Well hell may be freezing over (workout)

[tnf]

Also, Iggy Pop as an example of functional strength vs. Arnold or Steve Reeves as 'bodybuilder strength'?

Bodybuilders need as much core strength as almost anymore.

[[xeno]Julios]

Putting on excessive amounts of muscle isn't very attractive or functional. That said, many people who are considered athletes and possess great physiques and functional strength include some form of bodybuilding in their training.

Bodybuilding as an end to itself isn't a very worthy pursuit imo.

[andyman]

Iggy Pop as an example of functional strength

rofl yeah that threw me for a loop... perhaps by functional strength they meant 'enough strength to function'



How about this: you do the regimens like everyone else, and how you look is how you look. end of story

[tnf]

Putting on excessive amounts of muscle isn't very attractive or functional. That said, many people who are considered athletes and possess great physiques and functional strength include some form of bodybuilding in their training.

Bodybuilding as an end to itself isn't a very worthy pursuit imo.

What would you define as excessive? Many of today's top athletes would have been considered 'musclebound' by old standards - when my dad played college sports back in the 60s, the idea of a baseball player spending significant time in a weight room wasn't taken very seriously. I think there are a lot of misconceptions out there about the functionality of large amounts of muscle (muscle takes away your flexibility, speed, etc.)

[tnf]

Joined another gym today - SNAP fitness opened a place about 2 minutes from here. 24/7 access, less crowded and fewer guys screaming at each other while squatting or loading up 40 plates on a leg press.

[[xeno]Julios]

What would you define as excessive? Many of today's top athletes would have been considered 'musclebound' by old standards - when my dad played college sports back in the 60s, the idea of a baseball player spending significant time in a weight room wasn't taken very seriously. I think there are a lot of misconceptions out there about the functionality of large amounts of muscle (muscle takes away your flexibility, speed, etc.)

Some rough guidelines for "excessive" may be:

-when you spend most of your time eating in order to preserve and gain mass
-when you spend significant amounts of money on anabolics
-when you weigh so much that you cannot play regular sports without injuring your joints and/or muscles
-when your muscle mass requires so much glucose and oxygen that your endurance suffers significantly
-when you start to look unattractive

the last one's subjective to a point, but I know of very few women that would want to mate with a top level bodybuilder. Arnie may be an exception, but he seems to have been blessed with a beautiful physique.

Ronnie coleman is not an attractive mammal.

[tnf]

What would you define as excessive? Many of today's top athletes would have been considered 'musclebound' by old standards - when my dad played college sports back in the 60s, the idea of a baseball player spending significant time in a weight room wasn't taken very seriously. I think there are a lot of misconceptions out there about the functionality of large amounts of muscle (muscle takes away your flexibility, speed, etc.)

Some rough guidelines for "excessive" may be:

-when you spend most of your time eating in order to preserve and gain mass
-when you spend significant amounts of money on anabolics
-when you weigh so much that you cannot play regular sports without injuring your joints and/or muscles
-when your muscle mass requires so much glucose and oxygen that your endurance suffers significantly
-when you start to look unattractive

the last one's subjective to a point, but I know of very few women that would want to mate with a top level bodybuilder. Arnie may be an exception, but he seems to have been blessed with a beautiful physique.

Ronnie coleman is not an attractive mammal.

heh..you've got a tendency to keep bringing this back to attractiveness.

My point was that if you had some time machine where you could show some coaches/athletes way back when pictures of guys playing their sports today, they'd probably consider them to be too muscle bound, lacking athleticism and flexibility, endurance, etc. and that there are a lot of myths about the effects of carrying a muscle mass.

I don't think Ronnie Coleman is an attractive mammal either, but from our discussions, reading your posts, etc., it seems that you have a lower threshold for what constitutes excessive muscle than others. And yes, being a completely roided up monster isn't going to help you in most athletic endeavors.

[[xeno]Julios]

agreed - there is a lot of room for subjectivity, and different aesthetic thresholds. I also don't necessarily think there is one golden mean for everyone. Even within athletic pursuits, there is variation on what's considered ideal (e.g. long distance runner vs. sprinter).

That said, I really do believe that the pursuit of muscle mass, as an end to itself, is not as worthy a pursuit as a pursuit of other athletic goals. If you pursue the acquisition of muscle mass to its extreme, and become the most muscle laden person you can, I don't think you will have enriched yourself as much as if you were to pursue, for example, gymnastics, or soccer, or tennis with the same amount of passion.

And I do suspect there is something to be said about the relationship between beauty and function. One obvious example is the idea that good looks are a marker of good genes. I think the idea of balance is important (and I'm sure there is an element of balance in the judging criteria for top level bodybuilding competitions that goes beyond mere symmetry). Really huge trapezius muscles don't seem to lend to a particularly balanced look on a human physique. Excessive vascular development and massive abdominal muscles are not always pleasing to the eye. Impressive, yes, but not necessarily something that captures the heart. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that athletes who have "transgressed" these lines also show significant deficits in other areas of athletic performance, and perhaps even health. But that's more of an untested intuition.

[+JuggerNaut+]

Joined another gym today - SNAP fitness opened a place about 2 minutes from here. 24/7 access, less crowded and fewer guys screaming at each other while squatting or loading up 40 plates on a leg press.

That's where I go. I love the 24/7.

[R00k]

heh..you've got a tendency to keep bringing this back to attractiveness.

My point was that if you had some time machine where you could show some coaches/athletes way back when pictures of guys playing their sports today, they'd probably consider them to be too muscle bound, lacking athleticism and flexibility, endurance, etc. and that there are a lot of myths about the effects of carrying a muscle mass.

I don't think Ronnie Coleman is an attractive mammal either, but from our discussions, reading your posts, etc., it seems that you have a lower threshold for what constitutes excessive muscle than others. And yes, being a completely roided up monster isn't going to help you in most athletic endeavors.

I think it's hard to deny that all pro bodybuilders, from Ronnie and Arnie to Worlds Strongest Man competitors, would never be able to play any other sport competitively against other well-trained athletes, regardless of experience. Take a highly-trained soccer player (or tennis or volleyball or basketball, etc), and put him on a baseball field (or rugby or any other sport he's never played) against one of the bodybuilders. There's no way any of the bodybuilders would be able to compete with him in terms of agility, speed or endurance.

I agree that the effect mass has on other attributes (flexibility for instance) has been reduced a lot by a more modern understanding of the body, and more modern training techniques.

That still doesn't negate the fact that increased body mass has a negative effect on these things overall -- it just means that it's less than it used to be.

[tnf]

I'm not suggesting you drop Ronnie Coleman into a basketball game. I was originally pointing out that the definition of excessive muscle is very subjective and that over time athletes have evolved such that guys who are performing at the highest levels right now would have been considered to be carrying around excessive amounts of muscle in the past. I recall Jules saying that he was carrying 'a ridiculous' amount of muscle at 175 pounds or thereabouts - that is what started my original question about what he considered excessive in the first place. It will be interesting to see where things are 30 years from now - I don't see how the physiques of athletes can change from now until then as dramatically as they did from the 50s or 60s to today, but who knows.

I'd be interested in where Feedback sees the evolution of the athlete's physique going in the future - has it reached its potential or are we going to see 6'4" tall, 260 pound point guards in basketball down the road..

[[xeno]Julios]

For me, 175 pounds is excessive. I most certainly noticed a massive endurance drop and increased frequency of injuries when I was that heavy. It was terrible. 175 pounds may be very manageable for someone else of my height - I'm sure a lot depends on the overall physiologic/anatomic profile.

[tnf]

For me, 175 pounds is excessive. I most certainly noticed a massive endurance drop and increased frequency of injuries when I was that heavy. It was terrible. 175 pounds may be very manageable for someone else of my height - I'm sure a lot depends on the overall physiologic/anatomic profile.

Yea, I didn't mean to be an insult, by the way. A person's natural ecto/meso/endomorphic tendencies will really be the biggest determining factor in what the optimal size is. What sorts of injuries were you noticing?

We are seeing a progression of size, strength, and speed that I believe many never thought possible. NFL players today are not just bigger and stronger than their counterparts from a few decades ago, they are also much faster. We aren't seeing this marked reduction in athleticism that many in the past thought would accompany the increased muscle mass they are carrying.

I just want to look like Iggy Pop.

[[xeno]Julios]

yea my buddy keeps telling me about this basketball player who's super athletic despite his massive size - I think it's lebron james but not sure.

One injury that stood out was a huge tear in my quadricep while playing tennis. I made a quick acceleration in a direction opposite to where I was going and boom - Couldn't walk properly for weeks. Also got a nasty strain on one of the tendons in the knee area (forget which one) - was months before I was able to play sports again. Granted, both those injuries may have been due to poor technique or lack of warmup, but the drop in endurance was almost certainly related.

[andyman]

Friday's workout destroyed me... it was 4 rounds of decreasing time per exercise as follows:

1m - 45s - 30s - 15s is how the rounds went of
Burpees
Pullups
Pushups
Squats

Pushups and squats i knew would be low, numbers are below

Burpees: 20, 11, 7, 4
Pullups: 34, 16, 14, 9
Pushups: 30, 20, 12, 10
Squats: 41, 32, 25, 14

I don't ever want to do this one again.

[andyman]

For me, 175 pounds is excessive. I most certainly noticed a massive endurance drop and increased frequency of injuries when I was that heavy. It was terrible. 175 pounds may be very manageable for someone else of my height - I'm sure a lot depends on the overall physiologic/anatomic profile.

How tall are you?

[[xeno]Julios]

5 foot 9 and a half

[feedback]

I'm not suggesting you drop Ronnie Coleman into a basketball game. I was originally pointing out that the definition of excessive muscle is very subjective and that over time athletes have evolved such that guys who are performing at the highest levels right now would have been considered to be carrying around excessive amounts of muscle in the past. I recall Jules saying that he was carrying 'a ridiculous' amount of muscle at 175 pounds or thereabouts - that is what started my original question about what he considered excessive in the first place. It will be interesting to see where things are 30 years from now - I don't see how the physiques of athletes can change from now until then as dramatically as they did from the 50s or 60s to today, but who knows.

I'd be interested in where Feedback sees the evolution of the athlete's physique going in the future - has it reached its potential or are we going to see 6'4" tall, 260 pound point guards in basketball down the road..

It's just my guess which is probably as bad as anybody else's, but I'd say we're going to see people in all sports take fitness training more seriously, perhaps to the level of MMA fighters like Georges St. Pierre. It's the natural evolution of sports that people have been getting bigger and better over the years, I doubt it's going to stop now.

[Underpants?]

sort of on-topic, does anyone recommend a heart rate monitor over the others? Like the polars, but don't know of anyone who has one to recommend. I would like to spend less than $100.00, ideally. I have a garmin forerunner ant+ series, which is cool in that it is designed to sync the software on my laptop. Shit seems to frequently require a reinstall and the battery dies every 2 months. I'm selling it on ebay, and looking for an inexpensive, lower maintenance alternative. Syncing isn't really all that important, as I use mapmyrun anyway.

[Underpants?]

where's toxic bug these days?
I wanted to tell him that I have level up my achievements in World Of gymcraft and put up 6 plates:

[Doombrain]

5 foot 9 and a half

lol, iclle man

[U4EA]

I've seen this mentioned a few times now, apparently new research shows that stretching isn't really all that useful and can be harmful in some cases as well. Your thoughts?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36553174/ns/health-fitness/

[[xeno]Julios]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/sport ... .html?_r=2

[plained]

i dont think its good especially for unfit people

[andyman]

you stretch and then do warm-up routines. nothing wrong with that... i usually do some stretching on the legs then jump on the rower and do a few hundred meters at a slow/medium pace before a workout. Basically whatever makes my soreness go away and that's how i know i can start the workout.