It sounds like you’re talking about Planet Fitness where the point free weights are DBs and they’ll kick you out for droppinf weights or grunting.
They market the shit out of their “Judgement Free Zone” while serving pizza and bagels to their members. If you work hard then you’re too hard core for them. You’ll intimidate the fatties walking on the treadmill.
Home to some of the best - correct. It’s tough to determine the other part of your statement. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the US has the most professional athletes per capita. But that’s because we probably have more sports here.
I think smaller communities might be a better environment to develop elite athletes. I grew up in a small town and it was a big deal when we won the state championship in basketball. The whole town was excited. I can remember growing up and watching the basketball team almost win state. It definitely planted the seed and gave me a desire to achieve that. I think it was largely responsible for my team’s success.
I now live in a city that’s about 20% bigger than Iceland and it’s a different atmosphere. No one cares if one of the local schools is winning (we have at least 10 high schools in town). It doesn’t have a trickle down effect.
If you changed those State Champs to Olympic Champs then you have a buzz about things and people take notice. Little kids want to be like the local champ so they start training early and actually pursue it. That creates more elite athletes and the cycle continues.
In that case, if someone just likes being exceptionally strong for the sake of it well of course he will train for strength, perhaps indefinitely.
Me personally, I just lift on a full body routine with four to six exercises per session for 6 to 15 reps, depending on the session and exercises for 45 to 60 minutes, three times per week. Nearly all my cardio is brisk walking, with an occasional jog here and there. I do almost no barbell exercises anymore. Nearly all exercises are cable, loaded-bodyweight (eg, dips) and dumbbell exercises. My quality of life and well-being will not suffer from not training for maximal strength, nor would it increase if I do. Actually, training with the specific aims of bodybuilding (real bodybuilding training) or strength would take up more time and energy that I don’t want to use for such activities and increase risk of injury. Maybe people disagree with me, but powerlifting and bodybuilding DONE RIGHT are inherently abusive to the body.
My current full body routine looks like this.
Everything is one in an upper-lower-body superset or circuit fashion with as much or little rest I need between sets.
Split squat
Pullup
Dumbbell stiff-legged deadlift
Overhead standing dumbbell press
Incline fly
Ab rollouts with bar or ab wheel
Day 2
Goblet squat
Dips
Back extension
Dumbbell rows
Farmer’s walks
Day 3
Reverse lunges
Dumbbell press
Barbell hip thrusts
Cable rows
Palloff press
I will change exercises every six weeks. This is pretty much the guidelines for full body training we’ve seen by Charles Staley recently and Chad Waterbury many times.
This is completely off topic but my wife and I were watching an NBC show on Amazon Prime. She thought they were about to show a woman topless. She forgot that it was originally an NBC series but I told her I think we’ll see topless in the next 10 years.
Cussing is now allowed. TV people are always progressive.
I remember the first time I tried barbell benching, at age 22. I worked up to 75 lb for a few reps.
95 lb. crushed me. Couldn’t get it off of my chest. Someone helped me rack it. Imagine if I had benched alone and died with 95 lb. lmao.
I had absolutely no idea how to handle that kind of tension, never did anything in my life that mirrored it. The physical “labor” I did do growing up (yard work, moving stuff around), didn’t help any. I played tons of basketball, and was “strong” on the court (skills help), but couldn’t move weights around at all. Interesting looking back.
Doesn’t have much to do with strength standards… but whatever. ;f
FWIW, at some point (7 years down the road) I managed to bench 85 lb db’s (for 5), at like 155 lb (only ~10-12 lb heavier). That felt kinda good, I remember feeling proud of moving that around, felt like a good improvement. Doing more in one hand than I could do on a bar with 2 hands. Being so light/thin, I remember I had to be careful to not allow the weights to pull me off of the bench, lmao.
First time I benched was when I was at my cousin’s and he had left for a few hours. I was midteens.
I benched the bar, then added 20kg and that moved okay so I decided to put on all the weight he owned because ofcourse I could bench it. 80kg plus the bar.
I unracked it and all I could do was resist as hard as I could as it slowly descended. It’s a pretty weird feeling being unable to stop something coming at you, just slow it down… I managed to do a roll of shame and survive.
The other great time was the first time I left a commercial gym. I had worked up to 2 plates in the commercial gym. I tried 2 plated at my new gym… I suspect I had a 10kg bar in the old place so I almost got pinned but managed to grind it up.
I first started lifting at age 28, weighing 130 lbs at 5’6". My girlfriend (who is now my wife ) taught and aerobics class at a local gym and was always trying to get me to lift to cure my chest problem. She joked it was a pirates dream, a sunken chest, ouch!
My first day in I saw this woman benching 135lbs for reps so I thought ok, I can do this. After warming up with the 45lb bar I said let’s put 95lbs on. Big mistake, it came crashing down after doing one half of one rep. The woman who was benching next to had to save me. How embarrassing! I went home and had to rethink this. I used machines for the next 6 months to build a base of strength before trying free weights again. Fast forward 31 years and I’m still at it. Still not the strongest guy in the gym but I’m very happy with my progress.
also lol @ woman saving you @magnumd. you’re lucky it wasn’t me (when i was getting into lifting) trying to save you… wouldn’t have ended well. lmfao. When I was new to the gym, someone asked me for a spot, and I said uh ook sure, having never gave someone a spot before, and being too weak to spot someone. They started failing (with ~185 lb i think?) and I was basically too weak to help them - in a “i have no idea what i’m doing” kind of way, someone else came over and helped. LMFAO.
I also ruined someone’s 225 lb max rep bench press test when spotting someone who was prepping for a pro day football combine. BUT, I told them before hand, to get someone else to spot them. I guess they learned the hard way. 8|
edit: i’m actually really bad at being spotted also… I stopped doing that early on. I’d rather setup the pins where I can fail, and just fail… and squirm out. lmfao.
The first time I bench pressed was at a friend’s house on those old sand filled weights and a bench from K-Mart. For what ever reason, I thought that people should be able to bench press their body weight, so I went for it at a whopping 60 lbs. I untracked it andstraight dropped it across my lower ribcage. I was pretty sure that I broke some organs and would die very soon.
Turned out I was OK, but made sure to really grip the bar after that. Don’t remember when I actually did get that 60 lbs. though.
