Of course the fitness industry has already rediscovered these clubs and sells stylish items under the 'functional fitness' category. But the more 'functional' a workout gets, the more one could wish there was real, physical work to be done, the kind of work that reveals muscular deficiencies despite regular gym workouts (often hand strength and endurance when working overhead) and gives a different sense of accomplishment and satisfaction: shelves built, home improved, practical skills acquired.
There's a reason we try to automate repetitive manual labor - it's dangerous and detriment to long term health. The whole of human existence has been a long march towards minimizing labour though we've definitely overshot to the point where disease of affluence has become our foremost public health challenge. That said, cultivating fitness in modern society should focus on the least amount of labour for maximum individual and public health benefits. An hour of strength training, some cardio per week to build individual durability and cardiovascular health is probably the most sensible prescription. A common anecdote between people who deadlift 600lbs and build houses for a living is how much pain they live with in later life.
On the topic of clubs, these are surprisingly good prehab tools for shoulder health.
An hour per week isn’t going to cut it. More regular physical activity is needed to keep the body and mind in good shape. In speaking with cardiologists, minimum 30 minutes a day. Obviously if you’re strength training and lifting heavy you’re going above and beyond, so this is a loose recommendation for people who don’t. The body acclimatizes to “moderate intensity” quickly when you put it to the test.
Let’s not toss the baby out with the bathwater. Awhile back on HN there was an article with a doctor who “prescribes” deadlifting, and I’ll butcher the quote but he says: “I would rather prescribe them an increase in deadlifting weight than an increased dose of blood pressure pills”.
Leisure is good. Finding a breath of fresh air in physical activity is better.
An hour a week of heavy (for the lifter’s current capability) deadlifting or squatting in three 20 minute sessions will definitely get serious results with good programming. One will see increases in muscle mass, bone density, and improved cardiovascular health from just that. Granted it would be beneficial to do more, but point is even an hour a week can be an effective training stimulus.
For me the guideline for general population should be basically intermediate strength standards like the prescriptions by NASA, which are hilariously low but calibrated to maximize muscle retention, mission capability and most significantly reduce injury. Mission capability for gen pop is just to have enough muscle so you don't shatter your hips during a bad fall or injure yourself on rudimentary tasks (carrying your kids) that lead to expensive long term care.
The NASA standard was something like bodyweight squats for 6-10s that most people should be able to cultivate quickly and maintain with minimal effort. The difference in space is they have to exercise for 2 hours a day to maintain muscle mass, but on earth you can crack out BW or 1.5xBW squats/deadlift and insipidly low bench/ohp for homework 3x10s in 30m sessions twice a week to maintain. The bar is exceedingly low. Of course that varies depending on genetics, but it's one of those situations where pareto principle comes into play.
Cardio vascular health is different, but mostly it's a balance between NEAT, actual cardio and maintaining a healthy BMI, while strength training maintains an useful amount of muscle mass. Barbell Medicine podcast has a lot of good info on strength training + rehabilitation. It's geared towards the powerlifting crowd, but along your point, one of the broader prescriptions is that frequently movement and exercise is better at healing than pills or other medical interventions, but movement is very infrequently prescribed.
The minimum of 30 minutes is for lower intensity exercise. Like taking a walk.
You can get pretty fit on two to three hours of barbell exercises a week like you describe. But it still helps to add a walk about every day to stay sane.
And lowering the amount of time spent sitting on your butt seems to have a separate and independent effect from exercise.
I'm suggesting 2x30m of fullbody compound exercises twice a week for general population. Push/Pull/Legs using the least stressful lift variations per individual anthropometry for 3x10,8,6 reps with 2-3 minute rest is enough for most people to get 80% of where they need to be be if done consistently over time. Some sort of cardio for heart health. Low intensity (NEAT) activity + diet to manage weight to healthy BMI range. It's not training where you maximize personal potential, more exercise / going through the motions of the minimal routine for maximum benefit. It's not even designed to get people "fit" but just healthy enough to be preventative against diseases of affluence or common trauma like hip fractures that burdens health care and have disproportionate impact on quality of life. Also pour research into steroids, any low effort magic pill that enables people to retain lean mass later in life with minimal side affects.
Lots of exercise regimes work to produce that kind of minimal level of fitness.
At this level for the general population the challenge is to get people to stick to it, not so much exactly which exercise regime they are doing.
VR games like Beat Saber might offer a reasonable chance to get people moving. Even the original Wii Sports had people get off their couch for a while.
"Where is the dividing line between building your body up and wearing it out?"
From personal experience: roughly aged 50 (give or take, probably give.) That's without farting around with big weights.
600lbs is about 270 kilos. There is no reason for your body to need to deal with moving weights like that unless you are in a competition or trying to save a life. Hence it is not built for loads of that magnitude on a regular basis. Running with an 80-100 lb pack/load on your back and holding a 20 lb lump is a reasonable load to put on a very fit body, aged up to say, around 40. Your local Army, Marines, etc will know better than me what to encourage here. Try this lot: https://www.paradata.org.uk/unit/infantry-training-centre-ca... for example.
I'll just suggest that for most people, messing with weights like that are simply daft. We are not fork lift trucks. In the rest of the world, 25 kilos is considered a normal one man lift.
Humans as a species are designed for endurance, not huge loads.
In what natural scenario would a human be running with 80 extra pounds on their back? That seems like a great way to destroy your knees.
> Your local Army, Marines, etc will know better than me what to encourage here
Nothing about the military is designed to be long lasting. The system simply isn't worried very much about what happens to the knees and joints of its members. You can't even enlist in the army if you're 35. A friend of mine was in the army - his job was artillery. Even though his hearing was perfect before entering the army, he needs hearing aids now because artillery is loud, and the army simply doesn't care about his hearing.
This is an anecdote but I can deadlift 550 lbs, probably 600 if I was going for my 1RM, and I've never really had any joint or back pain in my life. Meanwhile, I have similarly aged coworkers who love running but can't even bend over to pick something up due to their bad back or knees.
While I don’t do it anymore, in my high school and college years I hunted quite a bit. Depending on the terrain, I would routinely have to pack out 100 to 125 pounds of meat uphill. Wasn’t running (sometimes shuffling if getting dark or starting to rain/snow), but that much weight on the back isn’t out if the norm.
Another anecdote - Up until this past year (I’m 43 going on 44), I was routinely pulling about the same weight as you. I peaked at 637.5 (which still wasn’t enough for a good placement in a meet). I never had back pains or joint pains like yourself. For me, even though I had no pain, the next day, after pulling 600, was just miserable. I had no energy, was sluggish, etc. And yes. I ate. When peaking, I was always eating between 3500 and 4000 calories at 195bw. So I’ve not dead lifted heavy in 6 months. The stress on my central nervous system just isn’t worth it anymore. I’ll keep my lift at about 350 for 10 singles. That’s more than enough for me at this point in my life.
If yo want to run for the long term, I'd suggest barefoot jogging.
That'll teach you proper form for protecting your joints very quickly. And human bodies are literally made to jog longish distances barefoot.
I also like deadlifts. They are great as well.
As a rule of thumb, I guess, any amount of lifting you can do with only investing a few hours a week at most (and no steroids) is probably not enough to destroy your body.
The reason I compare it to construction is that at some point, pursing lifting to a high degrees involves putting in the amount of repetitions that amounts to a job with high statistical injury rate. If you follow bodybuilding and powerlifting closely, the amount of people who wash out due to injury is staggeringly high, to the point where an injury free career is anomalous and often credited to great genetics (tendon strength) than smart training. In fact the majority of the injuries happens on routine warm up reps, and because these people are enthusiasts and treat lifting almost like a job, they don't manage healing properly and will often continue training while injured leading to long term detriment. The particularly bone headed people will lift until they break their body and washout, but even smart lifters (who plan stress and fatigue sensibly) will eventually get injured past a certain level. This is like working in construction, people accrue damage over time, small injuries compound or big injuries take them out. The amount of work required in these occupation/hobbies are not calibrated for "health".
[1] https://www.strongerbyscience.com/powerlifting-injuries-resu...
>The overall number of people injured may surprise you. Of the 160 people who finished the study (either sustained an injury or made it through the whole year uninjured), almost ¾ of them sustained an injury. That seems to conflict with the finding that injury rates in powerlifting are only ~3-5 per 1000 hours of training. Assuming someone trains for five hours per week, that would mean you’d expect a lifter to get injured about once every four years, on average (or, stated another way, you’d expect about ¼ of lifters to get injured per year). However, keep in mind that we used a pretty broad definition of “injury” , compared to the more conservative definition used in other research. In another study on powerlifters using a pretty liberal definition of “injury,” 70% were injured at the single point in time when data was collected, so I’d say the overall injury rate seen in our study is to be expected. Taken collectively, the data suggest that powerlifters sustain minor injuries pretty frequently, but more serious injuries are pretty rare; comparable to triathlon training, but less common than long distance running or most team sports.
> The reason I compare it to construction is that at some point, pursing lifting to a high degrees involves putting in the amount of repetitions that amounts to a job with high statistical injury rate.
Why? You can increase the weight, and keep the repetitions constant.
In context of semi-serious strength training, virtually no one progresses long on increasing intensity only. Increasing weight + maintaining rep scheme, basically linear periodization exhausts itself in months. Medium-term, it's an inefficient method to gain strength due to repetitive bout effect, and fairly dangerous - lots of people injure themselves pushing too hard on 3x5s (i.e. starting strength) when the periodization scheme simply stops working for them. Sooner than (not or) later, people have to periodize, mess with variations, delve into programming. Even if you're smart about it injury is very common. For a general population extra complexity and injury risk is something to be optimized against when it's simply not necessary to ever develop that much strength for daily functioning.
I would say the vast majority of people are not capable of lifting in a maximally safe manner. In the powerlifting injury survey around half of trainees suffer some form of injury, this includes novice trainees. My experience in the body building community is similar. That's too high on a population scale. Lifting enthusiasts get hurt all the time for the hobby, that's their prerogative. But no reason to endorse it for people who don't share strength/aesthetic goals and could get most of the benefit from extremely modest and much safer training.
I'm not trying to denigrate barbell training, I think it's essential component to physical well being, but I don't think most popular strength templates are well aligned to overall public health or the mentality to train for general health. Their philosophy is based around training which will quickly lead people to conflate pursuing personal best with essential fitness, and TBH most people drop out of the habit they stop progressing after a few years and lose motivation. The people who lift the longest are those who can accept putting 4-8 hours at a gym every week for a year to add 5lbs to a lift or those who don't fixate on numbers and are content with just going through the motions for health.
Oh, we mostly agree. My point was more that the amount of strength people can get out of something like Starting Strength is more than sufficient for anything useful for general healthy fitness.
The limits of linear progression (and three sessions a week) put a nice limit on how much you can wear out your body. Basically, when you can no longer go up, just stay there.
I did Starting Strength myself for a while, and even for too long. Once I switched to the same author's Texas Method (a simple weekly program), I managed to eke out a bit more progress on my lifts again.
If you're going to claim that poor form leads to problems well then I guess we shouldn't be walking around either for fear of tripping.
And since we're dealing in anecdotes here: I have two bulging discs and the only thing that keeps me from throwing out my back is my heavy deadlift routine (not 600 but regularly 425-450).
I wasn't arguing against deadlifting. I was arguing that the correct strength training recommendation for general population is a baseline that optimizes for useful amount of strength, protective amount of muscle and minimal amount of injury. And for me that level is shockingly low, i.e the NASA low BW multiplier prescription. Everything beyond that is basically for enthusiasts with elevated injury risk over a long enough time scale. There's nothing wrong with enjoying lifting as a hobby so long as it's understood that training for strength past a certain point is the opposite of exercising for health. See my Barbell Medicine endorsement above, I mentioned that strength training, i.e. deadlifts is a good rehabilitation tool that's often under-prescribed as medical incentives doesn't align with cheap gym memberships. Though ironically for me, deadlifts is the best rehab for deadlift injuries.
My best gym pull is 660 @ 185. My observations in powerlifting is that injuries in squats/deadlifts doesn't start to mount until "enthusiasts" start trying grinding past their intermediate plateau because they're motivated but also reckless. This typically occurs between 2x-2.5x BW. Sometimes it's hot headed kids on stupid programs who thinks they're invincible, and sometimes it's just diligent trainees who misgrooves one rep on a 90% topset after 5 years of training. It's not a question about poor form but high statistical likelihood when regularly dealing with heavy weights over many reps for many years. The heavier one lifts relative to whatever individual genetics allow, the more catastrophic a misgroved rep becomes. It's simple leverages. Force/stress from 405lb vs 225lb on a misgrooved moment-arm doesn't scale proportionally to load. 1/3 of lifters about above novice skill experience lower back injury of some sort (see stronger by science link I posted) which makes heavy training not something I would endorse for people just looking for to exercise for health.
>we shouldn't be walking around either for fear of tripping.
My endorsement is the minimum amount strength train necessary so a trip doesn't shatter your hips (particularly older populations), which is very low but sufficient bar.
What are the health effects of looking at a computer all day?
Personally, I enjoy physical activity as a leisure. Yes, I've obtained some injuries along the way. Automating my presence away from the computer has been a priority. The goal has always been to spend more time doing the things I enjoy.
> ...shelves built, home improved, practical skills acquired.
Shoveling snow/dirt/other substances, chopping wood, pushing wheelbarrows, or loading trucks would be better examples of real-world equivalents to the more-maligned functional exercise regimes, but there's only so much of those most of us have opportunity to do. Apart from adding sheer volume it's also a little harder to build a progressive overload program around those types of activities.
FYI, these are referring to the indian clubs from the indian subcontinent. In india, they were mainly used by wrestlers in a wrestling sport called Pehlwani : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pehlwani
In Wisconsin there are still auditoriums named Turner Hall in some towns. Monroe is one, and when I was a kid I always wondered who "Mr. Turner" was who it was named after. My dad finally told me it used to be a gymnastics club, and the members were called "turners".
That comes from the German-speaking settlements/immigrants in Wisconsin. In German the verb turnen is to exercise or do gymnastics. And a Turnhalle is a place you go to do that.
I can't stand the macho pretensions of so many of the new fitness sellers. It's a heavy thing. Do something with it in a well known way, get gains. Get a heavier thing, or do more, or do longer, or do it differently, get more gains, rinse, repeat. Adjust program based on goals and current progress.
> It's a heavy thing. Do something with it in a well known way, get gains. Get a heavier thing, or do more, or do longer, or do it differently, get more gains, rinse, repeat. Adjust program based on goals and current progress.
I had a friend who said almost exactly this about the olympics: "The olympics should be about moving really fast, lifting really heavy things, and throwing things really far." Can't disagree with that. Subjective sports really grinds my gears.
I moved to a smaller town and there's only local one box which is populated with the town's supply of douchebags. It's hit or miss: sometimes a crossfit gym is a fun bunch of people, other times it's a bunch of head-butting-brahs that make the whole experience awful.
If anyone is interested in this type of exercise, you may want to check out Scott Sonnon and his club bell work outs. The company is called RMAX, and the programs are called “circular strength training”. I am not affiliated, but I knew someone who was a big fan and customer.
My friend was really into it many years ago (he has since become less active). He taught me a few basic things, and I really enjoyed the workouts.
Fair warning — RMAX is a typical modern workout marketing company — you will get lots of e-mail, so you might want to make a unique e-mail address for any products you buy. Some folks sound like cultists when they talk about him and his workouts, although that may be more their issue than his. All that said, the materials I read seemed to have some historical references (India, Iran, lots of strongmen around the world, etc., but I didn’t check the accuracy). The workouts were very good for me.
This type of club swinging is still practiced (and advanced!) by jugglers and flow artists - see for example the first 30 seconds of this performance by Kyle Johnson: https://youtu.be/7yoY6JI-RGo
Also artistic gymnastics, it's one of the props used in the Olympics. I have an old pair of the gymnastics ones and they are deadly, feels like lead weights inside the plastic! I'm told by a gymnast friend that the newer ones have a soft rubber coating
Here in Germany, we still had those clubs in our school gymnasium.
I have never seen them used, and somehow assumed they were for bowling or something silly like that. But it's interesting that they never really went away!
It's not like they were leftovers from ye olde time. Someone, at some point, ordered x amounts of clubs for the school gymnasium because they'd be part of the basic equipment. Similar to these ubitiquous blue mats and the wooden horsey thingys of which there were always more than anyone wood ever need.
Also it has a swimming pool in the basement before chlorine- the entire pool would be filled before use and drained afterwards. Heated of course. Also they had a bowling alley..
The muscular Christianity thing is fascinating. Modern threads of it show up in the football world where certain players or coaches are ostentatious about their religion. Comes from that time(I have a few books about it).
I've worked a fair bit with kettlebells and some with the mace bell (an stripped down gada), but never the 2h indian clubs. Curious about any experience reports people have of them - what they really do for you vs other weight tools.
Inspired by Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, I do Aikido sword kata with a 2cm x 30cm steel bar. I move rather slowly, and don't put much momentum into the bar. So the practice forces good form, in addition to maintaining strength.
Strongman type workouts still use these today (typically in steel), along with maces. You can buy them from the sort of suppliers that sell to crossfit gyms and the like, e.g., https://www.onnit.com/onnit-steel-clubs/
Get a 20lb sledge and ~400lb tractor tire. Alternate flipping the tire and using the sledgehammer on it. Almost better than any gym workout (it's what I'm doing right now while my gym is closed). Your forearms will be so sore the next day you'll barely be able to type (at least for the first few weeks).
You know, it just occurred to me that, despite growing up on a farm, I can remember very few used tractor tires; one was a raised bed and the other a sandbox.
Probably has something to do with a lack of vehicle inspections for farm equipment.
i would bet the reason is the same that you very rarely see used car tires: when you get new tires they take your old tires and restore them (to the extent that they can) and then resell them. so most people never keep their old tires.
This is still quite common in parts of India, where wrestlers train for old-fashioned "kushti" matches in a "vyayamshaala". It literally means "exercise school", and is basically a gym.
