How Strength Training Changes Your Body for Good | Hacker News Reader

How Strength Training Changes Your Body for Good

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Since I bet the overwhelming majority of our 300,000 years worth of homo sapiens ancestors and countless more years of prior ancestors exercised in these ways as a matter of course, I would instead title it

"How sedentary lifestyles and lack of strength training degrade your body and mind."

Not sure if I made that comment already on HN. But I was watching a documentary on some amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe.

All the men from teens to elders looked like gym models. It never struck me until I was in my 30's - but really I have the body of a sick individual and the guy on the gym adverts is actually what the human body looks by design, not some sort of aspirational dream.

Here's hoping you're young, and find the motivation to start testing the mental barrier that keeps you in this unhealthy state.

I've seen comments like this before, and they're valid, but I've also seen evolutionary biologists and/or anthropologists point out too that many if not most people who are wounded or sick die. So you're also seeing selection bias, where the healthy thrive and you don't see the unhealthy because they're dead.

That's valid if someone's saying hunter-gatherers lived healthier lives on average, but in this case, the OP is presumably healthy enough to do strength training so can fairly compare themselves to a healthy group of hunter-gatherers.

I don't get it; I mean, I understand the idea of selection bias but what does that have to do with grandparent's point?

OK, a relatively large percent of hunter-gatherers die due lack of antibiotics & other modern medicine. But gp isn't claiming it'd be a good idea to return to a full hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They're just observing that "this is what a biologically normal, healthy homo sapiens looks like". And if you go to the gym you might replicate that -- presumably without incurring the fate of short-lived hunter-gatherers.

I don't see it. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=amazonian+hunter-gatherer+...

Strange, cause I see it just fine. It's not necessarily Schwarzenegger style bodies, but those are perfectly healthy, with toned muscles and little fat.

This is literally the pics from the first page of results you've sent:

https://farm6.static.flickr.com/5262/5764935531_d03188cea9.j...

https://deeptimes.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/pygymy-dad.jpg

http://assets.survivalinternational.org/pictures/733/ind-jar...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tCsETZIB-z4/T8tJBhujVjI/AAAAAAAAHv...

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/oD_KKvTaXNQ/hqdefault.jpg

(Plus a lot of the more exposed tribes have changed their lifestyles and are prone to all kinds of western influences).

I'd guess that what our ancestors did would be more akin to endurance, stamina, and agility training exercises than strength training exercises.

One thing I wish I realized earlier in regards to strength training:

It's very easy to do at home if you have the space for it.

You don't need an expensive machine. A used power rack and bench can be found for cheap. I now get my workouts done in the amount of time it would've taken me to drive to/from the gym. Listen to whatever music I like. Don't have to worry about other people. Don't have to worry about weather.

Very true. Dialing it down even further, a bench and a set of adjustable dumbbells can be had for even cheaper and take up a lot less space. You won't be able to progress as far, particularly with leg exercises, but a small flat bench with dumbbells under it fits in the corner of a room when not in use. The power rack, bench, weights, and barbell may not be too expensive, but the extra room to hold all of them is.

That said, I'm a huge fan of the home workout. There's at least an hour worth of time overhead in going to the gym, and there's mental activation energy too. At home, I can easily start a workout, I never wait for a machine, I change in my bedroom instead of a locker room, I'm using my own shower, and it takes zero time to get there.

Especially for beginners, the downsides of only having dumbbells are dwarfed by the benefits of doing it at home.

If you're really hard up for space or money, resistance bands offer one of the best tradeoffs. The modular sets scale up to high weight and will last a while.

The issues that I think hit most people are not really with equipment, though, but time/motivation/energy. For that, it takes ordinary habit forming and logging progress.

Honest question:

I live in a small apartment, is another issue not smell?

i.e, the room with gym equipment may begin to smell of sweat?

Not it won't, your SO will notice the smell after a session, but with proper ventilation it will be quickly gone.

But the coating of the weight may smell very bad, it depends on the material :

un-coated plates won't smell, but will make lot of noise when stacked together and will easily put a dent in a wooden floor

rubber coated plates are silent, but will smell horrible for months, depending on the storage where you brought it, I had to clean mine 3 times with lots of recipes, and put it on the balcony for weeks, and even now I still notice a smell in the room.

I would go for urethane plates, won't smell and are silent.

One can get pretty far with just a pull up bar and gymnast rings.

For many exercises, you don't need any equipment at all.

Push-ups, squats, burpees, l-sits, planks, and a whole ton of isometric exercises can be done at home, without needing any equipment.

Check out r/bodyweightfitness[1], their Recommended Routine,[2] and r/isometrics.[3]

[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/

[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/wiki/kb/recommend...

[3] - https://www.reddit.com/r/Isometrics/

Yes, I am all about the calisthenics.

I don't have the best set up now. But my Walmart style iron gym pull up bar for my door, with gymnastic rings hanging on it, goes a long way. Sure, if I needed to progress further in the future, I would probably need more space for the rings, but it suits my workouts.

Hiking up mountains is for the leg workouts.

"The average American flat-out loathes strength training. While about half of people do the recommended amount of aerobic activity each week, only 20% also do the muscle-strengthening moves that work major muscle groups."

That definitely sums up myself. I am a cyclist. My totals for this week are 147.1 miles with 15,497 feet of climbing (I do nothing but mountains, flat is boring!), but if you ask me to do 10 push ups, I will complain! For me aerobic activity engages my mind. There is a destination. The environment moves and is changing. When climbing up a hill, I have no choice to push myself if I am ever going to get to the top. Push ups? I simply stop when my body resists.

Despite my complaints, I do some strength training. Core strength is important in cycling and it is my upper body that fails during long rides, not my legs. My legs can keep going, but my shoulders give out due to constant vibrations.

You'd probably see nice returns in your cycling if you started doing heavy barbell squats too.

Maybe.

afaik, most elite cyclists do not squat. I'm guessing endurance and low body weight are more advantageous to the sport.

I'm sure there are studies. Can anyone else chime in?

I can see how fast-twitch fibers are less important for endurance athletes. For cyclists, only climbs and sprints would benefit much.

Elite track cyclists--i.e., the ones who ride at 40+ kmph on velodromes--definitely do squat. I wouldn't be surprised if they also incorporated power cleans and deadlifts.

Example: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aOImvJOaGiY

Yes, track cyclists do indeed lift, but it seems OP is an endurance cyclist.

It's not really very useful. Most serious but recreational cyclists are limited in terms of available training time and recovery. When faced with the option of spending their limited time on the bike or in the weight room with the objective of going faster, the bike is almost invariably the right answer. The reason for that is that watts/kg and watts/cda are the 2 basic determinants of how quickly a cyclist can get anywhere. Weight lifting will increase the watts but only on a very, very short time scale (ie, sprinting). Weights will increase the kg and cda for cyclists who eat in surplus. Thus, the cyclist will be no faster and most probably actually get slower.

The obvious exception to this is track and road sprinters who benefit considerably from doing weight work. Everyone else serious about riding should just ride.

there is hardly a sport where strength training and conditioning is not useful.

That is a true statement, however when the objective is getting from point A to point B and those 2 points are >1km apart strength is rarely a limiting factor for cyclists. Available training time and recovery rate are however. Many of the benefits of gym based strength training can be achieved on the bike by performing on bike sprints all the while maintaining specificity. The modern, generally accepted principle is that weight training for cyclists is not the best use of training time.

That quote from the article isn't at all surprising.

The aerobic recommendation is 2.5hrs of brisk walking (i.e. 7 to 8 miles, e.g just over a mile a day). You'd have to be pretty dedictated to a sedentary lifestyle not to manage that.

On the other hand, you have to think about doing the equivalent of 1 set of 12 reps to exhaustion on each major muscle group twice a week.

I manage twice as much going to home/work walking. It's a luxury I get and I understand not everyone will get it, but I've been surprised by how many people tell me to take the bus.

For the record, I live about 20 (~100m) blocks from work, and it takes me 20-30 minutes. Since everyday I go with a backpack full of stuff (notebook, paper notebooks, a few books and a table), I'm also carrying 5 to 7kg of extra weight. And I try to never use the elevator, since it's just 3 floors up and down (on rare ocassions do it 2 or 3x in the day, but over a span of hours).

While all this seems exceedingly little, in the end it adds up so that I "don't do excercise" but I still keep a baseline shape. And I'm totally amazed at how many people will frown upon even doing as little as I do on a daily basis.

Exactly. Without trying you get double the recommended minimum cardio. I can't imagine how people can go about their daily business and not cover it.

Strength is trickier. Nothing in my day to day life requires me to pull something 12 times in succession in such a way that my lats will refuse to do a 13th pull.

That's why I do strength at home. I manage to pull about 30 minutes a day (not much yet), and I interleave upper body/legs every day. Been pulling that for a few months and managed to get fitter, not loosing weight (weight has always been extremely difficult to get for me, so that's a plus).

Have you tried changing up your strength training? There's no fun to doing more push ups, crunches, etc. but my goal is to beat my high score at deadlifting, etc. each week which keeps me motivated. Or flipping a tractor tire from X to Y; there's a destination.

There's a lot of different ways to strength train, it's not all seemingly pointless tasks.

Weight training doesn't make your muscles bigger, it inspires your body to make your muscles bigger. So my question has always been, if having bigger muscles is good why doesn't the body just do it? It certainly has to be aware that I'm operating with a calorie surplus.

Simply maintaining muscle mass requires a considerable amount of calories. Our bodies evolved to function with the least calories possible. So, if you aren't using your muscles often, the body will catabolize muscle to save energy. If you are using your muscles, and thus signaling to your body that you need more of them, your body will devote energy to hypertrophy and increase muscle mass.

The current regime of near universal caloric surplus is not something our ancestors ever faced and evolution left us very little tools to deal with instinctively.

> The current regime of near universal caloric surplus is not something our ancestors ever faced and evolution left us very little tools to deal with instinctively.

This depends on your ancestors. Demographics with a long history of agriculture are much less vulnerable to diet-induced diabetes than, say, native Americans are.

Some people will eat to gorging when faced with more food than they can eat, and some won't.

That's super interesting about demographics with a long history of agriculture. Do you have any links for further reading on that?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1323307/

Diabetes and Mexicans: Why the Two Are Linked

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1932342/

Diabetes Mellitus: A “Thrifty” Genotype Rendered Detrimental by “Progress”?

How many calories do you think it takes [to maintain] +1 lb of muscle mass, with same activity levels? [Hint: It's not the broscience 50]

Probably a calorie surplus is more efficiently stored as fat than as muscle (which consumes considerable extra calories too). And most food crisis events maybe aren't remedied with brute strength, especially if you hadn't been using strength before the crisis to achieve your main foodstuffs.

(But it could be many other reasons too when you factor in sexual selection, etc.)

Genetics and epigenetics.

If muscle isn't needed and used, it's expensive to maintain.

Because muscles take energy to power and fat is storage. In the non-modern world where food was scarcer it wasn't always advantageous to increase in muscle size and therefore caloric needs. Better to carry some fat around in case you don't find food for a while.

I agree that this is the shape of the answer, but I think that fat being preferential to muscle as a calorie store leaves not a lot of room to believe that muscle had substantial other advantages to health. Now of course, it might not be having the muscle that is healthful, but the activities involved in creating it.

Bravo, spoken like a true geek, if only evolution was as simple as building machines.

Evolution is building machines. What is often missed is that the machines that survive best across many scenarios may not excel in most scenarios. You can build a robot that moves 60mph on wheels but it can't take the stairs. Evolution could have built humans that naturally carry far more muscle, but those same humans would die massively in the event of a famine.

In a famine, they can consume their muscles as calories.

The return on consuming muscles is much lower than consuming fat. Thus we retain fat not musculature.

Evolution does build machines. It is a master of nanotechnology.

Even if you are operating with a calorie surplus, you'd need to eat an optimal mix of nutrients to maintain extra muscle. Most people (most likely) cannot simply ramp up amounts of what you currently eat.

For example, if you suddenly require 5000 c/day, you cannot simply eat more pizza, MT Dew, etc. You have to eat 5000 c/day of nutrient rich food. Your muscles do not only require calories. This is actually very hard to do (imagine how much actual food volume you have to process)!

You also need many more macronutrients to keep things going (all that extra food needs to be processed), and clean (significantly more waste byproducts produced).

Your cardiovascular system needs to grow in conjunction with the extra muscle -- it must keep up. As does your skeletal (bones, ligaments/tendons).

Which nutrients are pizza missing for building muscle? The problem with pizza is that it is way too easy to over indulge, but I don't think it is lacking "nutrients".

Fiber for improved intestinal health, and probably a boatload of micronutrients.

Crust has fiber.

Protein. Pizza is a high carb dish in most cases. If you're getting a whole chicken breast worth of chicken per two or three slices, that's a different story. But in general it's mostly a bunch of white bread with some tasty sauce on it.

Pizza has cheese which has a decent amount of protein in it.

Lots of pizzas also have meat toppings as well.

I think the cholesterol and salts will be bad for your health, no?

No and no. Dietary cholesterol is almost entirely unrelated to blood cholesterol and salt intake only matters for those relative few who are sensitive.

Depending on what kind of pizza you eat, the cholesterol may also not be very high.

There's some truth to this. Junk food is over-processed, doesn't have much in the way of nutrient content, and is usually loaded with too much sugar and salt. Everyone knows that.

But I think this comment is overestimating how many calories you'd need and how concerned you'd need to be about nutrient balancing, even on a fairly intense training program. Most people, in their first few years of weight lifting, aren't going to need much or any increase to their daily calories that they wouldn't come by naturally from getting hungry due to the exercise. For people who want to lose some weight, moderating the size and frequency of meals and cutting out obviously bad food will have the quickest and most visible results.

It's far more important to just hit the weights consistently. That's where you get results. I started about 2 years ago and dropped about 40 pounds without ever worrying about the diet side of things or counting calories. The only real changes I made were to start taking a daily multivitamin and to make an effort to avoid sugared soda, fruit juice (has a ton of sugar), junk food, etc.

"...dropped about 40 pounds without ever worrying about the diet side of things"

"... [I made] an effort to avoid sugared soda, fruit juice (has a ton of sugar), junk food, etc."

Important contradiction to point out there. I'd say you did worry about the diet side of things given the effort to avoid sugar and junk.

It's a common and widely accepted saying that "abs are made in the kitchen." That's to say, if you want to loose weight, you must change your diet. A few days of cardio or strength training per week won't make up for a bad diet. In fact, if all you're trying to do is loose weight, you're better off working on the diet than the strength training. You could end up being very discouraged if you go the opposite route. Ideally, do both and you'll see results very quickly. But think diet for fat loss, strength training for...strength.

Might be unclear wording on my part. I was thinking about the fitness and nutritional sites, forums, etc. you find when you Google on this topic. A lot of them try to persuade you to follow some pretty complicated or restrictive dietary plans, or expect you to monitor every last thing you eat.

When it comes to diet, I am an unashamedly lazy man. Lifting the weights is tough enough as it is. I'm not going to live on oatmeal or kale, count calories, or any of that. That just sounds awful.

What works for me is cutting out things that are obviously bad for you: too much sugar, too much salt, comes in a can or a box with a long list of preservatives, etc. Simple plans are easiest to stick with, after all.

Absolutely agree with keeping the diet simple. People like to focus on measuring macros and get hyper focused on hitting someone's idea of perfect balance that won't make the slightest difference unless you're a high level athlete. The obvious, simple changes are going to make a huge difference for the average person.

At the end of the day, I think it's helpful to remember that this sport consists entirely of picking up heavy things and then putting them back down again.

Just a little joke, there.

I hope HN doesn't mind tangentially related Dylan Moran skits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlLpCh-lE54

Isn't that the same guy who did the Black Books show?

> For example, if you suddenly require 5000 c/day, you cannot simply eat more pizza, MT Dew, etc. You have to eat 5000 c/day of nutrient rich food.

Pizza and soda are nutrient rich - macronutrient-rich, that is.

If you're getting the right number of calories, and the correct ratio of protein, fat, and carbs, you can mostly eat whatever you want.

Relevant: "Food Composition (Nutritional Priorities with Dr. Israetel)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwGspJZt1kE

A related question would be: why doesn't my body dump all the fat, since I'm eating a surplus of calories anyway?

Presumably because carrying surplus fat has minimal cost relative to the evolutionary likelihood of famine. This is more obvious than the muscle scenario. For muscle, prior to the famine you get to do cool things like punch your neighbor and do pull ups. During a famine, you could consume your muscles as calories. Where is the cost?

If your body fat percentage is too low, you'll run into side effects (including reproductive ones)

During a famine your fat neighbor will survive longer. Storing fat is more efficient than building muscle. Maintaining fat is more efficient than maintaining muscle. And metabolizing fat is more efficient than metabolizing muscle. So while it's cool that you can do pull-ups, your fat neighbor will easily outlast you in a famine unless you're willing to eat him.

why doesn't my body dump all the fat, since I'm eating a surplus of calories anyway?

That's a great research question. Normally, the body tries to maintain a happy "set point" of fat. However, different genetic populations (who may have historically gone through more famine) are more inclined to save fat than dump it relative to others.

Researchers suspect that there is some mechanism that may be going awry due to our modern diet/lifestyle. Fat makes a protein called leptin; the more leptin in our body, the fatter we must be. So why is our body not properly measuring how much leptin is in our bloodstream and thus thinking it is skinnier than it really is?

Answer that and you will both win a Nobel Prize and become a very rich person.

Interesting. Would it be possible to fool the body by injecting (or supplementing with) extra leptin?

Simply put: your body knows you are operating at a caloric surplus NOW. But it can't assume you will be operating at a caloric surplus for the indefinite future. Your body doesn't want to behave like a professional athlete who spends all the money from their first contract only to have a career ending injury and wind up broke.

muscles DO get bigger when you consume more calories then what your body requires for "maintenance". except of course unless your testosterone levels are exceptionally high most of those calories would go into fat storage.

you might know that this calorie surplus will last "forever" but your body doesn't so to speak so it's choosing a safe bet survival strategy-wise.

I think it effectively operates under the heuristic of build only as much muscle as needed(which is why the signals(hormones) are needed), store excess as fat. That makes sense if starvation is the largest risk shaping evolution, but this is all just armchair biology.

Because your body deems big muscles as relatively worthless if you don't need them. They are a big energy sink so it makes sense. Also, being muscular increases your basal metabolic rate, so not only does it take energy (which may not be available) to grow them, but you also spend more energy simply existing with more muscle mass.

Indoor climbing/bouldering is a nice alternative for ppl who find lifting boring. Despite mostly engaging upper body, it really gives you a good workout with the added problem solving challenge, balance and flexibility training.

What I like about climbing, despite never having done it,

  - blends power and subtlety
  - blends static and dynamic
  - involves almost all limb chains

The added "route planning" effort also forces your brain into deep focus. A climber said for him every second is an hour.

And on actual rock, having to judge a grabbing surface on the fly is beautiful to me, like playing violin.

Do we always need additional/external weights, or are there any body weight exercises that can target your bones? Perhaps leg bones are easier since the body weight goes through them. How about upper body (like shoulder area) and the spine?

Running has recently been shown, in contrast to previously held views, to strengthen spinal disks. [1]

Pull-ups/chin-ups/dips are probably the best upper body weight exercise, followed by classic floor exercises pushups and leg raises for the core.

Many of these stress bones in addition to the muscles.

[1] http://www.deakin.edu.au/about-deakin/media-releases/article...

You can do a lot with just bodyweight, but even the r/bodyweight folks recommend using a barbell for squats and deadlifts.

You can get pretty far with kettlebells too. And they're easier to deal with for a home gym.

Do you have a site you recommend with good routines? r/kettlebell maybe?

I'm familiar with kettlebells from Crossfit, but I know CF catches a lot of flak for how they use them.

Haven't been to r/kettlebell but I like what they have over at onnit[1] for beginners. I'm in the camp that would recommend against crossfit.

[1] https://www.onnit.com/academy/full-body-kettlebell-workout-f...

Get weights and get a trainer.

The difference is absolutely incredible, I thought it was supposed to take weeks to see changes and then I tried that and it was nearly instantaneous.

Isometrics are pretty good. You have to do them at various angles to build strength up across a range of motion, but they're very effective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_exercise

Stretching indirectly helps with bone health by improving joint activation and range of motion. If you're getting an increased ROM that's generally better for the bone than if it's stiff and limited.

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