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Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

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Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#341

Post by kragen »

reason wrote: post #100
NickPollard wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to argue that what you describe isn't good, but 'nature intended us to' isn't a particularly solid argument. You could argue that nature intended us to die from Malaria by the age of 30, I'm very glad that for most of the world that's no longer the case.

Us not readily acquiring the malaria virus is not due to evolution of our genes; we just don't live in the areas where the vector thrives. If you and I were bit by an infected mosquito, there's a very good chance either of us would die in a relatively short period of time. Although, there are some in Africa who do have fewer chances of acquiring it due to them being heterozygotes for sickle cell anemia. Anyway, I'm n…

> we just don't live in the areas where the vector thrives.

Actually, an awful lot of us do. I see those fucking Anopheles mosquitoes on a regular basis, especially if I venture a bit north from here.

> If you and I were bit by an infected mosquito, there's a very good chance either of us would die in a relatively short period of time.

Actually, out of the 225 million cases of malaria per year, there are only about 1 million deaths.

I'm not discounting the underlying concept of your comment; I haven't gotten malaria yet because of public-health measures like draining swamps, because of cypermethrin on the walls, because of DEET on my legs and head, because of sleeping under a mosquito net or in a room without entrances for mosquitoes, because of sleeping during the day, and because I have enough leisure time to swat the mosquitoes that do land on me.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#342

Post by sofal »

Okay I got up to 175 lbs for squats and then I started getting a severe, stabbing pain in my knee when I did them. Seems to me that squats are not so good for my knees. Leg press does not give me this problem.

Additionally, I've been doing deadlifts, and just this weekend I pulled a muscle in my back doing 245 lbs (and no, I was not rounding my back).

As you can tell, I am becoming hugely dissatisfied with these so-called "core" exercises. I haven't seen much improvement from them at all, and I've only ever gotten injuries from them.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#343

Post by btilly »

Liron wrote: post #327
btilly wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but anyone who says this has failed to understand evolution. Evolution is a slow process. But there is no reason to believe that it is going any slower today than it ever did in the past - we're just being selected for different things than in the past. (For instance carelessness about birth control.)

No, he's right. The most powerful force shaping the future is intelligence. Natural selection on biological genes is orders of magnitude slower.

The fact that intelligence is shaping our future faster than evolution does not affect the fact that evolution is still proceeding at the current moment in our species.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#344

Post by jpendry »

jerf wrote: post #165
jasonkester wrote: post #42

If you really want to get fit, there's one easy thing you can do that actually works: Take up a sport that gets you fit as a side effect. I have two obsessions in life: Rock Climbing and Surfing. I'm pretty good at the first, and borderline hopeless at the other, but I'm committed to the point where I've arranged my life so that I can travel for months at a time to pursue one or the other each year. When I'm working…

Every time there's an article on exercise or diet, there's a pileon of people promoting their own beliefs, with no apparent sign that they read the original link. How do you address the fact that your point is actively contradicted by the article? Did you even know your point is actively contradicted by the article? I'm not even saying that proves you're wrong; what bothers me is that you just ran off to post your ow…

to be fair, the author lambasts health magazines in a gym's waiting room/lobby, while the article appears in one of those magazines.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#345

Post by jules »

tensor wrote: post #321
jules wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, they do weigh a lot more than I do. Isn't that part of the fair comparison? You don't give a cyclist or runner a backpack with weights in it because it's "unfair" that he weighs less than the other cyclist/runner. These guys were probably training pull ups every week at least, so it's on their home territory. Yet their training is less effective than running & cycling. For the vast majority of activities, perfo…

And in a rock lifting competition they would win easily. I don't see your point. You pick an arbitrary metric that you happen to be good at and declare victory. As it stands, all you've done is point out that there are different tasks and depending on your target task the ideal body composition and training routine differs. If you want to be good at pullups you should probably let all your leg muscles atrophy and jus…

If you should do that then I am certainly doing it wrong by running and cycling and letting my arm muscles atrophy. Sure, they'd win a rock lifting competition. And if weight lifting is so good, then they should win a pull-up competition, since that's also what they're training for and it's not what I'm training for by virtually only using my legs. My point being: take this article with a huge grain of salt and train for real fitness not for how much kg you can lift. The easiest way to improve that is to become very fat.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#346

Post by defen »

bane wrote: post #315
jimbokun wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I very greatly over simplified. What Pollan actually advocates is eating a traditional diet that has been refined over centuries. He says that which one you pick doesn't matter that much. The traditional diets of people living around the Mediterranean and people living near the Arctic circle have nothing in common, but according to Pollan, either will give you better health outcomes than a normal Western diet. I…

(He gave examples of such complementary foods in traditional diets, which I can't remember right now.) One thing I've definitely noticed time and again is how complete traditional diets tend to be. It's amazing, thousands of years ago, with no concept at all of nutrition, people managed to put together fantastically complete (and tasty) diets.

It's amazing, thousands of years ago, with no concept at all of nutrition, people managed to put together fantastically complete (and tasty) diets.

I can't tell if you're being really subtle here, but the causality is probably reversed - people ate whatever they could get away with, and over the course of many tens of thousands of years they evolved to process that food efficiently. Anatomically modern humans evolved approximately 200,000 years ago, and agriculture was only invented 10,000 years ago. And industrially produced processed food didn't become a staple of most Westerners' diets until 65 years ago.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#347

Post by jongraehl »

dasil003 wrote: post #202
jobu wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where you live. A hilly area can kick your ass a lot harder than a treadmill, but my current neighborhood is flat and it compares pretty evenly to a treadmill run.

It does not. Running on the ground you push yourself forward. On a treadmill the amount of work you are doing can vary quite a bit by technique (ie. how much contact you are making with the treadmill) because you are not actually propelling yourself.

Crazy.

Mark a dot on the treadmill track.

How is the person moving relative to that dot?

How is the air in the room moving relative to that dot?

That's basically all that can distinguish between running at constant speed on a treadmill vs. on level (non-treadmill) ground.

If you're running 8mph on a treadmill, it's like running 8mph on level ground, with an 8mph tailwind.

How do you fail so badly at physics?

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#348

Post by AdamGravy »

jongraehl wrote: post #347
dasil003 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not. Running on the ground you push yourself forward. On a treadmill the amount of work you are doing can vary quite a bit by technique (ie. how much contact you are making with the treadmill) because you are not actually propelling yourself.

Crazy. Mark a dot on the treadmill track. How is the person moving relative to that dot? How is the air in the room moving relative to that dot? That's basically all that can distinguish between running at constant speed on a treadmill vs. on level (non-treadmill) ground. If you're running 8mph on a treadmill, it's like running 8mph on level ground, with an 8mph tailwind. How do you fail so badly at physics?

lol

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#349

Post by eleusive »

sofal wrote: post #342

Okay I got up to 175 lbs for squats and then I started getting a severe, stabbing pain in my knee when I did them. Seems to me that squats are not so good for my knees. Leg press does not give me this problem. Additionally, I've been doing deadlifts, and just this weekend I pulled a muscle in my back doing 245 lbs (and no, I was not rounding my back). As you can tell, I am becoming hugely dissatisfied with these so-c…

(Disclaimer, I'm not an expert, but I can squat well over 1.5x my weight for several reps)

For squats, you should make sure to go parallel and "sit back" at the bottom of the movement, while pushing your knees out to the sides as you go down. This takes the stress of the weight off of your knees and onto your posterior chain. Otherwise you'll get hurt knees just as you described.

Not sure what could cause that deadlift problem, other than maybe trying to lift with your back before the bar clears your knees (which until that point your legs should be doing most of the lifting).

FWIW, it took me a long time to really get comfortable with my technique in the heavy compound exercises, but I've seen remarkable gains from them once I learned proper technique.

If you're really serious about doing the core exercises with proper technique, I strongly recommend picking up a copy of Mark Rippetoe's "Starting Strength" book. It goes into great detail the correct technique and mechanics behind the exercises.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#350

Post by torkins »

Liron wrote: post #327
btilly wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but anyone who says this has failed to understand evolution. Evolution is a slow process. But there is no reason to believe that it is going any slower today than it ever did in the past - we're just being selected for different things than in the past. (For instance carelessness about birth control.)

No, he's right. The most powerful force shaping the future is intelligence. Natural selection on biological genes is orders of magnitude slower.

No, he's wrong. Natural selection doesn't speed up or slow down, it just is. Each passing generation there are pressures put on the spreading of human genes, and those pressures are the manifestation of natural selection. Whether those pressures are different now than before, or whether they shape "the future" is irrelevant to the biological impact of natural selection.
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