We’re all just temporarily abled

We are born totally helpless and die in various states of disrepair but the bulk of our moral disposition as expressed during our temporary window of "ability" does not at all reflect this fundamental truth.

This contradiction is at the heart of social and political frictions. How much does an individual at their peak owe to the collective that "abled" them. Why should anyone take care of them during decline?

Its not a trivial problem. The feeling of invincibility in our youth, ignoring - if not despising - the weak and adulating the strong and capable is probably an evolutionary adaptation.

Yet our predicament as an intelligent and moral species is to understand this core reality and find the right balance. Use the various forms of invented technology to push the limits of ability (augment) without forgeting how it is all bootstraped and held together.

I did read the article. We are all incredibly fragile and also strong creatures. I am quite regularly injured due to sport, and broken for months so I understand fragility and also that strength comes with hard work and focusing on what one can do with what we have instead of what we cannot do.

This is survivor bias; SS keeps some beginners engaged but there's no count of those who drop off or never start it. I was in the latter group; it was the first program recommended to me, but I was leery of it because I don't have medical insurance and was skeptical about the feasibility of the suggestions based on what I knew about my own body, so I just did nothing about it. When I did start lifting, I started out with light weights and spent months figuring out a program while getting a kinetic understanding of the different muscle groups and how they worked together, spamming volume for a while and gradually adding more weight.

I don't mean that SS is a bad program, it works for lots of people and it's very accessible. But I also think it's way oversold and not magic.

Arguments there are bullshit - talking about stuff that's completely irrelevant to beginners to make things sound complicated - personal fitness trainer playbook.

If you're a couch potato dev who sits all day and does no physical activity - just doing random shit with your bodyweight or empty bar will get you sore for the first month.

Overloading yourself with pointless movements that are meant to target specific muscle groups is completely irrelevant for the first year. Go to gym - find heavy stuff you can pick up - try not to do anything stupid.

SS is great because it has a low number of movements, volume is irrelevant when you get sore from a barbell squat, learning how to lift is deceptively complicated (breathing/bracing/muscle activation).

The article keeps straw-manning "longterm" this and that - SS is your first year in the gym (or less). By the time you're trough with it, unless you're totally oblivious, you'll pick up on other stuff when you have the time. And you'll have a decent intuition of how to lift, understand recovery implications, consistency in training, and a decent base strength. It's a great base to get you started and have an achievable progression framework that doesn't require much tutoring or time.

I've seen plenty of people get from 0 to nice lifting strength in ~1 year by doing SS. The only thing that's relevant is consistency - if you come in 2-3x a week and do something difficult for an hour for a year - you will see results - it can be total fucking around - you will still get results. It's good to start with SS type exercises because those well defined movements target your entire body, and if you learn to execute them correctly you reduce your chance of injury.

TL;DR - for any newbie out there that's in bad shape and looking to start gym - save yourself time and avoid "optimal muscle development" crowd. None of those arguments apply to you and are completely irrelevant. Don't trust me ? Go to the gym and do 5x5 with an empty bar and see if you're sore after the workout.