Fitness and all things fitness related (AKA: Eat your goddamn oats.)

[ColonicAcid]

So I saw some people talking about fitness in the say cheese thread after someone asked advice and I'm actually surprised we don't have a thread dedicated for this stuff already. So come on in and tells us about what you did today, your routine or ask a question and I (and maybe other people I guess?) will try and answer it.

As I've said in the Christmas thread I've started to get into oly weightlifting which is hella fun but I used to do mostly powerlifting (I had a total of 400 which is just shy of 900lbs and a wilks of 300 whilst 5'7 @ 70kg) Honestly raw strength will get you no where at the start in olympic weightlifting I would say, my clean being only ~60kg whilst I could squat high bar squat 170 kinda shows that.

Oh yeah there was also some misconception in the say cheese thread so let me clear it up quickly.

Spoiler

Strength training will not stunt growth, loads of studies have shown this, it's a myth and the earlier you start living a healthy lifestyle, because remember the fact that going to the gym three times a week but not changing your diet will not do anything, the better.

Bodyweight exercises are generally useless, those prisoner strength books are absolute rubbish in my personal opinion. Convicts are in a different scenario compared to us non prisoner folk. They gotta get big because if they don't they'll die, simple as that. If you want to read a book that will actually help you go read Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe and after that go read Squat Every Day by Matt Perryman.

Bodyweight exercises just take too long to get results. It would be 10x less effort if you went to a gym, did a linear strength program (add 2.5kg to your exercise every week) consisting of doing 5 sets of 5 reps of Squat, Bench and Deadlift. That's a really bad routine but that just goes to show how bad bodyweight exercises are.

Oh yeah one more important thing, as I've stated earlier, you could go to the gym every day and still not get any results. You gotta eat big if you wanna get big. There's a stupid saying that abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym. Spot reduction has and will never work, don't even bother doing abs exercises to get rid of that "belly fat".

 

[Seff]

Knowing body weight exercises is very handy when you don't have access to a gym.

 

[Pharaoh Llandy]

I power-type.

Lots of short posts in a short space of time, or long-haul WoTs in WW games. My fingers could totally beat up your fingers.

 

[ColonicAcid]

Knowing body weight exercises is very handy when you don't have access to a gym.

It's less than ideal.
I understand some people live in the middle of nowhere but 90% of people do have a gym near them. Their biggest fear is they'll come to the gym and people will laugh at them at the weight they're pulling. I've said it to many people and I'll say it again, people are at the gym to care about themselves, literally nobody cares about anyone else. You could be benching only the bar and nobody would care.

The only bodyweight exercises I really like are dips and pull ups, everything else really doesn't build strength.

 

[Seff]

Thus the "don't have access". Incidentally,  those are the only two body weight exercises I do - oh, and leg lifts.

 

[A_Mustang]

I prefer cardio.

Running can be done anywhere, add distance, weight and speed to make it harder. Sprints and suicide drills are great too.

Edit: As long as you can hump you're own weight, maybe plus 50%, strength is fine.

 

[Phonemelter]

I used to go to the gym a lot, but never made too much progress because I wasn't able bring myself to eat enough to help fuel that kind of growth. Any tips on that, in case I wanted to try it again?

 

[Seff]

I weighed 70 kg and humped 40 kg in Afghan, so that's not sufficient.

 

[ColonicAcid]

I used to go to the gym a lot, but never made too much progress because I wasn't able bring myself to eat enough to help fuel that kind of growth. Any tips on that, in case I wanted to try it again?

Break it down into small meals each day. Don't try to eat 5k calories in one sitting, you won't manage.
If you can't do that try and get your calories in liquid form, shakes or mass gainer are really nice for people who can't stomach massive amounts of food.
Oh and peanut butter.
Eat peanut butter, 1 tbs is 100kcal.

 

[DanAngleland]

I used to do a lot of squats, never been to a gym but enjoyed occasionally working out at home. I seem to have done something to my left knee, doesn't really hurt but feels a little odd and creaks a bit when doing squats- it has been like this from shortly after I developed a suspected case of plantar fascitis in my left foot (suspected because I never bothered going to the doctor). My foot seems fine now, but my knee still feels a little stiff and iffy, so I don't bother doing more than twenty or forty squats (on the rare occasion I do them) and never use weights on squats. I used to be in a routine of doing 80-120 every few nights, sometimes holding a 20kg weight at the same time, enjoying the burn in my thighs and maintaining the effort to keep the abs engaged, using short runs the day after to loosen up any knots. I've gotten really lazy with abdominal exercises as well, though I try to do just a minute or two of them once in a blue moon, and press ups once or twice a week. It just feels good to do exercise sometimes, keeps me reasonably fit.

What I really enjoy though is running, something I was doing at least twice a week until I developed that Plantar issue in July(which I think was from stepping badly onto the edge of kerbs occasionally when crossing roads, and occasionally jogging a short way in normal shoes to catch a train). I haven't gotten back into a proper routine of running again yet, but plan to go out tomorrow morning. I went for a 3 mile jog last week for the first time in almost 3 weeks, and at one point a month or so back the gap was well over a month. It is a long way from running 10-15 miles on a weekend back in the spring, but I enjoy even a short jog, it relaxes me and energises me at the same time.

I would recommend running to anyone as long as they don't have a medical condition which makes it inadvisable; it is a relaxing and accessible activity. That said it is important to do exercises at home to prepare and maintain your body for running; things like squats and lunges, abdominal exercises, stretches after leg exercises (including your runs) to relax the muscles and aid recovery (though not everyone finds they need to do these stretches).

I've never been interested in weight gain personally, I enjoy the feeling of being light and lean. Besides which I don't tend to put on weight much. I remember about 5 years ago, when I pigged out on snacks a lot and before I began running, I felt a little chunky in the upper torso from doing light weights and press ups, and didn't like it; I was only 5kg or so more than I am now. As long as I feel relatively strong and fit I am happy. Not really in that phase at the moment, probably won't be until I can be bothered to do regular short sessions each night of a few press ups or some sort of abdominal exercise like I used to, as well as doing regular runs again.

 

[Magorian Aximand]

Bodyweight exercises are generally useless,

Wtf...

 

[ColonicAcid]

I've said my argument, you're welcome to argue theory with me if that's what you really want.

 

[Magorian Aximand]

You're confusing size for progress, and strength for function. Lifting can help you get big, but it will also help you get stiff and it won't help you develop the lean muscle that you need to perform actions repeatedly.

To say that body weight exercises are useless betrays that you simply don't understand what they accomplish, or that fitness is not limited to picking up heavy objects.

As for size, I put on 25 lbs of muscle doing only body weight exercises in the past. It certainly can be done. I'm not a big guy, because I don't want to be, and I'm now complimenting my body weight work with some lifting, but body weight stuff is still the core of what I do.

I'm also a martial artist, and have done my share of work with people who primarily lift. I can do frog leaps for days around them, and every single one of my kicks has more power than theirs, despite up to a 40 lbs weight difference. I can work harder for longer, and while my flexibility still needs work, I'm not fighting my movements like they have to. The best example is the instructor though, and his instructor as well. My instructor has done only body weight work for 30 years. He's injury free, and at 52 he can outwork anyone, and can kick better and harder than anyone I've seen. His instructor is 68, is a two time TKD world champion despite his replaced hips from Vietnam injuries, has multiple World Series rings from his time as Tony La Russa's conditioning coach for the A's, two Super Bowl rings from his time as the conditioning coach for the Cowboys, and is still in crazy good shape. He took Emmitt Smith off weights. If body weight exercises were useless, shouldn't his production have dipped?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying lifting is useless. Because I understand that fitness is a broad term and everyone has different goals. And I'm getting something out of the light lifting I'm starting to do, and I know that a well structured lifting program can do great things for people, even if my goals are very different. It would be a good idea for you to make the same considerations for body weight training.

 

[ColonicAcid]

Guess what. Lifting weights will get you the same amount of "lean" muscle as doing push ups and pull ups and whatever. Weight training will activate much more muscles that you just can't activate with normal bodyweight exercises.
Good luck activating your posterior chain, good luck activating your glutes. Those muscles will simply not grow in any adequate fashion. Sure you can do 100 pressups every day and it'll probably decrease the time you do them by as you do them, but you reach a point of diminishing returns far more quickly than lifting heavy. Progressive Overload just isn't there. Unfortunately I don't think your CNS has been put in as much pressure as someone who actually deadlifts heavy weight. And being stiff? Yes I guess if you're doing the same exercise over and over you would get stiff, but I don't and neither do people who know what they're doing (I'm looking at you 5 day brosplits.). I can get into an olympic squat position, ie: ass to grass with 170kg on my traps. I would be hard pressed to describe Lu Xiaojun as "stiff".

Spoiler

Strength is Strength. You may be able to kick harder than x and y. But if I got two 16 year olds who never did any sort of weight training, and I put one doing a good strength routine and the other doing bodyweight exercises and after 2 years I got them to do martial arts guess who would be the strongest? There's no competition really.

Imagine the numbers your coach would be pulling at his age if he opted instead for weight training, and don't tell me that he would get injured. Snapping your **** up only happens if you ingrain wrong motor patterns into your brain and most if not all of the three main compound movements are designed to be safe if you do them properly. Round your lower back while deadlifting and yeah **** you will pop a disk and get a hernie, nobody is denying that, but blaming it on the exercise is the easy way out. There was a guy called Bob Peoples who trained in the early 1900's and in 1940 he broke the world record with a deadlift of 700lbs. And he was hella old in our standards when that happened. If I was stupid I would say if your coach is so strong why can't he deadlift like that? But I know why, it's because he maybe "strong" when it comes to bodyweight exercises. But that doesn't mean in the slightest that he's strong pound for pound. One of the reasons that Powerlifters nowadays don't do one routine over and over and change the intensity weekly from hypertrophy training of ~60% 1RM and 8 reps to a week of high intensity and low volume where they do 3 reps of their 90% 1RM. Why? Because if they did their maximum each and every week their body would adapt and they wouldn't grow in strength, they would instead grow in just that exercise. Their squat would improve in the weight that they're currently in but they would find it extremely hard to progress to a heavier weight. At the end of the day all muscle is muscle. There is no "fat muscle". The muscles you get from bodyweight is exactly the same as the ones you get in weight training. Except in weight training it's faster and far easier to incorporate progressive overload.

I don't think callisthenics will actually help me in any way. Doing the planche won't help me snatch and doing handstand push ups will not help me Jerk.  Bodyweight exercises increase your general strength. You're able to do more with your bodyweight. Weight training increases your maximum strength. Don't think you're going to see someone who is a master at callisthenics pull any numbers worth even mentioning when it comes to strength competitions.

 

[Seff]

I can think of bodyweight exercises for both posterior chain and your butt muscles, but okay.

IIRC muscles develop to handle the kind of stress you exercise them with. Lotsa reps at low weight (which bodyweight exercises end up being pretty fast) will enable you to do even more reps, while heavy lifting will allow you to lift even heavier. A marathon runner and a deadlift champion don't have the same kind of leg muscles, for example.

My experience with muscle is that some people have developed work muscles, while other have developed performance muscles. A work muscles keeps going for hours without getting exhausted, which leaves you sore at the end of the day, having worked all day. A performance muscle will be sore after much less work (aka less reps) but will be able to perform more. I've seen a lot of body building types fail at simple things like carrying a rucksack or splitting wood, because they were exhausted.

 

[ColonicAcid]

I'm suprised. Body builders usually can survive low weight at high reps, while people built for strength can go much higher weights for lower reps.
There's a famous experiment conducted by Fred Hatfield and Tom Platz where they both challenged each other to see who was the strongest. Have a quote from Squat Every Day

Back in 1993, Fred “Dr. Squat” Hatfield and quadzilla Tom Platz decided to see who was really stronger: powerlifters or bodybuilders. The gym rat’s analysis says that powerlifters are stronger than bodybuilders, but bodybuilders have more muscle than powerlifters. The bodybuilder needs finely-developed muscles and low body fat, which isn’t great for lifting the most weight. The powerlifter trains to move the most weight, which isn’t always great for taking your shirt off at the beach.

The Great Squat-Off in Fibo, Germany put this belief to the test. Hatfield, a powerlifter and one of the first men to squat over 1000 pounds, faced Platz, the bodybuilder renowned for his otherworldly leg development, in a challenge to see who could lift the most weight and knock out the most reps with 500 pounds. Hatfield out-squatted Platz at 855 to Platz’s 765. But when the weight came off for maximum reps, Platz took home the trophy with an amazing 23 reps at 500 pounds, while Dr. Squat only managed thirteen.

Who’s stronger? Hatfield with his 855 max or Platz with his 500x23? The strict view says that Hatfield takes it, in that he lifted more weight. Then again, “weak” isn’t a word I’d use to describe Platz ― and that 500x23 could be seen as more impressive, dare I say stronger than, a one-off maximum lift.

I should've probably said actively grew your glutes and posterior chain instead of activating them, yeah sure you can do glute bridges but that will only get you so far.

 

[Seff]

I was callous with the term "body builder". I meant guys who go for heavy weight and few reps, generally aiming for max strength.

 

[IA]

As an aside- One of the things to also remember  is that Platz was 37/38 at the time while Hatfield was 51.

 

[RalliX]

So basically, AGI v STR all over again.

 

[AWdeV]

Sounds more like endurance/CON to me.

Also, I don't wanna get big, I wanna get small.