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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2039 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for March 20, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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How much muscle is ideal for a man? At what point does lifting weights become detrimental? What is the ideal proportion of body weight to be able to bench/squat/deadlift/overhead press for a man with healthy bodyfat?

Evolution of the lifting dude.

I am at the gymbro stage wondering if it is worth evolving further.

At what point does lifting weights become detrimental?

Realistically, when you're already stronger than most men and the time cost is cutting into other valuable pursuits.

For maximum attractiveness to women, being lean (say 10~12% body fat) at something like 21 to 22 ffmi is probably the optimum, see this calculator to play around with your own stats. Regarding specific muscles, side delts are #1, then chest, back, and arms. Girls don't care about legs as long as they're not ridiculously out of proportion with the rest of your body. Glutes are also important for the overall silhouette from the back.

See this video for discussions about the optimal muscle level for attractiveness.

In general I'd say as much as possible so long as you're not doing steroids. It's hard to borderline impossible to put on too much muscle without some kind of growth hormones, which has skewed people's perception of the consequences of lifting.

An exception to this could be if you're really short (and have short limbs) in which case you might start looking a bit like a dwarf, but even that is mostly a consequence of people doing steroids. If you're of average height and above you really shouldn't worry. Even thimble sized guy like PewDiePie does 2 plate bench and do you think he looks too muscular?

Tldr: Go as hard as you can and don't do steroids.

Opinions may vary, but I don't consider any amount of muscle or strength to be excessive or undesirable.

How much muscle is ideal for a man?

How much height or wealth is ideal for a man? Height doesn’t matter, as long as you’re 6’6” or over. Similar principle with regard to muscle.

At what point does lifting weights become detrimental?

Pretty much never, unless you’re blasting a gram+ of testosterone a week with other anabolics in the mix, and lifting weights as a full-time job.

What is the ideal proportion of body weight to be able to bench/squat/deadlift/overhead press for a man with healthy bodyfat?

As much as possible, especially bench and/or OP.

For the most part, there’s no too much strength or muscle, just as there’s not too much height or wealth. Especially when it comes to dating and/or relationship management with women, basically never are there negative returns with regard to additional status/dominance signals.

I'll second @FiveHourMarathon here: if you're asking people on the internet this question, you aren't anywhere near needing to worry about the limits. Lifting weights to get stronger is basically pure upside until you get so deep into it that it becomes a part-time job, and even then it's basically all upside.

I also agree that 1/2/3 plate bench/squat/dead is a good bare minimum for a male lifter; under that your only goal should be getting stronger regardless of any other athletic goal.

if you're asking people on the internet this question, you aren't anywhere near needing to worry about the limits

My hope is this was an intellectual exercise instead of a serious inquiry.

Otherwise it's much like women worrying about being too "ripped". Honey, it'll never happen - and if it does, a week on the couch will swing you back just fine.

Lifting weights to build muscle is probably detrimental to long term longevity, particularly coupled with a high BW. If you care about that sort of thing.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37285331/

Conclusions: Low SMI was significantly associated with the increased risk of all-cause mortality, and the risk of all-cause mortality associated with low SMI was higher in adults with a higher BMI. Low SMI Prevention and treatment might be significant for reducing mortality risk and promoting healthy longevity.

I agree with @ArmedTooHeavily

Person goes to hospital with cancer. Is stuck in a bed having their bum wiped for them. Loses muscle mass. Dies. Clearly they just needed some whey and squats. Or hospitals cause cancer.

Actual weightlifters have bad life expectancy outcomes, on par with athletes that get punched in the face regularly.

https://www.sebjenseb.net/p/what-is-the-optimal-body-type

This guy is talking about "Olympic bodybuilders" so I am immediately skeptical that he has any idea about what is going on in the data. Looking at data that involves all Olympic weightlifters is going to be confounded by the super heavyweights with enormous fat mass.

confounded by the super heavyweights with enormous fat mass

Not just that, but if you look at the methodology they do not control for any confounders. Particularity the fact that countries that focus on Olympic weightlifting typically do so because it's relatively inexpensive to have a program compared to other sports. Look at any of the medals tables and you see a bunch of North Korea, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Belarus, etc. None of which are famed for longevity of the population. That lifespan chart is absolutely useless without controlling for confounders, unless you think equestrian and sailing has some magical protective powers other than being a sign of affluence.

They also fail to quantify the likely effect of steroid use, which is absolutely rampant in top level weightlifting. "...in the past decade, more than 600 lifters have tested positive." This is particularity relevant because the steroids used are chosen for their ability to avoid doping control and make the athletes stronger not for safety

Also agree, you should probably not take training advise from someone who does not understand the difference between general strength training for health, weightlifting the sport, and bodybuilding.

I'm sure you could find any number of reasons to ignore anyone you feel like - why not a typo or minor terminological error?

It's really more of a major error because the body composition of a bodybuilder is totally different from the body composition of a weightlifter. Olympic weightlifters are also (at least nominally) drug tested while top bodybuilders are not.

Again, if you choose not to be interested in this, you could find any number of rationalisations. That he wrote Olympic bodybuilder instead of Olympia bodybuilder does not really seem important to me. It's not even the only typo in his post.

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That doesn't even come close to passing the sniff test. "Exercise will make you die sooner"? Give me a break, the entire first world is dying from being too fat and too sedentary.

And even if there is some correlation between muscles and morbidity, you'd be a fool to only consider the number of years lived. Physical strength is massively, massively important to quality of life in the elderly. One of the most important reasons to maintain physical vigor is so that when your aging really sets in you have a sufficient physical baseline to not be reduced to invalidity.

To quote Tolkien:

The old which is strong does not whither

Deep roots are not reached by the frost

Exercise in general is good for your life expectancy. Any yet, weightlifters have some of the worst life expectancy outcomes among all athletes, alongside boxers and ice hockey players who are literally getting brain damage from their sports. I think virtually all of this is caused quite simply - people who lift weights are too large. The sport valorises size and strength, and even hobbyist natural lifters are expected to have BMIs at 25 or over.

Lifting weights is probably not the culprit. The skinny old guy doing squats with 60kg in between running marathons is probably not endangering himself. But he will likely outlive the meatheads benching 140kg. If you can call such an existence living.

I agree that it's better to live fifty years as a meathead than seventy as a cardiohead. And you're right that people are dying due to being fat and sedentary. But lifting doesn't fix that. It's one of the few athletic activities that actively encourages weight gain and does not inherently involve any cardiovascular exercise.

Whats your squat PR?

I ask because in my experience 100% of the people who say any variation of "you'll get too big" (in this case "even hobbyist natural lifters are expected to have BMIs at 25 or over") have never picked up a barbell in their lives. It just doesn't happen, it's not a concern, its media-created fantasy. It's like people who say "why didn't he shoot the gun out of his hands?"

170kg. I don't really PR that often on squats - in theory I could probably do 180 based on my reps.

I'm no soothsayer either but what others have told me is that if I wanted to squat more I'd probably have to put on more weight, at least temporarily. And since I don't really consider my squat numbers to be respectable...

Anyway, you clearly are not paying attention to what I'm saying. I don't consider there to be such a thing as too big. There are however, clearly tradeoffs to getting big and strong that people don't want to hear about.

How much muscle is ideal for a man? At what point does lifting weights become detrimental?

Ideal for what? Detrimental to what? My effort to back squat 400lbs was detrimental to fitting into pants I had owned for years. If you're worried in a generic sense about health or injury, don't. If you're asking questions on themotte you aren't there yet.

What is the ideal proportion of body weight to be able to bench/squat/deadlift/overhead press for a man with healthy bodyfat?

That said, to try to answer the question: if you can't bench/back squat/deadlift 1/2/3 plates for a double at the drop of a hat, you should work on getting there. That's the absolute minimum for a male lifter unless you're under 5'2" or crippled. I don't care about %BW until you're competing in powerlifting. Percentages are dumb, aim for raw numbers until you get serious. If you can't do 1/2/3 plates, you should be putting on muscle to get there, not trying to math your way into claiming you are strong from the right angles.

Overhead press is a little more complicated, I would say that a bodyweight push press is the standard I won't let myself slip below and a bodyweight strict press is the goal I occasionally reach. I'd say being able to do the clean and push press casually at one plate is a good place to start.

How much is a ‘plate’? At least at every gym I’ve been to there are plates of varying weights.

Lmao. One plate as a denomination refers to a pair of 45lb/20kg plates on a standard Olympic 45lb barbell. So 1/2/3 is 135/225/315.

Thank you, here the weights are 1.25/2.5/5/10/15/20/25kg and the bar is 20kg.

A "plate" is a colloquialism for the heaviest standard barbell weight size, 45 lbs (~20 kg). That also happens to be the weight of a standard barbell, so a "1 plate" lift would be a 45 lb bar with a 45 lb weight on each side totalling 135 lbs (61 kg). "2 plate" is 225, "3 plate" is 315.

For better or worse, being able to get at least one-rep of 225 on the bench often serves as a bright-line test between DYELs and intermediate lifters (novice lifters in between may struggle).

The NFL combine uses 225 for their bench press test on upper body strength; the NBA a mere 185.

What's the goal? I like running long distances, which diminishes the value of muscle mass. If you're @FiveHourMarathon, you're less concerned with running performance and more with throwing around heavy kettlebells, so he's going to want a hell of a lot more muscle. If you're trying to play offensive line for your local university, you're not even going to try to be lean, you actively want to add fat along with your muscle, the better to move the sonofabitch in front of you.

As a broad generality, almost no one has to worry about lifting weights becoming detrimental. Even skinny runners will generally be better at running if they commit to a consistent weightlifting program and it's pretty much impossible to just accidentally add a lot of muscle mass.

Famed fitness expert Steven Crowder answered this question for us 7 years ago.

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