Social Class and Lifting

This - quite short - article is really a very strong prompt for questions.

How the Other Half Lifts: What Your Workout Says About Your Social Class

I'm not sure I buy the class thing, but it's certainly true that what your peer group accepts, you are more likely to strive for. In a social network that looks askance at strength and looks at endurance work as something worth priding yourself on, you're going to feel awkward big and comfortable running long distance. In a social network of strength-inclined folks, you'll feel weak and small if you're a marathon runner.

In a social group that looks down on fighting, you'll feel odd fighting. I can vouch for this - when I trained full-contact in the US, people asked what was wrong with me. When I trained full contact in Japan, no one batted an eye. Friends who are fighters - pro and amateur - have reported a mix of support and disgust from peers. The network of people you surround yourself strongly influences your success in reaching your goals. If your goals are closely aligned with their goals, you're going to get places. If yours differ from theirs, you might feel like that author did.

The One-Exercise Solution

There are a fair number of exercise programs that rely on one movement. Just one exercise - although they occasionally sneak in variations.

Why do these in the first place, and why do these work?

Freedom from Choice

If your workout has you doing 100 pushups a day, or kettlebell swings three days a week, or 500 bodyweight squats every other day, you know what your workout is.

You don't have any guesswork. You don't have any planning to do. Nothing to wonder about or second-guess yourself over. You have the one movement to do. You'll have exactly zero stress over the workout planning as long as you let go and trust that the exercise you chose is the right one. All you need to do is execute. This eliminates the "analysis paralysis" problem where you just don't act due to too many choices in front of you.

Consistency

If you workout is just one movement, you can't help but work it consistently. You will improve if you work at that movement with any significant level of effort. A one-exercise approach means you will keep hitting that exercise over and over, and thus bring some consistency to your workout.

You can't fake progress

Either you get more sets, more reps, or more weight - or you don't. You can't switch exercises and tell yourself you're inducing "muscle confusion" or "shocking" your system into growth or whatever. Either you get more pushups, or more swings, or squat more weight for 20 reps, or you don't. There are no two ways about it.

That's basically why these programs work. You're free from choice, and have only a simple road ahead. It's a good way to progress if you can find a solid full-body movement, and just stick with it.

Kacy Catanzaro, Great Example

Sometimes female trainees worry about lifting heavy or aiming to get more strength. Hypertrophy - the increase in muscle size - is an even trickier topic.

So much has been made of exercises that make "long" and "lean" muscles, of how to train without "bulking up," and the ease of gaining muscle size - all myths - that it's easy for someone to believe that if they move the weights up just a little bit they'll turn into an ultra-lean bodybuilder in no time.

For those female trainees, I have a really nice example to show them - Kacy Cantazaro.

Kacy Catanzaro at the American Ninja Warrior 2014 Finals

She has amazing relative strength*, excellent endurance, and great drive.

Not only that, but she doesn't look like a female bodybuilder, or a fighter, or a weight lifter. She looks, for lack of a better world, normal but fit. That's often what female trainees are shooting for. That makes Ms. Catanzaro such a good example - yes, you can work on pullups; go up in weight on squats, deadlifts, and presses; and work on hypertrophy and strength without fear of transforming into something you don't want to be. A few extra pounds your squat isn't going to change you into Arnold, but it just might make you look for like Ms. Catanzaro.

Not only that, but her success is an impressive feat in an of itself.



* strength relative to her bodyweight, as constrasted with absolute strength, which is strength not relative to anything.

Hard Exercise is Fundamentally Different than Moderate Exercise

If you've done both hard exercising - using truly challenging weights, pushing hard when doing cardio exercises, sprinting, dragging or pushing heavy sleds - you know this already.

But a recent study showed that on a molecular level, hard exercise creates different reactions within the body. The study is discussed here, on Gretchen Reynold's excellent blog on the New York Times website:

For Fitness, Push Yourself

Basically, if you push your body hard enough, it will create different, deeper, and more lasting changes to your body than if you don't.


This also reinforces the high-low approach that I like to have people use - push very hard on some days, interspersed with days of light, low-intensity exercise. No middle ground - either hard enough to trigger this kind of molecular reaction, or just some energy-burning exercise that gets your heart rate up a bit but not too much. Sprint, then walk, then sprint again the day after, instead of run-run-run. The science showing that there is a fundamental split between hard enough to trigger molecular changes and not hard enough would help explain why that approach is so effective.

My Pushup Experiment - June

Here are the results of month 2 of my pushups experiment.

As usual, I took Sundays completely off.

Date	Sets	Total Pushups
6/1	-	-
6/2	7	140
6/3	6	120
6/4	6	120
6/5	5	100
6/6	5	100
6/7	8	160
6/8	-	-
6/9	5	100
6/10	5	100
6/11	8	160
6/12	5	100
6/13	6	120
6/14	6	120
6/15	-	-
6/16	5	100
6/17	8	160
6/18	6	120
6/19	6	120
6/20	5	100
6/21	5	100
6/22	-	-
6/23	6	120
6/24	5	100
6/25	7	140
6/26	5	100
6/27	5	100
6/28	6	120
6/29	-	-
6/30	10	200
Total:	151	3020

That is a 60-rep improvement over last month. I averaged slightly more than 100 reps a day (100.66) for the month, and slightly over 120 each actual pushup day (not counting the Sundays).

The last day was a goal - I wanted to get 10 sets in, and break 3000. It wasn't easy, and the sets were mostly back-loaded to the end of the day, but it felt good to get them all in.

Overall, I feel good.

Next month - July - I've switched to sets of 25, and my goal is a base 4 sets a day (aiming again for 100 reps a day.) My theory is that the extra 5 reps per set will improve my endurance a bit more, challenge me slightly more, and allow me to potentially get more reps for the month without needing to get in extra sets each day.

Squats

I also did 2 sets of 20 squats on each day, for a total of 50 sets and 1000 squats. One in the morning, one at night. These were mostly movement prep. I think they worked - I found I was foam rolling my legs and hips less this month than usual. This is perhaps because I was getting my hips loose every morning right away. That wasn't the intention, but I found that especially in the summer, 20 squats gets my heart rate up a little, and is tough in slacks, and gets me sweating, which are tough when I'm in a non-gym work environment. The 2 sets was enough to keep my mobility going, however, so I will retain that in July but bump up to 25 reps.