The Scientific 7-Minute Workout
well.blogs.nytimes.com
well.blogs.nytimes.com
After years of spinning wheels, like many others, I've found that gimmicky crap like this is just that - gimmicky crap. This may be more efficient than a 30 minute run and burn the same net amount of calories, but you'll offset the entire effect of this workout by eating a cookie. For overall health and lasting benefits you're going to need to get into a gym and pick something heavy off the ground.
As technology-minded guys who tend not to get a lot of physical exercise, we're really susceptible to people throwing around the term "scientific" to describe their exercise pitches.
Please don't waste your time with this "workout," unless of course you're so weak and fragile that it'll literally kill you to do a squat. Really look into Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe for actual good advice.
"Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general." - Mark Rippetoe
Edit: Btw, time comparison: spend years chasing the latest "scientific" fitness fad (see article) and going nowhere or get in better shape while working an office job than 99% of highschool/college guys in a few months for a time commitment of 2-3 hours per week. That's the kind of math I'm talking about when I talk about starting strength and leangains.
Actually, the headline is targeted towards people who know very little science. Tech folks like us approach things like this with a great deal of skepticism. I bet more than half the posters in this thread have at least skimmed the study on which the article is based. You can't really expect the general populace to be so inquisitive.
You could try it, and decide it's not for you. But a lot of self-professed nerds disdain it, assuming it's something only stupid jocks do.
It's not. Getting strong has been one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done. It's also had lasting effects in pain reduction, how other perceive me, and my self-confidence.
those are INCREDIBLY difficult to get. you're not going to get those just by lifting big with deadlift/squat/presses a couple of times a week.
it's like when women say they don't want to lift because they don't "want to get bulky".
100% pure nonsense. it's VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY difficult to get big muscles.
let me say that again...
it's VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY DIFFICULT to get big muscles. it has to be nearly a full time job for YEARS and YEARS of your life.
When I stopped ballroom dancing and started working out more, I did not get bulky in any way, however it surely felt that way!
Gone was my coordination, my elegance, my posture!
Isolated, limited movement with weight is the exact opposite of rhytmic dance movement with lots of body tension.
It annoyed me, but I can imagine that this matters a lot more to women. In dancing I've seen women who might have been a little overweight, moving around gracefully.
Just wanted to point that out, because I have noticed several comments like yours around the 'net recently - maybe people getting a little touchy that the work they put into their body is not appreciated sufficiently?
After I started barbells, I noticed I got MUCH better at yoga and any activity that requires balance. You cannot lift 250 pounds safely without some measure of balance and grace.
When I look around the gym, I see a lot of people bouncing around when lifting lighter dumbbell weights or using weight machines. It's very possible to lift weights unbalanced, to a point.
However, the most efficient weight training will also train balance.
I'm guessing two things happened in your case:
1. Your form was off, and you unbalanced yourself 2. Your elegance stopped because you had stopped training elegance. It was lack of dance, rather than weight lifting.
Proper weight training does not destroy grace, it augments it.
Lifting requires form and balance and all that, and is beautiful in itself, and for elegance you gotta keep training elegance.
I do maintain that people look bulky and uncoordinated if they are only lift weights and doing nothing else (i.e. excluded people who do other sports, or women in the acrobatic bodybuilding categories etc.). This can be normal/cool for men, but is noticable in women in my opinion.
While we're in a general fitness/workout thread, I want to recommend activities that require coordination and skill. If you are looking for an activity, see if you can find a broader challenge than just a weight - learning a skill in martial arts, experiencing progress more vividly in climbing, swimming and learning all 4 styles etc.
The attitude of articles like this (7 minutes) often feels like "how little do I have to do this dreaded activity for my health conscience". Meh.
There's something quite beautiful in watching a skilled lifter. Lifting a 200 pound bar without the slightest wobble takes no small amount of coordination, as does merely doing a powerclean at all.
When, due to injury, I became unable last year to perform either the snatch or the clean and jerk, I was relegated to being able to do whatever it is I could. Lots of less complicated exercises that don't share any patterns in common with either of those two lifts.
At a recent experimental trial of my technique after 15 months away from the two lifts, it came as no surprise that I came kinda bad at them now.
Do I blame the other weight training? No: I realise that these two lifts require constant practice to remain smooth, precise and efficient. It's the same for other inter-muscular coordination tasks. If you stop doing them, you get worse at them.
My flexibility, coordination and posture has all improved substantially through lifting - I needed a lot of work to get flexible enough to carry out e.g. deep squats and correct deadlifts without hurting myself.
Do primarily isolation exercises, and yes, you will not spend time maintaining and improving your flexibility and coordination. Do exercises with large range of motion and complex movements, like deep squats, clean and jerk or power clean (power cleans are "easy" compared to clean and jerk), or kettlebell exercises, and add in some dynamic stretches for mobility (separate by time from the lifting), and most people will get far more flexible and coordinated.
Personally I'm annoyed at people worrying about getting bulky for two reasons: Yes, it is annoying seeing beginners be all presumptuous about how easy it'll be, but I also find well trained but non-bulky women more attractive. And I happen to know that most of them will never, ever get into bulky territory without a combination of cutting their body fat to unhealthy levels and steroid use, so I would love more women to lift weights..
"Double" your strength, sure, in the sense that beginner gains due to improved coordination and better understanding of your actual limits means it's not uncommon to double or triple the weight you can lift in the first few months (I tripled most of mine in the first month I exercised - these days I'm lucky if I can increase my max by 2.5kg per month from starting points ranging from 90kg to ca. 200kg depending on lift; often the increase takes longer than a month by now).
Almost all of the people you see pictures off with really huge muscles today are/were heavy steroid users. Arnie looks "normal" compared to modern bodybuilders, and he used lots of steroids and put in massive amount of effort (another thing a lot of non-lifters don't understand is that steroid users don't get it easy, what they get is much faster and better recovery, letting them work harder and keep improving beyond a point where non-steroid users plateau) year after year after year. He first won a competition in 1965 after many years of exercise, and got his last Mr Olympia's in 1975 and 1980. The entire competitive field moved massively in that period with
Even more so, you usually see pictures of them that are nothing at all like what they normally look like. When training for Conan, Arnold decided to take one last shot at Mr. Olympia, and went on to win the 1980. Here's what he looked like: http://www.ironmanmagazine.com/blog/johnhansen/2011/12/27/th...
But he looked like this, minutes to hours at a time at most, while covered in oil and dark colouring to bring out his definition. This is Arnold near or at his peak, after months of gruelling competition preparation, followed by making sure he is hydrated just right and his muscles are pumped for competition.
Outside of competition or exercise situations most lifters will be much less lean (especially power lifters) and will ironically often look smaller as a result of less definition and for many a less V-shaped torso that masks some of the development. I even find myself impressed by guys at the gym that I know for a fact are less muscular than me when they happen to be leaner so their build is more noticeable.
I just did heavy (for me) bench sets this morning. When I do, my chest and arms swell enough that my normally well fitting t-shifts stretch noticeably. I have to keep adjusting my polo shirts. This lasts for a couple of hours, and the swelling wears off.
I'm roughly Arnie's height, and weigh as much as he did at his peak. My body volume is bigger than he was at his peak, but I look much smaller because I have about 15kg more fat than him and 15kg or so less muscle... (I can claim my volume is bigger because muscle is more dense than fat - his overall volume would have been smaller, but concentrated in more muscle on his arms, chest and legs rather than as more evenly spread fat; I believe his waist was 34" when he was competing; I'm 36" to 38").
This is after 8 years of "recreational" lifting, starting at 30. I'm consistently in the gym 3-5 times every week outside of perhaps 2-3 weeks a year. If I started younger, and lifted more seriously, I might have gotten closer in size, but without steroids and far more work I'd have no chance of getting close to that kind of muscle volume and development. I'm not even at competitive levels for regional competitions in either power lifting or body building.
Yet I look more muscular than most guys who worry about getting bulky ever will, but I look tiny compared to well developed body builders much smaller than Arnold, despite a similar body volume.
Another thing most people that worry about this don't realize is that they eat way too little to ever get to even my size no matter how much they exercise. Currently I'm gaining strength at a good rate without increasing my weight thanks to mostly following intermittent fasting with a very high protein diet. Most days I eat 180g-230g of protein... Most people will find they'll be so stuffed they can hardly push more food down if they try that, pretty much irrespective of total calorie intake - getting most of it via lean chicken to give me some flexibility for other meals, still means I have nearly a kilo of chicken for lunch... I'm sick of chicken...
And I am not eating enough to get steroid-eating body-builder big, by far - I currently eat at roughly maintenance levels but varying up and down to get me in a slight deficit on non-exercise days and slightly above on exercise days.
(Can't remember which one it was, but I read it in a book by decathlete Dan O'Brien when I was about 10.)
Before I started barbells, I had a fair amount of muscle mass. My muscles got a bit bigger, but I got a lot stronger.
I'd also like to clarify that I didn't really increase my gym time to do barbells. It takes about 3 hours per week. 1 hour, 3 days per week.
The main difference is the type of exercise done, and making sure that I sleep and eat in such a way to promote muscle repair.
This is the main time suck for me in weight training. Eating like a combination horse/tiger is pretty time consuming.
I don't see how this would ever be possible - is there a specific method you're referring to? Coaches don't put football players in front of a p90x DVD, they stick them under a barbell add some heavy weight to it.
Example of a planche. http://www.crossfitgymnastics.com/uploads/gymnastics/image/T...
http://www.livestrong.com/article/141152-what-muscles-do-pus...
Muscles targeted by bench-press.
http://www.livestrong.com/article/167707-the-muscle-groups-u...
Am I wrong or do these two exercises seem to target the same muscle groups?
Also, the muscle groups targeted by both exercises depends largely on hand placement. The same would apply for hand-stand push-ups, just to a lesser degree.
I bench a "measly" 286lbs, about 1.3 times body weight, which isn't all that amazing. I can trivially easily get up to substantial numbers of regular push ups in a few weeks. But getting to that 400lbs range, there's a whole set of progressions towards being able to do planche push ups etc. that I'm not able to do at all at my current strength. But most people doing body weight exercises just end up adding a few extra push ups or doing slight variations that don't overload them much more.
I think that's one of the largest benefits of lifting weights for most people: It's very, very easy to track progress and make sure you're not cheating yourself. Even so, enough people still manage to cheat themselves (and wonder why they're not getting bigger muscles...)
I'm 5'6", and by doing only basic bodyweight exercises, push-ups, pull-ups, and dips, I could bench press 180lbs 10 times at a body weight of 155. That's not bad at all in my opinion.
What kind of body weight routine do you have, and does it depend on any equipment such as dip bars? I'm looking for a good one for when I go traveling.
In addition to the pull-ups, I would do the Army's regular work out. This would involve running 2-3 miles 2-3 times a week, and performing general calisthenics(similar to the 7 minute workout originally posted, just at a slower pace.) 2-3 times a week.
But my point is that even people who want to get bigger seem to fail to progress more often with body weight exercises than with weights because the progress is so easy to measure: Either your numbers go up, or they don't, and while people do certainly cheat themselves with poor form or range of motion, I see less of it with weights than with body weights. Perhaps the biggest problem for people getting started with body weight exercises is that they don't know how to progress and so a lot of them end up dicking around with the same basic exercises with the same rep ranges without ever getting anywhere.
Conversely if you do know how to progress and is strict, you can do amazing things with body weight exercises - it's not unusual for high level gymnasts to be able to go straight in and put weight lifters to shame without ever lifting regularly, for example.
The other example I have is from Christopher Sommer, a famous U.S. gymnastics coach. He mentioned an athlete that could benchpress 400lbs either in an online article or his book. I can't remember which, but I haven't been able to find it. I did find an article where he mentions a young athlete trained solely through bodyweight exercise, that managed to deadlift 400lbs at a bodyweight of 135.
http://www.dragondoor.com/articles/building-an-olympic-body-...
I forgot another source. When I was in the military we had a martial arts instructor that was about 6'3" and 250lbs of muscle. He claimed that his only other source of exercise was Yoga.
Also, couldn't you say the same thing about professional weightlifters?
The pissing contest between weightlifting and other types of strength training is pretty ridiculous. As I said in one of my original comments, both methods are completely viable. Whether you use weights or bodyweight exercise, a person who exercises is going to be far better off than someone who doesn't.
Edit: I looked up some of the claims about strength gains of Sommer's athletes. He's bragging about 400lb deadlifts, 75lb pullups after years and years of training. For reference I hit those numbers for reps in less than 18 months at a bodyweight of 145 with an actual lifting routine, and I consider my progress to be slightly slow compared to a lot of other lifting logs on fitness sites. I expect any other numbers I find to be similarly unimpressive. In general I find that the claims about bodyweight exercise follow this pattern, proponents simply do not understand what constitutes genuine impressive numbers once you are talking about a legitimate strength training program (one used by professional athletes across many sports).
Edit2 found some more claims: Double bodyweight dead lift
Military press with 110% bodyweight
Chins with 50% of his bodyweight for reps
Dips + 60% of his bodyweight for reps
There's nothing here not reachable within 2 years by a young male following a decent program (and that's assuming a start from sedentary).
If I woke up one day and decided that the most important thing in my life was to one day bench-press 400 lbs, I would grab a copy of Starting Strength and hit the weights. There really isn't any debate about that.
The original argument against bodyweight exercise was that it's a complete waste of time. It clearly isn't. When I started basic training, about 20 percent of us could actually pass a PT test. Some people could only perform a couple of push-ups. After 8-9 weeks of doing nothing but running and body-weight exercise, nearly everyone passed.
If you took a cycle of recruits, tested them on the bench-press on day 1 of basic training, and then did so again on the last day, I'd be willing to bet that on average, their numbers would be significantly higher.
>This is a waste of time.
He then goes on to explain that the only way to get real and lasting benefits from an exercise routine is to go to the gym and lift weights.
I agree that the part about "only real and lasting" is wrong.
There are ways to get incredibly strong using only body weight exercises (inmates and yoga practitioners do it, after all), but to my knowledge these all require a greater time investment due to the higher number of reps, and the results materialize over a much longer time span. I imagine that most HN readers are more interested in a time-efficient form of exercise.
Unless you want to avoid sports or paying for a gym membership entirely, the only real benefit seems to be that you can move up very slowly and conservatively, with little risk of injury.
Basically this.
I was a gymnast for 18 years (from 2 - 20 years old). Obviously, it wasn't professional level the entire time, but starting a bit before high school, workouts would be 5 or 6 times a week, for 4-5 hours. There was never any weightlifting, only body weight exercises. Those guys you see on TV doing Still Rings, Pommel Horse, etc., they didn't get that strong through weight training. It's just hours and hours of practice and so-called 'endurance' conditioning. I say 'so-called endurance' because most gymnasts that I met were pretty bad endurance wise, judging on ability to run for awhile. A lot of us topped out at a couple of miles, before we needed to walk.
Gymnastics is a sport that isn't assisted by weight training. There are a few exercises that use weights, like wrist therapy using 5-10 pound free weights. But all those physiques you see on TV are just thousands of hours of work, and those hours make for some of the leanest, strongest people.
Here are two videos of some good, professional-level routines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScgJJDYeqqg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRDzQX6MzHo
You literally can not learn to do that through weightlifting. You cannot gain the strength those two use through weightlifting. It's not because the positions themselves are difficult, those are usually the easy parts to train and practice. It's the transitions between two different positions that is difficult, and cannot be trained by weightlifting. Gymnastics is a dynamic sport, weightlifting is a static exercise. The best that weightlifting can do is make the holds a bit easier, but that isn't really necessary, because those aren't as hard to train as the fluid transitions.
> Gymnastics is a dynamic sport, weightlifting is a static exercise.
I dunno, man. The snatch seems to happen fairly quickly.
The fact is that any given person will be significantly stronger after N months of training using "optimal" barbell training than using "optimal" bodyweight exercises assuming an appropriate diet.
You will get stronger using bodyweight exercises or P90x but it will take longer and you will never get as strong as using barbell training so why do it?
bullshit.
Look at cats. Cats sleep up to 17 hours a day. They lie around seemingly doing nothing most of their waking hours. But if you watch a cat work out - wow!! it works out. It's going all out for a few minutes. Talking about a healthy country cat here, which, compared to its body weight pulls of physical feats a human can only dream of.
People often ask me if I go to the gym. Nope. I just do push ups now and then, not even every day, but when I do, I do them properly, military style push ups until I almost faint. Between 50 and 80 full on ones seems to do it for me. Takes... 2 minutes or so?! Fitness secrets!
For the same reason, smaller weightlifers snatch a larger multiple of bodyweight than bigger weightlifters. At the Olympic level it goes from about 3xBW down to 1.6xBW depending on weight division.
Also, humans are upright bipeds in a body that has the architectural hallmarks of a system for quadripedal locomotion. Cats have not compromised those advantages: we have.
Do I need to say more?
It is simple, it involves linear progression, and it is a clear set of directions which explicitly tell you to NOT DO ANYTHING ELSE. This is important, because with newbies it is tempting to go to the gym and then start playing with all the other toys.
I did SS for several months, and after significant gains of muscle have moved on to the Wendler 531 program, which uses much slower progression and is more compatible with my normal caloric intake.
Edit: btw, for anybody who read JPKab's comment and is wondering what we mean when we say "beginner," we mean squatting less than 250lbs or so and benching less than near 200lbs range. A novice in the strength-building sense can still be stronger than 99% of people you'll encounter in this world. Starting strength will get you there really effectively.
The main reason I never hit the gym was/is because I'm too embarrassed to be seen exercising by others. Interestingly, my problem is that I'm too thin (with a bmi of 18 now) so my goal was/is to become both stronger and huger.
How about if I get this machine (or something like it): http://eatinggreat.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/MACHINE-WE... Could I then be fine following the SS book you mention with it?
Looks a lot less expensive!
Question #2: are all gyms created equal, should I 'shop' around for a decent one with decent equipment or whatever, or just join the 'snap fitness' gym that is literally 2 minute walk away from my place of residence?
Avoid gyms without a squat rack (yes those exist, ugh). Things that matter: squat rack, affordability, and operating hours that work for you. Not being super-packed all the time is also really nice.
[1]http://www.home-gym-bodybuilding.com/homemade-power-rack.htm...
[2]http://www.roguefitness.com/burgener-rippetoe-men-s-bar.php
Personal trainers are either terrible or expensive. If you can afford a personal trainer for a long time, either you have hired a great one because you are loaded, or you are paying for a crappy one and probably not getting great results. I know I am stereotyping, but I'm just trying to encourage a little skepticism. The gym I go to has multiple squat racks, rubber "bumper" plates for doing Olympic style barbell lifts, and has personal trainers/staff that have been stolen away from chains like Gold's, LA Fitness, etc. Why? Because the gym I go to has a premium business model where they pay their staff much more than other gyms do. Rather than paying a low monthly rate and then hiring a personal trainer, I pay a higher monthly fee for using my gym but don't need a trainer.
Anothe thing about trainers: Too often, their goal is to keep you coming back. They tend to have constantly changing, high variety workouts. These are fine, since the body adapts to exercise and the point is to prevent plateaus. However, this is not good if you are trying to learn to work out on your own. Also, variety is overrated for people trying to get fit. I've noticed trainers mix in strength with aerobic conditioning. Gaining muscle and losing fat are goals which are most easily met when they are done one at a time. If you want to get stronger, lift weights and eat a lot. You will make progress. If you want to lose fat, get up every morning and do cardio before eating ANY breakfast. Just water, then straight into cardio. Your body will be in fat burning mode with depleted blood sugar, and your energy expenditure will come primarily from fatty acids released by fat cells. But for the love of God, don't try to do both in the same workout. Cardio interferes with muscle building and vice versa, requiring ridiculously oprimized nutrition that is hard for people without professional chefs/dieticians to achieve.
Here is what I would look for in a gym:
1) 2 or more squat racks
2) 1 or more trainers who keep themselves fit using barbell exercises (my gym, despite having the standard cardio floorplan for the masses, has a section with the good strength equipment, and the staff who are into Olympic/Barbell lifting walk around and happily give advice/tips/form checks). When I am doing squats in the morning workout, I will frequently look over and see a staff member doing the same workout on the other squat rack. 3) Large numbers (5 or more) of benches for doing bench presses with barbells (not machines)
4) A rack of dumbbells that is complete (missing dumbbells is a sign of a gym that doesn't maintain their equipment) and ideally goes up to 120 lbs. per dumbell
5) Lots of pull-up bars
Good trainers are hard to find but invaluable. You can try: http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/coaching#dir or,if you are lucky, finding a Starting Strength training camp in your area.
Otherwise, take a video camera and film yourself. Review it after your set and later at night and compare it against the technique described in Starting Strength. It will be very wrong at first. Fix it. When you think you finally got it right post a video form check on the Starting Strength forums and they will tell you what you missed.
The main downside to my gym at least (I don't know if it's the same at all Snaps) is that they have a Smith Machine, not a Power Rack. This is only a downside to me because I just recently started the Stronglifts 5x5 program, which gives a convincing argument for the Power Rack over the Smith Machine. While not a big inconvenience in the grand scheme of things (all the 5x5 exercises but the bench press can be done with the bar starting from the floor) it's something to consider. Other (typically more expensive) gyms have showers, pools, hot tubs, or climbing walls, all of which might factor into your choice too depending on what conveniences you care about.
Edit: If you can get a friend to sign up with you, that will help a lot. Instead of midnight snack trips (okay we still do those sometimes), my friend and I have midnight gym trips.
1) you have a serious, unaddressed medical condition (please seek help!)
2) you're trying something far beyond your normal activity level. There's no rush, work up gradually and your body will adapt. If a walk around the block is a challenge, start there. Repeatable training sessions over time is what makes change, not beating yourself up in the name of 'health'.
At some point life "got in the way", and between a kid and a full-time job my gym time started to disappear. I've tried a lot of creative approaches to keeping fit with shorter workouts, and what I have come up with isn't all that different than what is being prescribed here.
My basic approach is this:
1. Pushups - every other morning I do 5 minutes of pushups where I start at a set of 20 then bump up by a count of 5 until I'm at 35. Then I work my way back down to 20 allowing brief 20 second rests in between.
2. Pullups - same as pushups except I start at 6 and bump by 2 until I hit 10, and then work back down.
3. Squats - No weight, three sets of 50. This could be better, but I'm kinda lazy when it comes to squats
4. Mix in exercises using resistance bands. (shoulder press, lat pulls, tricep extensions, etc). I usually do these in three sets of 12-15.
Each workout takes about 15 minutes, and while I've lost some muscle mass I'm still a pretty lean/muscular 170. I'm sure there are all sorts of optimizations I could make, but honestly I don't really care at this point. I've found a quick workout I can do 3-4 times a week and it is keeping me pretty damn healthy.
Look into doing pistol squats[1]. The bodyweight fitness subreddit[2] is actually a pretty good resource for what you're doing. Glad you've found something that works for you.
A Starting Strength routine shouldn't take more than 3-4 hours a week, and you'd be moving way more than your bodyweight.
Or, if you can find room in your dwelling for a barbell and plates, Pavel's Power to the People program would take a total of 2-3 hours a week. Again, you'd be developing strength, rather than endurance.
Having said that, if you've found something you're happy with, cool. The routine you actually do beats a theoretically superior routine you don't get around to.
Since I started working out at home (same kind of deal as OP), I got less strong, but not by much, but I also have more time.
Fitness advice is so fragmented and the debates between those who practice various types of fitness are so vigorous that it puts people off to fitness entirely.
If you actually want to inspire people who are not fit to get fit, it is going to take encouragement, not constant criticism of every possible method of getting fit.
There is literally no exercise routine that someone can propose and not face immediate criticism. A beginner doesn't need a perfect routine (which clearly doesn't exist anyway given all the argument on the issue). They need to do something. Something that is not actively harmful and will increase their fitness, even in a small way.
You may think you are showing people a better way, but you are really giving people nowhere to turn for support, because everyone always tries to show a better way no matter what the original way was. I could come here every single day posting about another fitness routine and every single day I would be told it's wrong. So if everything is wrong, what do you think I am going to do? Nothing.
I could be completely depressed and sleep deprived, drink a scoop of that, and the ONLY thing I'll want to do is get in a squat rack and put some heavy shit in the air.
My overall point is that while these "scientific" workouts are not the best way to workout, people should at least do something instead of nothing, similar to what DanielStraight said. Then if they truly want better results, they should follow routines like yours.
You're criticizing gimmicky crap and bloated industries and you post a "health supplement"?
Edit: http://www.leangains.com/2010/09/high-protein-recipes-and-ja... make sure not to get the "micro" stuff and instead look for the one with the DMAA in it
http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm347270.ht...
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/business/fda-issues-warni...
But don't go shooting the messenger because he's a bit of a meathead and turn people off to good advice as a result. That's just employing logical fallacy. Really, the benefits of weightlifting and eating properly are so great that if you tried it you wouldn't be surprised I'm so adamant about these programs. They literally prevent you from dying early.
Ted: Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Abs. Yeah, the excercise video.
Hitchhiker: Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: 7... Minute... Abs.
Ted: Right. Yes. OK, all right. I see where you're going.
Hitchhiker: Think about it. You walk into a video store, you see 8-Minute Abs sittin' there, there's 7-Minute Abs right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?
Ted: I would go for the 7.
Hitchhiker: Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Abs. And we guarantee just as good a workout as the 8-minute folk.
Ted: That's right. That's - that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with 6-Minute Abs. Then you're in trouble, huh?
Sure, but it can't be just any ol' snake oil thing. If they keep buying into snake oil after snake oil, they will never see results and only become more depressed and unmotivated. Snake oil exercise regimes are actively detrimental because of this.
Posted elsewhere in this thread but very much worth reading, a devastating take-down of the piece:
http://elsbethvaino.com/2013/05/should-you-do-a-newspaper-wo...
But the dirty little secret is burning calories though exercise is basically a waste of time compared to simply eating less and it takes vary little to get basic fitness. So assuming your diet is reasonable you can look like someone that spends 2 hours a day in the working out by doing to same basic routine without the cardio.
That's not to say cardio is pointless, rather unless your trying to build stamina for some reason cardio takes a lot of time for little short term benefit.
http://elsbethvaino.com/2013/05/should-you-do-a-newspaper-wo...
Exercise is hard. We used to have to do it, you know, to like eat and stuff. I would be willing to bet that if you grabbed a prehistoric man and dropped him into now with all the luxuries modern life affords, he, himself, would be loathe to exercise.
You have to want it. People who do "7 minute exercises" don't want anything. They can't even find value in prolonging their life, or living more healthy, or goddammit even looking better.
There is no fragmented advice, no magic bullet. If you want to be healthy, you have to work for it. Period.
I assume this is intended as snark, but still... a little extreme.
It's a ridiculous statement. Life expectancy, even among those who do not regularly exercise, is greater than 50. My mom is 70, and the most exercise she's ever gotten was from walking (and not for fitness, just around the block, or meandering through the mall). She certainly would not have been better off dying in her 50s.
Yes and no.
Once you dig past the obviously bullshit claims and scams, and the One True Way prophets (and even Rippetoe suffers this to an extent), there's a lot that's very well established. Much of the problem boils down to a fundamental set of market failures: fitness _is_ simple (not "easy", but simple), and there's relatively little money to be made in the stuff that really works (that's a principle you can apply well beyond the field as well).
The rebuttal piece noted elsewhere in this thread is excellent. Read it.
http://elsbethvaino.com/2013/05/should-you-do-a-newspaper-wo...
The most important thing for me to realize is understanding how your body responds to training, diet, rest, recovery, and stress.
Here's the key: your body is a complex feedback system responding largely with and to hormonal flows you can influence directly through diet and training.
"Training" includes both strength training and cardio. For the typical schmoe or schmoette, a basic level of strength, cardiovascular, mobility, and motor-control fitness is reasonably easy to attain.
An extremely good general overview is Liam Rosen's guide. The Reddit Fitness FAQ is also quite good. Neither is selling anything, a key point:
http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html
http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/Fitness
Rippetoe is a good introduction to strength. The "New Rules of Lifting" books by Schuler and Cosgrove go a bit broader (and add some scope to strength training), as well as add the introductory phase that some untrained individuals might benefit from which Rippetoe largely omits (though the general principle that "you cannot start too light" is useful to keep in mind.
As to the failings of the NY Times piece, there are many, and these are highly typical of Gretchen Reynolds pieces -- I've come to discount her, and much other, health & fitness reporting at the Times (Gina Kolada is also pretty poor in my experience, despite her stature and tenure).
- It offers little or no actual strength development.
- There's no training of the back (difficult without at least minimal equipment). This is omitting training a major muscle group, and one which is underutilized in most modern daily life. More than even other muscle groups.
- There is no progression. You don't need "muscle confusion", but if you're going to progress in a training program, there has to be some mode of increasing the challenge over time.
- This is effectively a cardio-only program. It's promoting the same myth that the fitness industry has promoted since the 1970s, that cardio is all you need. The simple truth is that muscle mass and strength offer very significant benefits (Schuler and Cosgrove get into this, Robert Arnot's Dr. Bob Arnot's Guide to Turning Back the Clock also addressed this back in 1994), and as you age, you are losing about 0.5% of your muscle mass per year. This is called "sarcopenia", or age-related muscle loss.
So: yes, this is a pretty poor article, the science is lacking. The program is likely "better than nothing", but there are vastly more effective programs (and Rippetoe or "New Rules" would be good starts) which will actually provide far more returns.
The key is this: while "something" may be better than "nothing", "better" is better than "something".
If the article itself would point out these deficiencies and that this program is only a VERY basic starting point, I could accept it. It doesn't. Ergo: it's adding to the problem.
Honestly: Gretchen should be canned.
That's an unfortunate name.
Also, great comment on your part :)
Then answer your own question in a reply here.
Or I could sit next to you for the next 20 years and spoon-feed you the Internet.
For most people the answer is to do a bit of each.
This routine is more for intermediate-to-advanced types and those already spent a big amount of time in gym.
You can have the best of both worlds. If you just spend 3 or so hours/week at the gym lifting heavy things in a focused, disciplined manner, you won't have to worry about eating too much, you'll have to worry about not eating enough. And the types of food that you want to eat will change too. It's almost magic. Sugars, fatty foods, excessive carbs, etc will just start to seem unappetizing.
If you use bad form on the front squat, you drop the bar. If you use bad form on the back squat, the bar drops you.
Similarly, the trap bar deadlift also makes it easier to keep your back straight and avoids awkwardness (and possible errors/injuries) as you get the bar past your knees.
(Both are suggestions given to me by my boxing coach.)
What's far worse is that good form on a front squat is harder, especially for inflexible people (read: most men.) It takes a wider stance, more ankle motion, and better control over your butt and spine to stay stable. You also can move less weight and it's less of a full body exercise.
Trap bar deadlifts are less problematic but I still wouldn't use them. Rippetoe has called them "a leg press with a bar"--sure, it's easier to stay vertical, but you shouldn't be trying to do that. And while yes, it takes some instruction and practice to learn good deadlift form, that's time you should be spending with a coach anyway.
Mind you, front squats and trap bar deads are by no means bad exercises and are way better than what 95% of people waste their time with; if that's what gets you to spend time under heavy weight, good for you. I just wouldn't tell my friends to go that direction.
Not necessarily true. There are also body weight exercises/calisthenics you can do at home. Hell, even regular walking and some yard work do wonders for your health.
You do not need to go to a gym and lift weights.
This exercise regime (or "gimmick", as you refer to it) is completely valid, and it's better than doing nothing. The average person probably can't even complete the 7 minute exercises with proper form.
This article is attempting to repackage old knowledge, but that doesn't really mean that it's a waste of time. There are world class athletes that use only bodyweight exercises to stay in shape. Going to the gym and picking heavy things off of the ground isn't a strict requirement of lasting fitness. Weightlifting is a perfectly viable method, but it isn't the only way to get in shape.
I rejoined the local gym six months ago with near-constant back pain and posture that was screwed to hell. I was seriously nervous about my ability to even lift an empty bar, never mind serious weights.
A month or two in, I reached a set of weights that I simply couldn't safely increase any further - not because I wasn't getting stronger, but because my appalling posture wouldn't allow me to do it properly. So I've worked since at doing the same weights each time, but doing them right
This week is the first time since that I've been able to start adding weight - just a couple kilos, but an increase nonetheless.
But bearing in mind my back was literally so weak I had to be slow & cautious about getting out of bed in the morning six months ago: courtesy of nothing but 3 gym visits a week following the advice in SS, I'm now stronger than I ever have been, and am slowly undoing the damage of years of godawful posture.
The other day I was sitting on a sofa with my lady friend sitting on my lap. I was able to put my arms under her and stand up from that position, lifting her entire bodyweight as well as my own. And no matter how weak you might think you are right now, unless you've taken genuine spine trauma recently, I gaurantee you're stronger than I was six months ago.
And the nice thing is, it's come with very little change in body size - almost all my clothes still fit.
"caution should be taken when prescribing this protocol to individuals who are overweight/obese, detrained, previously injured, or elderly or for individuals with comorbidities. For individuals with hypertension or heart disease, the isometric exercises (wall sit, plank, and side plank) are not recommended."
Obviously, for beginners, something with less intensity, and a higher tolerance for mistake will have better results. While you learn how to properly do exercise, and build a core foundation, that will later allow you to move to high intensity. The reason you would want to later move to high intensity, is for either lack of time, in which case, you will need the shortest workout with the highest fitness accomplishments. Or for improved oxygen flow levels and decreased body fat, which high intensity is often better at than other types of workout, no matter how much of it.
The workout described in this article, is one routine, you should not be doing it ad vitam eternam, it serves as an example, and you already need to be in a certain fitness level to perform it properly.
Be sure to get the Mac one if you're on osx.
SL is by design a beginners routine, intended to exploit quick recovery while you're a beginner. It is intended to get too hard for you to continue to be able to gain on it. Starting your workout with 5x5 squats 3 times a weak is not something normal people will keep doing with heavy weights. Once I started flattening out with SL 5x5, it took <6 months of substantial gains before I was flattening out on 1x5 too, and switched first to Texas Method, then to Wendlers 5/3/1. At the moment I'm doing a program that is similar to 5/3/1 but slightly higher volume, as I'm seeing decent results from that while eating like a pig.
Who said the point of the workout was weight loss? That's a really narrow view. How about just, you know, health?
> a 30 minute run and burn the same net amount of calories
Wait... now you seem to be contradicting yourself. So, a 30 minute run is offset by eating a cookie too? I can't tell if you mean the run is good, or you're saying that 30 minute runs are bad... which doesn't make a lot of sense.
I'm sure you have a point to make, but I can't tell what it is. And as for "picking something heavy off the ground"... push-ups (step 3), for example, aren't any different than that. Clearly this is not a body-building routine, but for just getting into better shape with minimal time, it seems pretty good.
> As technology-minded guys who tend not to get a lot of physical exercise
Well that's kind of the point... this is a lot better than not getting a lot of physical exercise, isn't it?
He is probably American. Americans are obsessed with losing weight and consider gyms as places "one goes to loose weight". Heard this over and over from relatives and others. "Gotta hit the gym after the holidays/after eating cake/etc". I tried telling some of them how unproductive it is to run on the treadmill for 2 hours then eat a large BigMac but it just doesn't register.
Weight and health are not necessarily strictly and linearly related. One can be thin as a stick figure and be very sick or can be overweight and relatively healthy. Why should one go to the gym? There are many reasons, feel better, get stronger, get more nimble, improve dexterity, improve mobility, meet people, and yes loose weight too but is just one of the reasons.
The ridiculous part is I've never had weight to lose. I started at 140 lbs! After considerable effort I'm up to 165 lbs now. An hour on the weights every second day and I eat ~4,000 calories / day. My goal is to reach 180.
The article only does a dip into the effects of strength training, but the more I research about strength & health the more I truly believe that strength (not big bulky muscles) is something everyone should strive for.
Instead of prowler pushing, I substitute in running on a switched off treadmill. You have to generate resistance to move the belt.
My brother spends at least 5 days a week at a gym lifting weights and eats a very strict diet. I'm more of the runner type, doing Taekwondo 2 days a week and more body weight workouts like this (and I eat fairly well for the most part). He's definitely stronger than me, but I have no doubt that I'm in just as good of shape if not better than him.
Can I disprove one anecdote, with another? Sure, why not?
I used to go to the gym 6x a week for about 60-90/session and lifted heavy things from every possible position imaginable. I even won a fitness contest at my university (a weird combination of weight to bench press, squat, deadlift, and pull ups). I was certainly in great shape and very strong.
But life intruded. For a while I did nothing and got in much worse shape. I needed to get back in shape, but I didn't have time for the gym (at least that was my opinion). So I started just doing stuff at home. Probably 10 minutes per day. Push ups, pull ups, crunches, and biking a short distance to the bus for work.
While I'm probably not quite as strong as I was in college, I'm pretty close. I've probably gotten something like 90% of the gains with 15% of the effort.
To be a competitive athlete or bodybuilder that 10% makes a huge difference. But for most people, I think this seems like the right tradeoff.
I don't really see your anecdote disproving the GP, rather, it seems it is further evidence of the GP's hypothesis that heavy lifting is required for strength gains.
Congratulations on your gains, though.
"Muscular strength is inversely and independently associated with death from all causes and cancer in men, even after adjusting for cardiorespiratory fitness and other potential confounders."
The conclusion that muscular strength will always improve your health does not imply that other things are useless! (And note that the linked routines does attempt to improve muscular strength, but the whole point of it was to be something you could do without special equipment.)
The larger view is problematic, though. Progressions in bodyweight training often require large leaps in resistance and the development of new skills.
For conventional barbell training you can progress in increments of a kilogram.
I'm a barbell partisan, but I have a few bodyweight-ish things sprinkled here and there. Pushups are an excellent assistance exercise for the overhead press and for the snatch/jerk lockout positions. Pullups or chinups are fun and develop the latismuss dorsi, a key muscle for the snatch and clean.
What was your 1RM squat, deadlift and bench press then and what is it now?
Right now I do nothing other than jogging or strenuous hiking, and I recognize that I need to add strength training. More than half of these seem to be strength exercises.
I don't understand all the weird schisms and cliques that pop up on HN when fitness topics are discussed. From an idiot's perspective, it seems like I could get good strength gains with these exercise and my (already-considerable) body weight.
For me personally, I've noticed that when I pay for a gym membership (or some other fitness program), I actually force myself to use the service due to the financial commitment. When i try and save money by working out at home, I always skip sessions. If I could get better at motivating myself for the home workouts, I would probably do those more, but like someone else said, the best workout is the one that you actually do.
That's a strange definition of "same benefits".
If you lift weights, you get the added benefit of being able to start with a lower weight and work your way up. If you are just doing push-up/pull-ups you will likely find you hit a threshold where your body weight is no longer sufficient for strength training.
TBH, most people will never reach that point. You've got to be in damn good shape to be able to do 50 pushups with your feet on a chair.
So yeah, the benefits are the same for most people.
If you're like me and you reach that point, you'll then look back at the years wasted doing pushups and biking or whatever and consider it time wasted. You'll wonder "why isn't this more widely known?!"
That statement is not true.
Yoga is incredibly beneficial to the body with many lasting benefits after you leave the mat.
And you never have to lift anything heavy. Ever.
Also, I don't understand why his routine is so lopsided as to favor the lower body.
Right now I'm doing Mike Mentzer's Heavy Duty routine, which after 3 months has been fantastic. It uses HIT principles, where you are only doing the minimum work necessary to stimulate the muscle. This translates to 1 set per exercise twice a week or so.
Check out http://boiseexperiment.com/HeavyDuty/?page_id=308 for a very detailed account of the results of doing such a workout.
Even though it is only one set per workout, that set tends to be pretty painful. ;)
I could have eaten even more though. But I don't get the whole eat until your stuffed mantra either. It seems so unnatural and unhealthy.
I also plateaued on Squats during SS after about 4 months, so I lowered my work weight to 80% during my middle squat day (Wednesday in a MWF routine), as Rippetoe suggests, and I immediately broke out of it.
Anyway, I just discovered HIIT training, which has made a world of difference. I'm actually gaining strength and mass every time I work out, and I'm eating less now than I did on SS.
SS works for some people, but I think it depends on your genetics. Or maybe your right and I'm not eating enough. However, my system just can't handle that much food without GI problems. Also, I was getting a big fat belly along with it.
HIIT training has been working for me and after 2 months the gains are still there and better than those I was getting on SS. There also is more evidence that it works than SS has, I believe. Like I posted on another thread, checkout the boise experiment: http://boiseexperiment.com/HeavyDuty/?page_id=308
Anyway, each to his own.
Most of the muscle mass of the body is in the hips and legs.
If you dislike squatting frequently (personally, I luuuurve squatting), look up and try the Greyskull Linear Program (GSLP). Here's a handy summary: http://i.imgur.com/ADuFA.png
Lifting weights in general has been shown to improve cardiovascular health; obviously not as much as pure cardiovascular training, but the science is pretty conclusive that it has a positive impact on your heart.
Lifting weights prevents injuries by improving bone density, strengthening connective tissue around troublesome joints (knees, rotator cuff, hips, etc.) and preventing the use of poor posture to accomplish everyday tasks (e.g., instead of hunching your back and stressing your spine to carry a heavy ice chest, you can use the muscles of your upper back). It also adds muscle, which increases your BMR (AKA metabolism).
If your main interest is in gaining muscle and looking better, there may be better routines. But Starting Strength is about one thing ... strength. Pure and simple. It never claims otherwise.
Starting Strength has been used as a fundamental building block by athletic trainers for years; it is often modified to be sport specific, but its fundamental lifts have proven effective over and over. After one has reached strength standards, it is typical (and recommended) to move on to a more advanced strength routine, which may explain why many of the big guys you have met are no longer doing a stripped down strength routine.
Yes, those with serious pre-existing injuries may want to opt for a different program (probably machine based), but that will be true of almost any strength training program. Those with only minor injuries can just start SS at a lower weight and improve more slowly.
Hope that helps address your concerns.
It is worth noting that the adaptation of the heart to weight training is different to the adaptation caused by traditional "cardio".
Weight training causes the heart walls to thicken because, during muscular contraction, blood pressure spikes and the heart must beat against that pressure. For heavy compound exercises the spike can be very high (which is why weight training is contraindicated for some trainees).
Cardio training however is aerobic -- the muscles begin to use blood-borne glucose and oxygen. This means that the heart must deliver more blood per stroke and so ultimately, the heart chambers grow larger.
Both adaptations have a positive impact on heart health. For most people doing both strength and some conditioning work is good.
Some claim that elevating one's heart rate (170+ BPM for late 20s individual) for 20-30 minutes three times a week is a good 80/20 solution for aerobic exercise. My current routine is to lift for 50 minutes MWF, jog for 45 minutes Tuesday, interval sprint for 25 minutes Thursday, and take a long hike Saturday. I also bike to work MWF (11 miles round trip) and walk 12k steps a day, so I figure that cancels the need for a third weekly intense aerobic exercise session. Curious to know if you have any heart health improvement suggestions.
My conditioning requirements basically are to get my breath back within 90 seconds of attempting a 1RM snatch / clean & jerk, so most of my conditioning is timed KB swings.
Visit a powerlifting gym some time. I cross-train at one.
What I realized is that variety is exactly what I need. Now I'll generally switch up my routine once every month or two. Right now I'm on a biking kick because the weather is finally getting nice here. Before that it was pull-ups/push-ups/one-legged squats. Before that it was yoga.
There are tons of ways to get fit. Starting strength worked for me--for three months--but it's not any more the "one true way" than anything else.
I think gym-nerds vastly underestimate how out of shape the median person is. I started doing a variation of this regimen every day before work two weeks ago and I feel better already. I was sore for the first two days from just a few sets of squats.
Who gives a fuck about being able to bench press all you can bench press? It sounds like macho bullshit to me. I don't care about being as strong as I can be.
I care about not being winded when I hit the top of the stairs, and I care about not having back aches from sitting in a chair all the time, and I care about dying a bit later than sooner. If a few simple bodyweight reps once a day or three times a week will get me there without the expense and the hours wasted travelling to and from gyms all so much the better.
You should.
From the introduction to Rippetoe's Starting Strength:
“Physical strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not. As humanity has developed throughout history, physical strength has become less critical to our daily existence, but no less important to our lives. Our strength, more than any other thing we possess, still determines the quality and the quantity of our time here in these bodies. Whereas previously our physical strength determined how much food we ate and how warm and dry we stayed, it now merely determines how well we function in these new surroundings we have crafted for ourselves as our culture has accumulated. But we are still animals - our physical existence is, in the final analysis, the only one that actually matters. A weak man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were strong. This reality is offensive to some people who would like the intellectual or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their squat strength goes up.”
The worst part about weight lifting isn't setting aside time to lift weights; the worst part is consuming information produced by weight lifters.
Uhm, like I said - macho bullshit. There is not a single actual argument in that paragraph past "strength good weak bad".
People historically were as strong as they had to be; I have a pretty good intuition about this as I'm only about two generations removed from subsistence farming. It's not like you had the time - or often, the calories - to spend doing pointless exercise.
I care about feeling comfortable in my body. I'm sure being able to lift 300lbs makes you feel more confident! but I learned how to be confident a few years ago.
Do exercise because it makes you feel good, and because our bodies need a workout every now and then. Don't get caught up in some silly statistic; there's a diminishing ROI past a certain level of fitness (which, admittedly, I'm currently still far from attaining).
This is a claim worth investigating, not "macho bullshit"
Of course this is anecdotal, but that's what I would expect from the experiment. Secondary confidence improvement would be expected, but that's thanks to awareness that you are more compliant with what Men's Health says you should look like, not inherent property of humans (see: places and times when fat people were seen as more attractive).
What a load of shit. I was actually considering checking this guy's stuff out until you posted that.
It's a well-used sales line: You've got somebody on the hook- they obviously think it's important or they wouldn't be looking at the book. They also obviously don't have what you're selling, so they wouldn't know any better. Then, make an argument (emotional if possible) as to why they need this. Presto: sale. And perhaps guru status.
I imagine this works for similar "my life would be better if only..." sales. Penis enhancers come to mind.
I think the OP's workout is a great place to start. The only caveat is that you want to go through the routine several times as you get proficient. The exercises are part of the "core" exercises that serious athletes are doing. If you stick with it you can add yoga, bosu, and medicine balls to the mix to work on your stabilizing muscles. You can add dumbells and barbell exercises too. I added "core" to my workouts about a year ago and am please.
As your strength declines, so does your life. You can no longer play with your kids. You can no longer get up stairs. You can't care for your house or yourself. Someday, you will no longer be able to get out of bed.
Correlation is not causation (you might as well flip it around). And I'm afraid that even for the strongest person, they're will come a day where they won't be able to get out of bed.
Before being a programmer, I was a soldier, and before that, a rugby player. I've had my share of extreme fitness levels, and I've known and am friends with a lot of strong people. Trust me, strenght is fun, but to make it the most important thing is plain wrong. Life is not uni-dimensional. Obviously, it's unclear what Rippetoe means by important. Does he mean it'll make you happy, live longer, healthier, good looking, etc.? Until he specifies that, he is saying absolutely nothing of value.
By the way, Physical existence, is, in no way, related to strength.
If you want my 2 cents, the only thing that works to get fit is: "Shut the fuck up and exercise!". All the time spent to talk about it, find a good workout, supplements, etc. Is worthless in the beginning if you can't shut it and do some physical activity.
The high intensity circuit training have been demonstrated to be more efficient at certain objectives, everyone that calls bullshit, probably never did high intensity circuit training properly, and for a reasonably long enough period of time, or has objectives to which it has not been proven to be good at. Other type of workouts can be just as good, or better, depending on the objective, and your context. If you only have 10 minutes a day, you don't really have a choice now do you.
Obviously, nothing will ever compare to having an active lifestyle. The reason we even need workouts are because our modern lives are so inactive.
Also, don't think because it's so short, it is easy. Sometimes, more motivation might be needed to perform high intensity circuit training properly. Higher injury rates can occur if done poorly. Depending on individuals, it is easier to perform at lesser intensity for longer times.
If I'm not mistaken, I think Zed Shaw was an american soldier before becoming a programmer.
BS in its purest form. Makes this guy untrustworthy. Actually, I find all of the fitness popularizing guys somewhat untrustworthy. I'm not sure why, my subconscious tells me that there's something fishy about them.
"Bro, do you even lift?"
"Cognitive strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not. As humanity has developed throughout history, individual intelligence has become less critical to our daily existence, but no less important to our lives. Our intelligence, more than any other thing we possess, still determines the quality and the quantity of our time here in these bodies. Whereas previously our intelligence determined how much food we ate and how warm and dry we stayed, it now merely determines how well we function in these new surroundings we have crafted for ourselves as our culture has accumulated. But we are still animals - our cognitive existence is, in the final analysis, the only one that actually matters. A stupid man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were smart. This reality is offensive to some people who would like the physical or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their ability to do math goes up." -- some ranting fool
Or try the experiment with "visual acuity". Or with "a strong family connection". Or with "memory". They all work just as well as "strength".
Individual sentences in the Rippetoe quote are true (like "strong is happier than weak" and "strength is less day-to-day essential than it was, but still very important to overall life" and "it's instructive to see what happens as you get stronger"). The overall package, with the superlative phrasing exemplified by the first sentence, is total utter bullshit.
Replies like hoelle's, below, about "play with kids" and "get up stairs".... that's true of strength, but it applies to things other than strength, too. Again, "visual acuity" is a drop-in replacement, and so is "short-term memory".
First of all, pre-civilized humans (and especially our pre-human ancestors) were highly dependent on intelligence for acquiring food, and staying warm and dry. The part before the comma is obviously true.
Second of all, modern humans in civilization do not usually require intelligence to eat and stay warm and dry, just like we don't require strength. Many humans do well because of inheritance, or because of familial support (this one was available to pre-civilized humans too), and some modern humans benefit from society-level support (admittedly a minority). And many many humans need only minimal intelligence to contribute to their economy enough to buy food and shelter.
The only tricky part is arguing that intelligence helps us function today. For some people it helps, for some people it seems to hurt. Was that your complaint?
No, modern life provably does not require any of those skills in order to stay fed and warm and dry. For example, zero of my cousins (I have two cousins) have ANY of those three skills, and both of them have survived into their thirties. I wouldn't be shocked if one of them had reproduced, in fact (if so, I pity the female involved).
On the other hand, all three of those skills help to "determine how well we function in these new surroundings" of modern culture.
The minimum intelligence requirements to stay fed and warm and dry, in modern society, are far lower today than any time in the history or pre-history of "humanity". Just like with the minimum requirements for strength. This isn't even a claim about social safety nets. Society is just so rich, food is just so cheap, that you can be a pretty crappy contributor, and even so some other smart guy will figure out how to put you to work, to his profit, and give you just enough to live. It's a good time to be a loser. (It's a great time to be a winner.)
(Oh, and also, I happen to disagree that the intelligence required to understand monthly payments or logging into a website is greater than that for reliably hunting or finding reliable shelter. Interest rates, I'm not sure. But this whole paragraph is beside my main point.)
- The article talks about HIIT which is a more general principle and not just a name for this specific exercise. It has been shown to be in some regards better than longer endurance exercises. And yes, with scientific studies with a HIIT group and a control group. The specific exercises that I have seen have been more about running or cycling than body weight exercises for that matter.
- This post was clearly aimed at people that want overall health and not necessarily more explosive strength, yet you only complain about the strength-part.
- EVEN disregarding the last point: you can gain a lot of strength from just body exercises and some props like a bar; all I have to say is gymnasts. I guess you can't accuse that sport of being a recent fad. Whether or not barbells and dumbbells are better comes down to the specifics of explosive versus endurance, strength vs bulk and so on and so on.
would you like your steroid injection now or later? Taking fitness cues from professional athletes who are ALL on PEDs is silly.
Anyway, aren't some gymnast exercises very demanding, and demand a lot of functional strength? Even if not, with some basic props and your body there is a lot of difficult things that you can do - handstand pushups, one-armed handstand pushups, muscle up, one armed pullup, L-sit...
I have never, ever, heard even a whiff of anyone taking anything remotely on the wrong side of rules for "performance enhancing" substances.
Bodyweight workouts can be incredibly challenging and develop not just strength but explosive power. Regular pushups too easy? Try clapping pushups or handstand pushups or an iron cross to work your deltoids, pecs and triceps.
Steroid abuse is ridiculously rampant, and it is hard for the layperson to know what sort of physique is attainable without them.
I don't know much about gymnastics but if performance in that sport is dominated by strength or endurance, that is a stronger or better conditioned athlete will normally win, then it is likely that the top athletes in the world use PEDs. Otherwise it would be inconsistent with evidence of PED use in every other strength or endurance sport.
I don't know why you think having competed against an athlete would give you some special insight into their PED use especially if you aren't competitive enough to beat them; it would clearly be precarious to have other people find out.
For anyone who has never done free weights I cannot recommend enough the need for finding a competent trainer when you are starting out. Although SS goes into great detail on how to properly perform the lifts nothing compare with having a professional evaluate your form.
This is even more important in a sport like lifting where often times the first hint that you are not using proper form is through injury.
The big catch to this advice is that most professional/fitness trainers are worthless. I don't have any advice on how to weed out the good ones from the bad ones other than getting recommendations from someone you trust.
However, my wife is both ACSM and NASM certified. She's spent the last decade "just doing the damn squats" and all the rest of her waking hours working with clients and studying, studying, studying.
I've been reading your replies out loud and she says, "Right on!"
And yeah, I'm a pretty lucky dude. :)
In an HN thread commenting on a scientific study, our top comment is an N=1 report, followed immediately by the commenter peddling the book of a self-described fitness expert who praises "ultra-high calorie diets", followed downthread by the same commenter peddling some "supplement" called "Pre-Exercise CNS-Carnosine-ATP Augmentor".
Really, HN?
Really, this book teaches a very "old-school" approach to fitness but as a matter of fact, it does work and it did indeed work for thousands and thousands of people already. I know we like to get all scientific on everything these days, and I think this is a good thing, but there's something about fitness and especially building muscle that makes intuitive sense without any science whatsoever: If you want to be strong, start lifting heavy things. Do that in a controlled fashion, with a simple workout plan, and you'll eventually succeed.
-Mark Rippetoe is not a self-described fitness expert, he is THE expert on building strength. If you want results, you listen to Rippetoe. Such a claim is widely-supported, rarely disputed.
-If you want to get stronger you'll need a caloric excess. Repairing muscle requires chemical energy in the form of protein and glucose. Look into Leangains for a method to do so while avoiding fat gain
-Jack3d - the supplement you're referring to - is a powder that has a stimulant in it called DMAA that's very effective as a pre-workout energy drink. I'm a biochemistry major so I know that "Pre-Exercise CNS-Carnosine-ATP Augmentor" is probably meaningless mumbo-jumbo (common in the entire supplement industry) but the drink works and is safe when used as directed. Tastes great too.
Mark Rippetoe is a well respected strength coach in fitness circles. He may not be delivering Olympic-level athletes, but certainly good at delivering strength knowledge for the lay person.
"Ultra-high calorie diets" is a suggestion that needs to be taken in context. His focus is strength, not diet. Excess calories are required to gain muscle and strength, and for one of his target demographics, young skinny teens who lack muscle altogether, ultra-high calorie diets are exactly what they need. Obviously for heavily obese people this advice would not necessarily apply if their goals were to lose weight.
Regarding the supplement, don't judge things by the marketing fluff, but rather by what it actually does and its ingredients. DMAA is a well-known stimulant that does what a pre-workout supplement should do.
Hm. I dealt with this problem by radical diet change and no change in activity level. I lost more than 100 lbs in a year by going essentially vegetarian for a couple months and then gradually changing my diet into to something that's still not what it was but is something I can live with long-term. Right now, I'm doing what I'll be doing the rest of my life, which is monitoring my weight and modifying my diet based on observed results but otherwise eating what I want. I still walk multiple hours a day, as I did before I lost weight, while I lost weight, and will until I physically can't, but I did (and do) no other exercise.
I'm predisposed to being fat. That may or may not be genetic in a meaningful sense, but I treat it as if it is. I know I'm genetically predisposed to Type 2 diabetes. If I get fat again and stay fat long enough, I'm going to have to manage that. I'd rather manage the process of staying a healthy weight.
After correcting form and playing around with routine and resistance level, these "injuries" are bothering me a lot less. I used to do squats 3x5 at 180-220 lbs twice a week. Now doing one medium weight 3x8 back squat day, one light front squat day, one heavy 3x5 day. Increasing the frequency seems to help keep the knee ready over the course of the week.
And runners and swimmers get injuries too. I had those. One particularly memorable calf muscle pull swimming, painful to walk for over a month.
The benefits of progressive strength training over staying in "shape" exercising is that it gets your body closer to its natural well fed, well prepared state. It simulates the life humans evolved for, hunter gatherers or farmers, not lethargic bed ridden hipster skinny jeans.
Your bone density increases, your hormone levels become normal. Your face looks less childlike. I know from personal experience it helps a lot with depression and others believe this as well. Exercising without progressing to a recommended level of strength, 2.5xBW deadlift, 2xBW squat, etc. just doing 50 pushups, bunch of light curls, left me feeling not much better and not motivated to continue. But I was in extremely bad shape, people who live actively don't need a strength training shock treatment to feel normal.
I would say yes. There are health effects of resistance training (with weights or bodyweight) that cannot be obtained through other means. The incidence of injury in weight training is lower than for many sports, including "safe" options like soccer.
Also, I dunno if you've ever sat in on swimmers bitching about overuse injuries.
this is a good set of exercises to mix into your home (next to the chair) routine. and the point of the article is intensity level while touching most of muscle groups.
Let me explain.
If you take a workout like this--that lasts, say, ten minutes (slightly longer than the one described), you will be getting 70 minutes of somewhat intense exercise per week. It's not as intense as doing deadlifts, but if you follow the routine as prescribed (10-second or so breaks in between exercises on the circuit), you're going to be at least performing somewhat taxing activity.
Compare that to someone who works out 2-3 times per week for 30 minutes at the gym.
First of all, that time in the gym generally contains at least 5-10 minutes of breaks, waiting for machines/weights, etc. Let's just factor that out to make a more fair comparison.
The article, but more importantly the study[1] it references, is stating that you can have much of the effect as a longer workout. It never claims that you can get the full effect of a 30 minute workout in ten minutes, but it does imply that you can more than just the third you'd expect.
Now you have efficiency gains on two fronts: first, you're working out almost as much per week as going to the gym a couple times, but spending smaller chunks of time exercising. For a lot of people, that's attractive. Secondly, if the study is correct, then getting more efficiency per time makes you "break even" in terms of generalized fitness.
In short, I don't think the authors of the NY Times article or the study behind it are saying that you can become a bodybuilder or a competitive-class weightlifter by following their steps. They are saying that working out for, say, 70 minutes per week is a lot easier than committing to going to the gym several times, and that their technique apparently produces efficiency gains as if you were working out for longer periods of time.
I don't know enough about biology and physiology to dispute the claims of the study, and although you mention elsewhere that you're in a biology-related field, I doubt that you have the prowess to dispute their academic claims either. I really think that all of this boils down to the fact that short, intense workouts produces more gains than its percentage of a longer workout.
1: http://journals.lww.com/acsm-healthfitness/Fulltext/2013/050...
Edit: Even though I disagree with you about the potential efficiency of the workout described, I'd also like to second your opinion that for those trying to get stronger, Starting Strength really is the way to go. Don't fool yourself into thinking that this workout is going to do anything other than provide the bare healthy minimum of exercise.
This article is specifically about a time efficient workout that does not require special equipment. While this article does not report on a controlled study, I don't think it deserves quotes around "science" since it does appear to rely on real science like
5. Gibala MJ, Little JP, Essen MV, et al.. Short-term sprint interval versus traditional endurance training: similar initial adaptations in human skeletal muscle and exercise performance. J Physiol. 2006; 575 (3): 901–11.
Your comment is overly dismissive without the supporting evidence to back it up. The authors of this piece have the same qualification (CSCS) as your preferred source.
Sometimes you only have 7 minutes. What's the difference between 7 minutes of this and 7 minutes of sitting, reading HN or Reddit? Lots.
I did this one yesterday, just to try it out. Now me, personally, I'm quite active. I did it three times with 30-second stretch breaks because that's what it took to work up a good sweat.
The point of exercise like this, to my mind, is that you can do it anytime and work it into your work day. Exercise during the work day, even minimal exercise sharpens your concentration and "shakes out the dead leaves" so to speak. It makes you sharper, and sharper at 3:30 in the afternoon (empirically determined to be the least productive time of the day by several studies) is exactly what most of us need.
What are your goals when you work out? Depending on that, this is not a waste of time. If you want to lose 50lbs, this will not help you. If you want massive muscles, this will not help you. If you want to be an "active person", this will not by itself achieve that, although it may make it easier to get into exercise later, when you do something short and see nearly immediate results. It's rewarding, and that's the first thing you need when starting an exercise program of any sort.
My point is, don't let anyone -- or yourself -- shame you out of working out. Yes, you read it in the NYT. It's a fad and it's mass-media. That doesn't make it stupid by definition. If it starts you off on finding ways to hack your body and make it strong, endurant, and resilient, then by all means, go for it.
That is until recently since a new trend of running very long distances at a low intensity for training became popular, just as runners from Kenya and Ethiopia do. Now Americans who employ the latter tactic are starting to fair better on the international scene, even reaching the podium for some long distance events. More American collegiate athletes who are employing the low-intensity, long distance training strategy are clocking sub-4 minute miles as well which is a hallmark of elite running status.
It seems counter-intuitive that low intensity running over long distances should improve high intensity short-distance times, but the proof is in the pudding.
Interval training can increase your lactate threshold, or your body's ability to remove lactic acid from your muscles while you are engaging in high intensity activities (the same acid that causes that burning sensation we all love to hate), but it doesn't do that much for your VO2max which determines how effectively your body uses oxygen.
Most pro endurance athletes mix interval training with long distance training to get the benefit of both strategies. As with anything in physical activity, there is no silver bullet.
This conclusion is premature. We have no way of knowing whether the increase in performance in American athletes comes from them changing their training methods, as opposed to countless other factors. As far as I know, no random controlled trials have been conducted in this area (and those are the only truly reliable scientific method for answering questions like this).
edit: only someone who doesn't understand science would downvote this comment. :)
You need enough subjects.
First problem: how many advanced and elite athletes are there? Not many.
Second problem: how many have coaches who are happy for you to experiment on their charges? Not many.
Third problem: given the small samples, how do you control other factors such as diet and sleeping patterns? With great difficulty.
Fourth problem: funding the dream trial. Most research money is public money, and "give us money to find out how to make healthy adults run slightly faster so we can win an extra medal every 4 years" is a pretty difficult ask next to research into helping sick folk.
There's a reason that a great deal of sports science still relies on research done in the eastern bloc throughout the cold war. Totalitarian societies had the conditions and the motivation to set large, serious experiments up, and they did.
In general though, progress occurs through a cut down version of science. Coaches observe, hypothesise and tinker. Scientists do small studies; the studies compound or refute each other. Over time rough consensus emerges about what works and what doesn't. Things that don't work disappear quickly. Meanwhile, unseen, population effects muddy everybody's waters.
Is it the fully dressed version of science we demand from physics or medicine? It is not. But it's what we can reasonably expect.
how do we know these types of studies aren't happening right now in other countries that have more lax ethics in science?
The one truly totalitarian society left, AFAIK, is North Korea; they might be doing this.
But pretty much the easiest strategy for a centralised sports system is to just throw bodies at sports until the normal distribution gives you winners. The Chinese are finding that this works well for them.
"The exercises selected should ... promote strength development for all major muscle groups of the body".
Then progressive resistance is required. Simply adding reps does not increase strength past initial accomodation.
"... create a balance of strength throughout the body ..."
Then drop the isometrics. Isometric exercises only produce strength increases in a limited range of motion close to the joint angle of the isometric exercise. And most of those studies were done with maximal voluntary isometric contraction -- ie pushing as hard as possible against an immobile object. Wall sits do not fit those studies.
"... adapted as necessary to increase or decrease exercise intensity"
Which can't be done with most of these exercises.
"To maximize the metabolic impact of the exercise, time should be sufficient enough to allow for the proper execution of 15 to 20 repetitions (15) of an exercise."
Which further breaks the link with strength.
" Individuals who previously believed that they did not have the time for exercise can now trade total exercise time for total exercise effort and get similar or better health and fitness benefits."
Given that the studies done on high intensity interval training were initially done with elite athletes, I'm not certain it shows that at all.
This is about as scientific as two guys spitballing over beer. It hasn't been tested as a program and the idea that you can achieve any kind of serious strength gain through high repetition circuit training is, frankly, a joke.
If you want to get stronger and improve cardiovascular condition, simple barbell exercises and running or swinging a kettlebell will do it better, for longer.
When I write programs for my trainees, I am apparently equivalently scientific. I too take the general principles I am taught and go through a process of exercise selection, exercise ordering, repetition and set layout, rest period selection and then sprinkle in modifications. I'll be right back, I have a scientific program for figure competitors I need to flog to the Wall Street Journal.
[1] http://journals.lww.com/acsm-healthfitness/Fulltext/2013/050...
And I don't see why you would argue against increasing strength at the joint angle. It's very important for people with the potential for joint pain or injury to strengthen supporting muscles around the joint.
I agree that there's little to no science in the article. It seems like everything i've seen concerning athletic performance is based on cherry-picked ideas distributed by non-scientists.
Their first criteria for exercise selection was to "promote strength development for all major muscle groups of the body".
As for developing short term fatigue resistance (as opposed to straight up endurance), kettlebells are excellent. My favourite tool for such a job: compact, widely available, and evil.
> And I don't see why you would argue against increasing strength at the joint angle. It's very important for people with the potential for joint pain or injury to strengthen supporting muscles around the joint.
Because joints move through, and must support load, at a variety of angles. Being really really good at a particular 10 degree band is not very useful for most folk.
> It seems like everything i've seen concerning athletic performance is based on cherry-picked ideas distributed by non-scientists.
Well in their defence, sports science sucks. Like software engineering research and for the same reasons: small and biased samples, poor experiment design and not much funding to fix either.
This is so true it bears repeating. A lot of people who focus on limited joint angle strength end up injured when they work their muscles beyond the angles that they are trained for.
It's certainly important to exercise muscles with a full range of motion, but even people who don't do isometrics hardly ever train to their full range. Watching people at gyms do push-ups, pull-ups, squats, lunges, hell even lat raises with only a specific range of motion is sad.
Man, don't even get me started on trainers...
Yep. So does nutritional science and anything else that involves measuring humans over long periods of time. It's expensive and we make lousy lab rats.
And this is part of why you see bulgy weightlifting types at the rock climbing gym getting shown up by skinny "DYEL" types.
"Then progressive resistance is required. Simply adding reps does not increase strength past initial accommodation."
But initial accommodation for many people might be 6 months. I have trainees who struggle to squat past parallel for weeks or months, who can't do a Tabata cycle of more than 8 squats and who struggle to do real pushups after weeks of training. The base level of fitness for most people is so abysmal that getting them to understand the benefits of 7 minutes of high intensity exercise can be life changing. Sure, to be truly strong, you're going to have to eventually lift heavy weights but for majority of the people out there, a simple body weight routine will give them an amazing fitness boost.
Any exercise is better than no exercise. For years, people have thought they needed to spend hours at the gym to lose weight when in fact, solid nutrition combined with short intense workouts can in fact lead to enhanced strength and fitness. When the baseline is so low, anything is helpful.
Most of the most popular weights programs for beginners are linear progressions. You literally add a fixed amount to each exercise, each session, until you can't. Folk are amazed at how quickly they can progress from struggling with a bar to squatting their own bodyweight.
If I can get people doing 7 minute exercise routines in their living room, eventually they will see the results and want more which leads them to the next step, a true strength program.
I feel differently: that training at home makes it easier to give up. "Oh, I'll just sit on the couch for a minute. Hmm, I'll just check facebook for a second".
A gym, meanwhile, is an environment dedicated to training.
Still, we're both spitballing. Each trainee has their own path to exercise. I would prefer to put them onto something that won't run out of room to improve within a month or two.
For example I tried out the 7-minute exercise simply because I could, it was easy. If I can't even be bothered to spend 7 minutes on exercise there's no way I'm going to the gym, so it's not as if the short exercises are interfering with work at the gym.
Whereas going from a 20kg squat to a 100kg squat can be done 1kg at a time with the same movement pattern throughout.
For people who genuinely can't or won't go to a gym, I'd first suggest installing a power cage, adjustable bench, barbell and some plates. Failing that kettlebells and resistance bands. Only after those are exhausted would I suggest a purely bodyweight training regimen.
I don't agree on "true strength", whatever that may be. I don't care to be any stronger than I am, frankly. I can pull myself up anything; I can easily lift my dates. I don't need to impress on the beach. And I don't enjoy gyms, I'd rather do something else. So "getting strong" really isn't on my priority list.
What's worse is that the exercise actually changes. So you're doing a exercise that requires more strength, that you haven't and cannot practice at a lower level of difficulty.
Spot-on. People think they need to throw themselves into a weight-lifting program, or P90x, or crossfit, or running 5 miles a day. It's all garbage unless they can develop a habit and see personal gains. All this method requires is a timer, a room, and a chair, which makes for a much less intimidating introduction to fitness.
This is what is wrong with "fitness" today - the harder you work out the more "bad ass" you are, and the fitness-is-my-hobby crowd are notorious for their "go hard or go home" attitude (yes, massive generalization here). And since these people are the go-to 'experts', people who only want to not-suck when it comes to fitness probably get easily discouraged because there is a real and tangible barrier to entry: you have to "work out" which means to go to the gym, or go to the park and jog, go home, shower... while for some people, simply some more activity would be better than nothing. Simply walking more, or doing the odd push ups during down times.
But evidently - that is not good enough. Go hard or I will make you feel worthless for not being as dedicated as me.
I guess the joke's on all the extremely fit, strong people who do yoga, then.
(I've personally gained strength and muscle mass doing yoga, and when I looked at this routine, I saw most of the poses in a basic vinyasa class. Seven minutes is perhaps a bit aggressive, but the exercises do work. The notion that you can only get intensity with weights is the obviously silly one. All you really need for a good workout is your body, and maybe a mat.)
Athletes get stronger with yoga, because improved flexibility helps them to do compound exercises with better form, and that allows them to activate the correct muscle groups for better leverage. In other words, they have the same muscle mass - they can just activate those muscles more effectively. This is most likely what happened to you, unless you were so unfit when you began yoga that even simple poses worked the hell out of your muscles.
No, that can't be it...
"unless you were so unfit when you began yoga that even simple poses worked the hell out of your muscles."
1. How did you measure your lean muscle mass? 2. How did you conclude that it increased due to yoga and not something else?
Edit: I agree with you that weights are not the only way to elicit adaptation. But they're easy to scale up in small increments and a lot of the movements don't require much in the way of skill acquisition.
There is no question that intensity can be achieved without weights. I believe what the gentleman was referring to is the science of building significant strength increases over a fit level of baseline strength.
The science on this one is very much settled, courtesy of the not very ethical, but scientifically valid, studies from the Soviet Union in the height of the Cold War.
The science is this:
Lower # of reps at 80 - 90% of a weight you can only lift once builds strength most effieciently.
As you progress up the curve to higher reps at 60%, you are still building strength, but not as efficiently, and you are moving more towards increasing endurance.
Endurance, of course, is most efficiently gained with high # of reps at low percentages. However, this will typically be at the expense of raw strength.
Note: For people who are not at all fit, with atrophied muscles, strength will be gained very easily from almost any use of their muscles, high reps or not.
#Admittedly it's hard to find a replacement for something like olympic barbells when it comes to exercises such as the deadlift. And of course weights have their benefits with the easier progression, etc etc...
Yoga isn't the same thing as high repetition circuit training. Strength gains from yoga are caused by the increasing resistance found in more difficult poses. Out of all the people you've seen become extremely fit and strong, how many stayed in beginner classes doing the easiest poses the whole time?
The primary differences between a beginner class and an advanced class are the frequency (repetition), rest time and hold times used. Advanced classes will easily work 2-3x more asanas into an hour than beginner classes.
"Although HICT can be an efficient means by which to improve health and decrease body fat, it may be inferior to [sic] creating absolute strength and power, specific endurance, and other specific performance variables. If these are the goals of a program, as with competitive athletes, traditional programs may elicit greater absolute gains."
There was a study recently released of HIIT (8s sprint/12s relax on a bike) on overweight males, showing it to bt very effective [1]. Not that I pretend to know how this relates to this program in particular.
"Starting your 7 minute workout with Jumping Jacks in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1..."
"Start Jumping Jacks for 30... [optional chirp-per-second]... 20 seconds... 10 seconds... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1..."
"Rest now, next is Wall Sit... in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1..."
"Begin Wall Sit for 30... [etc]"
Obviously, it could be a static recording. But some obvious enhancements would be:
• visual countdown timer
• changing images of the exercises to precede/accompany each phase
• optional chirps/clicks each second
• alternate trainer voices
• optional extra voiced 'encouragement' ("keep up intensity", "good", "almost there", "all done")
• automatic logging/reminders of when/how-often circuit is completed (either based on how many times started run through uninterrupted, or based on a prompted "did you finish and what was your self-rated 1-10 intensity?" question at the end)
The supplement and weight loss industry has made in very difficult for people to achieve results. I lost 50 pounds fat and put on 20 pounds of muscle with zero supplements, not even a protein shake, just lots of good nutrition, patience, and little understanding that my body might change.
...research from a number of centres has shown that three minutes of HIT a week improves insulin sensitivity by an average of 24% ...
Although 15% of people made huge strides (so-called "super-responders"), 20% showed no real improvement at all ("non-responders").
http://journals.lww.com/acsm-healthfitness/Fulltext/2013/050...
It's surprisingly readable and goes into much more detail. Also, a downloadable PDF.
I'd summarize the contents as: 1- Most gyms are 45% cardio, 45% stretching 10% weights. This is bad. 2- You need to lift heavy things. 3- There are no shortcuts.
Favorite excerpt: My conversion moment came in a garage-like industrial space next to an ATV rental yard in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I was lying on a concrete floor, near puking, having just humiliated myself on the king of all strength exercises, the old-school back squat. "The best thing I can do for an athlete," coach Rob Shaul said to me as I struggled to get up, "is to make him strong. Strength is king, and you're fucking little-girl weak."
[1] http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/everything-you-know-abou...
Science isn't peer review. Peer review is merely a filter mechanism to discard bad from good...a filter mechanism that has both false positives and false negatives. We shouldn't conflate peer review with science.
I dont see science in this article or the science in this article is the same science behind those late night tv ads where they sell 8-minute-ab-pro (among the others).
The original paper that articles cites does not provide any concrete data to defend their claims.
Secondly the most important thing is what is the objective of this workout. Clearly it is neither to keep your weight in control or to build strength. It is merely to provide "some" exercise.
There are some fundamental truths about workouts which everyone should know.
1. Your body starts burning fat at higher rate only when you heartbeat is above average for around 20 minutes. Till then your body is mostly burning calories from the carbs. So no matter how hard you work for those 7 minutes you are not gonna lose that extra fat.
2. Even if you do these exercises regularly it is only within a week that your muscles will get strong enough to get used to your body weight. After that same number of reps wont have any effect on your body. (Yes it might be little better than being idle).
3. Actually no matter what is your goal if you keep your regimen fixed you very soon find yourself in a local minima. After that the law of diminishing returns kicks in and the benefit of exercise becomes negligible compared to the time you spend doing it.
Here is a quick checklist to see if the advertised regimen should be taken seriously
1. Is the lower limit on duration around 20 minutes ?
2. Is there any variable that can be changed with time to increase difficulty level ?
3. Does it cover all core muscle groups ? Arms, Chest, Back, Abs, Legs and shoulders?
I think I'll try the bike peddling one first, repeatedly sprint for eight seconds, then pedal slowly for 12 and repeat.
http://lifehacker.com/5989669/researchers-claim-to-discover-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5BX
That has 5 exercises which you should be able to do in 5 minutes. It has a complete scheme of exercises building up in intensity as you get better at them.
[0] - http://i.imgur.com/MwbAD.png [1] - http://i.imgur.com/o3bRo.png [2] - http://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/comments/15bou5/ex...
Diet and fitness is one of those things in life where you should just overkill the plan. Keep your diet stricter than you have to, lift more weights than you have to, do more cardio than you have to.
When you overkill the situation, you will get in and stay in excellent shape, trying to walk the line of "just enough" gets your burned and loses precious time towards proper progress.
Speaking from experience, don't overkill. You won't be able to sustain it over the long term.
Slow progress and sustainable changes are the key to success my friend :-)
Sorry, but there's no way that I'll believe that a 7 minute "heavy intensity workout" can burn the same number of calories of an involved 45 minute run, and have the same beneficial effect on weight control.
Better than nothing, maybe very efficient in terms of results/time, but in no way "combines a long run and a visit to the weight room" as the article claims.
EDIT : It's useful to separate what the NYT says and the actual article does.
You do understand this is scientific research and not just an idea someone thought up on a whim.
Calories are a measure of work (Force x mass). To burn Calories your body has to be doing work of some sort. To burn the same number of Calories in 7 minutes as 45 requires doing an equivalent amount of work.
In my case, 45 minutes running is 800 calories. 800 calories in 7 minutes is like 114 Calories/minute. I don't think even maximum anaerobic sprinting comes close to 114 kcal/min, and even if it does I certainly can't maintain that intensity for more than 15-20 seconds.
For a comparison, my 2800 lb Honda Civic burns probably 400 kcal/minute in gasoline during city driving at an average speed of 20mph.
The article is very vague about how reasonable this 7-minute set of exercises actually is. From the article:
Interval training, though, requires intervals; the extremely intense activity must be intermingled with brief periods of recovery.
How intense? It doesn't say. This should be possible to measure. To explain more though I will have to read the original paper to see exactly what sort of "benefits" they were talking about and how intense this exercise has to be.
It definitely doesn't make up for "a visit to the weight room" and while fairly 'effective' in its ROI, the 7 minute span definitely gives it a hard limit on its benefits (when I used to row, we'd do 15-station circuits for an hour or so).
Also, I actually wonder if a very out of shape person can even make it through a 7 minute high intensity circuit sesion.
Isn't high intensity self-defined? Meaning someone out of shape's high intensity will be less intense than someone who is in shape?
In weight / strength training, "intensity" refers to percentage of a 1-rep maximum. So if you squat 100kg, a 70kg squat is 70% intensity.
Meanwhile, in various aerobic trials, "intensity" could be defined as percentage of measured VO2 max. This is important because one of the most influential studies on high intensity interval training (Tabata) was calibrated this way. Cyclists were tested to their sprint VO2 max and then made to push past that level for 20 seconds, then 10 seconds of rest; repeated 8 times.
Also since when is exercise effective for losing substantial amounts of body fat/weight? You burn very few calories when you exercise, at least very few relative to your BMR.
Even just knowing some numbers should tell you how bonkers losing weight through exercise as opposed to diet is (e.g. calories burnt per hour running, calories in a chocolate bar, calories per pound of weight, and BMR).
Plus, you're basically dumping on a scientific article with your nonsense anecdotes. Your belief is not required.
"You burn very few calories when you exercise, at least very few relative to your BMR".
This is just BS, that you would know if you ever tried to lose weight.
I'm not dumping the scientific article at all, I'm criticising the claims the NYT makes of what it means.
The scientific text clearly states that this is a program that provides some of the benefits of a regular regime, and it's suited with people that doesn't have either time or easy access to facilities.
Let's look at some numbers then. Let's take a hypothetical person, 250 pounds, male, age 25, 6' tall.
This person does NOT change their diet. They exercise instead. Since exercise means weight loss, and diet is unimportant... Or so you claim.
So to get to be 250 pounds you have to eat 2370 calories a day. Since they haven't change their diet and are 250 pound we know for a FACT they're eating 2370 on average a day...
So how do we beat that with nothing but exercise? If they ran at 5 MpH they would burn 960 calories/hour, therefore at 2370 calories a day, in order to start losing weight they need to run at least 1.2 hrs a day, 7 days a week.
How many even fit people do that much exercise? Not damn many. Do you? I don't.
But contrast that against diet changes... In order to have the same amount of weight loss as 1.2 hrs/day/7 days they would need to eat the equivalent of four less McDonalds meals a week.
What is harder? 8.5 hrs/week of running or eating four less McDonalds meals?
Where did he claim that? He does not mention diet.
I took his claim to be: For the purpose of burning calories, a 45 minute workout will be more efficient than a 7 minute workout, regardless of workout content.
Doing physical exercise without controlling intake is a surefire way to fail any weight loss program, since you tend to overestimate the burned calories and compensate by eating more.
Let's take a REAL actual example, myself. I run 45/50 minutes x day (yes it's very possible to do that, as it is for the hundreds of people I meet daily in the park doing the same thing), burning an average of 500 calories x run.
To lose a pound you need to burn about 3500 calories. This would be about a pound every week.
Run half of the time(maybe more realistic, and perfectly achievable by most normal people) and we are talking about a pound every two weeks, without changing diet.
I have been running an average of three days for week over the last 6 years, according to my Nike+ record, and I have had very little problems in controlling weight over these years, as opposed as being seriously overweight before I starting working out.
Is diet more effective for weight loss? No, diet and exercise is a much more effective combination than any of those two alone, as doctors and scientists have been saying since, well, ever.
But I thought we were comparing a cardio workout to the 7-minutes workout, where diet entered into the discussion exactly ?
Is this a joke? I just ran the numbers for my BMR and what I've burned running for the month of May and get:
BMR Estimate = 1.4 Kcal/min
Jogging (8:30/mile pace)= 17.8 Kcal.min.
The cardio is burning 1207% more Calories per minute than BMR. To put it in perspective, it would take me about 2 hours of Cardio at that intensity to burn my entire daily BMR. Running a marathon would consume almost twice my daily BMR.
edit: ah, I see from your comment below that you are mistaking BMR and daily Calorie intake. Yes, exercising is often accompanied by an increase in Calorie intake and a deficit is necessary for weight loss. Diet is important, too.
To do a proper sprint interval workout, you'd need to warm up (5 minutes at least), and go so hard in those 30 intervals that you'd need 90 seconds to recover. So 120 seconds * 12 + 5 = 29 minutes. Add in stretching and you're beyond a half hour.
The other issue is many of these exercises won't get your heartrate up to the right threshold to be good interval training.
Yes, it's better than nothing. No, it's not better than a real workout, and not scientifically valid.
I started Crossfit a few months back, and its entirely possible to do 2-3 simple movements (thrusters + pullups for example) in a short time period (2-10 minutes) and really push yourself to complete exhaustion.
Is this workout terrible? No. It beats nothing. Is it the key to your ongoing physical fitness? Of course not.
The fitness world is overrun with so-called experts. One problem is that we are all different. We have different body types, different goals, different strengths, different weaknesses, and different likes/dislikes. What works for me may not work for you.
Can a periodical take this into account for all readers? Of course not.
Consider their workout as a first step. If you are doing nothing, do the 7-minute workout. It will help you, to a point. Thereafter, you'll need to challenge your body to do harder things.
Also, consider the physics definition of mechanical work: W=f*d.
So, go apply some force of a distance. That's a workout.
Do work.
The true measure of a program is if after the first year you are still making quantifiable improvements.
How come I go to the comments and all I see is a battle of the anecdotes? Where's the fact-checking?
This being HN, I would at least have expected someone pointing out that 12 exercises à 30 seconds plus 11 x 10 seconds rest between them is closer to an 8-minute workout than a 7-minute workout ;-)
Eat/drink/do whatever else you want and you will stay fit regardless, because it is about increasing your metabolism and not how much or even what you do, just that you do it every single day before eating.
Oh and don't drink sweet drinks of any kind.
#unsubstantiated personal experience
Illustrators don't know what they don't know. I don't hold that against them, especially if there's a sharp deadline looming.
"Sua Sponte!"
Getting fit is hard work. If it was easy everyone would look like a Greek God / Goddess!
No Pain, No Gain
http://lifehacker.com/these-12-videos-show-the-proper-form-f...
Your toes need to be pointed out 30 degrees and knees spread apart, crotch opened as far as possible.
You'll find a lot of wrong YouTube videos. It's a minefield of fitness non-experts trying to make a profit. Follow Starting Strength form recommendations and make sure the videos you're watching follow them approximately.