Why Did Bronze Era Lifters Have Flat Chests? | Hacker News Reader

Why Did Bronze Era Lifters Have Flat Chests?

youtube.com

12 pointslots2learn14 comments

This is interesting from a engineering side. At first they didn't care/want massive chests. Then they want chest but equipment was lacking. People tried different exercises and eventually the eureka moment happened that standardized the exercise. Talk about scratching an itch.

I just came back from Planet Fitness, which has three benches for doing bench presses. All of them are always occupied.

Instead of asking, "what was wrong back then?" we could ask "what's wrong now? why are people so obsessed with their pectorals?"

Bench is much less effort than other exercises and it produces quick results.

Most guys hate leg days. The effort is extreme, chest day is the easy day.

Strange. I hate bench press (much prefer dumbbell press) but I have never considered leg day extreme. Legs contain the largest muscles, the effort to make them bigger seems less.

It was my understanding that the reason most guys avoid leg day is because they're not "show" muscles. It's rare that you're not wearing pants so most guys who lift purely to increase odds of finding a mate focus on the muscles women do see.

I think the difference between dumbbell and barbell is just preference often based on the time you've put into each. My dumbbell press is pathetic due to a lack of training.

I think lifting for the looks is part of it. I've also read that most women prefer guys butts to other parts so it's probably a little silly that most guys do more upper body to get the girls.

When I was last going regularly to the gym I knew loads of other guys that worked out. It was near universal that leg day sucked. I was exhausted after doing squats and deadlifts. I'd recover quickly from most upper body stuff. Leg day was still fun but there was a mental battle to put in the effort required. I remember once not being able to drive home after week 6 of the training program Smolov JR with squatting. I pulled over and had to take an hour to recover. I've not had anything close with upper body lifts.

Everyone is different I guess and we are talking about preference.

>It was my understanding that the reason most guys avoid leg day is because they're not "show" muscles.

I think you are right. Many also may avoid legs because the recovery period can be more painful. Its easy to avoid further stressing certain sore muscle groups (arms, chest, abs, etc) post workout, but legs, not so much.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jalen-hurts-eagles-super-bowl-c...

Jalen Hurts can get a yard whenever he wants one, and no one can stop him. So there's at least one use for strong legs.

There’s no particular logic to it. It’s just fashion. Competitive bodybuilding favored certain styles of physique, and amateur bodybuilders developed a practice that pursued that style and adopted some folk beliefs/language that center around it.

Leg days are no “extreme effort” to dancers, cyclists, runners, gymnasts, etc

Here is an old article discussing the topic

https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/why-so-many-guys-dont-wo...

Looks like body builders were actually fit and healthy back then.

Yeah they're a good example of the upper end of what you can achieve as a natural lifter. Today's steroid fueled gym buffs trick young guys into thinking they can get huge by natural means. That is simply not true for 99.999% of the population.

Sure it is, it just takes considerable effort and discipline. Steroids are like a massive shortcut but by no means the only realistic path to getting huge.

It really depends on what you mean by huge. But I have to emphatically disagree with your statement. It is simply not humanly possible to get as big as a modern body builder without steroids. They are not just a shortcut they allow people to get much bigger than otherwise is possible.

Yeah I suppose we have varying definitions of huge. I'm just talking adding on considerable muscle mass.

Steroid use is so ubiquitous and far better understood than ever before that most guys don't see a point in doing things natty. We're talking cutting down years of training to months.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com