Speaking as someone who dislikes lifting weights and other forms of exercise, but enjoys hard work. I no longer had a choice! I was growing weaker by the day, and my desire to do everyday activities was waning. I had to find some way to work out that I would stay with for more than a week without quitting. Was I just being lazy? was I bored? Did I lack motivation? Was it physically too painful? Did I experience painful injuries each time I started a program? I decided that as long as I was going in the right direction, I wouldn’t be concerned with how long it took me to get there. Mentally, I can see that my desire to work out is gradually improving.
I also find weightlifting to be rather boring but, likewise, it’s often the most practical way to build muscle and stay fit and healthy.
Strongman training is nice since you’re focusing on strength, so fewer reps and faster sessions. The movements also feel more relevant to every day life, and have more variation. You can do more basic training like squats or get weird and race to move heavy sand bags around. That can help to keep it fun, especially if you’re competing.
But if I had more freedom in my schedule, I might do something like joining a rowing club, playing soccer, take a course on metal welding, etc. Strength building can come from doing activities that require strength, there isn’t just weight training.
Yes, I was wrong that you can see the hip flexors (excuse me, the psoas muscle); you can’t see all skeletal muscles. But what I said about barbell exercises wasn’t misinformation (even if I walked away from that conversation) anymore than it’s misinformation to say that there are different types of protein.
But what happens is that a lot of legitimate science gets filtered into pop culture knowledge, and does get peddled in a way that gets distorted. And there are people who are rightly hostile to that misinformation, but who may then become dismissive of the underlying scientific principles.
So, for example, pop culture has made it seem like protein is the end all, be all of muscle building, and that people need to obsess about it. And that’s not true. But it is an important nutrient, and there are different kinds, and any fair discussion would recognize that (we didn’t even get into bioavailability! There’s a reason the egg is the best whole food source)
There’s something similar with workout styles. Certainly there are new innovations that can provide new and different benefits on the body, but there are also tried and true fundamentals of hypertrophy that have been tested and proven over a century (and which are indeed backed by science)
I’m not advocating for the extreme position, and I was rash in some comments if they came across as dogmatic, but many of the things that the people who obsess about muscle building and fat loss do in practice are actually effective (as evidenced by their success)
The thing to bear in mind is that a feeling of thirst is triggered by your body becoming dehydrated (however slight), Thirst is a reaction, so if you never get dehydrated you should never get to level 3.
Another fundamental in the muscle building process is sleep. Much like staying hydrated, it’s something everybody does. But optimizing it is important for maximizing muscle development.
(So, no, don’t try to sleep 12 hours a day. But a good sleep regimen, where you wake up the same time every day, and don’t need an alarm clock, is another point in favor of hypertrophy)
Oh, absolutely. But in real life, sometimes things come up, you end up sweating when you don’t have as much water as you’d like, whatever. (Or, you are nursing and your systems are just thrown off. There are probably other conditions that confuse your hunger and thirst.) Fortunately, brief periods of dehydration are well tolerated by healthy human bodies.
I don’t know if it is a genetic thing or not but the older males ( over 75) on my mom’s side of the family tend to die from dehydration when they were perfectly capable of getting water without assistance. I don’t know the details but it seems to be related to chronic dehydration. I have to conciously force myself to drink water. Coffee I will happily sip on all day. I often notice 3# fluctuations in my weight. I think it is water.
I’m not suggesting it’s dire. But a person who sips water throughout the day (and doesn’t drink so much that their own urine looks as clear as water - I certainly agree that water toxicity is quite dangerous!) is avoiding becoming dehydrated altogether, and never has to rely on thirst to tell them when to drink.
So, yes, you can simply wait to get thirsty, but you don’t have to rely on that mechanism. And if you are trying to run your body at peak efficiency, that might be a better way to do it, since mild dehydration- while tolerable - isn’t ideal.
I believe in exercising all my body functions, to the extent practical. I fast every year, and i feast every year. I let myself get hungry and thirsty from time to time. And then i enjoy my food and drink. It may just be superstition, but it works for me.
No intent to be argumentative here at all. More of discussion of different personal beliefs and philosophies
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I’m on Team Puzzlegal here. Stress (to varying degrees below the breaking you threshold) followed by adequate recovery, in cycles, seems to me to be the recipe for good function, if not progress, across systems. Obviously well understood in this thread the case for strength and hypertrophy training. True for cardiorespiratory based exercise too. I believe physiologically and psychologically across the board as well. More stress needs more recovery.
Returning to thirst guiding hydration - while the general principle of using thirst as the guide is one I stand by for the general population, the concern about chronic dehydration and the risks of that for those without intact thirst mechanisms is real and we are here a crowd that skews older. And from @HoneyBadgerDC ’s and @JaneA ’s posts it is evident that some individuals may be more prone to dysfunctional thirst mechanisms than others. I reserve the right to continue mocking Gen Zs carrying around their huge Stanley flasks hydrating all day, but this ain’t that crowd and I must acknowledge that.
By the way, i get thirsty from time to time, but i also over-hydrate most mornings. That’s when i take my fiber supplement, and i want to make sure that it is fully hydrated, so i drink lots of water, in addition to the tea and milk that are part of my breakfast. Then i spend a lot of the morning peeing out the excess. 
I can discuss this stuff for days! It’s sort of my thing. (I’m real boring)
But how far do we take that?
Is it advisable to occasionally stay up for 30 hours at a time, so as to induce fatigue? Should I sometimes binge on food, past the point of satiety, or maybe go a week or so without eating, just to keep my body robust?
Those aren’t gotcha questions. I’m sincerely asking.
I do agree that the body responds to stress, but I also think that there are certain parameters within which the body best functions.
Bear in mind, too, that we are taking about building muscle, which is contrary to the body’s effort at maintaining homeostasis. I’m not arguing that the stress of mild dehydration is damaging to the body, but it nevertheless may not be conducive to creating an anabolic response.
You have rightly warned of water toxicity. I am not trying to say that you can just drink water to inflate your muscles, or that you should down copious amounts before a workout.
I still maintain that if your pee is relatively clear you are doing fine, and if it looks like water you should dial it back. I read about bodybuilders drinking 2 gallons or more of water a day - that’s insane to me! I’ve tried drinking 1 gallon a day, but I just peed all the time.
So I do have a water bottle with me at the office, and I take it with me when I go in the car. And I drink periodically. But I couldn’t tell you how much I consume, it’s not all the time, and I don’t get to the point where I’m having to use the bathroom an inordinate amount.
But, to my larger point, if you were making a list of things to consider when lifting weights, it might include things like eat whole foods, including sufficient protein and fiber, stay hydrated, and get good sleep. These are variables that can be controlled. It doesn’t mean to take them to extremes, but it’s a good idea to be mindful of them, and you will see best results if you try to optimize them (breathing, too, is important . It’s just most people don’t have much room for improvement on that part)
The human body does adapt to various stresses, so as to be able to handle them better, and having your body “at the ready” for those situations could be viewed as good… But, I think you need to know that there is an adaptation available - if not, then I’m not sure that there’s any advantage to the stress - and understand precisely what the adaptation is, to understand whether it’s worth it.
To take the example of sun exposure, we know that the body does adapt, by generating more melanin. We could, in theory, build melanin in advance of a period of exposure (e.g. a beach day) or try to keep a high level of melanin in order to always be ready to deal with a high sun experience. And since we’re doing this by training and not through natural exposure, we might be able to raise our melanin levels through a method that’s safer than sun exposure.
Our body’s natural sunblock is probably a strong device to protect our body and almost certainly acts as a more consistent shield to exposure than lotions. People usually don’t put on enough lotion, they miss areas, and they don’t reapply frequently enough. Pre-tanning could really help out in some situations.
But…does that mean that we should walk around at our most dark, all of the time, even if we live in Seattle? Having a tan likely blocks an amount of Vitamin D generation. If you live in Seattle with a constant tan, you would need to monitor and supplement to ensure that you’re getting enough Vitamin D.
And, are methods of inducing a tan safe? I’m sure that we have options which are better than the sun, but I’d want to do some research to see whether they’re totally safe or just “better”. Your “training” might just have the effect of raising your total risk of melanoma, if your tanning method wasn’t totally benign.
In general, we’re not surprised by the sun. Keeping a full year tan probably wouldn’t be worth it. But, there may be advantages to pre-tanning, if you were going to go on a trip to a very sunny location though.
In terms of sleep, the closest research that I can find at the moment to point to a sleeping adaptation is referenced here, saying that you can store sleep in advance to allow yourself to stay awake longer. If true, then perhaps that’s something that could be trained and built up so that, on that day that you need to stay awake for 48 hours, you can build up a sleep bank for two weeks and go the full distance… But I’m not seeing a lot of potential for this skill since life doesn’t tend to surprise us with sleep marathon emergencies and I think you’d want to better understand the mechanism before playing with it since most indications are that sleep is pretty immutable and that losing any just hurts you.
Likewise for bingeing, maybe there’s some amount of stretch that you can put in your stomach so that it can handle excessive loads better. But, given that we control our own consumption, being prepared to handle sudden extreme quantities of food, getting gorged, just doesn’t feel necessary. Sometimes I need to respond to tripping on something by jumping and twisting a bit, unexpectedly; but I’m never attacked by a tiny man with a massive food syringe, which he’ll try to force down my throat.
As to hunger, though… That’s an interesting one.
One of the most well known and studied forms of life extension is triggered by hunger. The body seems to adapt to periods of famine by slowing down aging, presumably to give us more time to procreate once things become good again. So it’s not so much an adaptation that helps you to prepare for emergency starvation cycles, but it may be worth considering.
That said, intermittent fasting appears to have issues that it can, instead, lower your overall health and fitness. Sometimes, researchers would see good outcomes and sometimes they would see bad. A recent study I saw claimed to have figured out what differentiated cases of fasting that had health and longevity benefits versus health demerits and issues. The key was to not lose weight while fasting.
So, plausibly, there may be some advantage to going hungry every once in a while if you know that you’re going to be relatively inactive, e.g. playing video games on the couch or laying by the pool reading (without swimming). If you can refrain from spending energy, while also feeling a bit of a hunger gnaw, that may slightly increase your life. At least, certainly, it’s better than chowing on deep friend potato chips.
Aye. That’s where the discussions and choices go. What sorts of stressors, which systems, to what degrees, and with what sorts of recoveries? What parameters?
Some have been well studied even if without good conclusions able to be made. What levels of stresses and recovery for muscle hypertrophy, for strength, for power, for sprint speed and for endurance … Intermittent fasting on a regular basis as a stress has been studied and our conclusions about that may vary (and don’t belong here). There a fad now of cold water as a positive intermittent stress. Not for me. But even with lots of study there is much that is best guess and personal experiences.
I’d err to less rather than risk overshooting the mark and focus equally on protecting quality recovery with adequate sleep. But as long as I can have a few nights to recover from a late night I don’t fear it. I also trust my body to tell me what my sleep needs are more than a statement that X hours are required.
And clearly a little stress followed recovery repeated goes a long way.
Not trying to nitpick; I’m just not sure.
There’s a fair amount of research that restricted blood flow during resistance training increases muscle hypertrophy response. Seems weird to me and no thank you but the thought is that it the resultant muscle hypoxia causes increases in metabolic stress, anabolic hormones, cytokines, etc., which is a trigger for growth. The performance during the hypoxic condition is of course impaired compared to during normoxia, but a bigger response is still apparently achieved. I am NOT advising intentionally aiming for any degree of dehydration by anyone, but it wouldn’t at all surprise me to find out that occasional mild dehydration workouts also had the same effect.
I think you are referencing cell autophagy.
Did you know that weight training induces the same thing?
I know you aren’t debating the point, but I suspect that exercise induced autophagy is a better option.
The only reason I’m skeptical is because there is, as you’ve noted, a fair amount of research on hypoxia and low blood flow, but all of the science I see on dehydration suggests that it hinders athletic performance and recovery.
(Although I, too, am not interested in doing things like tie a tourniquet to my arm before doing bicep curls. The closest thing I have come to low oxygen training was doing squats in Denver and feeling that uncomfortable squirm from not being able to catch my breath)
Not for me either. I tried it once in the shower and just hyperventilated.
Plus, it seems to hinder muscle growth.
No question that performance while dehydrated is impaired to some degree. (The cites you gave don’t show that? One itself cites an article as they claim it, but that article actually showed no change in performance between a fluid restricted and an ad lib arm. But I believe it is so.) And there is zero evidence that the same hypoxia induced changes over time would translate to the metabolic stress induced by mild dehydration.
It just wouldn’t surprise me?
ETA and neither does the cold water article you linked to. Thanks for it. Nice to have my presumption confirmed!
I get ‘ya!
Much like jumping into ice water, I’ll pass.
I’m not sure what you mean. When you said “neither does…”, are you saying it doesn’t show a hindrance in performance?
Oh, maybe you mean “Neither does” it surprise you.
Yes. My knee jerk to these sorts of things is a combination of skepticism and suspicion.
The reason lower blood flow might help build muscle is increased local lactate, a potential growth factor along with muscle fatigue, changes in mTOR and AMPK, etc. Dehydration might reduce blood flow. I doubt the game is worth the candle in terms of effect so will not pull up papers. The muscle damage induced by exercise is the big growth factor. And muscle memory is a thing according to this paper: