ProfQuirrell
No bio...
User ID: 606
ProfQuirrell
6mo ago
Only the heir to the kingdom of idiots fights a war on 13 fronts.
Great reference.
ProfQuirrell
8mo ago
Epistemic status: Uncertain
My lifting plan is centered around barbell work with some dumbbell accessory movements. I don't use machines at all. The reason to use free weights rather than machines is that you activate all kinds of smaller stabilizing muscles that aren't hit when using a machine because the machine guides the path of the weight for you. The advantage to using a machine would be to target your larger muscles in a very specific way.
My guess would be that gym owners invest in machines because:
- They are safer; you can seriously hurt yourself on a bench press if you don't have a spotter and don't have safety rails set up. You can't hurt yourself with a chest press machine.
- They're more user friendly; any schmuck can walk into a gym and immediately start using a machine rather than having to futz around with getting the settings right on a power rack and making sure they have good form etc.
- They're more sexy; newbies love using machines
But no, you don't actually need them and in my opinion you're better off not using them ... but really as long as you're getting in the gym consistently and pushing yourself hard you will progress (especially at first); the specifics aren't really that important.
ProfQuirrell
9mo ago
I do a fitness test with my students where I can crank out a little over 20 in a row. The thing that helped me the most was adding weight for training using a dip belt. I mixed pullups into my normal lifting routine with two variations depending on what else I was doing:
Pullups at 3x6 with a low amount of additional weight (normally I do this with about 25 lbs, but start lower)
Pullups at 5x3 with a high amount of additional weight (now it's something like 80 lbs, but start lower)
Do linear progression for the above.
Throw in some 3x8 or 3x10 normal pullups or chinups from time to time too.
I think just additional volume on the same motion won't really help you; the big thing is to make it harder. So add weight, same as you do for any other lift!
ProfQuirrell
6mo ago
As one of the (mostly) silent majority who got a few ACQs back when we were on Reddit, you summed it up well.
I also share your frustration that media seems completely uninterested in citing any primary source, particularly court documents. It's not hard at all to find the .pdfs, so I can only assume they don't want readers to come to their own conclusions; just trust whatever we tell you!
ProfQuirrell
11mo ago
He hides it pretty well, but this is the first Econtalk I've ever heard (and I've been listening for 6+ years) where Russ doesn't give the guest the last word and instead just ends it himself.
ProfQuirrell
8mo ago
She was mostly determined to take posed photos of the kids, culminating a very staged attempt at getting a video of her reading a book to all the kids, keeping two of them up past their bed times. I don't think she learned anything from the experience, though the video is hard to watch with all the crying from the younger two.
As someone with five kids (one special needs) and a mother in law who is similarly useless / kind of narcissistic, I was filled with second-hand rage reading this. Hang in there, that's really hard.
Test passed, no doubt.
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