Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie (2011)

archive.mensjournal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 343 posts

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie (2011)

#141

Post by magicproudfeet »

raverbashing wrote: post #4

Yes 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.

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).

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie (2011)

#142

Post by vidarh »

analog wrote: post #124
cma wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie (2011)

#143

Post by jpatokal »

brianmwang wrote: post #60
davidtyleryork wrote: post #15

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 comf…

"...how much more it makes you tax your own body. When you're at the gym, you don't push yourself." Says who? This seems like a false premise to me.

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.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie (2011)

#144

Post by analog »

spudlyo wrote: post #140
ncphillips wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're goal is fat loss, not cardiovascular health, then lifting weights works just as well as running or using the elliptical, and it is easier on your body if you learn the correct form.

Strap an HR monitor on your chest when you do your next weight lifting routine, have it estimate your calories burned. Spend the same amount of time doing cardio at > 70% of your age predicted HR max. I think you'll find it's not even close. Of course you said fat loss, and perhaps you'll quibble about how much of the calories burned comes from fat vs. muscle, but I think more people are trying to get to a healthy we…

"I think you'll find it's not even close." Fairly similar for me actually, my heart rate goes pretty high when I'm lifting.

When people say healthy weight surely they always mean healthy body fat percentage?

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie (2011)

#145

Post by davidtanner »

web_church_dev wrote: post #64

I like how every general fitness article refrences "brad pitt in fightclub"...brad pitt in fight club was a little under 160 lbs so beyond aesthetics,I doubta 156 lb male had any real functional strength.

Well those 160lb Olympic weightlifters sure manage to fling around a lot of weight for people with no real functional strength. World record lifters in that class can get around 400-430lbs overhead in the C+J.

But who knows how strong Brad Pitt was

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie (2011)

#146

Post by cdcarter »

dredmorbius wrote: post #137
goronbjorn wrote: post #48

> 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 weig…

CTA?

Call to action.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie (2011)

#147

Post by guelo »

cryptoz wrote: post #20

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?!

How else are they going to sell those magazines at the counter competing with "10 Easy Ways to Get Laid!!!".

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie (2011)

#148

Post by vidarh »

mhp wrote: post #18

So what do you do if your gym only has a smith machine and dumbbells? It's dangerous and hard to bench without spotter.

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.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie (2011)

#149

Post by vidarh »

dbecker wrote: post #94
analog wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

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.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie (2011)

#150

Post by udzinari »

cwilson wrote: post #42

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,…

Thank you for this link, I started reading and can't stop, indeed a very fun read! and brutally honest too.
Post reply on HN