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We’re all just temporarily abled

blog.jim-nielsen.com

121–130 of 537 posts

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#121
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is being downvoted because it's low quality. It's basically a drive-by hit on SS with no context. I will upvote it and add some context. * thefitness.wiki is maintained by Reddit's r/fitness and it's a great resource. * Parent had to use an archive.org link because thefitness.wiki long ago removed the post he linked to. * I suspect they removed the post because thefitness.wiki now has a 'Basic Beginner R…

What would you recommend to someone older to start with? I've done SS in my late 20s but I do feel like I'd like to try something new as I get closer to 40 and considering some exercise. Context, I wfh, am overweight and extremely sedentary. At the moment have been purely working on my diet but exercising is next.

Honestly you should start again with starting strength or a beginner program like it if you haven't been actively training in the last few years. Go slow, start with the bar, let the increases happen until you hit a wall where you need to reassess. Listen to your body. Once you're back to "intermediate", i.e. 6 months to a year of reasonably consistent training, you can transition to a different program or just maintain at 2x a week if you like where you've ended up.

That's in addition to very gradually adding some sort of cardio like walks around the block. Being sedentary is going to be more of a struggle to overcome than strength - you will find that the strength you used to have will come back quickly when you start training again, but as a guy in the exact same boat, the cardiovascular side is the tough part. I am getting strong again really quickly but I am getting winded half way through a strength workout, let alone actually trying to jog.

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#122
> Through all of it, I’ve found myself noticing “accessibility” helpers more than ever before: that railing on the stairs, that ramp off to the side of the building, that elevator tucked away in the back.

The title got me because I was fortunate to have this revelation too. I'd sprained a foot joint jumping off a small staircase. A day later I could barely limp into a med supply place to buy crutches. My "outdoors" vacation changed completely.

Suddenly I'm worried about people judging me, and I'm intensely grateful for ramps, I care about parking spots, and it dawned on me that I'd ignored all this infrastructure that I now needed.

Thanks.

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#123

One of the best things I ever did was get strong through a basic barbell training program called Starting Strength. Squat, deadlift, overhead press, bench press, chinups, eat, sleep. It really is that easy. Highly recommend it for anyone interested. 1. Any back pain I had disappeared completely. 2. When I have to lift something awkward (eg, furniture), I don't injure myself. If you can deadlift 200KG, awkwardly leani…

Alternatively you could do bodyweigth training if you prefer that (like me) 1. Pull: such as pullup 2. Push: towards one arm one leg pushup 3. Legs: Pistol up (=1 leg squat) 4. Core: V-ups and bridge works for me. Once we went carting with the company. Everybody was sore afterwards in all kinds of places (software devs :)). I was fine.

If you are a beginner and want to start with calisthenics, I recommend the Hybrid Routine[1]. It has really nice progressions for all exercised mentioned above (and it's free!)

[1] https://www.hybridcalisthenics.com/routine

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You mention some pretty scary KG numbers there > I just wanted to mention to readers that even squatting a ‘measly’ 50KG or deadlifting 30KG Yes -- this is really important to contextualize. Barbell resistance training is actually two things: 1) A method of exercise that has a variety of well-quantified health benefits including improvements in strength, bone density, and connective tissue. More muscle also means y…

It's also relative to your body weight. A 150 kg squat for someone who weighs 118 kg (i.e. me) is not that impressive. Whereas an 80 kg squat if you weigh 80 kg is extremely impressive. You should be aiming to lift 1x-1.5x your body weight, over time.

I don't get it, 1x bodyweight is impressive for a smaller person?

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#125
post #90

This reminded me of 5 daily remembrances from Buddhist cannon. 1. I am sure to become old; I cannot avoid ageing. 2. I am sure to become ill; I cannot avoid illness. 3. I am sure to die; I cannot avoid death. 4. I must be separated and parted from all that is dear and beloved to me. 5. I am the owner of my actions, heir of my actions, actions are the womb (from which I have sprung), actions are my relations, actions…

how depressing. what do they have to say about what joy to derive from life?

That joy is transient and ultimately in its transience a cause for suffering. Perfectly fine if you take it for what it is, but not something to cling to. 'Life is suffering' is kind of the whole deal of Buddhism - first, it teaches you to recognise how bad the problem really is, then gives you mechanisms for solving it (detachment).

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#126

> it’s easy to misunderstand ability as a binary thing. Yes. And also the notion of ability/disability has too many connotations, it makes it really hard to discuss the subject. One could posit that having less than perfect vision is a disability (for whatever value of "perfect"). But people will fight tooth and nail to not fall into that category, they'll explain how much they still can do without correction, or str…

You make a really good point here.

Some years ago, I probably never would have thought of myself as "disabled" in any way. But, like you mention, I wear glasses, and, depending what the activity is, I can either continue on with little issue, or end up completely useless. I've also learned that I have ADHD and a learning disability.

A "disability" is generally defined as a condition that limits one or more "major life activities," which is a term that has its own definition, but it's pretty common sense. One of my disabilities is myopia, which limits the activity of "seeing." My learning disability limits my ability to process visual-spatial information.

Without accommodation in certain tasks, I absolutely am disabled. Ask me to navigate an unfamiliar neighborhood alone without my phone, and I'll end up lost, frustrated, and probably not find where I'm supposed to go. Ask me to do it without my phone and my glasses, and it's just a pointless exercise in futility then.

But, let me have those tools which I know can help me do the tasks, and I'll be just fine. I am still a person who has some disabilities even with my tools, but they're what lets me manage. It says something about American culture, I think, that being seen using something as a "crutch" is a sign of weakness, when, in fact, a crutch is nothing more than a tool that can let someone who would be otherwise unable to do an activity be able to do so, no more or less than my glasses or my phone.

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#127

One of the best things I ever did was get strong through a basic barbell training program called Starting Strength. Squat, deadlift, overhead press, bench press, chinups, eat, sleep. It really is that easy. Highly recommend it for anyone interested. 1. Any back pain I had disappeared completely. 2. When I have to lift something awkward (eg, furniture), I don't injure myself. If you can deadlift 200KG, awkwardly leani…

Starting Strength is not recommended anymore: https://web.archive.org/web/20200528135350/https://thefitnes...

Recommended by who? Redditors?

I read the critique. It's basically "you don't do enough volume for certain exercises", "you'll end up doing too many squatting and looking funny", "their approach to stall isn't optimal".

It sounds like a www.bodybuilding.com forum rant. Someone arguing why micronized whey is superior to non-micronized. It's ultra-optimization.

If you're someone looking to get started, you're looking to get started, not optimize for a bodybuilding competition. If you like SS, and it gets you actually lifting, then it's good.

If you really get into it, then great! You can continue to refine what you do, read up on all the arguments, try different things. But if you just want a workout that makes you stronger that you can keep doing, then SS works fine.

It reminds me a bit of audio enthusiasts. Somebody wants an amplifier recommendation for a certain budget and people jump in telling them "you'll regret going solid state, the purity of tube amps can't be beat" and the person is like "I just want an amplifier so my kids can watch Disney in surround sound".

And the really good thing about SS is the focus on proper technique. It's more important than how much you lift.

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#129
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did SS too in the beginning. I didn't see much progress and that has also been verifiably the case for others too, if you are using anecdotes as your verification process. That SS works is despite its quality, not because of it. And so what? Should we not try to improve programs just because they work in some cases? We don't have to use 5/3/1 then, we can use even the basic beginner routine as recommended on r/fitn…

But you're still lifting, presumably. That sounds like success to me. I tried to start lifting multiple times. SL 5x5 is what actually made it click. Now that I know what I'm doing, I could write volumes on its flaws, but what I needed wasn't a technically optimized program, but one which gave me a clear goal for each workout and an easy way to see what the path forward looked like. As the reddit beginner program cor…

> But you're still lifting, presumably. That sounds like success to me.

That attributes success not to the program but to mindset. He may well be lifting despite lack of success.

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#130
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't trust anything on reddit...

I would. For example, /r/AskHistorians is extremely high quality. Don't mistake a forum for all of its users as one monolith.

AskHistorians is a bunch of PhDs doing quality write-ups with full referencing.

You can't compare that to r/fitness in the least.

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