Why don’t you lift weights?

In My Humble Opinion
721

I knew nothing about powerlifting when I started going to the gym, so have always used a pretty wide variety of exercises - not just major lifts and things to strengthen those.

As I get older, I still use very heavy weights some of the time. But recovery takes longer. More time between major lifts is helpful. And there are many exercises I consider beneficial and want to include in my regular. One is constrained by time and energy and I wanted to limit any given session to eight exercises - a couple at high intensity, a handful of machines at whatever intensity, a touch of cardio and a few specific new things to keep it interesting.

TL; DR: Just doing the main powerlifting lifts does not give enough rest or balance for my current needs, plus I want to increase power and flexibility.

722

As we age the rest periods do seem more important. I tend to wait for the soreness to mostly subside before working again. My workout tend to be 2 or 3 days apart now. I find I am noticeably weaker while I am sore.

723

I think the bulk of evidence points to the value of consistency and (if you’re trying to get bigger/stronger) adding volume. Past that, genetics and biochemistry take up the next brunt of the matter. Technique and philosophy is largely just something for people to debate and think about, so that they maintain interest in the activity. The actual impact of technique differences, relative to the impact of working out consistently over decades, is largely irrelevant.

724

I haven’t found a given regimen for all-round health that includes everything you’d want:

  1. Strength
  2. Power
  3. Low heart-rate endurance
  4. Mid heart-rate endurance
  5. High heart-rate endurance
  6. Flexibility

Outside of having an active life, working an 18th century farm, I expect that you’d need to roll your own regimen.

725

If you have been lifting a few years, constantly experimenting, you should have some idea of what works for you.

726

You can’t optimize all these things at the same time. This is why periodization is a thing. If you optimize your muscles for strength and power, running marathons will be hard.

727

Does a “given regimen for all-round health” at all imply any need or goal to “optimize all these things” let alone “at the same time”?

For “all-round health” I can be fine being a mid pack for age group runner and cyclist, with decent but not impressive strength, power, etc. Am I perhaps better off for all around health optimizing none of them?

728

If no place for weights, try this-

LINK–it’s real

729

Yes.

The reason you can’t optimize is because the muscle fiber ratios change just by doing a lot of marathons or powerlifting. If you don’t compete, it is better and reasonable to maintain “good enough” strength, endurance, power, balance and flexibility. You need to understand periodization to get better at everything, picking two of those at a time (and not just any two). Interested readers should read Thibaudeau’s Kindle e-book on the subject, or in much less detail, Muscle Ladder (both discussed somewhere on SDMB).

There are sports where many skill sets are required: CrossFit, hockey, decathlon, etc. An athlete great at one sport is unlikely to be great at another, and the best (say) Crossfitters are genetic misfits unlikely to train in ways that apply to me or you, even in the absence of dubious training aids.

730

I don’t know that I’m the most knowledgeable person out there. From what I do know, it seems like we have fairly limited knowledge on the “overworking” aspect of things. I.e. in general, we see that it’s good to have some amount of physical activity, good to have some amount of flexibility, to have some amount of endurance, etc. In general, it seems to be that more is better. Cases of cautionary tales are fairly limited. Powerlifters, for example, who are squatting a thousand pounds semi-regularly, anecdotally, might have hip issues. But that is “anecdotally” since there’s so few people doing it that you can’t really get meaningful metrics out of the matter, and who knows whether they’re doing other, suspect things might be involved.

So in terms of what we do have, most things that I’m aware of simply say that “more seems to be better”. If you’re more able to run, that’s better than if you can’t. If you’re more able to lift heavy weights, that’s better than if you can’t. It could be a linear progression of goodness. I’m just, personally, skeptical of that answer.

We’re sort of left with making reason-based assumptions like, “Most things can be done too little and too much, this probably falls in the same territory.” But, reason-based assumptions are what lead to the idea that, “If your back hurts when you lift heavy things, stop trying to lift things.” Which, plausibly, lead to more back issues because the real answer was that people needed to continue using their back, but build up the overall strength to do what they were trying to do in a more deliberate way.

I don’t think that there’s sufficient real-world data to say that it’s guaranteed that you should be adept at all things, at all times. Personally, I’d bet that we will, in the future, determine that it’s bad to fall below a particular threshold on any one thing, so any effort to cycle through the styles of training would need to keep that in mind. But that would just be my personal bet and nothing more.

I’d likewise bet some good money on the following propositions: 1) Any form of physical activity is liable to have cross-over benefits to those other things, even if it’s not the modality that best targets those things, and 2) Consistency and regularity are of utmost importance, so finding physical activities that encourage you to get out and do stuff is probably of high enough importance, given proposition 1, that you probably don’t need to be so concerned about hitting everything - unless that, itself, is part of what motivates you.

Of course, future drugs and genetic modification could make all of that moot.

731

I don’t know that general health and fitness relies on optimization? I mean, I don’t try to get as much Vitamin C down my gullet in a day as I can, to the expense of Vitamin A, and then try to catch up the next month on A to the loss of C. A healthy diet is just a low-level exposure to lots and lots of different things.

In terms of avoiding injury, I think we could make a reasonable statistical case that the important thing is to have capabilities above some minimum.

Like, if you think of a structure that’s out in the world, it might need to survive earthquakes, storms, fires, collisions, etc. But if you look over the history of incidents, you’re likely to find that less dangerous incidents are far more common than more serious ones. The average fire is going to be a wastebasket fire, not a fire big enough to destroy half of LA; the average earthquake will be a 3 not an 8; and so on. But, that being true, it’s all perfectly random. Eventually, there will be some incident of larger magnitude than the usual, and it will be of some random and unpredictable form.

On that day, can that structure survive that issue?

If we apply the same logic to our everyday life, we never know what power we will need on that day when there’s some incident. Do I need to be able to lift something, run away from something, bend out of the way, or what? Without knowing that answer, I just need to be good at everything. And how good do I need to be? Well, the most likely emergency is still a small emergency - just somewhat larger and problematic than the everyday. You probably don’t need to be amazing, just good enough to deal with tier 2 problems. And if you can handle all the tier 2 problems, then your next best bet is to be solid against all the tier 3 problems.

If you can remain proof against injury, that’s going to help you from suffering any larger structural failures.

And while that does only apply to accidental inuries, you might extend the philosophy to everything. If you’ve got bad lungs, that creates an entry point for bad health - which will then affect the rest of your body’s functioning. If you’ve got a bad heart, then the same.

Minus any way to know what predicaments and ailments are going to attack you in the future, your best bet is to have a consistent, well-rounded defense against all of them.

732
  • Balance & proprioception
733

The goal is not to become, say, the most flexible person ever - one study shows seven weeks of yoga can increase certain ranges of motion by a modest 4%.

The goal for many should be to avoid sarcopenia, muscle loss gradually occurring over later decades that may result in an inability to carry light loads up stairs, do modest tasks, or play with grandchildren. Balance helps avoid disastrous falls; flexibility keeps joints healthy. Exercise has more health benefits than we yet know, many at the level of cells and microbiota.

My goal is to be moderately powerful, flexible and balanced. With impressive strength and some endurance. But only in service to enjoyment (I enjoy exercise) and health.

734

FWIW there is a fair amount of work on trying to establish any possible dose response curves. More on cardiorespiratory exercise than on the strength side.

For all forms of exercise the best news is that benefits are front loaded. Of course that also implies diminishing returns. The top off to possible even negative impact may be at lower levels for strength training than for cardiorespiratory exercise. And for each there is definitely a concern for overtraining. Stressing a system is good. So long as the stress isn’t overwhelming and there is opportunity to recover from the stress.

Preach it! Regular exercise, especially a plan than does address cardiorespiratory, strength, and neuroproprioceptive components (balance), is as close to water from the fountain of youth as we have got. Modest investments literally slow aging and prevent the diseases of aging.