Why you maybe should lift weights, and How to.
Who this post is for? Someone who either:
Wonders if they should start lifting weights, and could be convinced of doing so.
Wants to lift weights, and doesn’t know where to begin. If this is you, you can skip this first section, though I’m guessing you don’t know all the benefits yet.
The WHY
Benefits of ANY EXERCISE:
Great mental benefits. I personally have ADHD and lifting gives me an attention boost similar to my Adderall. I’m not talking about the long term abstract of being happy that you are healthy. Post exercise your mood and cognitive hability will probably me accutely better.
Improved sleep quality, which will then improve about a million things
Strongly improved health markers, both blood levels and your body composition. Most people probably would be healthier with more muscle and less fat.
It fits the hobby-shaped whole your life might have. Something you do divorced from work, with progression, community, and so forth
Benefits of LIFTING compared to other exercise:
In spite of most of the lies you will hear, most exercise won’t build muscle. If you are a fat guy and start jogging or playing soccer, you’ll probably actually lose muscle mass along with your fat loss. Athletes that play sports professionally are both genetically gifted, and probably lift weights to support their performance. But why do you want more muscle mass? Benefits in order
You’ll be more attractive to others and to yourself. You’ll probably largely hedonically adapt to seeing yourself look better, as will a long term partner. But you don’t hedonically adapt to being treated better by strangers and to having access to more options in dating, if you are interested in dating.
Images of outlier physiques you can’t probably even reach aside, more muscle is as close to universally attractive as anything you can get.
The number of times someone who didn’t take performance enhancing drugs was described by anyone as “too muscular” in the entire history of humanity can be probably counted in one hand.More muscle and less fat again, benefit your healthy greatly. The latter is easy, the former not so much. If you’re interested in quantified self, I’d suggest getting your blood markers before your journey to see what lifting does, including your A1C.
You might really enjoy it. I personally do. Lifting is a really boring sport to watch, which I believe leads to it being tried by less people compared to good expectator sports like basketball. Lifting has recently really upticked in popularity, and you’ll know in two months of doing it if your personality lends itself to enjoying it. Compared to most others sports, measuring progress is easy, feedback loops are not too long, making it an easy habit to reinforce.
It’s a a very easy habit to maintain. You can find a gym almost wherever you move, your office might already have one, and you need no one else to do it with. Weather has no impact on your ability to do it. Compare this to basketball or running outside. Having something keep you from your exercise for two weeks can be devastating for your hard built habit.
You’ll be much stronger in daily live. I get a little jolt of joy when I can do the rare physically demanding task.
You’ll be more resistant to injuries. Lifting doesn’t just strengthen your muscles, but also your bones and connective tissue. And compared to most other sports, injury rates in lifting are really low. Lifting will make you age much more gracefully, strongly delay the point in which you phyisically need assistance for things like stairs, groceries and so on. The increased bone and joint health will also come in handy then.
Costs of LIFTING:
Time. But my prescription is two to three sessions of 45 minutes per week. Marginal cost is zero if you “have to exercise anyway”.
It will take between 2 and 8 weeks of active discipline to stick to it, like most habits. Forcing yourself until it’s a habit is a cost.
Like all new things, you have to learn it. That’s where this post comes in.
You might not like it. You’ll feel unconfortable in the gym at first, and for a very small fraction of people that never fully goes away.
My Prescription for those who want to start lifting:
The tacit advice
Not all you need to know is just the program. I will at the end of this both give you a program, and a framework to make many more programs. But first I need to go through an infodump with all the basic things I either get asked / have to correct in people. Each of them is formatted as my suggestion, then the explanation in deepening levels. Feel free to skip as much of the explanations as you won’t, unless you disagree with the prescription.
You should train your full body every time you go to the gym.
Why? This is called your “split”, other common splits being Push-Pull-Legs or Upper-Lower. When you go to the gym, you initiate a signaling cascade that tells your tissues to grow, but you also damage your muscles and tendons and deplete various resources which take time to replenish. This is why you do lifting then rest, and won’t get much jacked by just starting to do curls and never stopping.
The time course of both these processes (recovery and adaptation), however, will not require you to rest a whole week after squats before squatting again. If you go to the gym 3 times per week, on a full body split each muscle gets trained 3 times per week, on a Push-Pull-Legs, only once. Direct research has shown higher frequency (times you train a muscle / week) is better
If you have less than 6 months of consistent lifting under your belt, I strongly advise you against lifting more than 3 times per week. The extra marginal gains are not worth the extra hassle, and the increased chance of you burning out on it.
Whenever performing an exercise, your first priority is learning the “good technique”. Then do as many reps as you can until you think you can’t keep good technique on the next rep. Youtube search the exercise’s name, followed by one of the following keywords, and you should get a better than default explanation: “Renaissance periodization”, “Jeff Nippard”, “Max Euceda”. If it is one of Squat, Benchpress or Deadlift, add “Starting strength 5 minutes”
Why?: “Good technique” is on the extreme margins not universally agreed between people who are really into fitness. This is not the type of technique disagreement I’m instructing worried about. Beginners who have never been taught willl often make mistakes everyone agrees are bad, significantly harming results, and will improve from almost anyone instructing them. Good technique is defined as achieving some mix of the following goals, ordered by how much I prioritize them:Repeatable. You only know that you got stronger in the exercise if you’re doing the same thing set to set, week to week.
Ensures you can push hard, via being stable, and using the proper range of motion.
Takes the already very small injury chance and makes it even smaller.
Ignore anything fancy. Your lifting should look like this: For a given exercise, select a load that allows you to perform between 5 and 20 repetitions, and do close to as many as you can (This bout of continuous repetitions, or reps, is called a set). Rest for a little bit, then do another set.
Why?: The list of fads that range from useless to beginners all the way to provably worse is long, here are many: Resistance band workouts, “circuits”, Special loading techniques like dropsets, specific warmup exercises, mobility work, stretching, activation drills, foam rolling, kettlebells, weird timing (resting too little) and so on*
Be Not Afraid: Lifting weights, statistically, is extremelly safe compared to any other sport. In the same vein as above, if someone tells you “you need to do X on top of your lifting to make sure you don’t get injured”, they’re probably wrong. If they say “This exercise is very injurious” they might be at best stretching the truth.
Why? : The median strength training practicioner is a 30yo dude, who didn’t think about it much at all, and goes to the weight swinging around as much weight as he can. That guy, in all of our data collection, is doing totally fine compared to soccer players, joggers, gymnasts, basketball players, etc.
The forces you put on your connective tissues in the gym are just not that big compared to the sudden spikes when doing things like jumping or tripping. When professional natural bodybuilders (who are much more risk-prone then you) get injured, it’s not something like “I ruined my back”, it’s usually “I couldn’t train that body for a month because of it!!”.
See profesisonal athletes when they retire. The former (natural) bodybuilders have a lot more joint health than the “real sport” pros.
You don’t need a belt, knees over toes is good, upright rows are good. Anything that doesn’t hurt your joint every time you do it, will not be secretly harming you in the background
Don’t complicate your eating. Try to eat something resembling protein on every meal, don’t go beyond that. Don’t start meal prepping, don’t count your calories, don’t change the foods you eat too much. If you’re vegan and hate tofu, just buy any tub of vegan protein powder and drink some. Same goes for supplements, take none.
Why?: If you just make sure you’re eating a measurable amount of “protein foods” (dairy, animal products, soy, protein powder) you will NOT miss the gains because of bad diet. You are picking up a new habit, don’t pick up three or four packaged habits at once. Conditioning on this having any point, you’ll be lifting for years. You can go back and re-analyze food if you want once lifting is sedimented in your lifestyle. Too many people fail because they try to “Do Fitness”. Instead, just lift weights same as you would start going to a dance class. You’ll get plenty of benefits. I’ll make a post about more serious food optimization for when you’re there.
Warm-up like this: For each exercise, if do two sets of that exact exercise, with less load/repts than you’ll do in your “Work Sets” (which means non-warmup sets). This will both physiologically get your tissues ready, and gives you a chance to practice your technique.
What lifts to do?
A program I’ve prescribed often:
Here is a very basic sample program. I heavily encourage to at least go through Program Design 101 below, which will teach you how to substitute exercises if you need to.
There are two different routines, labeled “Day A”, “Day B”. Do day A. Rest at least 48 and at most 96 hours then do day B, rinse and repeat. You can do them on the same day of the week always, or not, does not matter.
NOTE: WHAT IS A SUPERSET? The entire program is “supersets”. In fitness this is a loaded term, and the specific type we’re using is “Antagonistic Supersets”. Fancy sounding as it is, it’s simply a way to cram more productive lifting per time unit. Take the first part of Day A: “DB Shoulder Squat” superset with “DB Lateral Raise”. This means you do a set of the squats, rest only until you’re no longer out of breath, like 30s to a minute, then do a set of lateral raise, rest 30-60s, go back to squats. Repeat until done the correct number of sets.
Workout A:
3 Sets of Squats with DB on shoulder , superset with DB Lateral Raise
3 Sets of Barbell Bench Press, superset with Barbell bent over rows.
3 Sets of Barbell Overhead Press, superset with pull ups (any grip, assistance form machine or band if needed)
Workout B:
3 Sets of Barbell Squats, superset with DB Lateral Raise
3 Sets of DB Bench press, superset with DB Bent over rows (both arms at once)
3 sets of DB Overhead Press, supersets with Chin ups (assistance if needed)
Program Design 101
This is just a template with which to make programs. It’s the template I used to make the program above. The template for any day of this workout is
Workout _:
3 Sets [Legs] , superset with [Side delts]
3 Sets of [H Push], superset with [H Pull]
3 Sets of [V push], superset with [V pull]
You just fill in the brackets with exercises from the following lists:
Legs: Barbell Squats, Leg Press, DB on Shoulder Squats, Front Squats, Goblet Squats, Bulgarian Split Squats, Reverse Lunges, Normal lunges, Walking Lunges
Side Delts: DB Lateral raise, Cable Lateral Raise, DB Upright Rows, Side Delt machine, Leaning chair DB Lateral raise
H(orizontal) Push: Bench press with dumbells or barbell, incline or flat. Push ups, Chest press machine.
H(orizontal) Pull: Bent over rows with barbell or barbell, Inverted rows, Chest supported rows on a variety of machines, cable rows.
V(ertical) Push: Overhead press with barbell or dumbell.
V(ertical) Pull: Pull ups or chin ups assisted by band or machine if needed. Lat pulldown (cable) machine, DB pull overs, Lat Prayers.
How to pick from within a category? You need to have the equipment, and not hate the exercise, and if you can don’t use the same exercise multiple times per week.
Final thoughts/ Random
Why SUPERSETS? You probably want a couple minutes of rest between two sets of the same exercise, for those specific muscles to recover and be able to push again. Supersets are just a way for one muscle group to rest while the other does the work. If you just did squats back to back then lateral raises back to back, you’d either need to rest more between sets, taking longer, or perform worse in each set.
Also shese are not all technically antagonistic supersets, since antagonistic would mean muscles that perform opposite functions get trained together. The legs + side delts combo is a “non-overlapping superset”.Machines vs Dumbells vs Barbells: There is no broad difference. Barbells are better because you can load them heavier and in a more fine grained manner. Machines are better because with ingenius design, they allow you to train patterns that would be very hard to replicate with free weights, and while fatiguing you less. Dumbells are extremelly convenient, allow for single arm training, and for exercises in which an empty barbell is too much. I believe a beginner using good reasoning could get great results with just one of the three, or whatever mix they prefer. For each muscle group you want to train, look up “best way to train _ with DBS/Barbells/Machine” and the exercises that come up probably will be very good.
Who is the author? I’m 24, have been lifting seriously for 3 years, and have not missed a week since I started. I’ve lost around 70lbs of fat and gained 15lbs of muscle in the meantime. I have spent an unreasonable about of time reading and watching things related to everything adjacent to exercise. From old soviet textbooks, modern textbooks, the vast knowledge dump from the 2000s blog era, to the modern youtube landscape where PHD’s with professional bodybuilder level physique will talk your ear off about lifting. I don’t follow much of my own advice. I lift 7 times per week for around 1.5 hours a day, and optimize my food and sleep for maximal gains. I train each muscle group approx 3 times per week, eat 160g of protein per day, and wake up without an alarm (can you tell fitness is my only hobby?), take 5g of creatine religiously. I have done paid personal training in the past, but it’s no longer worth the money.
Is something in this article not quite right? comment and I’ll try to explain why I said it in more detail. I don’t know if there is a market for people to hear my more complex advice for more advanced trainees, since I’m guessing lesswrongers who get into lifting quickly consume a lot of knowledge on it and don’t need my summaries. This was inspired by an Anonymous friend who said he’d be interested, so I quickly wrote it up, since I believe nothing I am saying here is controversial advice.
Comment if you need anything answered, or DM me (does lesswrong do DMs?)
Based advice.
I just wanted to add that 60-75 minutes is optimal for growth hormone release which determine recovery period as well as helping a bit with getting extra muscle mass.
Final thing is to add creatine to your diet as it gives you a 30% increase in muscle mass gain as well as some other nice benefits.
How big is the benefit from going to the gym instead of focusing exercising at home with barbells and dumbbells?
Given both the cost of time to travel to the gym and the actual cost of the gym, how should we think about that?
Depends on how off the beaten path you go. I can give for each of the movement patterns above my best recomended exercises, and how good they are compared to the gold tier.
[legs] : Lunges, Sissy squats, single leg squats and so on, if you add some weight to your back. I think these are great. Kind of annoying, and yo might only have one or two you are in the correct strength range to do.
[side delts]: Pretty much no way to train without a heavy thing you can hold in one hand. One set of adjustable DBs solves this.
[H pull]: Inverted rows are the only thing you can set sup, but they’re really messy, so can’t train this super well. With DBs you can do one arm or two arm DB Rows.
[H Pull]: You need a pull up bar. If you’re not strong enough for pullups/chin ups (at least 5), cheap bands as assistance will get you there. No lower tech way to train this.
[H Push]: From kneeling push ups, to deficit push ups, the low tech solutions are great and probably accomodate any strenght level you have.
[V Push]: The most redundant of my 6 classes. You can push heavy things vertically if you have them, otherwise i can’t think of a way.
Is working out half your body well and neglecting the other half better than not working out? hell yes. WIll anything bad happend from being “inbalanced”? Nothing beyond maybe looking unbalanced
I thought it was better to exercise until failure?
The literature is inconclusive. We have many trials comparing training to failure to leaving sy 2 reps in reserve, and meta analysis on top of that. I can for sure say the improvement, if it exists, is very small.
The upside for a beginner of not going to failure though, is that going to failure makes you much more likelly to use bad technique, hindering your hability to properly learn good technique. Every rep you do with bad technique is very counter productive.
My current model for people who already have very well established technique is: Failure maximizes growth per set, but total growth is maximized by doing more sets not to failure.
How do barbell and dumbbell exercises differ? I always find dumbbells more convenient — is there ever a reason to use a barbell instead?
I’m not near any gyms and have plenty of space, so I strongly prefer the safety profile of barbell + squat rack. If something goes wrong and I lose control of the weight, it’s good to know that there’s no way for it to hit me. And part of progressing is sometimes trying a weight that you’re only 80% or 90% sure you can actually lift successfully—I’d much rather the failure mode be clank “whoops!” than however many pounds of iron to the face.
I also find that it’s easier to track whether I’m using good form with a barbell vs dumbbells. The cues to moving a bar correctly are to keep it level and trace the correct path in a plane with it (usually straight up and down), whereas the cues to moving dumbbells correctly are… something about simultaneously tracking the position and orientation of two separate objects in 3-space? Definitely more complicated to keep track of all the moving parts when there are twice as many.
Barbells are also a compromise between fixed and adjustable dumbbells. You’ll probably want different weights for different exercises, and the exact weight you want for each will slowly increase over time. With a barbell, you modify the two ends to change the weight, and you can get plates as small as a few ounces if you need to increase the weight super slowly. With dumbbells, either you use fixed increments and have to store a lot of pairs, or you use adjustable ones and have to modify twice as many ends for each weight change.
If your access to equipment, space, and trainers is different from mine, though, your conclusions about the best options for training will likely be different as well.
There is no broad difference. This is also true of the machines vs free weights question. Many trials have investigated this, and if two exercises have the same general movement pattern and are hard in the same way (e.g. a legpress and a squat), expect them both to work the same.
Some extra considerations:
* If I want to do a squat or deadlift patter, and I’m not a beginner, I’m going to be using inconveniently heavy dumbells.
* If I want to train my side delts with a barbell, I got maybe one good option (upright row)
And for each individual exercise I can probably talk your ear off about nuanced improvements with one or other.
If your question is something like “If I only ever use dumbells, can I get 90% of my theoretical max gains? ” I’d guess yes. Use your creativity, google, and good sense to find exercises that challenge you as you advance.
Certain exercises such as skull crushers among others are more injury prone if you do it with dumbbells because you have more degrees of freedom.
There’s also larger interrelated mind muscle connection if you do things with a barbell i believe? (The movement gets more coupled with lifting one interconnected source of weight rather than two independent ones?)
I for example activate my abs more with a barbell shoulder press than I do with dumbbells so it activates your body more usually. (same thing for bench press)
I’ve been lifting once a week for 20-45 minutes for two years and have noticed that I am stronger in everyday life and my body looks better (arms/shoulders/etc). There’s definitely a benefit to be had even if you think 45 minutes twice a week is too much.
Here’s my questions:
I only use machines because I was intimidated by the risk of injury with free weights. What are your thoughts on machines in general?
What is your advice for someone who wants to move from machines to free weights?
How do you track your progress? I use a very bare-bones android app that is simply called “Strong” which I use to keep track of my reps/sets/weights, and find it really useful as it tells me what my previous weight with that machine/exercise was. There’s a lot of paid options out there. Do you have any advice?
If your gym has a good selection of machines, you can totally get really jacked just using them, see my above comment for Barbells vs Dumbells. My first questions to you would be how you’re training your legs and abs since machines for those can be rarer.
I should double down on the point that injury should not be on my mind. Here are some factoids since I can’t tread them into a coherent narrative very quickly:
* When the median american lifts weights, aka someone who is much more careless than yourself, he gets injured way less often than in any other sport.
* Even for injuries that happen in the gym, accidents like tripping and weight falling on you make up a bigger share than what we think of as “injuries”. Wear shoes, don’t walk around weights looking at your phone, be sensible etc.
* Injuries are most often not a consequence of “misperforming an exercise once”. They are rather the result of bad programming. Every rep you do with your legs hurts your knee a little bit, and it can heal some amount per week. Injury comes when you do more (load, reps, sets, speed) in aggregate than you can handle, which is really difficult for a beginner, and for someone training for not that much per week.
* Acute injury, aka when you break something during a lift, should be a worry only for the strongest among us. It’s just math. Your muscles can produce some amount of force, which your tendons must be able to transfer without snappin. For normal humans, your muscles are nowhere near strong enough to do this. WIth years of strength training (and PEDs which strengthen your muscles without strenghtening your tendons), you can maybe get there.
My advice is to be mindful of technique when learning a new lift, film yourself or ask someone to watch if you can, and make sure it looks the same as in the video.
Advice for moving from machines to free weights? Pick like 2 or 3 free weight exercises that look cool to you / are hard do do with machines and swap them into your program. Rinse and repeat after months. You may have many worries, and I can dispell most of them if you lay them out.
I also use strong, I have the premium membership. I looked into all the other apps, their features are not beter tracking afaik, but algorithms that create programs for you, or just access to pre-made programs
I think the reason I worry about injury is because I am far, far more clumsy than average, am really bad with form in general (I am in a theatre troupe and we often have to learn choreographed movement or rarely simple dances and I’m always the worst at it), and when I did running I ended up with a hip injury that still gives me grief (that said I am trying to build back up to hopefully running 10-20k a week again as I did really love it).
So, yeah, essentially, I’m terrified of baking in poor form and then injuring myself over time, as well as terrified of dropping a weight on myself (that said, I have never dropped a weight on any machine, so maybe that’s a good way to update myself).
The lower body exercises I do on the gym are the leg press, hip abduction/adduction, leg curl, leg extension. They also have an ab and back machine but to be honest I hate them and only use them rarely (once a month when I’m having a good week and want to do everything). But I do alternate between leg-focused machines and arm-focused machines when I exercise. Sometimes I do split sets between two machines if it’s quiet but that’s obviously rare because I want to be courteous. I aim to do 7 rep sets, and will lower the weight if I can only get around 4 and raise the weight if I can get 10+.
Thank you for the suggestion, it honestly didn’t occur to me that I could just add in one or two free weight exercises and use the machines for everything else.
My fitness goals are “have nice buff looking arms”, “do a pullup” and “lift up my husband (~80kg) in the traditional wife-carrying pose”, though I’m not pursuing them relentlessly or optimally, they’re just milestones I want to reach.
What free weight exercises might be best for getting me there, and have the most straightforward technique?
Those are great goals.
If you want to be “lifting your husband” strong, look up the starting strength squat and deadlift guides.
For upper body exercise suggestions, I think the list above is great.
For injury risk, I would really not worry, given the injury statistics are so low, and they are from people who DON’T focus on technique. The median gym goes is a 30yo guy swinging as much weight as possible around, and he’s mostly fine.
As far as technique goes, define failure as “I can’t do another rep without changing technique” and you reduce your chance of injure drastically.
For the exercises you’re doing now, I’d say there is a lot of “redundance / over-optimization”, e.g. the leg press will train both your adductors and abductors. If you want to do 2 leg exercises instead of just one (like I suggested in the post), I’d pick one form each category):
[squat] : Leg press, Back Squat, Front squat, split squat, hack squat, smith machine squat, dumbell-on-shoulder squat, goblet squat
[hinge] : Deadlift, Romanian deadlift, good Morning, reverse lunge.
I can’t help myself but to gym bro since it is LW.
(I’ve been doing lifting for 5 years now and can do more than 100kg in bench press for example, etc. so you know I’ve done it.)
The places to watch out for injuries in free weight is your wrists, rotator cuffs and lower back.
If you’re doing squats or deadlifts, use a belt or you’re stupid.
If you start feeling your wrists when doing benchpress, shoulder press or similar compound movement, get wrist protection, it isn’t that expensive and helps.
Learn about the bone structure of the wrist and ensure that you’re trying to hold the bar at the right angle with the hand. (this is a classic for wrist pain otherwise)
Do rotator cuff exercises once a week
Finaly generally, start with higher reps and a bit lower weight , 8-12 is the recommended range (but you can do up to 20 as post says) and get used to the technique over time, when things start hurting you know you’re doing it wrong and you should have someone tell you what you’re doing wrong.
Why are rotator cuff exercises good?
Essentially, if you’re doing bench press, shoulder press or anything involving the shoulders or chest, the most likely way to injure your self is through not doing this in a stable way. The rotator cuffs are in short there to stabilize these sorts of movements and deal with torque. If you don’t have strong rotator cuffs this will lead to shoulder injuries a lot more often which is one of the main ways you can fuck up your training.
what set of exercises do you prefer to strengthen and stabilize the rotator cuffs?
This is the quickest link i found on this but the 2nd exercise in the first category and doing them 8-12 reps for 3 sets with weighted cables so that you can progressive overload it.
https://e3rehab.com/rotator-cuff-exercises/
So for everyone who’s concerned about the squats and deadlift thing with or without a belt you can look it up but the basic argument is that lower back injuries can be really hard to get rid off and it is often difficult to hold your core with right technique without it.
If you ever go over 80kg you can seriously permanently mess with your lower back by lifting wrong. It’s just one of the main things that are obvious to avoid and a belt really helps you hold your core properly.
Here’s the best link I can find:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9282110/#:~:text=[1%2C2] It is,spinal injuries during weightlifting training.
Could you say a bit about progression?
Yeah. Progression will be really weird when you start by yourself.
Sometimes you’ll be 20% stronger than last workout on the same exercise, sometimes 20% less (because you might have improved your technique).
If you are not, on average, getting stronger, you are probably not gaining muscle. Don’t goodhart, letting your technique focus slip away.
Progression changes a lot from one exercise to the other. You can probably add 5lbs every time you deadlift for the first 3 months. However I’ve been doing DB Lateral raises for 3 years and I’m about to move on to the 20lbs.
My practical advice?
Keep track of the weights you’re using, apps like strong do this well. Anytime you select a lift, it shows you how much you did it with last time.
As a beginner, stop every set when you are not confident you can maintain good technique on the next set. You’ll be farther from “true muscular failure” than someone who is more accostumed with the lift, but that’s ok.
For every exercise, have a range of repetitions. Say you’re doing squats for 5-8 reps. Perform the set as described above. If you get less than 5, next sets use 10% less weight. If you get more than 8, next time use 10% more weight.
10% seems like a lot.
Also, I worry a bit about being too variable in the number of reps and in how to add weight. I found I fall easily into doing the minimal version—“just getting it done for today”. Then improvement stalls and motivation drops.
I think part of the appeal of “Starting Strength” (which I started recently) is that it’s very strict. Unfortunately if adding 15 kilo a week for three weeks to squats it not going to kill me drinking a gallon of milk a day will.
Which is to say, I appreciate your post for giving more building pieces for a workout that works out for me.
Suppose that “someone” is a woman. Would you stick to the same claim? Even my Dunbar-sized social circle includes people who consistently describe as “too muscular” women with any amount of visible muscle.
You can find videos where girls deliberatly flexing can evoke bad reactions, but those same girls are totally fine when not flexing.
I have seen one example (so infer many exist) of a very gifted chinese lady living in the us who was quite muscular, and her wedding photographer photoshoped her legs to be skinnier. I have no idead how cultures other than the western monoculture operate with this, and probably should make it clear my statement is somewhat tonge and cheek, or add this nuance to it.
The thing to keep in mind is, lets say with 10 years of dedication you could get to a place where you’d be “too muscular”.
1 - You’ll notice before you get there and just stop. Muscle growth is extremelly slow
2 - You can reverse. 2 months of not training and dieting will take a lot of muscle off
I wonder what you think of the super-setting weights vs. HIIT trade-off?
I’ve gone full circle on this—I used to prefer HIIT, then I switched to hypertrophy-style weight training (mainly after watching “exercise science youtube, RP etc.”), now I’ve gone back to HIIT for most workouts. A typical workout will look like a 21-15-9 progression of 5 or 6 exercises, e.g. weighted squats, pull-ups, burpees, lunges, kettlebell swings, press-ups, leg raises, box jumps, or (relatively light) deadlifts or olympic lifts for 15-25 mins. My heart rate usually stays above 140, and hits VO2 max at some point.
To me, HIIT feels way better, and more time efficient. Hypertrophy training (even with supersets, which are definitely better) still feels a bit more like a chore, and I never get a “buzz”.
I don’t have good enough theory of mind to know which is best to recommend to others, though.
I’ll say on this the same as I say about crossfit.
Worse for gains than weight training, worse for cardio than cardio. The best way to combine both.
You have pointed out the biggest benefit of this style of training: Some people really really like it. From the fact that it is a trope that crosfitters talk about it all the time, I take that crossfit is really good at getting people to stick to the habit. I have recommended it to people whose main worry was “I don’t know if I’ll enjoy lifting weights that much”.
The buzz is real
Known fallacy: the statistical safety could be conditional on participants taking special precaution, like in skydiving.
(Though the part after suggests there’s a true adjacent thing, if {it’s true those median participants don’t actually use special (even if ‘lay’) safety caution}, which I’m doubtful of)
I’m curious about your thoughts on lifting vs endurance training. I thought in terms of general health optimization a combination of them would be better then just lifting
For “optimization” I totally agree. This was not the goal here, but yeah I think if you can only do one you should lift, as it will improve your cardio to above baseline levels, but doing both is probably better than just lifting