Fitness Crazed • Hacker News Board

Re: Fitness Crazed

#101

Post by cjf4 » Mon, May 26, 2014, 3:22 AM UTC

zacharycohn wrote: post #87

cjf4 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless your rail thin and a teenager, I'd avoid Rip's diet advice. It will undoubtedly get you fat. Lyle McDonald's bodyrecomposition.com is, as far as I'm concerned, the best nutrition resource on the internet. Lyle does a great job of taking clinical research and boiling it down to practical applications for people who train.

Diet != losing weight. The GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) diet is not designed for you to lose weight. It's designed to maximize daily caloric intake, which in turn maximizes speed of recovery. Once you're done with starting strength, you switch to something like IF (intermittent fasting) to cut the excess fat. Then you end up with lots of muscle and no fat. You can either lose fat or gain muscle. It's incredibly diffi…

GOMAD is also specifically designed for teenagers with no fat or muscle that don't know how to consume 3000 + calories/day (and I believe Rip usually wants them in the 4-5000 range). What I'm saying is that this is an inefficient approach for almost everyone outside that demographic that has any sort of interest in improved appearance (i.e. almost everyone).

Your body can only build muscle at a certain rate, and the rest of the caloric surplus is going to be converted to body fat. So what I'm saying is if you are willing to pay a little bit of attention to macro nutrient intake, you can gain muscle with much less of the associated body fat that comes with bulking.

This way, you have to much less to cut. More importantly, you learn how to eat properly which is essential for long term success.

Re: Fitness Crazed

#102

Post by Detrus » Mon, May 26, 2014, 4:36 AM UTC

grannyg00se wrote: post #44

x0x0 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who started lifting a year ago: you don't know what you're talking about, but don't let that stop you from giving others advice that could hurt them. For the rest of people interested in getting strong: get a competent trainer (one easy evaluation metric is, as I mentioned, their deadlift maxes; greater than 500 pounds makes avoiding injury w/o good form very unlikely; or participation in powerlifting even…

Why does it have to be one or the other? Your main point is that one requires instruction to attain the correct form. That can be achieved by reading the book and properly following it, or seeing a competent trainer, or both. There are some good trainers who can help, and there are certainly many who are worse than useless. As for the book, it has hundreds of pages explaining in great technical detail exactly how eac…

I've read the book many times, looked at reputable youtube videos, had people with perfect form try to correct mine and still have trouble understanding how to do the lifts perfectly. My brain just turns off during the workout and takes a while to come back. Starting Strength's 30 pages per lift are also overwhelming. I really only need a checklist of 30 things per lift and have to figure out which to emphasize for my crap posture, knees out, chest up, etc.

My numbers should be better, 2.7 years, 185 BW, 400 lb deadlift, 275 bench, 275x5 squat, 150 OHP. All thanks to crappy form, not understanding how to do the exercise properly. People with hunchback posture have a lot more to think about than those with good posture. I got to 375x5 deadlift within 1.5 years. But my form was already crap at 245 and I had no idea because I only checked with video at 225. Also filmed myself and couldn't tell what I was doing wrong, looked ok as far as I could tell at the time. But it was wrong. My idea of how to deadlift/squat/OHP was fundamentally wrong at 1.5 year mark. Bench needed major corrections.

You might be doing it wrong too, you can get away with it for a long time.

A trainer at some globo gym like Planet Fitness, Bally etc. won't promise correct form for 300 lb deadlifters, even if they pull 500 lb themselves. They're just there to make total novices feel comfortable.

If you want proper training you need to find a freeweight focused place like a powerlifting gym, maybe crossfit and pay whatever obnoxious price they charge for personal attention. Train a few months there to get started. Or hope you're not as dumb as me and rely on youtube and books.

Re: Fitness Crazed

#103

Post by zacharycohn » Mon, May 26, 2014, 5:16 AM UTC

cjf4 wrote: post #101

zacharycohn wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diet != losing weight. The GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) diet is not designed for you to lose weight. It's designed to maximize daily caloric intake, which in turn maximizes speed of recovery. Once you're done with starting strength, you switch to something like IF (intermittent fasting) to cut the excess fat. Then you end up with lots of muscle and no fat. You can either lose fat or gain muscle. It's incredibly diffi…

GOMAD is also specifically designed for teenagers with no fat or muscle that don't know how to consume 3000 + calories/day (and I believe Rip usually wants them in the 4-5000 range). What I'm saying is that this is an inefficient approach for almost everyone outside that demographic that has any sort of interest in improved appearance (i.e. almost everyone). Your body can only build muscle at a certain rate, and the…

The point is to have a caloric surplus. Because then you can guarantee maximum recovery.

Re: Fitness Crazed

#104

Post by klepra » Mon, May 26, 2014, 8:45 AM UTC

zacharycohn wrote: post #93

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you play tennis, box, run 400m, or play basketball, then pursuing a heavy weight deadlift routine is going to compromise your performance. Sometimes it might help build some strength, but beyond a limited amount sinking a lot of training capacity into it is going to slow you down and compromise endurance. This is not remotely controversial.

All of those exercises demand explosive strength from the legs. Which is what the deadlift is very, very efficient at producing. Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrLVlbgwcW8#t=80 This guy is doing a 47 inch box jump... out of a pool. This is what deadlifting does.

I know people who were able to dunk in high school as teenagers and were very explosive. Than they started weight lifing regime, lifted hard for a decade (solid weights on compund movements), still can't really dunk no more, while they should be even more explosive.

Thing is, pylometrics is still nr. 1 for most explosivnes and also olimpic lifting, but not classis weight lifting, strength is not power.

+EDIT: This guy on the video does far more than just DL to achive what he does, he is also very competent at calisthenics, he does one leg hill jums and other extremely difficult exercises ... Claiming this is a product of solely DL is misinforming.

Re: Fitness Crazed

#105

Post by ramblerman » Mon, May 26, 2014, 9:11 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #33

Finally a fitness article that says "Just do it". There really isn't a silver bullet to this stuff. If you keep working out, you will become stronger and eventually if you also eat reasonably well you will start looking better as well. It's as simple as that. No miracles required, just a bit of patience. Personally the solution I've found works best for me follows two simple rules: 1. Never be hungry and never be stu…

Could you elaborate on your 15 minute bodyweight routines? Would it be mostly interval type stuff like (1 minute burpees, 10 second break, 1 minute pushups) etc.. ? or what do you do?

I'm only asking out of scientific curiosity to "looking bloody amazing naked" of course ;)

Re: Fitness Crazed

#106

Post by s_husso » Mon, May 26, 2014, 11:43 AM UTC

zacharycohn wrote: post #87

cjf4 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless your rail thin and a teenager, I'd avoid Rip's diet advice. It will undoubtedly get you fat. Lyle McDonald's bodyrecomposition.com is, as far as I'm concerned, the best nutrition resource on the internet. Lyle does a great job of taking clinical research and boiling it down to practical applications for people who train.

Diet != losing weight. The GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) diet is not designed for you to lose weight. It's designed to maximize daily caloric intake, which in turn maximizes speed of recovery. Once you're done with starting strength, you switch to something like IF (intermittent fasting) to cut the excess fat. Then you end up with lots of muscle and no fat. You can either lose fat or gain muscle. It's incredibly diffi…

"difficult to do both at the same time"

With right combination you can do it. Targeted Keto/IF combination seems to be quite effective. Sheds fat while maintaining (or gaining) muscle mass and minimizing the impact of the diet to your strength levels. I've dropped +25kg BW while gaining +5kg of muscle mass and gaining/maintaining my big-lifts. I noticed that going from Stronglift 5x5 to Madcow really helped my recovery. Mostly as my body couldn't keep up with the heavy squatting and deadlifting too many times during the week.

Re: Fitness Crazed

#107

Post by sheepmullet » Mon, May 26, 2014, 11:52 AM UTC

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #70

jere wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If he was trying to avoid diabetes, that makes sense to me, that affects anywhere from 10-40 years of your life, and is a very extreme quality-of-life factor. Sure and two of the biggest factors in preventing/treating diabetes are exercise and weight maintenance. >This doesn't explain anything, however. It's tautological... he wants to increase his fitness, to increase his fitness? Nope. He is performing weight bear…

> Sure and two of the biggest factors in preventing/treating diabetes are exercise and weight maintenance. 60 years ago, your grandfather's generation had no problems with this at all. They didn't go to the gym. While exercise is a factor, these people have taken the required level of exercise and kicked it up 10,000%. > Nope. He is performing weight bearing exercise to, not only become better at performing those exe…

>60 years ago, your grandfather's generation had no problems with this at all. They didn't go to the gym.

My grandfathers generation got a lot of daily exercise. My grandfather was a farmer and was on his feet for 10+ hours every day.

>Huh? The only way it increases his mental well being is that he believes that if he doesn't meet some abstract ideal he'll have failed

?? Regular exercise has dramatic effects on stress levels and general cognitive ability.

> My life's quality is already pretty high. What is it that I'm missing? Being able to hike up a mountain?

You can have an amazing quality of life without ever reading a book after high school...

You can have an amazing quality of life even if you are born paralyzed from the waist down...

You can have an amazing quality of life if you are deaf or blind...

You can have an amazing quality of life despite being in massive debt...

Re: Fitness Crazed

#108

Post by VLM » Mon, May 26, 2014, 11:57 AM UTC

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #86

SwellJoe wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same sort of, and similar length, history with weight training. I believe that's because it's pretty widely accepted now that free weights are more effective than machines. And, the difference is large enough that even people outside of weight lifting circles have a vague awareness of this. In the 80s, it was still really popular to use machines because they were "safer" (which is not necessarily true), th…

> it's pretty widely accepted now that free weights are more effective than machines. I don't buy that. The people who say that stuff are the same ones who go on about stabilizer muscles, when there's no such thing. Machines are safer than barbells. For overhead and pull-down stuff the good machines minimize dangerous shoulder stress. Barbell squats and deadlifts quite simply are somewhat dangerous and even very expe…

Machines ARE safer strictly with respect to sitting in the machine.

Outside the machine, I have personal experience that your shoulder, leg, and arm muscles might be able to trivially lift a mere concrete block but your back muscles (luckily in my case not a ligament) were not strengthened by the machine to a similar level leading to quite a bit of pain and damage. Which is the short version of life experiences explaining why I'll probably never go back to machines in the future.

Given an infinite number of machines, presumably one for every muscle or so, and an infinite amount of knowledge such that you strengthen your back to always be 5% stronger than your arms or whatever, then machines would be safer than free weights. Of course given spherical cows I'd have the same level of knowledge and safety of free weights.

You certainly could hurt your back without any relationship to strength training at all. Or even hurt yourself after freeweights. But it is more likely after machine work.

There is also a practical matter of scale. Lets be realistic. A really bad day of lifting won't be much worse than naturally happens to fat couch potatoes every day, so its no really big deal. On the other hand a "really bad day" of bicycling means getting turned into grease under the wheels of a truck, or a "really bad day" of hiking means hunters find your body after a couple months. Its not in practice a serious concern, compared to other human activities.

Not that opposition to machines is some kind of amish / historical re-enactor philosophical opposition. Not using a squat rack when squatting is probably an excellent way to hurt yourself. Someone should invent a machine or technique to do bench presses safely while alone.

Re: Fitness Crazed

#109

Post by sheepmullet » Mon, May 26, 2014, 12:02 PM UTC

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #45

I have trouble understanding the basis for articles like these. As far as it goes, asking which exercises might provide the best real-world gains is a sensible question, but the question of why a 40 yr old man wants to be able to push 235 lbs away from his chest when lying reclined is never even asked. Does he know why he wants this? From a biological perspective, a specimen might want to be able to do this to signal…

>I'm continually surprised how much time, effort, and money people will waste on these activities that seem devised to attract mates

You are surprised that people will spend 3-4 hours per week to look good, stay healthy, stress less, feel better, and increase the number of fun activities they can safely enjoy?

The average American spends 35+ hours/wk watching TV!

Re: Fitness Crazed

#110

Post by Swizec » Mon, May 26, 2014, 3:24 PM UTC

ramblerman wrote: post #105

Swizec wrote: post #33

Finally a fitness article that says "Just do it". There really isn't a silver bullet to this stuff. If you keep working out, you will become stronger and eventually if you also eat reasonably well you will start looking better as well. It's as simple as that. No miracles required, just a bit of patience. Personally the solution I've found works best for me follows two simple rules: 1. Never be hungry and never be stu…

Could you elaborate on your 15 minute bodyweight routines? Would it be mostly interval type stuff like (1 minute burpees, 10 second break, 1 minute pushups) etc.. ? or what do you do? I'm only asking out of scientific curiosity to "looking bloody amazing naked" of course ;)

I'm too lazy for interval and interval only works if you have someone else doing the timing. I've tried doing it on my own but it doesn't work well because of fiddling with the timer.

I started with this: http://imgur.com/gallery/v49W4

Now I just continue with the same -> 100 pushups (4 different types), 130 situps, 200 crunches (4 different types), then either 100 side-to-side, 70 leg-lifts, or an alphabet (spelling out the alphabet with extended legs), 2 minute plank (2 different types), and 60 squats.

If I am pressed for time I can squeeze that into some 13 minutes. If I don't stop chatting on whatsapp/skype/fb it takes about 20 to 25.