There’s a clown using genetically gifted athletes as an example to propagate some personal preference for a particular exercise. For public health reasons, I just want to say a few things. You are free to obviously follow anyone’s suggestions.
There is a line to draw. If you hear that Einstein spent his mornings walking to clear his mind while attempting to solve problems that’s useful info. It doesn’t mean you’re going to solve the next mystery in physics.
99% of human beings are capable of walking. So the easy sleight of hand is open to use here to trick people. Let’s talk exercise physiology. It involves biomechanics. Joint structure determines function. Human beings have vastly different joint structures.
Look up a power lifter, a marathon runner, a sprinter and a swimmer. You will immediately start to see how things aren’t all the same. Baseball pitchers have 30% more connective tissues in their rotator cuffs. That is why a pitcher can launch a ball at 100 mph.
It’s also what allows them to not throw their arm out. Athletes are special genetic freaks. Whatever they do for their sport or their health is orders of magnitude beyond what the average person can do.
Case and point. The human body has baseline requirements. To survive. One of the ways it does this is that it sacrifices ligaments and tendons to same the belly of the muscle. Imagine you’re running from a bear in the jungle.
You violently step into a hole and that’s now an external shock. Your brain will actively inhibit and shut down a whole chain of muscles in your leg and lower extremity. Why? You might sprain an ankle but the joint stays in tact. You’re still able to make a get away.
Your brain sacrificing your ligaments and tendons to save the muscle belly in order to protect the joint is what it comes down to. So how do we extrapolate this? Well let’s look at a horrendously stupid exercise. The power clean.
Every exercise you see in the gym either has an aesthetic appeal or a specific history. Power cleans are about generating tremendous power. Which is the upside. Where’s the downside?
Once you get that load moving it’s no longer under your control. When you catch that weight it’s like that external shock from stepping violently into that hole. Your body actually inhibits a ton of muscles when you attempt to “catch” that load.
The catch is where you the price. And where the risk profile changes and your payoff space is skewed. If you want the benefits what people do is something called high pulls. You launch the weight just like a clean but you don’t catch it. You guide the bar as it crashes...
To the ground. Now you’re in a better position to capture the benefits while letting the ground and the plates pay the costs. Remember training is meant to get you stronger. Not injured. The sign of an idiot is someone who recommends specialized exercises for the general public.
Anyone telling you to do what genetically gifted athletes do is someone who is going to hurt you. Most athletes have very short lives. They spend their retirement in lots of pain because the spent their youth destroying their bodies.
Train for your 90 year old self. Everything else is a cost you won’t want to bear. There’s a final example. Overhead presses. You see people doing these and your own spine cringes involuntarily. The risk profile vs payoff space for that exercise is asymmetrical and stupid.
One bad rep and fuck you and your back. But hey in the meantime look good for twitter because some doofus is selling books and a brand while being stupid enough to not realize the short form brand literally ties to Hitler. 🤦♂️
Be healthy, be well, avoid cults and their newly recruited members.
