I have a similar story, but not as serious as OP. A couple years ago, out of the blue, I started having almost constant unbearable back pain. Doctors I saw didn't know what it was. Eventually, one of the neurosurgeons, after I showed him an old MRI scan told me it was a cyst in the spine that was 80% of the time asymptomatic and unlikely to have caused the issue. That cyst required surgery and only 3 doctors in the world have done it before. During this time I started to go to the gym and train, and after some time, the pain went away on its own. Not sure if it was because of the better food I was eating or stronger back muscles that got rid of it. Since it's a neurological issue, some postures and chairs still cause pain, but it usually goes away quickly now.
Same here, 14 years lifting, suddenly I had to be in bed for back pain for a week. After that I spent 4 years with backpain and stopped training following the advise of various doctors. Met a guy who does power lifting, we became friends, he is also a phisio and told me to gradually go back to the gym, pain almost disappeared after 6 months. Now I am almost back to lifts I used to do 20 years ago, but I manage pain actively and avoid overdoing it. Most doctors don’t train and don’t understand how mind/body works. Sometimes pain is not linked to a “real” physical problem, then you do MRIs, talk to doctors, and they find a problem somewhere, they always do, but it could have nothing to do with the pain.
For me, the most interesting part of that article wasn't related to weight-lifting, but the relatively brief critique on the state of the healthcare system and its inability to provide optimal care for individual patients.
Maybe it's confirmation bias, but I strongly agree with Jake's observations; working in a related field, I'm ever-more struck by the absolute inequality of care offered to people. Of course, obvious societal inequalities (e.g. socioeconomic status, age) have an impact here, but there are less obvious issues which can have quite an impact: one's level of education multiplied by confidence to interact with (rather than just be a passenger within) the system can have a big impact. And there's sheer dumb luck, too - being physically located near a good center, or having a good doctor (many aren't) who specialises in your cancer available to you, or even just having an acquaintance who can support and guide with research and advice, can have a 'Sliding Doors'-like impact on the course of someone's life.
(If anyone knows meaningful work that's being done to address such issues, I'd be very interested to hear...)
This is most definitely true, but I think it highlights the mistaken idea that individual healthcare is a commodity. I think we all recognize that an excellent home builder, auto mechanic, attorney, software developer, etc., can have an outsized impact on the outcome of potentially severe or expensive situation but we often put less effort into finding a healthcare provider for a particular malady. I've had some severe negative outcomes from questionably competent, focused-on-billing doctors where I would have been better off not seeing a doctor at all than seeing them. Unfortunately, there's no reliable way to separate the truly skilled doctors from the ones who barely passed their boards.
I guess I hold the (idealised) view that doctors and hospitals should be held to higher standards than the other professions you listed, to varying degrees.
It's probably also harder make an evidence-based decision about a doctor than some other professions.
One very noticeable effect it has on me is a reduction in anxiety. Lifting weights close to failure for weeks on end tends to put my brain into a state of calm, where things affect me less. When I'm living a more sedentary lifestyle, something as simple as a person not responding to a text message can send me into an anxiety spiral, where I promptly begin imagining all the things I may have done to upset them. When I'm exercising regularly, I'm much more likely to think "oh well, they must be busy", and go about my business.
I don't know the exact physical mechanism behind this effect, but I can say that the intensity of the exercise seems to be important. Before starting to lift weights, my primary forms of exercise were walking and casual cycling, and those didn't have anywhere near the same effect.
Starting Strength, now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. It used to be a go-to recommendation in fitness communities for beginners about 10 years ago, but you won't see it recommended much anymore. It's not a great program and it wastes a lot of your time and effort for results that aren't great. Over the last 10 years I've tried a lot of different LP programs with beginner level lifters and something like GZCLP is a MUCH better program for beginners.
Interesting! I’ve about six weeks into StrongLifts, based on the Starting Strength program (which I am reading concurrently). What about the Supple Leopard book do you think makes it pair well with SS?
Mobility is pretty important for compound lifts for both good form and injury prevention.
You'll regret getting strong and moving heavy-weight with bad mobility - you get those long term injuries you can't shake because now your own musculature is pulling things out of alignment too. The wrong muscles get activated in movements to overcome mobility flaws and they only get stronger and more dominant so it's like compounding interest on a debt.
Any flexibility/mobility routine will help new strength come faster, and will help prevent injury.
A major source of injury is not completely movements to full range of motion - not squatting below parallel, not locking out at the top of a deadlift, not touching your chest with the bar on a bench press or overhead press, etc. Not everyone has the flexibility/mobility to do that, but you're more prone to injury if you don't. So if you work a mobility program congruently with strength you will gradually get the mobility you need to complete the entire movement and not just part of it.
It's popular because it works. Though it's not like you really have to drink a gallon of milk a day, the idea is that you eat way more than you would as a skinny person.
It’s a fine beginner program, and as the original article inadvertently shows, one common failure mode is not getting enough calories. GOMAD is tough to mess up.
It’s fine, if you don’t take it as dogma, understand that Rippetoe isn’t a particularly great coach or lifter, and it should only be run 6 to 12 weeks - maximum. I think most folks would be better off doing 5/3/1 with cardio and/or a sport or doing any number of programs from John McCallum’s classic, “The Complete Keys to Progress”.
> Unfortunately, whatever physical pleasures lifting once brought have dissipated. Now, it’s more chore than not. An important chore, but a chore. It used to be fun. I used to know how to make it fun. I’m sad that that sense of fun is gone, and I’ve not really been able to rekindle it.
I definitely understand how this poor fellow would feel this way. Lifting when feeling sick or emotionally / physically tired is not fun. What can help is to mix things up. Doing nothing but squats, bench, overhead press, and deadlifts? Go to a park and do a bunch of bodyweight exercises on the climbinb bars. Switch your barbell routines over to dumbbell workouts - they are generally less neurally taxing and easier to tackle but can still get you plenty strong. Change up sets, reps, weights, and rest periods to add variety. You're not prepping for a meet in two months so specialization is not a paramount concern.
I'm kind of curious to what degree lifting weights is actually beneficial. I like lifting weights. But more than once, I've seen very red, almost inflamed looking people that lift weights. not sure if its the meat diet, or if they self select.
My cousin died of a Brian aneurism, from a vein that popped due to high blood pressure. He used to get very red in the face. So I think I recognize that look now.
There's a youtube channel called Boho beautiful. It's a couple that does yoga videos, and are fit vegans.
I would be curious if you did blood work on them, vs a fit weight lifter who would have the better results, and possibly life expectancy.
So if you were to chose one life style (meat eating weight lifter) vs Vegan Yoga Training. Which would be better for you. I suspect the vegan yoga would be better.
There’s plenty of people who work out badly and eventually their injuries stop them from working out. You don’t hear much about them though.
I for one messed up my shoulders when I was a teenager and not knowing what I was doing in the gym and all that took years of stretches and re-learning how to engage the muscles and proper form. I have a childhood friend who worked out so badly as he was obsessed with muscular mass he worked himself out into a massive hunched hulk, I think he was also taking steroids at some point. He evetually had to stop due to health reasons and massive headaches from a badly worked out neck. These are just 2 examples but there are lot more people who misuse weights. You only hear about the success stories unfortunately…
I prefer calistenics as it is a bit harder to mess up. One can build a beautifully harmonious and resilient body just with these. As far as strength goes I need just enough to leverage my body smartly but that is my personal choice.
I did the same for bench pressing. I had to adapt as well. I now mostly use smith machines for most of my workout. As I find that they control the movement better, to keep you aligned, and actually the duration of the contraction / pump can happen for a longer time span of the motion.
I used to keep reef aquariums. I've learned that keeping the same aquarium successful at one year, is very different than success at ten years. As the probability of something catastrophic killing the tank increases with time.
Log term, I've had things like pumps failing, tanks cracking, a power grid going out for a week. Catastrophic things are almost inevitable long term. After all something 3,000 wars in recorded human history. So even war breaking out could happen.
Your childhood friend was definitely taking steroids. And thing is, they don't really develop your tendons and other supporting tissues, and definitely not your cardiovascular system. So they tend to gain strength and muscles so fast the rest of the bodies doesn't have time to adapt. And in the case of "massive hulks", no body can really adapt to all that muscle mass.
About calisthenics, I think it's for people with proper motor coordination. You have to be able to pay attention to your whole body because one hand out of position can also mean an injury. Gym equipment, or even free weights, have way more "form cues" you can use to see if you're doing them right (if you truly care about form, that is).
I'm not sure why you'd equate "some weightlifters sometimes have red skin" with "my cousin sometimes got red skin and he died" with "vegan yoga is good for you."
Veganism is associated with a slew of health problems.[0] But regardless of that, the first two statements are completely unrelated. Weightlifters don't naturally have higher blood pressure, and lifting weights regularly lowers your blood pressure, it doesn't raise it. I've seen the flushed, red, vascular look you're talking about. I'm sure in some people it's natural due to low body fat and I'm sure in some people it's a combination of pre-workout and creams designed to give exactly that look.
> Veganism is associated with a slew of health problems.
As compared to what?
Yes. You can’t get B12 on a vegan diet. Vegans supplement it.
Side note about B12: a B12 deficiency from a vegan diet largely comes from environmental sterilization. B12 is bacteria-produced. You could drink stream water and get your B12 “naturally”, too.
To some degree I do believe people can spot health problems in other people.
After all we do chose mates and assess their overall health based on looks.
In terms of longevity, I feel there's probably some minimum amount of exercise you need to do, after you might be better off at addressing other things if you have other deficiencies. (dental health, snoring, etc)
Thinking in terms of a sports car. You can do all kinds of things to maintain and improve the engine. But if you want long term success, don't forget about the breaks or other systems that might need take you out a lot earlier.
> By diet group, there were 116,894 omnivores (whose diet does not exclude animal products), 329 lacto- and/or ovo-vegetarians (whose diet excludes meat, but includes dairy and/or eggs), 310 pesco-vegetarians (whose diet excludes meat except for fish and seafood) and 140 vegans (whose diet excludes all animal products). After an average follow-up of 18 years, 39,763 participants were deceased. The risk of all-cause mortality did not statistically significantly differ among the four diet groups.
I'm curious if a) they looked at self-reported exercise regimes, b) they looked at objectively measured exercise (everyone thinks they exercise more, and better, than they actually do), c) 140 vegans is enough to draw conclusions broadly given the total sample size.
This is my thought. For most of us, any exercise is more than what we're actually getting, and the best form is the one you're likely to keep doing. Even people who look unhealthy may be healthier than if they didn't exercise.
My main source of exercise, for 40+ years, has been cycling. Therefore I have very little upper body strength. This may be a liability when I get older and start losing that strength, increasing the chances of injury.
I personally think that young people should do some strength work in addition to the easy and fun aerobic activities like walking and cycling. The dangers of over training are their own beast, but not a worry for most people.
If I get the time, I'll link the studies (if someone else has them handy or wants to dispute these claims, please do so):
Strength and muscle mass do seem to be very good predictors for longevity. Lifting weights does seem to be one of the best ways to increase these two things. The acute effects on blood pressure don't seem to be problematic for healthy individuals and don't really cause a chronic increase in blood pressure.
There's a lot of controversy over being vegan vs. being an omnivore, but it seems like the actual data on outcomes (read: not theoretical mechanisms) suggest that:
1. If you tell the average person to follow an omnivorous diet vs. telling them to eat a vegan one, even if you give them some basic guidance on how to eat healthy (try to stick to minimally processed foods, etc.), doing the latter does tend to improve various biomarkers associated with longevity. [0] for example, suggests this.
2. There's no clear case that this difference is caused by something other than differences in:
a. Average caloric intake (meat-eaters tend to eat more calories, and very broadly speaking, more calories = worse health)
b. Saturated fat (meat tends to have more saturated fat, which is associated with higher apoB, a big factor that contributes to heart disease)
c. Nutritional opportunity cost (obviously, all else equal, eating meat means you're not going to be eating something else - for example, eating a lot of meat could mean you don't get sufficient fiber intake, which seems to have positive effects on health).
That is, if meat-eaters controlled for these things - making sure they didn't overeat, making sure they didn't overconsume saturated fat (by, for example, eating leaner cuts of meat), and making sure they had a balanced diet, it's not clear that meat has some other detrimental effect.
I think weight lifting being good for your health is relatively uncontroversial. The data does not really seem to suggest that meat in a balanced diet has detrimental effects, though the jury is still out.
It might very well be the case that the vegan yoga trainer lives longer than the meat-eating weight lifter, but it would probably be a mistake to infer a causal relationship between an otherwise healthy diet with meat in it/weight lifting and lower life expectancy.
> 1. If you tell the average person to follow an omnivorous diet vs. telling them to eat a vegan one, even if you give them some basic guidance on how to eat healthy (try to stick to minimally processed foods, etc.), doing the latter does tend to improve various biomarkers associated with longevity.
I'm interested in this study, if you could link it. Most comparisons I read are observational studies, not experimental.
Would it be the same kind of phenomenon as heart failures when doing harder runs (marathons and longer) past 40 yo ?
While the runners are well trained and otherwise healthy, the activity puts enough stress on the whole body that weaknesses are surfaced and something somewhere will fail at some point.
Good point, blood pressure is probably the key indicator. But I also suspect that maintaining a lower body weight is probably better for the cardiovascular system.
I watched a video from Brian Johnson, a guy that is spending millions to try and live longer, and get all kinds of tests. The way he measures progress is by comparing how well his organs function vs someone that is younger. I think blood work is big part of that.
That's a bit of my thinking too. But maybe the amount of extra calories you are consuming is not good for you.
Or maybe just the meat. My local food store has a butcher section and you can see them working. The head butcher, a large man, has this characteristic red look on his face too. I'm guessing his diet is probably a lot of meat.
I remember my statistics class, we would calculate the probability of event B given event A.
So I wonder if perhaps if you are prone to high blood pressure, a vegan yoga training would be better for you, than meat eating and heavy weight training.
Or even a just a life style where you are eating less, while still having some muscle mass, is just better.
But people will do what is easier, since they perceive they are better at it. Being a heavy set man, pushing weights is a lot easier than going for a mile run.
Whenever I read these kinds of stories, I eagerly seek details on what might have caused the cancer. I think it’s very unsettling to imagine that it’s random. I’m not looking to find blame, but to find anything that I can grasp onto as an explanation for why I’m different and I won’t randomly lose an organ or limb.
I can’t imagine wanting to live through that horror of detachment, which makes me admire people like Jake who demonstrate an extreme level of courage.
That’s natural, I think the same way, but in person try to stick with the here and now. Anyone who’s ever been sick with anything knows that other people often probe with questions and advice that is often unwanted and takes the focus off the sick person.
> I’m not looking to find blame, but to find anything that I can grasp onto as an explanation for why I’m different and I won’t randomly lose an organ or limb.
That would be nice but unfortunately the human body doesn't seem to work like that. You can try to live a healthy life but there is no guarantee you'll make it into your eighties.
Friend in college died of some super fast cancer at 21. Navy cadet, high speed, PT superstar. We don't like to think of it that way but it's often just a roll of the dice. Some cosmic ray flips a bit and the immune system was taking a nap that day or something.
People are living past 30 with startling regularity, when you realize that for most of human history that wasn't the case. Cancers were one a very long list of things that could kill you and no where near the top.
Far more bulk than was previously affordable by many is also a big factor though, i.e. better nutrition leads to a taller generation and height correlates with risk.
If you have twice the mass you are rolling twice the dice.
I was once curious about this regarding breast size and breast cancer. Does more cells in the body simply correlate to more dice rolls each cell generation?
(Yes I’m sure this sounds woefully ignorant of how things work)
While one can't really apply this model in comparisons between individuals, it tends to hold up in population models and is used to try to figure out how some species have evolved better defenses. For example:
For one individual they might have a number of genetic factors that in a world of perfect models could be used to calculate risk of an organ cancer per gram of the organ.. In the case of breast cancer there are studies on breast reduction and risk, but the one I found is not freely available..
> Eating can be a pleasure or pain, but eating for weight gain isn’t fun, particularly when the weight gain is elusive.
I've never been the recipient of cancer surgery or had to undergo this kind of long recovery the author has, but I was a professional nutrition coach in a previous life and I have eaten for weight gain in the traditional weightlifting sense, both "clean bulks" and "dirty bulks" and about everything in between.
I would much rather be 30 pounds overweight and try to lose that weight than be 15 pounds underweight and try to gain it. If you're really killing it in the gym, 4-6 days a week, 60-ish minutes of heavy weight training at bulking RPEs of 8-9, and hitting the numbers of sets you need to be for muscle hypertrophy, eating becomes the worst part of your day. The classic "dirty bulk" of a couple big macs and a non-diet soda for lunch is great for the first few days (maybe) but it becomes a chore very quickly, and it's easily 5x worse when you're trying to eat clean and realize your lunch is going to be 2.25 pounds of chicken breast plus multiple normal servings of rice and broccoli. It's a big part of why people bulking end up eating less healthy foods (the caloric density), and seeming eat all day every day (because they do).
Not sure I understand the information at your link, but as far as I can tell, the most weight that has been deadlifted by a teenage female (<20yo, open weight) is 391lbs.
Maybe I suck at web search? Is there a teenage female record holder who has smashed that weight and I’m just not finding anything about it?
What are you basing your protein requirements on? Even a gram per pound of protein is overkill [0] (Menno knows his stuff), and the protein you get from other sources besides meat (rice, beans, dairy) counts as well. There are plenty of vegans that lift that prove that. That clean eating is a diet of nothing but lean meats, rice, and broccoli is a myth. There's lots of flexibility in your macros once your basic requirements are satisfied. All those chickens don't need to die for you to get strong.
And pretty common for a clean bulk unless you only weigh 150 pounds or so. If you're in the 200-225 pound range you're probably eating 250-300g of protein a day, which if it's only chicken breast will be approaching 3 pounds daily.
To be clear, this is for traditional bulking. And you only really do that if you're trying to get bigger weightlifting numbers for the sake of getting bigger weightlifting numbers. Nobody casually gets a 450 lb backsquat, they do this kind of stuff to get there.
That's the food intake of what, 4 or 5 'regular' people?
And probably 25 in the poor part of the world. I'm not a vegetarian but I wonder if the people that do this sort of thing realize the impact of what they are doing, it's the equivalent of consuming 1000+ chickens on an annual basis and that's not all they eat. I get it that kids in their teenage years eat a lot because they grow so fast and really need it but this feels excessive to me.
Damn near every hobby imaginable will have externalities. Asking as gently as I can: Maybe this isn't a battle to pick?
Tangentally, some clever children, when told to "Think of the starving kids in Africa. Finish your plate" will retort with "Then give me a stamp". Someone who's hobby is improving their squat or deadlift, and picking up lots of chicken at the store, is not (intuitively to me, at least) taking food off the plate of someone with less - especially those >3 timezones away. That's a distribution problem, not a lack-of-food-worldwide problem
You still gotta eat big. You can pin HGH if you really want to gain weight, but understand that it doesn't discriminate in what kind of soft tissue it grows.
I had to go back and reread to find the mistake, because when I saw his mention of 225 I automatically thought "2 plates".
My goal when I was lifting seriously was to get to 1/2/3/4 plates on my overhead press, bench, squat, and dead respectively. The middle 2 numbers are easier than the outer two - it's surprising how much harder OHP is to increase than bench. And the 4 plate DL is attainable for sure, I was up to about 365 at my best, and had hit the 315 target for squats - but it takes a long time to build up to 405 incrementally.
I've just recently got back on the wagon and it's been interesting to see how much strength I lost - where I was usually squatting in the 225-240 range at my peak, i started back up w? squatting 135 and it was surprisingly difficult. Crazy how much our bodies can change with a little stimulus.
The strength will come back much quicker than it took to attain the first time. I never worked out a day in my life until I was almost 30, and with the exception of the deadlift, all my numbers are quite a bit lower than anyone my same age who worked out even sparingly in their 20s. The people my age who were high school athletes make me look like an old man, and the people my age who were college athletes make me look like an even older woman. I always liken it to blowing up a balloon, you feel a certain amount of resistance the first time, but if you let the air out (lose strength) and blow it up again it's much easier.
Yeah, for sure! I've already experienced that once or twice after other start/stops. I made what felt like relatively quick progress when I first started lifting a few years ago, and I definitely think having been moderately athletic through my youth was a factor. (Never was particularly great at any sport, but at least they kept me in shape!)
In the US they use 45 lb bars and plates. So one plate (per side) is 135 lbs, two plates is 225 lbs, three plates is 315 lbs, four plates is 405 lbs, five is 495 lbs, six is 585, seven is 675 and so forth
also:
One plate is usually 20kg or 45lbs depending on where you live.
But:
A one-plate lift, then, is 135 pounds. Two plates is 225 pounds. Three plates is 315. Four plates is 405. Five plates is 495.
I changed the text after looking through a bunch of results.
There is no dissension. "One plate" when referencing a lift is 135 pounds, or 90 pounds on each side for a standard bar (you always assume a standard bar). One plate when referring to the plate just refers to the plate itself, which is 45 pounds.
So "hand me a plate" means give me a 45 pound plate. "Lift one plate" means 135 pounds.
For another perspective, if you put 22.5lbs on each side of the bar, you wouldn't call that a "1 plate" lift even though both sides add up to 45 lbs. There are no plates involved in the lift, thus it's not a "1 plate" lift.
If you search "1 plate overhead press" or "1 plate ohp", you'll see many references to how that's a 135lb lift.
You're technically right that a plate is 90 lbs on the bar, but generally for one plate you're referring specifically to 135 lbs because you'd include the eight of the bar.
> and I was working my deadlift reps towards 225 lbs—four plates, in meathead parlance.[1]
in meathead talk that means 2 plates, because they typically count one side only. at least in my experience thats always been the case. so 405lbs deadlift is 4 plates (aside) 8 plates total.
This sounds like something a scrawny/short little guy would say to compensate. Tell us you’re insecure without telling us you’re insecure. Your other comments are just as laughable. A teenage girl can dead 405? I bet you have a lot of friends :)
As someone who does actually understand this topic, no untrained person is going to start squatting at 145 or deadlift at 225 unless they want to injure themselves upfront. They would start both with an empty bar and move up slowly from there once they have the form perfect. Untrained people don’t lift actual weight. From there, most would move to a 75 pound squat and a 95-115 pound deadlift.
The original post was spreading a gym rat myth that pulling medium weight requires eating more. It doesn’t.
Most of us aren’t Brian Shaw. Most of us will never pick a thousand pounds off the ground. That’s okay. Be realistic with your goals and what it takes to reach them.
Most people have probably picked up more than that in their lives even if they’ve never seen a gym. Have you ever moved a heavy couch?
115lbs as a starting max for a man is a joke. You might put 95 on the bar to illustrate basic form, but you cannot deadlift 95 the same as 495. You’ll start rowing the barbell if you setup correctly on 95lbs just from leverage alone.
That's an in vitro study, in isolated cells, which used a totally non-physiological dose of lidocaine.
It's not even a mouse or rat study. It's less valuable than that.
Lidocaine, taken systemically, is associated with serious side effects. It's the only known "cure" for tinnitus, but its side effect profile is so nasty that pretty much nobody uses it.
About half of health-related HN submissions feature someone willing to throw out wild medical advice. They'll usually double down, too, by linking to a study - a study that neither they, or 99% of commenters, are capable of effectively evaluating.
Treat them the same as you would that one weird guy who tells you that drinking urine will cure everything that ails you.
Feasible, maybe. But has it ever been done before? Are you aware of any papers where lidocaine is used as a treatment for solid tumors, and not simply as an analgesic during or following surgery? Studies in humans would be most relevant, but I'd even be interested in rodent studies if lidocaine is used systemically. (i.e. given orally or injected IP/SC/IV. Having researchers inject lidocaine directly into mouse tumors is not terribly relevant to what you were recommending.)
