Weight Lifting for Hackers
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Weight Lifting for Hackers
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Re: Weight Lifting for Hackers
#2ugh....the large number of reps at low weight meme has spread because people want to believe that they can do an easy workout. if you can do more than 5 reps your weight is too light. there's no such thing as "toned instead of bulk". lifting casually a few times a week is not going to turn you into a hulkish freak. and if you want toned you do CARDIO. treating weightlifting as cardio is stupid.
for the average person doing weighted dips and pullups is more than enough. do those combined with jogging up hills a few times a week and you'll be in great shape. if you want to take it further you should be doing olympic lifts. anything else is really for professionals with specific needs or people with medical problems.
Re: Weight Lifting for Hackers
#3I don't see the "for Hackers" angle in this article.
Yes, you can think through problems while lifting but that's hardly unique to weight lifting. Ditto for books on tape.
I'm not hating on weight lifting here (I've been lifting consistently for 9+ years) but I just don't see this as being Hacker News.
PS - I think you meant to write "read" instead of "ready" here: "In particular, the Freakonomics audio books are quite good as they are ready by the author, as is Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell."
Re: Weight Lifting for Hackers
#4Good stuff although the rep scheme isn't optimal. I'd stick to sets of fives.
A few additional points:
a) Form, particularly on Squats & Deadlifts, is key. If you do them wrong you'll fuck yourself up. The stuff by Mark Rippetoe, particularly Starting Strength, is awesome for this.
b) If you want to make progress you'll need to consume a surplus of calories. A good way to do this is to add full fat milk to your diet (a liter of full fat milk is approximately ~700 kCal). If you aren't gaining, eat more. If you're a young, skinny guy just starting out it's very easy to put on 15 lbs in a month[1] from squatting three times each week and drinking a fuckload of milk.
c) The advice on lowering the bar slowly then exploding upwards is mostly crap. Just move the weight under control.
[1] Some of this will be fat but most will be muscle.
Re: Weight Lifting for Hackers
#5ugh....the large number of reps at low weight meme has spread because people want to believe that they can do an easy workout. if you can do more than 5 reps your weight is too light. there's no such thing as "toned instead of bulk". lifting casually a few times a week is not going to turn you into a hulkish freak. and if you want toned you do CARDIO. treating weightlifting as cardio is stupid. for the average person…
If you're lifting for hypertrophy, more reps is better than more weight, e.g. 15 reps of 100 lbs instead of 6 of 150 lbs or whatever your maximums may be.
Re: Weight Lifting for Hackers
#6In my experience cardiovascular exercise is way better for almost everything he mentions and for strength training one doesn't really need weights, various push-up routines are more than enough.
Re: Weight Lifting for Hackers
#7ugh....the large number of reps at low weight meme has spread because people want to believe that they can do an easy workout. if you can do more than 5 reps your weight is too light. there's no such thing as "toned instead of bulk". lifting casually a few times a week is not going to turn you into a hulkish freak. and if you want toned you do CARDIO. treating weightlifting as cardio is stupid. for the average person…
If you're lifting for hypertrophy, more reps is better than more weight, e.g. 15 reps of 100 lbs instead of 6 of 150 lbs or whatever your maximums may be.
If you're just starting out lifting for hypertrophy is irrelevant. You need to focus on lifting heavy and eating to match.
Re: Weight Lifting for Hackers
#8In my experience cardiovascular exercise is way better for almost everything he mentions and for strength training one doesn't really need weights, various push-up routines are more than enough.
I'm having a hard time imagining how push-up routines can match the muscle building power of heavy squats and deadlifts.
Re: Weight Lifting for Hackers
#9ugh....the large number of reps at low weight meme has spread because people want to believe that they can do an easy workout. if you can do more than 5 reps your weight is too light. there's no such thing as "toned instead of bulk". lifting casually a few times a week is not going to turn you into a hulkish freak. and if you want toned you do CARDIO. treating weightlifting as cardio is stupid. for the average person…
If you're lifting for hypertrophy, more reps is better than more weight, e.g. 15 reps of 100 lbs instead of 6 of 150 lbs or whatever your maximums may be.
are you a professional bodybuilder? no? then you're talking about minimal differences. you get plenty of hypertrophy from low reps high weight. you're talking about specialized training for the specific circumstances.
Re: Weight Lifting for Hackers
#10In my experience cardiovascular exercise is way better for almost everything he mentions and for strength training one doesn't really need weights, various push-up routines are more than enough.
dips are more effective than pushups. weighted dips and weighted pullups are highly effective.