The part I don’t understand is why people want to be stronger as opposed to be more visually muscular. This is not the same thing, for the later goal traditional body-building i.e. one composite and one isolation exercise for every major muscle group works better. Also it is more like 5 x 8 or 5 x 10. A lot of strong people end up still being fairly thin.
What is the utility of strength without beach looks today? I just pay movers to carry furniture from the old apartment to the new. Even in a brawl, punching strength depends more on knowing how to use gravity.
Because just inflated muscles don’t do these? The gap between the two is not that big, the body-builders just go a bit less intense on the heavy lifts in order to have some energy left for the isolation ones, and the rep range being higher makes the weights 20-40% smaller. The difference between 5x5 150kg bench presses vs. 5x8 110 kg ones + doing pec-decs is nowhere nearly as big as the difference between these two and just about anything else. The primary difference is joints and ability to move heavy objects. Doing more in the sense of being more a of human forklift somehow does not look that glorious. The feeling better may as well attach better to the more spectacular looks, and as for longer lasting, probably near draw.
For me strength always meant punching strength and this guy convinced me it is mainly technique.
Caveat: I know grappling sports are getting more popular, such as BJJ / part of MMA. I think this probably does not apply there. I think grappling could be more brute-forced.
I think one reason modern culture may be hooked on strength is that when we were children a lot of fighting / domination / bullying / rough play relied more on intuitive grappling than on punching (or kicking). This made us all respect The Strong Guy Who Can Whip Everybody. And of course movies like the 300 etc. reinforce it. This goes back to very old cultural origins, wrestling is one thing many cultures paralelly evolved because this is how people can physically dominate each other and establish a pecking order without actually hurting each other.
Here is why I like to argue it: weight lifting techniques are used in many sports for a long time. Still, most guys were scrawny, and not due to lack of nutrition, since even today some lifters use really easy nutrition like eating lots of cottage cheese. Or drinking lots of milk if they are tolerant. Body building got popular in the West roughly after 1977 (Pumping Iron) and elsewhere later, I would say, buff guys on bar dancefloors became a common sight 1990-ish, roughly? What do you think body building brought to the table that former lifting couldn’t? I think it brought ease through isolation. That while doing the triceps cables is straining for that muscle, it is not straining for the rest of the body, nor the mind. You can almost not pay attention, and not even feel tired, just stop it when the muscle itself burns but you can almost even avoid getting sweaty. This ease brought a strong motivating factor. When I was 17 it felt like a cheat code: I was sitting in the 45 degree leg press, and wondering how amazing it is that I am sitting on my ass, laid back, relaxed, yet got better looking legs that classmates who played soccer all the time.
The current SS / SL 5x5 trend is bringing back the former, pre-body-building era, where your energy is wasted on making sure your posture is right, all the secondary muscles are flexed all right and so on. While with a 45 degree leg press basically the only tiring, attention-grabbing, willpower-sapping activitiy is just pressing the legs up, with a squat you must pay attention to getting the whole body right, which is much more tiresome hence demotivating, because most of that does not apply to good looks, just a rather useless forklift-ability.
Doing more in the sense of being more a of human forklift somehow does not look that glorious.
Try being bedridden for a few weeks and see what you feel like afterwards. Then you can decide how much strength you actually want available in your everyday life.
And how much endurance you want? And how much speed you want? And how much coordination you want? And how much sense of balance you want? Why single out strength? Feeling my speed improve feels better than strength improvements… I think strength is a dangerously good sounding word, it has way too positive connotations than utility. Of course, I am not advocating weakness, I am advocating that for people not interested in sports beach-muscles may work better, and for people interested in sports whatever amount, form, and methods of acquiring strength their trainer tells them is probably best.
You spoke of strength, and that is what I was responding to. All those other things are also important. The body you get if you do not attend to maintaining them is unlikely to be optimal, outside of a career that forces you to. Not being a professional athlete, dancer, or soldier, I must take care of the matter myself.
I understand it, I just don’t understand why taking care of the body maintenance equals human forklift stuff? I just baffled that somewhere in the last 10-15 years being healthy or fit gets increasingly equated to having a high one rep max. Alternatives are either beach body building stuff,which optimizes for looks, yet gives most of the forklift stuff as well, or the normal sports, not professionally but like playing tennis 2-3 times a week or something, which does little for muscles but takes care of speed, balance, endurance etc.
When I visualize myself as an ancestral hunter—as it sounds like a good way to take care of the body—I don’t just see someone who can in a rigid and stiff way pick something up and put it down. It involves reflexes, balance, speed, dodging a thrown stone, throwing another back etc.
So this is what I don’t understand this contemporary understanding of fitness. I understand the beach body builders, as it is about visuals. But the idea of picking up heavy things being fitness, it just seems so removed from any possible idea of how an animal’s body is supposed to function.
I agree that having pretty muscles and having a physically capable body are quite different things. I do not agree that having a physically capable body is useless in our times.
Physical capability does not equal picking up heavy things, it is not even close. Speed, balance, accuracy etc. just imagine an ancestral hunter or any animal really. A fast, limber, precise, situationally aware guy who can dodge a spear and throw one in return. Our modern weight lifter would be the pack mule of the hunting band, who is too stiff and slow to do anything useful but he can carry the deer carcass home. OK...
I am not arguing that weightlifting is the best thing ever. I am arguing against your assertion that, except for looking pretty, contemporary people do not need physically capable bodies.
Okay, but how to define physical capability? What kind of capability matters most?
I’d like to have better cardio and better muscle endurance in the legs, for example, dancing for hours or walking sight-seeing all day without having to sit down would be awesome.
Yes, the other extreme : be able do everything, even though you probably don’t want to do everything. It takes so much time that you probably won’t have enough time left do the activity you wanted to become fit for.
It takes as much time as you are willing to commit. You asked what is physical capability, not whether you can afford trying to become physically perfect.
The part I don’t understand is why people want to be stronger as opposed to be more visually muscular. This is not the same thing, for the later goal traditional body-building i.e. one composite and one isolation exercise for every major muscle group works better. Also it is more like 5 x 8 or 5 x 10. A lot of strong people end up still being fairly thin.
What is the utility of strength without beach looks today? I just pay movers to carry furniture from the old apartment to the new. Even in a brawl, punching strength depends more on knowing how to use gravity.
You can do more, it feels better, and your body lasts longer.
Because just inflated muscles don’t do these? The gap between the two is not that big, the body-builders just go a bit less intense on the heavy lifts in order to have some energy left for the isolation ones, and the rep range being higher makes the weights 20-40% smaller. The difference between 5x5 150kg bench presses vs. 5x8 110 kg ones + doing pec-decs is nowhere nearly as big as the difference between these two and just about anything else. The primary difference is joints and ability to move heavy objects. Doing more in the sense of being more a of human forklift somehow does not look that glorious. The feeling better may as well attach better to the more spectacular looks, and as for longer lasting, probably near draw.
For me strength always meant punching strength and this guy convinced me it is mainly technique.
Caveat: I know grappling sports are getting more popular, such as BJJ / part of MMA. I think this probably does not apply there. I think grappling could be more brute-forced.
I think one reason modern culture may be hooked on strength is that when we were children a lot of fighting / domination / bullying / rough play relied more on intuitive grappling than on punching (or kicking). This made us all respect The Strong Guy Who Can Whip Everybody. And of course movies like the 300 etc. reinforce it. This goes back to very old cultural origins, wrestling is one thing many cultures paralelly evolved because this is how people can physically dominate each other and establish a pecking order without actually hurting each other.
Here is why I like to argue it: weight lifting techniques are used in many sports for a long time. Still, most guys were scrawny, and not due to lack of nutrition, since even today some lifters use really easy nutrition like eating lots of cottage cheese. Or drinking lots of milk if they are tolerant. Body building got popular in the West roughly after 1977 (Pumping Iron) and elsewhere later, I would say, buff guys on bar dancefloors became a common sight 1990-ish, roughly? What do you think body building brought to the table that former lifting couldn’t? I think it brought ease through isolation. That while doing the triceps cables is straining for that muscle, it is not straining for the rest of the body, nor the mind. You can almost not pay attention, and not even feel tired, just stop it when the muscle itself burns but you can almost even avoid getting sweaty. This ease brought a strong motivating factor. When I was 17 it felt like a cheat code: I was sitting in the 45 degree leg press, and wondering how amazing it is that I am sitting on my ass, laid back, relaxed, yet got better looking legs that classmates who played soccer all the time.
The current SS / SL 5x5 trend is bringing back the former, pre-body-building era, where your energy is wasted on making sure your posture is right, all the secondary muscles are flexed all right and so on. While with a 45 degree leg press basically the only tiring, attention-grabbing, willpower-sapping activitiy is just pressing the legs up, with a squat you must pay attention to getting the whole body right, which is much more tiresome hence demotivating, because most of that does not apply to good looks, just a rather useless forklift-ability.
Try being bedridden for a few weeks and see what you feel like afterwards. Then you can decide how much strength you actually want available in your everyday life.
And how much endurance you want? And how much speed you want? And how much coordination you want? And how much sense of balance you want? Why single out strength? Feeling my speed improve feels better than strength improvements… I think strength is a dangerously good sounding word, it has way too positive connotations than utility. Of course, I am not advocating weakness, I am advocating that for people not interested in sports beach-muscles may work better, and for people interested in sports whatever amount, form, and methods of acquiring strength their trainer tells them is probably best.
You spoke of strength, and that is what I was responding to. All those other things are also important. The body you get if you do not attend to maintaining them is unlikely to be optimal, outside of a career that forces you to. Not being a professional athlete, dancer, or soldier, I must take care of the matter myself.
I understand it, I just don’t understand why taking care of the body maintenance equals human forklift stuff? I just baffled that somewhere in the last 10-15 years being healthy or fit gets increasingly equated to having a high one rep max. Alternatives are either beach body building stuff,which optimizes for looks, yet gives most of the forklift stuff as well, or the normal sports, not professionally but like playing tennis 2-3 times a week or something, which does little for muscles but takes care of speed, balance, endurance etc.
When I visualize myself as an ancestral hunter—as it sounds like a good way to take care of the body—I don’t just see someone who can in a rigid and stiff way pick something up and put it down. It involves reflexes, balance, speed, dodging a thrown stone, throwing another back etc.
So this is what I don’t understand this contemporary understanding of fitness. I understand the beach body builders, as it is about visuals. But the idea of picking up heavy things being fitness, it just seems so removed from any possible idea of how an animal’s body is supposed to function.
I agree that having pretty muscles and having a physically capable body are quite different things. I do not agree that having a physically capable body is useless in our times.
Physical capability does not equal picking up heavy things, it is not even close. Speed, balance, accuracy etc. just imagine an ancestral hunter or any animal really. A fast, limber, precise, situationally aware guy who can dodge a spear and throw one in return. Our modern weight lifter would be the pack mule of the hunting band, who is too stiff and slow to do anything useful but he can carry the deer carcass home. OK...
I am not arguing that weightlifting is the best thing ever. I am arguing against your assertion that, except for looking pretty, contemporary people do not need physically capable bodies.
Okay, but how to define physical capability? What kind of capability matters most?
I’d like to have better cardio and better muscle endurance in the legs, for example, dancing for hours or walking sight-seeing all day without having to sit down would be awesome.
That’s how.
Yes, the other extreme : be able do everything, even though you probably don’t want to do everything. It takes so much time that you probably won’t have enough time left do the activity you wanted to become fit for.
It takes as much time as you are willing to commit. You asked what is physical capability, not whether you can afford trying to become physically perfect.