The OP is addressed to women for a reason: I wanted to know if women specifically can relate to the negative feelings I was experiencing five years ago. Fotheringay-Phipp bumbles into the thread and post something that unintentionally screams, “I cannot relate at all to what you’re experiencing, so I’m going to downplay/disagree/critique it rather than just listen and digest. Because I have to be That Guy. You can’t have a thread like this without That Guy telling women that their feelings are weird and wrong. But I’ll be polite when I do it so no one can get mad!”
This is pretty much the exact definition of “mutually exclusive.” None of the definitions you offer for “orthogonal” are even close to being as clear or precise.
So, I asked for an explanation of what was meant and why that term was used. Sometimes I prefer to directly ask people who are actually using a word to account for its use.
I heard about them in a PG Wodehouse book as the exercise equipment of a man who was the cutting edge fitness enthusiast of his day (his day being in 1915). It sounded cool - and I also realized I was likely to break everything in my house if I tried to use them.
Weight training is also a great way to get strong. And if you know that you can bench ____, then when the lawnmower won’t start or whatever other thing that’s disguising itself as a feat of strength won’t do what it’s supposed to do, then you know that it isn’t anything to do with your strength (you have objective proof that you’re strong), it’s because the lawnmower is stupid.
Wrong exercise. Do pullups/rows/pulldowns.
Actually, you should have a balanced program but bench press is a pushing exercise while starting a mower requires pulling.
“Mutually exclusive” applies when two things cannot occur together: the presence of one excludes the possibility that the other is also present. What is the probability that the flip of a fair coin is tails, given that it is heads? Zero - heads and tails are mutually exclusive outcomes.
“Independent” is pretty much the opposite: the presence of one says nothing about the probability that the other is also present. What is the probability that the flip of a fair coin is tails, given that the previous flip was heads? 0.5 - fair coin flips are independent, so the outcome of the first has no effect on the second.
You don’t swing steel clubs (or maces, or kettlebells) inside your house unless you have a room with a lot of open space and a very well padded floor. However, you can do grip, wrist, and ankle strengthening exercises with clubs without swinging them; just hold them upright (inverted) and articulate your wrist to create an offset load.