srf0638
16d ago
I've seen that article (and e.g. https://www.slowtwitch.com/running/we-often-run-faster-off-tri-training/). Best I can tell, Couzens has appallingly bad epistemics, but I think he's pretty close to right on this point.
What you perceive as "goofy" is in my mind more like "optimized for achieving balance across multiple domains of fitness."
Eh, I was thinking, like, shadowboxing with dumbbells, or anything involving Bosu balls or squishy foam mats or tsunami bars, for instance, none of which I would consider simple but balanced. Though, granted, it's not like I have a video montage of top MMA guys doing that stuff.
When you say you are suspicious of general fitness, are you saying such a property doesn't exist, that it's impossible to describe, or that it never matters to anyone?
I would accept either "doesn't exist" or "is impossible to meaningfully describe" as a characterization of my views, here's my reasoning:
optimizing fitness for a given activity A produces different levels of fitness for B and C;
This is of course correct, but I think that people's actual selection of A, B, C, ..., ultimately boils down to some.combination of the following:
-"idk it just sounds cool", great, awesome, that's pretty much what it comes down to for me as well, but I don't think you can get from this to meaningful claims about generality.
-muh fizeek, to be answered by a dismissive Bronx cheer
-fighting/soldiering/moving house/farming/etc from someone who's not actually doing any of those things and has no plans to start, ditto
--fighting/soldiering/moving house/farming/etc from someone who is actually doing one of those things, but then you're just doing task-specific s&c, and it's not going to matter much in comparison to specific practice anyway.
Basically, I don't think there's a principled way to select a truly general A, B, C.
On a purely autobiographical level, I experienced noticeably better carryover to manual labor in the woods from training like a dentist with a half Ironman coming up than I did from various well-regarded "tactical" training systems. I suppose this isn't a terribly widespread experience, but then again I don't know how many people have tried both, and it certainly made me more skeptical of the idea that I had to think about some kind of balance or generality in my training for it to carry over to real-world tasks.
srf0638
17d ago
FWIW, the most interesting answer to "the fittest" in my mind is probably MMA competition,
There's a certain primal appeal to fighting, absolutely, but I also feel like combat sports s&c is pretty unsophisticated or downright goofy compared to more specialized events because, well, perfectly optimized s&c isn't all that important relative to skills training.
I am an athletic mediocrity
Oh, sure, me too, and ultimately pretty similar logic re:specialization, I just think the many variations on "but what's his Fran time?" (perhaps more prevalent: "I would never want to look like that") are generally contemptible.
More generally, it occurs to me that the word "fit" by its etymology and other meanings pretty strongly implies specificity--fit for something or other. I don't know how many people this will convince, but it certainly makes me look on the concept of "general fitness" with a good deal of suspicion.
srf0638
17d ago
The inability (in work capacity or mental fortitude) to lift all day is the same as not being "all that strong at all" - no matter what the little numbers on the plates say when they get moved around for a grand total of 10 minutes every other day.
It seems more or less pointlessly obfuscatory to use the word "strong" like this when you yourself invoked the more accurate "work capacity or mental fortitude" (and we might also or instead say endurance, heat tolerance, hand skin toughness, ....). People surely do love to define "true strength" as what they, themselves, are good at, even when it has very little to do with maximal force production.
srf0638
17d ago
hopper
I would push back against this a bit. If a "hopper" scenario is what motivates you to go put in the work, fine, cool, whatever. But it sure seems to me that this scenario is just as contrived and fake as actual real competitive sports with standards established through a history of wide participation, particularly when you look at the multisport competitions that actually exist. To my ear, it vaguely rhymes with a Rawlsian veil of ignorance--"how would I train if I didn't know what I had to do?" Of course, there may be an answer to this question, but in a world where I do pretty much know what I have to do that answer shouldn't have much action-guiding force. Meanwhile, the cost of invoking a "hopper" scenario is that it invites mediocrities to be smug, cf my point above about established standards--"Mark Allen? what's his Fran time?"
when one is talking about muscles we're mostly talking about aesthetics.
Indeed. I class talk of "gym muscle" much the same as "I don't want to look like one of those gross bodybuilders", "lean, toned muscle", " Tyler Durden in Fight Club", "swimmer physique", etc. etc.
srf0638
20d ago
running through Wilson's Ramble with her male boss to get ready.
Woof.
I think I could manage faster than 40 days, but yeah, that's the rub. I've enjoyed interacting with fellow travelers on previous tours, so timing things to line up with the Grand Depart has a certain appeal.
srf0638
20d ago
srf0638
22d ago
Would you race?
I might try to throw down some big days, but I don't like recreational sleep deprivation, so not in a real serious sense. Maybe start with the Grand Depart, maybe not. You?
I've done a fair bit of solo travel both on and off the bike, never really struggled, but it's gonna be harder to schedule now that I have a serious gf. Or slow-play my hand and do it when I retire, there's at least one guy in his 70s on the Rigs of the Tour Divide series every year.
srf0638
22d ago
Nothing much of substance to add, but I enjoyed this quite a bit. Have done a few touring-with-a-purpose trips on pavement, would like to hit the GDMBR and Baja Divide someday.
srf0638
2mo ago
I don't really trust calculated/composite scores from wearables myself. But caffeine/stimulant use might be worth thinking about.
srf0638
2mo ago
quitting to pick pineapples isn't going to make you any happier until you find something larger than your own ego and physical pleasure to live for.
I dunno, one can be noticeably happier on the pineapple plantations while still suffering from a lack of larger meaning, and indeed that's a pretty fair description of how it worked out for me.
There's also some ambiguity here (and in the original pineapples post)--is "picking pineapples" meant to denote physical work in the outdoors, maybe somewhere exotic, maybe seasonal, maybe paired with travel during the offseason? (Planting trees in Canada, fishing in Alaska, wildland fire, etc. etc.). Or is it merely supposed to be any kind of low-wage minimum viable employment? In the former case in particular, I can see it being quite a bit better than Office Spaceing and swiping harder, while still being ultimately meaningless. In the latter case, maybe less so (though even then, "work a mcjob and spend half the year training muay thai in rural Thailand and living like a local" might fall into the same bucket as the first class of jobs.).
srf0638
3mo ago
srf0638
3mo ago
have only really seen that particular work
You trippin foo, "Freedom from Want", "Rosie the Riveter", "Dreams", "The Runaway", and "Soda Jerk" are all at least as common in the US outside of the Extremely Online, "Freedom From Want" quite a bit more so. I've also seen "Be a Man", "Sunset", and "Sunday Morning" around pretty often. While I will otherwise refrain from offering opinions on artistic merit in this comment, I'll add that when I was trying to find links to all these pictures I'd seen but didn't know the names of I encountered "CPA" and "The Lineman" for the first time, and I quite like them both.
srf0638
3mo ago
I think most women consider the idea of various forms of sex work as a fantasy in much the same way that most men vaguely fantasize about violent crime, or of running off to work on an oil rig.
Whoa
srf0638
4mo ago
You can also find 3rd party OSes (KOReader, Plato) that work noticeably better than stock.
srf0638
4mo ago
I'm actually not sure why this method of eating fruit hasn't caught on more outside of Southeast Asia
Sounds a bit like the Mexican custom of eating mango/pineapple/melon with tajín, which is quite good.
srf0638
4mo ago
Some modestly weighted chins and dips (via a dip belt worn low on the hips) were pretty much an overnight fix for some back pain I was having around January/February.
srf0638
4mo ago
This time, it wasn't THAT bad
Ah but were you wearing your official ROGUE(tm) 25lb plate carrier with Punisher skull patch?
srf0638
4mo ago
undiscounted prices are, while better than the eBay resellers, not that amazing.
Honestly, this is mostly the level I operate on (and sometimes big sales days like 11.11). This and generally knowing what's a good product (TPU tubes are a great example, Kalloy Uno stems, Raudax jerseys, and the 3d printed saddles are also well-regarded and in my experience pretty good value; complete bikes and wheelsets are better bought from OEMs that sell via email, for example).
I think the app offers some better deals but I haven't bothered to engage with it very much.
srf0638
4mo ago
I've bought quite a bit of bike shit off AliExpress. Decent deals to be had if you lurk enthusiast forums.
His truth-seeking processes are bad. In particular:
-Refuses on principle to engage with disagreement, except maybe of the "fifty Stalins" variety
-Lots of talk about intermediate outcomes but precious bloody little about actual performance
-Confident inference from naive linear regressions on heavily pre-selected populations (as in linked article)
It's not really that bad by the standards of the fitness industry, I guess, but it annoys me coming from someone whose self-presentation makes it seem like he should know better.
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