Speaking of exercise, anyone want to go for a run together in Hong Kong?
I'm not in HK but I would have a HK related question. Do you have an email I could reach you at?
How Weight Training Might Change the Brain
61–70 of 177 posts
Re: How Weight Training Might Change the Brain
#62We've already figured out that aerobic exercise increases our cognitive abilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobic_exercise#Neurobiologic... Even though weight training isn't aerobic, couldn't it still increase our state of fitness?
Weight training is as much neurological stimulation as it is muscular. In fact, most of the fast gains a new lifter makes are due to learning to recruit motor units, which is to say training the nervous system. As any long time lifter can tell you, putting on muscle mass naturally takes a long time. The question is does stimulating motor neurons have knock on effects for the rest of the CNS? It's plausible that it does, but with some brief searching I'm not finding any compelling research that it does or doesn't.
Re: How Weight Training Might Change the Brain
#63Serious lifting or athletics in general necessitates cultivating competent time management, planning skills and self control/discipline. Even more so if you roll into dieting for maintaining weight class or generally aesthetics. Once a lifter exhaust all novice and easy gains which doesn't take long, it's down to planning multi week/month long meso cycles, trouble shooting and learning about about your body, refraini…
Enough money let’s you bypass a surprising amount of those things, like the time management, planning and troubleshooting.
Re: How Weight Training Might Change the Brain
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
That comment is more directed towards the increase in eating disorders, body dysmorphia and negative thinking when comparing progress online. Particularly in men. 5 years ago, 5plate is a solid deadlift, now junior women are pulling that. And it's causing very brittle minded people grief and others to push too hard ruinously when it's clearly not in their cards. Not to mention predatory fake natties schilling nutriti…
Junior women can't pull a 5 plate DL. Women can, but certainly not junior. Even for men it takes some time to get there. There's a tendency (especially on the internet forums) to think that average muscle mass an capability is the same, when it varies a lot more. It's ok if a person can't do a 50kg deadlift at the beginning. Everybody has their own limits.
Jessica Buettner pulled 227.5kg (502lbs) at 72kg last year at 23years old, Amanda Lawrence pulled 252.5kg (557lbs) at 84kg this year at 22years old, both in Junior women classic powerlifting.
It's OK to be to pull whatever weight, lifting should be about realistic self improvement and self empowerment. My point is because records are getting chipped so fast, and for the first time, extremely strong women are entering the stage due the raising popularity of lifting among women that it's causing a lot of issues (and toxicity) in lifting social media, which I recommend most people to stay away from.
Re: How Weight Training Might Change the Brain
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure. Even though I don't want to admit it, I'm sure I, along with many others, would have more confidence in a fit, muscular person than an out-of-shape slovenly one.
I'm the opposite for hardcore engineers. An in-shape, muscular person looks like they have dedicated a non-trivial amount of time to not software. I presume most people that look like that just see writing software as "a job" and won't be as capable of fully owning anything more complex than small portions of a complex application.
Alternative: If all your software work has to be done at a computer you probably aren’t thinking hard enough.
Re: How Weight Training Might Change the Brain
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
That comment is more directed towards the increase in eating disorders, body dysmorphia and negative thinking when comparing progress online. Particularly in men. 5 years ago, 5plate is a solid deadlift, now junior women are pulling that. And it's causing very brittle minded people grief and others to push too hard ruinously when it's clearly not in their cards. Not to mention predatory fake natties schilling nutriti…
Are there any specific eating disorders that these men you are describing are more inclined to be victims of? I feel like this whole intermittent fasting trend is a little eating-disorder-ish but it doesn't seem that bad overall. I do agree the dysmorphia is getting bad. I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that anabolic steroid use is growing rapidly. I think it's really analogous to how in certain sports, athlet…
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/31/eating-disor...
Just in general, there have been quite a few articles like this in the last few years. Particularly affects bodybuilding communities trying to get to sub 10% bodyfat. One of the problems is that lifting social media is basically Youtube recommendation on steriods (pun intended), the average lifter that lifts or diets for health doesn't get as much attention as the shredded one lifting big weights, probably on drugs, and if not, have genetics 99.99% of people doesn't and therefore have effectively zero chance of replicating.
Edit: another issue is because health culture likes to emphasis on hard work and discipline without acknowledging that 2sigma genetics is precursor to being at the very top. Kids see juiced idols who play the eat well and work hard card (including wholesome figures like Arnold), whose livelihood depends on perpetuating that myth, and telling the truth is tantamount to admitting you committed a crime due to legislation around steriods. The incentives are stacked.
Re: How Weight Training Might Change the Brain
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Plenty of people on gear who doesn't have the basics dialed in and get poor result. I don't believe this is true. I read a study (that I can't source right now) essentially suggesting something like: Training +gear: 9kg of muscle gained Training -gear: 5kg of muscle gained No training +gear: 7kg of muscle gained No training -gear: 0kg of muscle gained All that said, I'm left with the same conclusion as you, which i…
Normal gear raises your genetic limit by ~5-10%, 7kg of leanmass is a great result for untrained people to inoculate against everyday challenges hence my endorsement for larger role in general population who can't be bothered to train. For serious trainers who you can pack on a lot more lean mass than that, whereas ignorant gear users gains + gear bonus might leave some pretty easy gains on the table by training stup…
It really depends. Anabolic-androgenic steroids come in a rather wide variety. It's one thing to inject Test Cyp or some other bio-similar to natural human testosterone in "normal" doses as part of TRT or similar therapy. It's quite another to inject something like Trenbolone[1]. That and similar drugs will produce extreme results in anyone who isn't androgen resistant. And they have all kinds of other nasty side effects too. Suppressing intratesticular testosterone is virtually assured without additional intervention.
Interestingly there is some evidence that the effects of steroid use continue even after discontinuing use. Also, thanks to the unexplained secular testosterone decline, pretty much every American man who doesn't medicate is going to be well below his genetic potential. Unless, of course, the secular testosterone decline is a consequence of some dysgenic force.
[1]Used to make cattle get meatier. And it works exceedingly well.
Re: How Weight Training Might Change the Brain
#68We've already figured out that aerobic exercise increases our cognitive abilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobic_exercise#Neurobiologic... Even though weight training isn't aerobic, couldn't it still increase our state of fitness?
Unless you're doing singles, a significant amount of energy is being delivered aerobically (I can't find the study atm, but I vaguely remember numbers around 50-70%). The longer you go, the higher the contribution by your aerobic system. It's a different stimulus from an hour of steady-state, of course, and it might be closer to HIIT than jogging. As for the benefits, there's this https://www.uab.edu/news/research/item/10251-weightlifting-c...
Re: How Weight Training Might Change the Brain
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
That comment is more directed towards the increase in eating disorders, body dysmorphia and negative thinking when comparing progress online. Particularly in men. 5 years ago, 5plate is a solid deadlift, now junior women are pulling that. And it's causing very brittle minded people grief and others to push too hard ruinously when it's clearly not in their cards. Not to mention predatory fake natties schilling nutriti…
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 5 plate, but if you're talking about 5 x 20kg plates on either end of an olympic bar (which is another 20kg), that's a 220kg/495lb deadlift and is still very much a solid deadlift. For an 85kg man (average in UK is 83.6kg) that's as near as makes no odds 2.6x body weight. For a 70kg woman (average in UK in 70.2kg) it's more than 3x body weight. Generally anything more than 2x bod…
Nicely Put
Eddie Hall pulled 500kg 1102 ibs
Incredible video (he nearly killed himself)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9Y4o_BqC0A
He weighs around 160 kg so a bit over 3
Re: How Weight Training Might Change the Brain
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Junior women can't pull a 5 plate DL. Women can, but certainly not junior. Even for men it takes some time to get there. There's a tendency (especially on the internet forums) to think that average muscle mass an capability is the same, when it varies a lot more. It's ok if a person can't do a 50kg deadlift at the beginning. Everybody has their own limits.
Jessica Buettner pulled 227.5kg (502lbs) at 72kg last year at 23years old, Amanda Lawrence pulled 252.5kg (557lbs) at 84kg this year at 22years old, both in Junior women classic powerlifting. It's OK to be to pull whatever weight, lifting should be about realistic self improvement and self empowerment. My point is because records are getting chipped so fast, and for the first time, extremely strong women are entering…
Junior is usually defined as "inexperienced" (as in "junior developer")
They might be at a competition "junior" level but I'm willing to bet they have at least 5y.r. of experience lifting weights
She was competing already in 2014 (source https://www.openpowerlifting.org/u/jessicabuettner ) and she's also Type 1 diabetic
Also this is a competition/record level of weight for their bodyweight, men might be lifting 220kg for their usual workout