more but helped me barely finish the remaining 5. His point was that you can do low weights, high reps but you need to work past what your mind is capable (and thus he suggests a personal trainer to push those limits). He also said with lower weights, high reps I could gain muscle mass and it's healthier (ie., less injuries) but if I wanted to be huge like a bodybuilder that lower reps, higher weights is better.
So, I've been trying this out on myself recently - doing low weights (30-40% of usual) and high reps (25-50), and doing each rep until the point of exhaustion (not able to lift any more). And then I take a short break (15-30 seconds) and do it again. Break, repeat, etc... until I do about 10 sets. Each set is to the point of exhaustion and I can't lift any more. The results is I'm super sore and it feels great. Prior I tried the StrongLifts 5x5 program (5 reps, 5 set) and also the typical 6-12 reps per set. But with heavier weights, I'm more scared of injury and it's harder to go to the point of exhaustion by myself. With lower weights, I don't fear injury as much.
I'm not trying to become a bodybuilder- rather just trying to bulk up a bit, lose fat and get fit.
Interesting. But I would still be skeptical because of one thing: bone/tendon resistance
Not sure small weights/high reps can create the kind of bone changes (and tendon resistance) that bigger weights do. And this may be critical in some situations.
Take a video with your phone and either check your form yourself or ask online for a form check.
I requested an exception once at a 24 hour gym and they had the most inane excuse. They said "there may be witness protection people here that could be compromised". I really had no response to that one...
If you want to get better at something, do the something you want to get better at.
One academic study of 18 untrained athletes.
Mark Rippetoe (author of the Starting Strength book recommended by the original article) actually says that an untrained subject will improve their performance by doing any exercise.
The problem with reps at that level for me personally is that its very difficult to know where your limit is. With failure around 5 reps it's very obvious which is your last possible rep.
Also 50 reps is just much more pain for the same (or less) gain as I see it. I can do 60-70 press ups which would be in that range, but it's significantly harder work than 5 reps near my max bench.
A while ago someone posted an article on Reddit about a group of 5 people who had tried a 1000 kettlebell swings per day for 10 days challenge, and about the outcomes. The discussion turned to whether it'd be possible to get close to that with squats or various other execises. So I figured I'd see how close I'd get with squats.
I didn't finish a full 10 days, and I didn't reach 1000, but I did ~400 bodyweight squats a day for 5-6 days in sets ranging from 20 to 100 at the time. It'd not be that hard to do more if you have time, after the first few days of soreness.
What I learned (apart from how funny you'll walk the day after 400 squats) was that the difference for me between 20 and a 100 squats was whether or not I drew my focus away from the burn, and how I counted, coupled with pacing. When I counted towards 20 and then at 15 said to myself that I'm halfway to 30, so I might as well continue, and kept going like that, meeting 100 was "easy" and I probably could do more. But I'd slow down substantially towards the end, and I'd get more done in less time by confining myself to sets around 5 0 reps.
But I could just as well reach 20 and feel my legs were on fire and I needed a break, if I didn't pace myself properly or didn't "tricky" myself into moving the goalpost.
I honestly don't know what my actual failure limit is for bodyweight squats. I just know that it's somewhere beyond 50 and likely beyond 100 depending on what restrictions I were to set on pace. I thus also don't know, without experimentation, how many reps I'd need to see growth that way... Too much hassle to try to find out.
The mental maths helped block out the discomfort!
With weights, you can just use lower weight, and can thus freely work your muscles to exhaustion. With body weight movements, you can try negatives, but again- much more difficult.
See this diagram for example: http://www.operatorchan.org/pt/src/135399773193.jpg
The book recommended by xweb explains in more detail how to fill the holes between these exercises.
The logic works the other way, too, for increasing difficulty. Can you do 3 sets of a hundred one-armed pushups? Well, start climbing your feet up the wall!
If you can do free-standing one-hand vertical pushups without strain, I've got nothing for ya. Go ahead and start vert pressing 600 pounds. Also, try out for the Olympic weightlifting team--the gold medal should be easy!
http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-3rd-Mark-Rippetoe/dp...
The DVD is a great guide to the six or so major movements in weightlifting and I found it was much easier to visualise what I was meant to be doing.
I got serious in May '11 and by Jan '12 my personal bests were a massive improvement over where I had started, and I found that I was really enjoying tracking my progress and getting strong and fit.
I'd gone from benching 80 kgs to a 1 rep max of 120kg, and squatting 90kg a 1 rep max of 160kg.
I found the major contributor to my improvement was - consistency (3 times a week, every week), and - focussing on getting the biggest impact for your time in the gym.
Even if you just squat and deadlift, I believe you're doing much more for yourself than by focussing on what most people do - tricep pulldowns and bicep curls.
Anyway, was struck me about CrossFit and really any group exercise routine is how much more it makes you tax your own body. When you're at the gym, you don't push yourself. You run comfortably fast on the treadmill, lift a comfortable amount of weight, and do it at a comfortable pace. Group exercise is great for breaking you out of that habit and making you push your limits. It's too easy to pretend that 45 minutes at the gym, 15 of which is "cardio" and 15 of which is "cooldown", is going to change anything.
Says who? This seems like a false premise to me.
And yes, of course there are people who can put in supremely productive 9-to-5 days at the home office and/or whip themselves mercilessly in solo workouts. But they're a minority.
My big takeaway from that was that olympic lifting is much more fun and rewarding than CF for me. (Note to HN pedants: for me.) The only problem is that it's hard to find a big box with a barbell, let alone two or three.
This article has fired me up again.
The problem with Crossfit is that it is an affiliated brand. Every CF facility pays about $5,000 per year to use the Crossfit brand, but each facility is independently owned and operated, and so the programming at each facility is usually unique. There exist a number of questionable facilities, especially out in California where the concentration of gyms is much higher.
The Crossfit affiliates need to start doing some quality control. As I've watch the program expand over the past half-decade, I've been excited at how many people the gyms have helped, but dismayed at how the trainers at some facilities don't share the same love or ability for the basic lifts.
Note: I haven't tried this with a huge amount of weight, so it might still be dangerous if you're benching 300 lbs+
And use the dumbbells. You can bench with them. Do sumo deadlifts (legs flared much wider than usual, and lift the weight between your legs - you can start with one dumbbell, and increase to two). Learn to clean the dumbbells for overhead presses and front squats. Back squats are tricky with dumbbells, so there you'll have to resort to the Smith machine, thouhg it is considered somewhat evil amongst many lifters (it is easy to end up lifting with bad form and an unnatural movement, and very easy to fool yourself by leaning into the bar), but it is better than nothing.
Frankly, until you start getting to dumbbells that add up to more than your body weight on every main exercise, there's not much reason why the lack of a proper bar should impede you, and dumbbell exercises have much to be said for them for stability.
The first thing is, unless you're not concentrating, you don't really drop it. For me, it's normally not being able to lift the weight back up when I've brought it down to my chest. Without collars, you can just tip the weight to the side, the plates fall off, and the bar (fairly rapidly) pings upright. Makes a bit of a noise, and you feel like a fool, but that's all :-)
One thing that is extremely dangerous is using the 'suicide grip' when benching - i.e. having the thumb and fingers on the same side of the bar and simply resting the bar on the palms. It's stupid, but a surprisingly large number of lifters use it.
Yes, it's a slightly better angle for your wrists, but you can get that anyways, and it will kill you.
You don't need to bother benching without a spotter, if you feel uncomfortable. You can load those muscles with body weight exercises. (Push up variations, dips, handstand push ups, etc.)
Alternatively, benching dumbbells won't leave you trapped below a barbell, even without a spotter.
Well, it started off with complete bullshit like this. If we could get 10% of people to the gym (instead of their usual home-bound sugar-feast), it would be fucking wonderful. My gym time was never a waste, regardless of my form or which equipment I was using.
The rest of the article, however, I'm pretty in line with with. But it's preaching to the choir for the most part. We could make this article mandatory reading and it wouldn't make a goddamn difference. And that's the problem. Got a solution?
You'd get the Nobel Prize in EVERYTHING if you could figure out an effective way to get masses of people to effect these kinds of changes in their lives. That kind of science spans the realms of pyschology, sociology, medicine, biology, physics, and wizardry.
People seem eager to find some magic, half-hearted shortcut to reaching certain goals. There really aren't any. The best advice is often the kind you don't want to hear. To really improve, look at the people who are the best in their field and mimic them. Why would you blindly trust a magazine written by someone trying to sell you a product?
Look at any college gym to see how well the article's conclusion is supported. Women generally stick to cardio machines. The skinny guys trying to get strong are all on the weight machines, and the big guys are all using free weights.
Having recently switched from distance running to weight-lifting because of an injury, I've had a rapid improvement in a few months. The exercises recommended to me from a guy that benches 400 lbs (180 kg) include: squats, deadlifts, bench press, dips, chin-ups, flys, and ab-crunch machine (only machine he mentioned). Dips and chin-ups should have weight added when body-weight becomes too easy.
Also, since I've very paranoid about injuries now, I've been watching and reading as much as I can on proper lifting form. In this case, I would recommend against copying the strongest guys. I see some very strong people with bad form. All that means is that they've been lucky so far.
Often yes, and in this case probably especially so, but I'd like to make a general comment here as I hear this sentiment repeated in many other situations: in general, this is not true. The entire technological progress of humanity is based on this simple assumption: there must be a better / faster / magic way to do this, even a half-hearted shortcut, so that we do not have to work much to get what we want. That's why we invented... pretty much everything. We can call it "looking for half-hearted shortcuts" or "optimization", but it's the same process.
My point with all that is that a traditional gym and a staff trainer can work, provided the trainer knows what she is doing. Everybody is different. I have no particular athletic talent; my only advantage is that I am relatively young. However, what I have is time. There are 168 hours in a week. Devoting 5 of them to fitness is not a big deal. For me, finally getting a professional to train me was what I needed. This may work for others as well.
Edit: by the way, getting a trainer to work with you once a week is fairly expensive. I got a raise at the beginning of 2012 and thought that getting a trainer would be a wise way to spend that money. I do not regret a penny I spent. Looking back, the alternatives I considered (getting a loan on a new car, a new computer, etc.) would not have made me as happy as getting more fit than I ever was in my life up to this point.
Stretching happens after if ever, not before :)
From what I know: Stretching after doing a workout is bad, because it tenses muscles even more, stopping the flow of blood in the muscle and thus, making muscles more sore. But maybe that opinion is just the current trend.
on phone, but sources are a quick search away.
For example you can make yourself steadily stronger by gradually increasing the amount you're squatting each week or by running longer distances. You don't have this level of control when playing competitive sports.
That said I agree with the social elements. Sports are great fun and joining a team sport would be worth it for the camaraderie alone.
One characteristic of aerobic athletics is that most individuals peak in their mid 20s to late 30s, after which raw capabilities typically decline (albeit gradually, less than 1% per year). There's some exception for endurance activities, in which maturity, pacing, training, and nutrition can provide gains until later years (highly competitive 40, 50, and 60-something ultramarathoners aren't uncommon). And for activities involving fine motor control or finesse, skills may be developed over a lifetime, though injuries can also accumulate: gymnasts, dancers, and football players often peak out young.
For strength sports, progress is cumulative over years, meaning peak strength may not occur until the mid 30s or early 40s.
In competitive sports, you're looking at a mix of skills and abilities. Individual progress is harder to measure as it's team results that are most evident, not that stats aren't available (how meaningful they are is another matter). High-contact sports tend to be games of youth, but this isn't always the case.
And for anyone, coming to an activity fresh means a lot of latent potential to unleash: you'll likely improve dramatically over the first few years of participation.
I just picked up a couple of brochures of yoga and taekwondo classes near my home - each go for 150$ per hour (individual) and 100$ per hour(group) !! And crossfit is 200/month.
I am not a fan of CrossFit for many reasons. At best, you simply don't get your money's worth. At worst, it's a one-size-fits-all system with no structure to it. From personal experience, and word of mouth, it's also really easy to get injured doing it.
I still agree with his point that it's one of the best ways to spend that extra time, but I think it's important to acknowledge it and plan for it. The commitment of a one hour workout is quite different than one that's twice as long because you have to deal with after-work traffic. There's also the matter of which 5 hours, as not all hours are equal in value.
(Next you buy a squat rack. Or skipping rope, or pull up bars, or olympic rings. If you feel you need to use your triceps, buy olympic rings and do dips on them.)
The cage itself is good for squats, rack pulls, shrugs, high-racked overhead press (as opposed to cleaned presses), and bench press, among others. The safety pins can be used for additional protection where the bar might put you at risk, especially in squats and bench press. Most cages will have a high bar suitable for chin-ups, if not one can generally be added. Similarly a dips attachment. An adjustable pulley gives you the added flexibility of a cable station allowing for pulls with resistance at different orientations (high, low, mid). With front racks, you can work outside the cage while still racking the bar onto it, much as you would with your bar stand. Bumper plates and a platform allow for Oly lifts, which are great for developing not just power but strength (you can do Oly lifts without these, but it's safer and easier on your equipment if you do have them).
You can also set up a rack for use with bands, chains, or both, to change and target your training. A rack generally offers anchor points for bands (chains just get draped over the bar): http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_trai...
Something like this offers most of what I'm talking about, many other cages do as well: http://www.texasstrengthsystems.com/powerracks.html
An adjustable DB is just a bar, a set of plates, and a locking ring that you can set up for a wide range of weights, it's cheaper than buying a full set of DBs over the same range, and the manual ones will give more range than the adjustable DBs you can typically buy (usually 5-50# or so, not enough for the serious lifter).
A rope hanging from the ceiling for climbing is pretty minimal equipment. Kettelbells (even just 2-4 of a few weights) offer some increased variety to a workout, though most KB moves can be done with DBs.
A Concept2 erg is something I happen to like, and if I had my own gym it's what I'd want.
Total space budget isn't all that huge
I have tried doing dieting alone but it never worked: I could lose weight, but then would gain it back within a year. Combining diet and exercise completed the feedback loop. Eating like crap meant feeling like I was going to die when working out. Conversely, eating well meant performing well. This clicked for me.
Powerlifting tends to make for longer workouts because I would take more rest between sets. When I would do BB or cut workouts I would be in the gym ~30 minutes. Keep in mind that this 30 minutes was full on balls to the wall intensity. It's the intensity that matters and not the time. Also, many people do not know true intensity. I know I didn't learn it until I started doing BJJ training and puking multiple times during 1.5 hour sessions. Protecting yourself and competition has a way of drawing people out to the very edge of what they are capable of.
There was an article recently in Outdoor magazine where even amateur marathon runners are training differently. Instead of slogging out many many miles, they have cut miles and are doing less work but at maximum intensity.
My goals were 500/400/300 DL/Squat/Bench, but I could never get the squat. My legs are long and I do true ATG squats. My quarter and half squats were into the 400s though. My other problem with squats was that I tore my ACL wakeboarding and have had it surgically repaired. It feels great now, but the timing set me back on my squatting.
Benching in the 300s hurt my elbows too much so once I hit that number I backed way off. I rarely bench over 250# during a workout now.
Guess what the trainers in the gym think about him? They personally do his workouts. They take his advice. They are happy for him to go up to other gym users and coach them, because he knows more than they do about free weights.
They are professional coaches. He's a parts logistics troubleshooter. See the problem there? (And he said that the trainers we have are actually pretty good compared to those at the many commercial gyms he's used).
However, that was the situation I envisioned as well. I knew how to run and how to bench press, but I didn't know when to do it. I am a software engineer, not a fitness expert. I pretended to be a fitness expert for too long, so I decided to hire someone whose job it was to teach me instead.
One small addition to my story is that my gym had a training coordinator who talked to me about my goals and evaluated my fitness level before pairing me with a trainer. So, you could say that it wasn't completely random that I got paired with my trainer, but a result of a deliberate process. Of course that would depend on how good the coordinator is, so the chain of random events goes on.
Ain't that the truth! My wife thought that personal training would get her motivated to lose weight and get in shape. Unfortunately the trainer was a complete jerk. He was inconsistent with making his appointments, to his credit though, he must have the unluckiest family ever because just about ever Saturday was a "family emergency" eye roll. But anyway, since he wasn't consistent with showing up and he didn't do much except count and look at his phone, my wife wasn't getting results. That's when he suggested taking weight loss pills. Actually he didn't suggest, he kept pushing them on her. She actually thought about it (to which I convinced her it isn't a good idea). There has been one good trainer at that place since then but he left for a better job (go figure).
I feel that if you go a big box gym, you are walking in to a personal trainer revolving door and that the trainers are sales people in disguise. I have notice that at the gym in my office building (which is an independently owned gym) the trainers seem much more knowledgeable and nobody I have talked to has had any complaints.
The cost-effectiveness is much higher than one-on-one training, the emphasis is on measurable results (higher totals, Crossfit games, etc.), and the group itself is competitive but supportive.
One-on-one fitness studios can be good, but it's a high-cost niche.
While your story is both anecdotal and second-hand, what you describe doesn't sound that remarkable: Information is largely free now. It is entirely possible if not probable that someone with an interest in a niche will learn more about specific subject matter than generalists who have to know about the whole field.
The issue with many personal trainers (and people you discuss fitness with in general) is that, for the most part, if your diet is good, doing pretty much anything in the gym will get you results. Many trainers have desirable figures and they know it and they constantly have people asking them for advice in their private lives and are paid to give it at their jobs. This causes many to simply assume that what they did is the "correct" way to workout when the truth is that had they dont most any routine with that devotion for many years, they would have gotten similar results.
This is much more similar to investing in the sense that the experts often give worse recommendations than you could find yourself with a few hours research. Im sorry this is too anecdotal for you, but if you walk into most gyms, talk to most people who have a clue about training, etc, then this is what you hear; people simply arent properly educated on personal fitness even when that is their job
This. A great example of this is Tim Ferris and The 4 Hour Body. That guy basically says "well, here is what I did, and here's what I look like now. Do exactly as I say and you will too." His "research" has a sample size of 1, yet he claims that his method will work for anyone in the world, from a skinny teenager to his overweight mother. True, it will work for some, further muddying the waters.
The thing is, if you work in a gym daily, I'd expect you to have intermediate knowledge of a lot of things: cycling, running, rowing, free weights, warm up exercises, safe stretching techniques, nutrition. The ability to perform assessments of form, fitness, give advice about contra-indicated exercises based on disclosed medical histories, and more.
It's when I see people completely incorrectly adjust their gym bikes, start stretching before they touch any equipment, etc. because their "trainer" told them. When I personally get "corrected" on my "bad" form by a gym trainer (at the time I was attending twice weekly sessions with a qualified amateur lifting trainer instructor), telling me to do the exact opposite of what I was taught. When I see trainers get on the rowing machine and demonstrate poor technique that could lead to repetitive strain back injuries... the list goes on, and it's depressing.
Quite the market failure IMO.
Does anyone know of an article that does the same for becoming a great developer rather than continuing to wade in the novice waters of programming?
Classical CS education is also important; I went to a school with a fairly math-heavy CS program so that's how I learned it. Our algorithms text was pretty good, but it's on my shelf at home, so I can't recommend it by name.
The lecture notes for CS 182 are reasonably good for the really basic stuff: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/raof/cs182-f12/schedule.shtml
[edit] Not quite as complete as they used to be; it was previously all taught from lecture notes, but they now have 2 textbooks they use as well
What's really shocking about lifting free weights is how little time it takes to stay "acceptably fit" (not "ripped like Jesus" fit, but "looks pretty good in clothes" fit). It just doesn't take a long workout to work all your muscles to exhaustion, and since it's often counter-productive to work the same muscle group on consecutive days, you don't need to go to the gym every day.
If you progress enough, you will eventually need more complicated programming.
Going to failure is not a good idea in general. You do not want to train your body to fail. Going for slightly higher maxes each time is excellent advice for beginners, though.
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/12/18/pavel-8020-p...
I highly suggest giving it a a read or scan. It's very well written (fun to read, he's a great writer), short, and very to the point. He applies the 80/20 rule to working out, your body, your diet, and so forth.
My favorite section is how to build what he calls an "engineer bag", which costs a total of around $10 and replacing pretty much all gym equipment.
This is, by far, the most interesting and useful resource I have found when it comes to fitness:
http://www.amazon.com/Body-Science-Research-Program-Results/...
The author covers cellular biology and debunks ideas such as "cardio workouts", treadmill bunnies, jogging and walking around your neighborhood to loose weight with plain-old science. Here you'll learn about the cellular metabolic process, Krebs cycle, Insulin resistance, fatty acid synthesis, glycolitic cycle, Cori cycle, Bohr effect, glycogenolysis, amplification cascade and whole host of other topics that are important, relevant and reasonably well understood.
What's more important is that everything that is proposed in this book is backed by science and scientific studies. It's like open-source software. If you care to dive deeper into why something works the way it does the scientific references are provided. The book has over 25 pages of listed references (about 10% of the book is reference data).
Anyhow, one of the claims of the book is "12 minutes a week" every seven to ten days. In other words, that's the actual time under load you need every seven to ten days to affect significant changes in your body. This does not include time walking around, watching TV or resting. Time under load.
I have to say that it works pretty much exactly as advertised. After reading the book I tried it and had a friend try it. We'd spend about fifteen minutes under load at the gym once a week. For me it changed to fifteen minutes every 9 to 12 days (you track your data in order to determine frequency). I got stronger with every passing week. Something that I was not able to do without a ton more effort in the past.
If you are interested in learning about this, start with Dr McGuff's (the author) videos:
http://www.bodybyscience.net/home.html/?page_id=2
If I disagreed with anything in this article, there is nothing here that would make me change my mind. The author cites how bad he felt that some trainer calling him "little girl weak" as a reason we should lift heavy weights?
Honestly, I couldn't care less about the author's insecurities.
While his poor squat performance shows that his stability ball workout wasn't building raw strength, it's quite possible that doing squats wouldn't improve his balance. So which has the biggest benefits for injury prevention?
The article presents no evidence one way or the other. You (and I) may think raw strength is more important. But then we are agreeing with the author only because he's saying things we already thought.
So the article promises to show us why our beliefs are wrong. But we have no reason to accept the author's claims, except that they reinforce our current beliefs.
And the article then goes on to mention several elite athletes that have been able to return to competition at the highest levels after using strength training to rebuild their bodies.
Seems pretty solid to me.
If that's not a CTA for startups, I don't know what is.
(Oh, right, there's already a ton of those...)
My progression went:-
Cycling -> Running -> Machines -> Body Weight Exercises -> Discovering Rippetoe/SS -> Barbell (Power Rack)
The barbell is the king, and the great thing is in my gym it's always (95%) free. Everyone is on the cable machines.
Now I try and get all my friends and family doing some sort of 3x5/SS program because it. just. works. I even have my daughters doing it!
Glad I'm not partially wasting my time, and going onto the good stuff!
http://www.arcturus.com.au/sean/weekly_weight_2010.png
http://www.arcturus.com.au/sean/weekly_weight_2011.png
http://www.arcturus.com.au/sean/chart_latest.png
Large gain of 5+ kilos this year - trying to get squat past 140kg, hah. Playing rugby next year.
The biggest key is keeping a record. Doesn't really matter what you do, as long as you log it.
Good luck!
I have a wireless scale from Withings that logs my weight for me, and I try to stand on it every day or two. I think I should get a tape measure and start tracking that too.
starting point, began cycling to work about 2 weeks after this photo was taken (~118 kg, ouch)
http://www.arcturus.com.au/sean/2009-09-15.jpg
6 months later with riding every day and body weight exercises (~97kg)
http://www.arcturus.com.au/sean/2010-03-22.jpg
I would highly recommend taking some photos, because you don't notice changes yourself, everyone else does. :)
One of the fun things about working out is it appeals to my love of keeping and viewing personal statistics :)
And while we're talking about cycling, you're familiar with the bone-loss issues (which if you're lifting you're addressing nicely)?
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/16/health/he-cycling16
Get some gymnastic rings some day. Even if you just do dips and pull ups in them, they will be worth their small purchasing price.
With SS/Stronglifts/Whatever, you begin with an empty bar, (or no bar if you can't squat at all), so the weight doesn't start out being something you need any genuine assistance with. With the power rack you have the safety pins. You adjust the safety pins to be at a point where if you are in the bottom of the squat, and you can't return to standing position, you just drop the bar off your back onto the pins (or lower it onto the pins)
With the bench press it's the same thing - you set the pins so they're below your lowest point in the bench press (bar touching sternum), but slightly above your neck level (I'm lucky in terms of bench / safety pin positioning, it's perfect for me) - when I fail a bench press, or can't push it off, I just let it hit the pins and slide out from underneath the bar.
Youtube example of what I'm talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCOo3RtKu1E#t=59s
If you don't have access to a power rack with safety pins I would not recommend doing the bench press without a spotter unless you back the weight off to something you will always confidently re-rack safely.
However a spotter with the squat is a recipe for ruin, best to just rely on the pins. Supposedly designed to handle 200kg+ dropped on them from 4+ft. Hopefully your gym hasn't bought a cheap shitty rack!
The thing I've come close to injuring myself the most with is the press. I was arching my back too much and putting a lot of pressure on my lower back - trick is to keep stomach tight when doing the press. Something I wasn't doing.
The timing is also very good with New Year's resolutions and in particular for me as I'm finishing my studies and will actually have time to exercise.
The fact that it is on top demonstrates that it is doing the trick.
Demonstrate? Really? What about the other possibilities?
- An uncatched click-ring pulled it up.
- The HN crowd has been tricked to upvote something that do not "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" (would not be the first time).
- This "intellectual curiosity" is misunderstood. I remember a friend's friend who had a big collection of porn. He told us blantly that he did watch them only out of curiosity and interest... Yes. But, you know, I also feel mildly titillated when checking gossips about some topic I am interested in, eg. Mr Facebook wedding pics, and could easily mistake this for "intellectual curiosity gratification", but it is not, or anything is and the filter becomes useless.
Whining about why an article is on top of an internet news site is pathetic either way.