The idolatry of nerds ("pencilnecks") has infected the bodybuilding and fitness space

[Carl-Richard]

Thanks to creators such as Dr. Mike Isratael and Jeff Nippard, "thinking about lifting" has become more important than lifting itself.

Commandments:

- Listen to the mind first, listen to the body second.

- Rely on a summation of studies with dubious generalizability first. Figure out what works through experience second.

- Rely on counterintuitive, awkward and kinetically stifled movements first. Maximize flow and intensity second.

Rick Bugenhagen has accurately identified the problem:

 

 

 

Edited September 18, 2024 by Carl-Richard

[Jannes]

Why is he so angry? 

Yes I partially agree that thinking might play to large of a role in some peoples training. I personally experienced it myself getting lost in concepts. But you notice that and adapt to it and find a balance. Dr. Mike and Jeff Nippard are not advocating to not listen to your body though, they encourage you to listen to your body always and adapt accordingly to the bodies signals. 

Training very hard with bad form never felt good to me though. That you need to train hardcore (ego lifting) to grow is a thought coming from the ego mind and not a signal of the body. 

Focusing on the deep stretch and control is what my body tells me is growing my muscles the most. 

[Carl-Richard]

5 hours ago, Jannes said:

Why is he so angry? 

Loads of steroids and coffee 😤

 

5 hours ago, Jannes said:

But you notice that and adapt to it and find a balance. Dr. Mike and Jeff Nippard are not advocating to not listen to your body though, they encourage you to listen to your body always and adapt accordingly to the bodies signals.

It's not that they don't listen to their bodies. It's that they listen to their mind first and body second. The way they structure their training penalizes intensity and flow, which is what makes training feel good and how you perform the best. They make training feel like you hate yourself.

 

5 hours ago, Jannes said:

Training very hard with bad form never felt good to me though.

Back in the day, bad form meant "not full range of motion". Today, thanks to Dr. Mike and Mr. Nipples, bad form means anything else than slowly controlling the excentric, ridiculously deep stretch and pausing at the bottom. You can train intensely with full range of motion (good form), no problem.

 

5 hours ago, Jannes said:

That you need to train hardcore (ego lifting) to grow is a thought coming from the ego mind and not a signal of the body.

Not at all. Training hardcore is what feels good. It is what comes naturally before your nerd brain takes over and overanalyzes everything. And really, fearing being judged as an "ego lifter" is the real ego lifting.

Edited October 2, 2024 by Carl-Richard

[Jannes]

12 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

It's not that they don't listen to their bodies. It's that they listen to their mind first and body second. The way they structure their training penalizes intensity and flow, which is what makes training feel good and how you perform the best. They make training feel like you hate yourself.

I think you are onto something. When you train with passion you can go with what feels the best and what comes naturally and not what is on your plan. Like when you start benching and you feel like flys would be the shit for your pecs next you go and do that and not because it is the most logical thing to do. You are more in touch with your intuition and spirit. I trained mostly with a plan but it's not the most fun way. 

12 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Back in the day, bad form meant "not full range of motion". Today, thanks to Dr. Mike and Mr. Nipples, bad form means anything else than slowly controlling the excentric, ridiculously deep stretch and pausing at the bottom. You can train intensely with full range of motion (good form), no problem.

It is the most effective way to train as you get more stimulus but it can be a bit annoying to do that all the time. Although in many exercises this approach really feels great. I wouldnt have fun doing any sort of pressing movement without this technique for example, it's simply the best. 

12 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Not at all. Training hardcore is what feels good. It is what comes naturally before your nerd brain takes over and overanalyzes everything. And really, fearing being judged as an "ego lifter" is the real ego lifting.

I just learned that I should train to failure and thats what I have been doing all my life as it is burnt into my psyche by now. Not sure what a newcomer would naturally gravitate towards.

[Carl-Richard]

9 hours ago, Jannes said:

I think you are onto something. When you train with passion you can go with what feels the best and what comes naturally and not what is on your plan. Like when you start benching and you feel like flys would be the shit for your pecs next you go and do that and not because it is the most logical thing to do. You are more in touch with your intuition and spirit. I trained mostly with a plan but it's not the most fun way. 

It is the most effective way to train as you get more stimulus but it can be a bit annoying to do that all the time. Although in many exercises this approach really feels great. I wouldnt have fun doing any sort of pressing movement without this technique for example, it's simply the best.

I train with a plan but still try to go intense. I did try the slow and controlled approach for about a year when I was trying to fix my muscle imbalances, but now in the last few weeks when I tried the usual intense training, it's night and day in terms of how it feels (mood, energy, pump, etc.). It's also night and day for your cognitive functioning (for example, lactate is directly involved in glutamate transmission).

 

9 hours ago, Jannes said:

I just learned that I should train to failure and thats what I have been doing all my life as it is burnt into my psyche by now. Not sure what a newcomer would naturally gravitate towards.

If it's one thing a newcomer does not naturally gravitate towards, it's slow, controlled, deep stretch, pause at bottom.

[VictorB02]

On 10/2/2024 at 7:11 AM, Jannes said:

Why is he so angry? 

It's called Testosterone.

And steroids. Most definitely steroids.

[sholomar]

Internet is all content peddlers trying to monetize their efforts these days... it's why you have so many echo chambers and so many niche diets. Truthfully as you get older there's more you have to think about with fitness, such as managing things like golfer's elbow, tennis elbow, shoulder impingement, lower back pain from improper form or too much volume, etc.... stuff they really don't tell you in a lot of these videos.

Enjoy your 20's and early 30's while you can, because life is short and age will catch up with you.  Just lift stuff. If you feel pain that is not muscular, figure out why and adjust your workout to stop the pain.   Sometimes I question just how much people actually need to exercise and that overdoing is simply wears the body out faster. It's all about moderation.

[Jannes]

On 3.10.2024 at 6:46 AM, Carl-Richard said:

If it's one thing a newcomer does not naturally gravitate towards, it's slow, controlled, deep stretch, pause at bottom.

But newcomers are not really a blank piece of paper when it comes to training ideas, they have all kinds of ideas instilled in them from movies, videos, etc. of what training is. Mostly that training must be hardcore. Although back in the days I had a friend who just started out who only trained slow and controlled, so these cases exist for sure. 

[Carl-Richard]

23 hours ago, Jannes said:

But newcomers are not really a blank piece of paper when it comes to training ideas, they have all kinds of ideas instilled in them from movies, videos, etc. of what training is. Mostly that training must be hardcore. Although back in the days I had a friend who just started out who only trained slow and controlled, so these cases exist for sure. 

True, but if you're a young male and say 15 years old like I was when starting out with basically zero knowledge about lifting and only a workout program that I got from an introductory PT lesson, it's in your primal instincts to smash that weight to pieces. Your surging testosterone levels and ape level brain simply won't allow anything else. In such cases, it takes a lot of "brainwashing" with getting spammed with dozens of YouTube shorts each day of Mike Isratael hammering in his tightened anus approach to lifting before you transcend those impulses.

I had a friend who when he tried deadlifts for the first time, he instantly put on 100kg without warming up and fucked his back. Luckily it wasn't too serious.

Edited October 11, 2024 by Carl-Richard

[Jannes]

@Carl-Richard I trained like that when I started working out when I was 15. Always training to or beyond failure with bad technique on every exercise. I cant really capture the emotions back then, I liked the hardcore but I also thought this was the way to grow muscle. My friend who trained very controlled was 16 trained and I dont know what his thought process was.

I had such insane pumps back then because of all the testosterone. 

Interestingly females dont train this hardcore way, they train slow and controlled. So maybe it has to do with testosterone, that because of the extra energy and aggressiveness that comes from testosterone that it feels more natural to train hard. 

[Carl-Richard]

Sam Sulek echoing the principles of holistic lifting vs reductionistic lifting. Moving a weight cannot be reduced down to simple commandments. You have to develop it by doing it and feeling it out. The church of science-based lifting is what bible-thumping intellectualized religion is to ass-to-grass embodied spiritual practice.

And you also have to be aware of your goals. Are your goals improved mood, improved focus, is lifting something fun, do you want to maximize performance, do you like performing at your max, or are you simply about maximizing pounds of meat on your frame? Working out does not just affect one thing, people extremely rarely only do it for one thing (and ideally, you do it for everything.

 

Edited Sunday at 05:25 AM by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

Let's put it this way: do you want to listen to the couple of brain cells in the front of your brain (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the frontopolar cortex, all that good stuff) that tells you " tHiS iS tHe sCiEnTificALly oPtiMaL wAy tO liFt", or do you want to listen to literally every cell in your body?

That rush you feel to move that weight super fast and super forcefully, that's billions of years of genetic memory at work pushing you to do that. Forget the memory in your little tiny monkey brain. Let the memory of the entire universe flow through you. Let the spirit of God move through you (literally; lifting at your peak is a mystical experience, it's a Jesus take the wheel type experience).

Remember back to grade school when the class went for a bike trip and how all the boys were like rushing and blasting full cylinders from the very start and how all the girls (some of them) were like "you know you shouldn't spend all your juices at the very start, right >:(?" Why would you hold back that natural forceful energy, that primal energy, that natural adaptive force, like some giiiirl (just joking), when you can use it exactly the way it was intended? 

Evolution pushes you to act within your adaptive capacities and pushing it to the limit. That's how you survive and that's how you grow. (But of course, weaksauce training with immense volume might be better for hypertrophy in some cases, but as a general catch-all approach to training, when looking at all the benefits of training, without a doubt, you should go full intensity, or else you're just wasting your potential).

Edited Sunday at 04:18 AM by Carl-Richard

[Rigel]

Dr Mike Isratael has a very un holistic mind. He’s smart but has no wisdom. His perspective sabotages health & performance for aesthetics & vanity. I guess there’s nothing wrong with that either but it all seems kinda pointless to me. Why do you want to be 300lbs of pure beef & not be able to sprint or broad jump. It’s ridiculous.

[Schizophonia]

I'd rather have "pencil neck" than end up with a herniated disc, a torn muscle, a torn ligament, etc.
The guy who made the video may be angry, but Mister Olympia contestants often have accidents.

[Schizophonia]

In obsessive-compulsive neurosis, due to castration anxiety, there is a pleasure in shitting in the wrong place as a response; excrement is used as a substitute for the phallus.

That is, you will "hold it in" most of the time and exhibit mixed, non directed, even masochistic behavior; this is due to unconscious processes. And sometimes you "release the excrements" and become aggressive/sadistic, and say, "Oh, what a pain in the ass those cuckolds pencil necks, me, virility, me, me...").

But excrement still isn't a real phallus; the true phallic position doesn't occur when you rebel, but when there's nothing left to rebel against. If you've adopted the phallic position, then there's no longer any competition (unconsciously the father/father substitutes, power holders, since the Oedipus complex or individual scenario of the transition to the phallic stage in general) to rebel against, by definition.

So right now, you'd be a stoic doing whatever you want, rather than going on Actualized and making a thread complaining about your gay (non-phallic) mirrors who are afraid to lift heavy weights.

 

Edited Wednesday at 06:38 PM by Schizophonia

[UnbornTao]

17 minutes ago, Schizophonia said:

In obsessive-compulsive neurosis, due to castration anxiety, there is a pleasure in shitting in the wrong place as a response; excrement is used as a substitute for the phallus.

That is, you will "hold it in" most of the time and exhibit mixed, non directed, even masochistic behavior; this is due to unconscious processes. And sometimes you "release the excrements" and become aggressive/sadistic, and say, "Oh, what a pain in the ass those cuckolds pencil necks, me, virility, me, me...").

But excrement still isn't a real phallus; the true phallic position doesn't occur when you rebel, but when there's nothing left to rebel against. If you've adopted the phallic position, then there's no longer any competition (unconsciously the father/father substitutes, power holders, since the Oedipus complex or individual scenario of the transition to the phallic stage in general) to rebel against, by definition.

So right now, you'd be a stoic doing whatever you want, rather than going on Actualized and making a thread complaining about your gay (non-phallic) mirrors who are afraid to lift heavy weights.

 

Where did that come from?

Edited Wednesday at 06:53 PM by UnbornTao

[Schizophonia]

54 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Where did that come from?

Lots of introspection, and videos on Freud/Lacan during my insomnias.

Edited Wednesday at 07:42 PM by Schizophonia

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, Schizophonia said:

In obsessive-compulsive neurosis, due to castration anxiety, there is a pleasure in shitting in the wrong place as a response; excrement is used as a substitute for the phallus.

That is, you will "hold it in" most of the time and exhibit mixed, non directed, even masochistic behavior; this is due to unconscious processes. And sometimes you "release the excrements" and become aggressive/sadistic, and say, "Oh, what a pain in the ass those cuckolds pencil necks, me, virility, me, me...").

But excrement still isn't a real phallus; the true phallic position doesn't occur when you rebel, but when there's nothing left to rebel against. If you've adopted the phallic position, then there's no longer any competition (unconsciously the father/father substitutes, power holders, since the Oedipus complex or individual scenario of the transition to the phallic stage in general) to rebel against, by definition.

So right now, you'd be a stoic doing whatever you want, rather than going on Actualized and making a thread complaining about your gay (non-phallic) mirrors who are afraid to lift heavy weights.

All I read is that you like to take a phallus up the ass 

More seriously: every expression is an excrement. Presenting a stance, taking a position, requires shitting on something. If you don't want to shit, then hold it in.

You don't have to project this macho frame onto, about having the phallus or feeling superficially superior or powerful, or whatever Freudian "everything is fundamentally bad, painful and conflict-filled" frame. It's about expression.

That's where your "dysthymic" self-identity comes from: from anally receiving Freud, shitting his turds in reverse (man, this is going places).

Edited Wednesday at 09:31 PM by Carl-Richard

[something_else]

On 03/10/2024 at 5:46 AM, Carl-Richard said:

If it's one thing a newcomer does not naturally gravitate towards, it's slow, controlled, deep stretch, pause at bottom.

It kind of makes sense that the slower you move the more muscle growth you’ll encourage. The more time your muscles spend under tension the more they tear and the more they grow.

The only hill I’ve ever seen Jeff Nippard die on say in terms of how your reps should be timed is that the eccentric should be at least 1 second. Realistically if your eccentric is shorter than 1 second you’re probably lifting with bad form or trying to lift weights that are too heavy for you

[something_else]

3 hours ago, Schizophonia said:

In obsessive-compulsive neurosis, due to castration anxiety, there is a pleasure in shitting in the wrong place as a response; excrement is used as a substitute for the phallus.

That is, you will "hold it in" most of the time and exhibit mixed, non directed, even masochistic behavior; this is due to unconscious processes. And sometimes you "release the excrements" and become aggressive/sadistic, and say, "Oh, what a pain in the ass those cuckolds pencil necks, me, virility, me, me...").

But excrement still isn't a real phallus; the true phallic position doesn't occur when you rebel, but when there's nothing left to rebel against. If you've adopted the phallic position, then there's no longer any competition (unconsciously the father/father substitutes, power holders, since the Oedipus complex or individual scenario of the transition to the phallic stage in general) to rebel against, by definition.

So right now, you'd be a stoic doing whatever you want, rather than going on Actualized and making a thread complaining about your gay (non-phallic) mirrors who are afraid to lift heavy weights.

 

What in the fuck did I just read? I feel like I need to wash out my eyeballs with soap and water now