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I'm in a running club. It's kind of interesting how it stratifies.
Tier 1. Exclusively extremely younger fit dudes that win sprint races. Coach has completely different conversations with them.
Tier 2. Younger fit dudes and extremely fit middle aged dudes that win distance races, and some extremely fit younger women that win their category in distance races.
Tier 3. Middle aged fit dudes and younger fit women. Maybe we win our age+sex age group in some races. I'm in this group.
Tier 4. Obese dudes, not very fit dudes, thinner women.
Tier 5. Obese women.
Even though we're in a very blue town the vibe of the club is... not overly political! The most political thing we did was try to organize a food drive for people losing SNAP benefits.
Running is for everyone and you don't have to be competitive to enjoy it but it's pretty clear the young fit dudes are on a different plane of existence and we all know why.
No amount of hugboxing will get you a top 5 10k time if you don't put in the work and don't have genetics working against you.
The coach is not based enough to flat out announce the single best way to improve your running performance is to lose weight. But he will admit it in private!
Wait you're telling me there are chubby women in running clubs? I didn't know. ..this potentially changes everything.
Maybe there's a point in running after all.
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There's a bit of a funny story at my dojo my sensei likes to tell from time to time.
Years ago, his sensei was teaching. At the end of the class, his sensei turned to one of the female students, and promptly said '(Female student), you're getting fat!' In front of everyone. Not giving a fuck.
Cue strangled reply from said female student. Who then promptly lost weight in the coming months.
Morale of the story is... I dunno, get an old japanese guy to teach your running classes or something.
Which martial art do you practice?
Shotokan karate.
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In my opinion, the real question is what happens if the club comes into a significant concentration of social or financial capital. So for example, what happens if a wealthy member of the club dies and leaves $5 million to the club for construction of a nice facility. How long after that will people start joining the club and demanding "equity"?
I think that there are a lot of institutions out there which don't get infiltrated and captured mainly because they don't have anything worth looting.
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Interesting but not surprising.
What's really funny is now GLP-1 drugs have made it a simple matter of adhering to an injection schedule, so these difficult conversations need not happen. Someone just loses a bunch of weight out of 'nowhere' and their life quality and performance improves, everyone cheers, and then nobody has to acknowledge that being fat just sucks in about every way no matter what you do.
Martials arts well, as they say "weight classes exist for a reason." There's a bit more dimensionality to it, but simply put you will never EVER find a woman who can beat a man in her weight class without the guy being severely handicapped.
hollow laughter
I wish it worked like that. I'm on one for nearly a year now. Helps with the blood sugar levels, but nothing about weight. I'm around the same weight as ever (and it takes me effort to maintain that and not balloon up).
The magical "you won't feel hungry, you will feel full, it helps with all sorts of willpower, weight just drops off" results? I'm not seeing any of them.
Never have with any drugs that were supposed to be "and a side-effect is weight loss". One time I was on some medication and the doctor laughingly said "one patient I prescribed this to lost so much weight, he had to come off it". "Won't be a problem with me", I replied, and it wasn't, because no. goddamn. drugs. stop. me. feeling. hungry.
The only time, the only time, I lose even a small amount of weight is when I am literally too sick to eat anything and it's hard even to keep down water. Again, for one of those times, I went to the doctor (for antibiotics) and they did a routine blood sugar test because I had all the shaky symptoms, and the nurse made me eat something to bring up my blood sugar because it was too low to measure. In fact, I couldn't even eat the chocolate biscuit she gave me, so they had to dig out an energy drink.
I still remain embarrassingly fat.
The drugs don't work, indeed.
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As someone who is taking 2mg of Ozempic weekly (for diabetes, which it is helping), I can tell you that unfortunately this isn't true. It still depends on the person. Obviously some have success, but not all will.
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I assume you mean at the highest levels of the sport. Female black belts can absolutely wreck even fairly experienced dudes with 50 pounds on them when it comes to grappling (not as effortlessly as a male black belt their size would, but still).
Which MA? Because this is just like not true in Judo or Wrestling. And while I am less experienced with BJJ and combined striking full MMA styles I would think Male + 50 Lbs + mild experience is insurmountable. Even in all male rooms 50 lbs is a lot, and 50 can make up for inexperience if the lighter guy isn't a much better genetic athlete than you. My primary combat sport was wrestling way back in HS. I'd willingly give up 50 lbs to any female wrestler age 18 vs me at 18. It would not be close. As a pretty good wrestler, I could sometimes take on guys 50 lbs more, but they would be typically pretty inexperienced, or just bad at sports. My best friend and I started as freshman at the same weight. I won the starting position and consistently beat him that whole year. In the offseason he grew a shit ton, and I did not. Next 3 years he consistently beats me with a 20-35 lb advantage. Muscle is pretty good.
Give an athletic guy 2 weeks and 50 lbs, your black belt is not going to get you far as a lady.
Bjj is what I’m thinking of. Of all the options, it is probably the best at letting skill overcome weight differences. A 120 pound woman needs a specific style to beat a 170 pound man (extremely high tempo position switches and constant attacks), but there are women who have that level of skill out there. It is very hard, and they essentially have to be at the level of high level competitors to be able to beat male hobbyists who outweigh them, but I have experienced it and watched it.
What I am seeing from you description is that high skill + top 1% athlete defeats 50th percentile fat guy. That isn't interesting.
You're really underestimating female bjj practitioners. I'm fat at 6'1" 245 lbs, but I think I'm pretty convincingly 80th percentile or higher at fighting compared to men in my age cohort thanks to previous martial arts experience. But the (short, fat, female) purple belt at the jiu jitsu gym I joined still beat my ass on the rare occasion that we fought. Multiplying it out a female jiu jitsu purple belt is probably far rarer than 1%-- relative to women her age, I'd guess she's at or above the top 0.01% in terms of fighting ability-- but the interesting result is that it's not athleticism, but technique that puts her over the edge.
I really would go out of my way to get the chance to roll with a female blackbelt at some point, just so that I could offer first hand experience on this instead of this theoretical opinion situation.
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Well, are we starting with grappling or does the woman have to take him down?
I guess I can clarify, if 'dirty' tactics like eye gouges and groin strikes are on the table, then size isn't an insurmountable factor.
Problem is a dude can win literally by just dropping all his weight on her and holding her down.
If you think you can win by just dropping all your weight one someone, it’s obvious you’ve never done submission grappling in a serious way. If someone with 50 pounds on me just drops their weight on me without any sort of skill behind it, I’ll be choking them in 30 seconds.
Takedowns are harder given a weight difference because wrestling is harder to do across weight classes than submission grappling is. I’m less confident that a very experienced woman could beat a dude who outweighs her and has a moderate amount of experience from the feet.
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Could you adjust the weight classes for women's baseline higher body fat percentage?
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