Hacker News Reader

Comment by omn1 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure about that. This guy has gone through some extremes. First he was standing 8 hours a day, no workout. Then he was sitting 12 hours a day, no workout. Then he got into bodybuilding using lots of machines which made him gain lots of muscles and finally he scales back to something I would call "normal": a healthy workout of 30min per day but... with some no-training gaps in between which can be several months long? I'm glad that he found his own routine but why did it take him so many years of going through extremes and now he's advertising his method like the only truth but still not sticking to the basics like eating healthy?

View on HN

I wouldn't call what I did or even what I do as "extreme". Far from it. Taking steroids and growth hormone is extreme. Lifting weights and enjoying it to the point where you want to better yourself at it? I don't see it as extreme.

I also do not go several months without working out often. I did it during a shoulder surgery recovery and again earlier this year. I agree that is not a good idea, but life does get in the way sometimes and I was just pointing out that I'm no different than other people in that aspect.

I also wouldn't advocate that my way is the one true way. I will say that my results are probably pretty typical of what most people may experience when they actually decide to exercise.

yup, I used to exercise a lot and then I fell off the boat for about 5 years, simply because I no longer have a gym partner. Could feel my health failing. About three months ago I started doing the seven minute workouts, five or six times a week. I've been tweaking them a little bit, adding weights, changing exercise (but overall the idea is the same). I feel great. I think basically it boils down to: Commit to doing something that works for you, and stick to it.

Also, since I'm a lab scientist almost my entire time working is standing up.

> Lifting weights and enjoying it to the point where you want to better yourself at it? I don't see it as extreme.

I do. It is moving for the sake of moving rather than to achieve some productive effect. To me exercise is riding my to a place where I need to go rather than going by car if the distance is about right and the weather on the way out not too brutal. Walking, playing with the kids and so on. Lifting weights would indicate that I have calories to burn that go towards nothing else that helps. Usually at the end of the day I'm tired enough that I long for a bed rather than for more movement, especially not movement involving weights bought for the specific purpose of making that movement harder.

If I really did have energy to burn after a full day I'd probably take up some sport or spend that time and energy improving the place that I live in.

> Lifting weights would indicate that I have calories to burn that go towards nothing else that helps.

Resistance training does go to something. It goes to conditioning your muscles and building bone density which are both incredibly important the older you get.

I also agree one should do other things, which is why I mountain bike, do martial arts and kayak.

Lifting weights is a sport. A solitary one, just like running or rock climbing. No need to disparage it.

If you feel like you're lacking energy it could be that you're not eating enough calories during the day.

I took up resistance training a few months ago and it required I increase my daily calorie consumption by about 500kcal. I only realized how little I was eating after using an phone app to meticulously record everything I put in my mouth on a daily basis for a few weeks.

Since I started it really forced me to learn a lot about human physiology (because you can injure yourself if you do it with bad form), nutrition (because I want lean mass gain and optimal recovery), I sleep more (recovery) and stopped smoking. There's an amazing euphoric feeling after a heavy weightlifting session when you've got a good pump going. It can be quite a "technical" sport once you start factoring in all these things. The actual process of lifting a heavy object is the easy/least time consuming part.

Just yesterday I completely changed my sitting posture after I was having trouble with my infraspinatus muscle (bad posture at the desk). Now I'm finally sitting up straight at work because it negatively affects my weight lifting if I don't. Man there are so many benefits...

> Lifting weights would indicate that I have calories to burn that go towards nothing else that helps.

I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but this smacks of the whole calories-in-calories-out theory of weight gain that always comes up in diet threads in HN.

The reason I mention that is because I think programmers have a tendency to view things abstractly and quickly generalize. Sometimes this comes from an obsessive quality that makes us want to avoid spending any time thinking about anything that is not interesting work (witness the Soylent guy). However when it comes to the human body and our health reducing things to a simple equation comes at our own risk. Animal bodies evolved to survive and thrive under varied physical conditions and stresses.

If you don't like weightlifting then by all means do something else. But for all the people I hear complaining about RSI, and knowing what a combination of aggressive mountain biking and moderate weightlifting did for my RSI issues, I think it definitely comes with some very tangible benefits for programmers.

Lifting weights doesn't burn that many calories, compared to walking, running, etc. You can also have substantial strength gains by doing it just 2-3 times a week.

"Resistance training" gives you muscle mass so you can live longer. It gives you strength so you can do more in your daily life--lift a heavy object and without injuring yourself, for example. Having good leg strength can help prevent knee injury when you're out hiking with your kids.

Are you chopping and stacking wood at home? Lifting anything heavy (as trite as that sounds) at work? Or anything physically challenging that requires strength throughout the week? Chances are, like many of us geeks, the answer is no or very little. Lifting weights is a way to fix that. If you were working a physically demanding job, you wouldn't need to lift weights.

And anyway, don't interpret lifting weights too literally! Don't buy weights, use your body: pushups, pullups, etc. You can do pullups off the edge of a desk. Dips off the edge of a chair. Lunges and squats and "jumpy" versions thereof will give you plenty of leg and hip strength without any weights.

> Lifting weights doesn't burn that many calories, compared to walking, running, etc.

Doesn't increasing your muscle mass increase your metabolism? That is, your body's base calorie burn rate increases when you have more muscle to maintain.

If you exercised more, you would have more energy to burn.

Few things leaves you feeling more physically exhausted than being in bad shape.

For 48 I'm in excellent shape, thank you. In fact if you're over 30 I'll race you on any bike of your choosing ;)

Where does it say that he used machines?

It doesn't. :) I use none. I workout in my garage with a pull-up bar, a heavy bag and a barbell.

Can I recommend you also fix some gymnastic rings to your garage ceiling (or a branch of a tree outdoors, if the ceiling is too low)? They are cheap, and provide incredible challenging (and fun!) workouts.

Even basic things like push ups become challenging again on the rings. And you'll be so proud when you work up to your first muscle up.

> I put on 40 pounds of muscle one year alone by eating until I couldn't move, and then lifting as heavy as I could. I got up to doing a 400 pound deadlift, 225 pound squat, 195 pound bench press and I was doing pull-ups with an additional 90 pounds of weight added to a chain around my waist.

There.

None of those are machines. Those are likely all free-weights. I only say "likely" for the bench press, as it could be a machine, but is unlikely. People that do squats and deadlifts tend not to do their bench press on a machine.

Squat could also be with a machine (smith machine), but it's unlikely for someone doing deadlifts.

eww, but yeah, forgot about that one (probably purposely).

I wouldn't call a barbell a machine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com