Lifting thread
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Idolater
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Strong leg muscles may be linked with better outcomes after heart attack, study suggests
" Growing evidence shows that building muscle strength can have benefits for your heart, even leading to better outcomes after a heart attack.
"Having a higher level of leg muscle strength appears to be “strongly associated” with a lower risk of developing heart failure after a heart attack ... "
The classic powerlifting exercise to develop leg strength and muscle growth is the barbell squat. Typically the high-bar squat enables a more vertical spine during the squat, which limits how much of a back exercise it is.
But you can even start with no weight and empty hands. In fact if you can do it near something with handles which can support you while you squat, you can even partially hold your weight with your hands so that your squats are even less than a bodyweight exercise.
Imagine you're doing squats in front of a railing you can support your weight with. As you squat down, hold the railing, and support your weight as much as makes the squat comfortable. See if you can do one or two squats like this, as deep as you can. Pull yourself up using the railing. If you can do more, do five of these empty hand (no weight) assisted squats.
Take a break and do five more. Then do as many as you can in a row without stopping.
That's a workout. If when you did as many as you could, it was much more than five, then next time you can do six or even seven or more of them next time, twice, followed by another attempt to do as many as you can. That's another workout. Try to do this twice a week, or three times every two weeks. Worst case do it once a week. (Still worth doing.)
Idolater
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Hard or quality or working sets are sets with an R.P.E. of arguably five or more. If you want to be harder on yourself, you can insist on an R.P.E. of six or seven or more, but basically for sure if your set is R.P.E. of six, that's definitely a hard, quality, working set.
I'm using what Wikipedia today calls the "Borg CR-10" scale which goes from one to 10. R.P.E. 10 on this scale means, you can't do a single other rep of the exercise in that set. It means you did literally as many as you could without technical failure. Technical failure means your good form has broken down.
en.wikipedia.org
R.P.E. 10 sets the upper limit of how hard your set is. If you think you can do just one more rep when you quit, that's R.P.E. 9, and if you think you can do just two more reps, that's R.P.E. 8
Even if you do so much weight that you can only do one rep, which is aka your one-rep-max 1.R.M., you can still apply the R.P.E. scale. Your 1.R.M. is R.P.E. 10 iow.
I'm using what Wikipedia today calls the "Borg CR-10" scale which goes from one to 10. R.P.E. 10 on this scale means, you can't do a single other rep of the exercise in that set. It means you did literally as many as you could without technical failure. Technical failure means your good form has broken down.
Rating of perceived exertion - Wikipedia
R.P.E. 10 sets the upper limit of how hard your set is. If you think you can do just one more rep when you quit, that's R.P.E. 9, and if you think you can do just two more reps, that's R.P.E. 8
Even if you do so much weight that you can only do one rep, which is aka your one-rep-max 1.R.M., you can still apply the R.P.E. scale. Your 1.R.M. is R.P.E. 10 iow.
Idolater
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That's wrong. It has to be R.P.E. 7 to count as a hard, working set. But the point is your last rep has to be hard. It doesn't have to be "I can't do one more rep" hard, but it also can't be "I can do four more" that's not hard enough to count as a hard, working set. When you complete the last rep in a set, you have to acknowledge "Yeah that was hard."
Following up on a post in another thread:
First, 20 reps of anything is going to probably start off feeling really easy. It's almost like you're going to do like 16 warm-up reps before you get to the reps which are going to stimulate your muscle to grow and adapt. Those final four reps are going to be carrying most of the water.
Second, six sets of an exercise a day is sufficient to max out your muscle and strength growth for that day. For a week, as few as 10 sets will give you maximum benefit, so you can do six sets on two different days and get 12 sets in a week, for instance.
But that's for maximum benefit, you still get benefits even if you only do three sets in a day, two days a week, for six sets in a week. You're definitely going to benefit from that program, as long as you're doing progressive overload, primarily by increasing the weight you use every session (or every other session or something like that). Keep slowly adding weight and doing the hard sets and you'll definitely benefit.*
And third, starting an exercise with empty hands is always the right way to start if you can't even do 20 reps without holding a weight at all. If you have to provide assistance, even with empty hands, through a strap or exercise band or by holding on to a railing, that's always the right thing to do if you can't do an exercise for c. 20 reps even empty handed. In that case your progressive overload is going to be a gradual reduction in the assistance you need to do the exercise. Once you don't need any assistance anymore you can start picking up a small weight, and then keep doing progressive overload as normal.
*Edit you do have to eat ideally weightgain but at least don't be in cutting diet, to get efficient results.
Hi Idolater, I don't have much time to be on TOL anymore but I check in occasionally and saw this post addressing me. Hope everyone is doing well.
I'm currently doing 12 sets per week over 3 days (4+4+4).
Idolater
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Nice. Glad you're doing OK man, I was starting to worry. Take care.
Another oddity is grip strength is a stronger indicator of heart health. I read that tried to peel the onion back thinking it's a simple by-product of StP doing his chin ups and overall health. It wasn't. But it certainly contributes.
My left hand measured 137 lbs. I am right handed.
My left hand measured 137 lbs. I am right handed.
Idolater
"Foundation of the World" Dispensationalist χρ
Industry standard, if there is one:
en.wikipedia.org
(Word on the street is that basically nobody can close the number 4.)
Captains of Crush Grippers - Wikipedia
(Word on the street is that basically nobody can close the number 4.)
Idolater
"Foundation of the World" Dispensationalist χρ
You might be able to do 20-30 hard sets a week of full range of motion grip exercises a week and recover. I wonder if the effect is causal or just coincidence (like, if your heart is strong then maybe that just translates into having a stronger grip? maybe getting a stronger grip won't give you a stronger heart iow; maybe by measuring your grip however, you get a good estimate for how strong your heart is, and if you strengthen your heart, you'll be able to measure a stronger grip as a result? ---- very interesting).
The reason my grip strength was tested is my right hand was injured in a work accident.
If you put what I posted in quotes in google you can read the information. That is what they were trying to figure out. Because it is a better marker than blood pressure. But that is another tangent as there is so much falsified information on nutrition published, for financial gain.
Idolater
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I hope you recover soon and well. Well is better than soon though for a young man. So I hope you recover well first, soon only if well is established. That's the most important part for a young man.
Whether I lift weights or not, I get injured, so I figure I might as well get injured lifting weights. The more I lift weights though, the less I get injured doing anything else. Lifting weights as a middle aged man is like an injury magnet, in the sense that all your injuries come in the weight room now.
But with all the injuries, comes a lot of opportunity to think about form and technique and mechanics, like martial arts, working up to a black belt. The black belt is the middle aged guy in the weight room who never ever gets injured in the weight room anymore. That's who I'm trying to be. I know strength and muscle is good not only for me as I get older, but it's good for all the people around me, and that's the main reason I do this.
In one article above, it said that being stronger and having more muscle helps you recover if you have a heart attack. I can't imagine a better gift to give my loved ones, than a better recovery from a heart attack if I ever have a heart attack. Heart attacks wipe people out. You endure heart attacks better if you're stronger and have more muscle.
That's really interesting. I've seen a grip strength measurement device, but I've never used one.
Yeah. I like Israetel because I think he's legit. He's selling stuff for sure (he's got an app) but he's promoting himself as like a weight training PhD so I get the idea that he's like Dr. Berg who only will tell you well corroborated information from the literature. (He wants to protect his reputation ... so he can sell more stuff to you later.)
The most recent one I watched from Israetel (note the vulgarity warnings about this guy, he is not just profane he is vulgar, dirty, filthy, raunchy, this isn't just bad words, he has some really demonic imagery sometimes in what he says) said that, for an example, that while whey protein is in the top echelon for protein quality, that you probably can only use it all as protein up to like 30 or 40 grams in a single meal, maybe 50 grams is OK, but much beyond this, all at once, you're body's just going to turn the rest into energy, which makes that excess protein effectively carbs now.
So that was good to know. I was taking like 75 grams of whey at a time sometimes. lol. Won't do that again.
That's just so YouTube doesn't delete his channel. He delves into "controversial" (according to YouTube) issues on his website at www.drberg.com
He had videos deleted on known treatment to slow viral replication. I was perma-banned from IG for the same topics including nutrition. It's a good thing the Chicoms failed at Fauci's request to murder as many people as possible.
I am at the condition known as maximum medical improvement and permanent partial disability. I wish I didn't have to learn they exist. And I'm not young. But, I am long past the point of locking the bolt to the rear on a crew served weapon.
Idolater
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1 The most important thing to have as a middle-aged or old, man or woman, lifting weights, is a good supply of micro-plates, which are much smaller than the standard smallest weight plate out there, which is the two-and-a-half pound plate.
2 Sometimes, and more and more likely the older you get, five pounds is such a big step that you're inevitably going to have to stall in your progressive overload¹, you'll hit your strength limit, and then you'll never advance, and you'll lose interest and eventually quit. Not your fault. You didn't have micro plates.
3 There are quarter-pound microplates. Two of those (on a barbell) is a half-pound. You can make as little as a half-pound weight step. That means you can keep doing progressive overload¹. You won't stall. And, you can very gingerly apply more tension to your tendons and connective tissues and joints, instead of just blasting it with another five pounds. When younger, five pounds more is never going to rupture or tear or sever anything, but when you're Aaron Rodgers age, you can hurt your Achilles', just running around. Micro plates help prevent you becoming an Aaron Rodgers injury or casualty in the weight room.
¹ There's a good brief introduction to the topic of progressive overload in the linked video in this post: https://theologyonline.com/threads/lifting-fasting.59905/#post-1891469
You need two of those plates to make the smallest weight step on a barbell, so that's five pounds minimum that you have to step.
2 Sometimes, and more and more likely the older you get, five pounds is such a big step that you're inevitably going to have to stall in your progressive overload¹, you'll hit your strength limit, and then you'll never advance, and you'll lose interest and eventually quit. Not your fault. You didn't have micro plates.
3 There are quarter-pound microplates. Two of those (on a barbell) is a half-pound. You can make as little as a half-pound weight step. That means you can keep doing progressive overload¹. You won't stall. And, you can very gingerly apply more tension to your tendons and connective tissues and joints, instead of just blasting it with another five pounds. When younger, five pounds more is never going to rupture or tear or sever anything, but when you're Aaron Rodgers age, you can hurt your Achilles', just running around. Micro plates help prevent you becoming an Aaron Rodgers injury or casualty in the weight room.
That's all. I don't make any money from you buying micro plates at Amazon or wherever, they're just the single most important thing middle-aged (iow no branch of the military will take you anymore, simply because of your age) and old men and women should have. One set includes all the way down to two quarter-pound plates, to make just a half a pound weight step (0.5 versus 5.0). You can take them with you to the gym if they don't have micro-plates there, and bring them with you when you leave, just your personal set of micro-plates, is light enough to schlep around.
¹ There's a good brief introduction to the topic of progressive overload in the linked video in this post: https://theologyonline.com/threads/lifting-fasting.59905/#post-1891469
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Idolater
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I'm there too, but I haven't looked into surgery ... yet. Have you done all the available surgical options? or are you on the brink of having to decide to go under the knife now? I have to modify my lifting program according to my current chronic injury. I'd love to do one exercise in particular, but my current limitation won't let me, so I found another exercise which isn't the one I want to do, but it's the one I can do. I have to do stuff like that in a couple places. Together with micro plates I've been able to make it work.
And then there are all the traditional compound exercises which aren't affected by my injury at all. I blast those exercises. I don't use micro-plates with those, I can make five pound steps there and progressively overload still, so far so good. But if I ever need micro plates for squats and deadlifts because five pounds is too big of a step, I can use them then also.
Coach Rippetoe teaches the big four compound power lifts, Bench press, Overhead press, Squat, and Deadlift. These four exercises when you do progressive overload get you strong and build muscle.
Idolater
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Ugh. Terrible. Tough luck. Sorry. You did what you could anyway, didn't leave any money on the table.
So it sounds like it's your hand /arm? Does it impede squats? With deadlift straps (I use them and I don't have a grip injury) could you still deadlift? Does it affect pushing or pressing a barbell, or is it only holding it?