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"When people train, they usually don’t try to actually run faster or lift heavier weights. As a relatively healthy computer science professor, how fast I run or

by ssijak 9y ago

"When people train, they usually don’t try to actually run faster or lift heavier weights. As a relatively healthy computer science professor, how fast I run or how much I can lift is of no practical relevance. " This is really strange. If you don`t try to lift heavier weights you will not have progress. It is called progressive loading. I don`t wan`t to go into the details of the training, but if you do not track and improve your training (with whatever goal you have in mind, there are different kinds of progressions) you are the same as the programmer who write bad code, and knows it is bad, but does not care.

zimpenfish 9y ago
> If you don`t try to lift heavier weights you will not have progress. That depends on what you're aiming for - if you're aiming for tone rather than bulk, you'd go for more reps of the same weight rather than stepping up the weight with the same reps, wouldn't you? (Although I guess, technically, that does count as "heavier" since you're still moving more weight in your sets.)
- tomtomau 9y ago
  The general consensus is there's not really such thing as 'tone' - usually that's just a matter of low bodyfat % which shows your muscles more promimently. What you're talking about somewhat though is balancing hypertrophy and strength goals - where someone may wish to increase their reps to say 8-20 which is demonstrated with studies to increase muscle size, but is poorer for progressing with strength (where 3-8 reps is more effective)
s_m_t 9y ago
I interpreted that as "When people train, their goal in of itself is not usually to run faster or lift heavier weights". (the following might diverge from the actual content of the article, the author's english doesn't seem to be that great and I don't think we'll gain anything by taking the article literally)The goal might be overall health, attractiveness, etc. However, that doesn't mean they won't take the training seriously if they think it will help their larger goal. If you saw someone at the gym dilly dallying and doing a seriously half-assed rotation you might think they don't really care about their end goal. In the same vein if you saw a programmer coding something extremely slow just because they couldn't be bothered to put in the tiny bit of extra effort to get to a baseline of performance you might think they don't take their job or future skillset very seriously. Always thinking about the performance of your implementation is a form of training just like lifting weights is. Even if you don't care about making this particular section of code fast, or you don't care whether this particular dumbbell is lifted up and down 10 times in a row, you do those things in service of a greater goal.

by ssijak 9y ago

zimpenfish 9y ago

> If you don`t try to lift heavier weights you will not have progress. That depends on what you're aiming for - if you're aiming for tone rather than bulk, you'd go for more reps of the same weight rather than stepping up the weight with the same reps, wouldn't you? (Although I guess, technically, that does count as "heavier" since you're still moving more weight in your sets.)

tomtomau 9y ago
The general consensus is there's not really such thing as 'tone' - usually that's just a matter of low bodyfat % which shows your muscles more promimently. What you're talking about somewhat though is balancing hypertrophy and strength goals - where someone may wish to increase their reps to say 8-20 which is demonstrated with studies to increase muscle size, but is poorer for progressing with strength (where 3-8 reps is more effective)

s_m_t 9y ago

I interpreted that as "When people train, their goal in of itself is not usually to run faster or lift heavier weights". (the following might diverge from the actual content of the article, the author's english doesn't seem to be that great and I don't think we'll gain anything by taking the article literally)The goal might be overall health, attractiveness, etc. However, that doesn't mean they won't take the training seriously if they think it will help their larger goal. If you saw someone at the gym dilly dallying and doing a seriously half-assed rotation you might think they don't really care about their end goal. In the same vein if you saw a programmer coding something extremely slow just because they couldn't be bothered to put in the tiny bit of extra effort to get to a baseline of performance you might think they don't take their job or future skillset very seriously. Always thinking about the performance of your implementation is a form of training just like lifting weights is. Even if you don't care about making this particular section of code fast, or you don't care whether this particular dumbbell is lifted up and down 10 times in a row, you do those things in service of a greater goal.