Why don’t you lift weights?

In My Humble Opinion
361

Well complete agreement is boring. :slightly_smiling_face:

The big message that you’ve been preaching, and that I’ve been “Amen”ing, is that the health benefits of any exercise are huge. More so that it does not take much to have huge benefits: moving from the lowest quartile to the second lowest is the biggest benefit. Moving from the third to the highest quartile relatively fairly little. Doing an exercise plan that improves both cardiorespiratory fitness and strength fitness, and add balance in there too, is by far best. We even agree on the importance of adequate recovery, which gains in importance as we age. Easy to do too hard too much.

Our only difference in perspective is my take of cardiorespiratory and some strength, and yours of strength and some cardiorespiratory.

362

I think strength training with even moderate repetitions is also cardiac training, which is very important. It can be made more cardiac by reducing rest, emphasizing plyometrics, adding sprinting (etc) or circuit type training. The reverse is not usually true, traditional cardio only builds limited strength. But I do both, about equal amounts.

363

And while we agree on the end point, each doing both, even if our ratios vary, I will refer to studies cited in this thread for the basis of my disagreement.

While one can do concurrent training (sprints between sets for example) most strength training is not significantly increasing cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF).

OTOH cyclists have great leg strength, rowers and cross country skiers fairly good strength all over, swimmers too, with lats to die for. Marathon runners no, but sprinters good muscle strength.

The data is fairly good that there is too much strength training, a point where not only mortality benefits stop but where it even becomes negative.

Harder to say if there is that point with gains in CRF at all.

IOW re dose response there is an overdose risk for strength training that is much greater than cardio. Both though are steep benefits going from none to some!

Bigger mortality benefits are gained with cardio exercise than with that labeled as strength exercise. Yes most with both!

364

Although I agree with most of what you say and have seen your evidence, I think the problem is the labels and stereotypes. Most serious athletes do strength training too and this accounts for some of their performance. And sometimes the definition of strength training is more expansive than usual - what is swimming if not moving against resistance? What is gymnastics if not fighting gravity using bodyweight? But we mostly agree.

Firefighters who could do forty or more push-ups had a 96% reduced rate of CVD compared to those who could do less than ten. Other studies show very significant reductions in cardiac morbidity (I seem to recall in the 60% range) in those who strength train. I agree some point is too much and cardio counts but your paper is one in a sea of results suggesting benefits. More research on more older people is required. It is coming.

365

Just to clear, the first cite was not just a single study but a meta-analysis, and several others were cited as well.

Benefits of strength training not in dispute.

Firefighters who cannot do ten push-ups? That’s pretty unfit, especially given the job.

366

I stand corrected. Yeah, and these were younger dudes too.

367

Looking at the results the basic principle is again confirmed: the biggest difference by far was between the lowest group, ten or under, and the next group, eleven to twenty. Fairly little difference between those who could twenty one to thirty and those in the highest group.

Seriously though, how do they have that job being that unfit?

368

A lot of firefighter jobs are volunteers, especially outside urban areas. It’s hard and dangerous work and they deserve support. In some communities they are likely in short supply and so they use the person who was in better shape twenty years ago. Maybe?

369

Push-ups are my primary exercise, along with some light weight training. I do 1000 push-ups every other day. They became my main exercise when I was 40, just after I had back surgery.

I recommend push-ups to everybody who asks me about my exercise routine, but nobody ever takes my advice.

370

Maybe not.

To be fair it was only about 7% of the firefighters who fell into that group, and they were the group with BMIs in the obese range, median of about 33. Still.

Out of curiosity - do you do any pulling exercise as well? Do you do variations? How many sets do you divided that up into? What sort of rest periods?

371

Each set I go to failure. In between sets I will do light weight training, curls, dumbbell shoulder flys, etc. I usually hit 250-300 push-ups the first set and each successive set will be less until I get to around 1000 total.
For variation, I’ll do 45-degree angle push-ups.

372

As eye popping as that sounds, there’s this guy …

373

That’s an impressive record (and pecs), but I would warn against people in general trying to do pushups quickly as an aspiration.

Most exercises are easier the quicker you do them. Doing 20 fast pushups might be the same level of effort as 10 slow ones, with the only difference being you might lose some form when going fast.

374

The most I ever did in one set was 500. 3200 is insane.

375

Pushups are a great exercise. There’s good reason the armed forces use them.

I worked for many years close to a military base and saw many soldiers. As one officer told me, “they have access to the best equipment and are given the opportunity to get in as good shape as they want. About half of them take advantage of these opportunities.”

There are many soldiers not at a peak fitness level. The fact there are some variation in firefighter fitness is not surprising. Think of how many out-of-shape doctors you know, who certainly have the knowledge and money to access good facilities, if not necessarily the time or energy.

376

And in fact I see many fewer obese physicians than I do of the general population, albeit that is a low bar! That may be an SES/educational level more than anything else. But to use the same low bar: I suspect many more of the general population cannot do more than ten push-ups (is push-up or press-up preferred?) and are obese than the 7% of the Indiana career firefighter population. So maybe not so bad?

How come this reminds me of those who define alcoholism as those who drink more than they do? :grinning:

Most I ever did in one set was 100, and that was after building up as a challenge goal!

And I never quite made it to the end of the “Bring Sally Up” push challenge. Pretty sure you’d blow right through it …

377

I would guess a significant percentage of people could not do one push-up or chin-up.

378

I’ve never heard of this challenge before. Seems like the planking part is the real challenge. Planking is not something I’ve ever done, so not sure I’d make it through either.

379

The thousand push up bit has me wondering, @Dr_Paprika, what your thoughts are regarding repetition number and strength/hypertrophy. Lots of strongly held opinions out there. (Not surprised I suspect that I prefer mixing up things)

Some research you presented earlier seemed to suggest that going to near momentary failure was more important for both than repetition number or even volume?

At the range @Galactus functions at push ups have to have switched from being strength and mass building to increasing specific muscular endurance, yes? In which case the plank part of the “Bring Sally …” push up challenge may not be as hard for them as they think?

For kicks I tried it again myself, having not done it in a few years. Drop out almost to the same second I did before! I’d love to have made progress but am satisfied to have not lost ground!

380

It depends what your goals are. In general, over time it is best to use a variety of rep ranges. People have strong opinions, sure, usually based on what they did. But in your first few months of lifting, as long as you are trying to increase the amount of work (load, volume, sets, increased speed, reduced time, pauses, etc.) each session almost anything will help.

Lifters tend to focus on muscle, but you also need strong joints, tendons and ligaments to prevent injury.

To get strong, most of the working reps (after warmup) need to be above 80% of your maximum (1RM) in order to recruit type IIB fibers. As you approach 95%, doing more than a few reps is difficult. It is often best to do the bulk of strength work in the 80-90% range (it need not be 95-100% to gain strength) and only test your maximum once every few weeks, even months. Saying “strength requires sets of 1-3 reps, hypertrophy 8-12 reps, do 5 sets of 5…” are simplifications with some truth. Experienced lifters might concentrate on periods devoted to hypertrophy, strength, power, speed, etc.

To get big, you want to do a lot of volume (setsrepsweight). This is often best done and 50-60% of maximal, but specifics depend on the exercise, goals and how many someone can do is influenced by their slow/fast twitch fiber ratio.

Doing a moderate weight for a lot of repetitions can make you as big as the above strategies but may not make you as strong. I like to set challenges for myself and once in a while will do hundreds of (assisted) pull-ups or very large volumes of weight. This is fine once in a while but tends to take up a lot of time, and might take longer to recover from too.

I know an older man who has been doing the same workout with the same exercises and weights someone showed him three decades ago. He completely missed the opportunity to become very strong. The body responds amazingly well to increases in progressive load and strengthens to be able to handle a little more weight (or other stress). If you only do a large number of one exercise, once your body is used to it, it is difficult to make the next workout more difficult once you hit a large number. Given the time and joint stress from repetition involved, and the key principle of needing to do more, high repetitions is less efficient than other ways of increasing stress if done often. But it works better if done for shorter periods. Push-ups are a very good exercise, but once capable it might be better to increase the difficulty by trying wall push-ups, archer push-ups, one handers, etc. depending on goals. If your goal is to do many push-ups, the above may not apply.