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Muscle Building and Fat Loss...

24

Replies

  • J72FIT
    J72FIT Posts: 5,958 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    I believe the fitness industry has also done some clever things with using ill-founded ideas to sell more products, too. Specifically, I'm thinking of ideas that we need to cause "muscle confusion", to "shock our body", and that sort of thing, in order to make progress.

    Can you imagine if we really had that much control over our body? Our species would have become extinct a long time ago...
  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,257 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    J72FIT wrote: »
    I blame this on the diet and fitness industry, who, IMO purposefully overcomplicate this stuff to keep themselves in business.

    I think it is interesting what the fitness industry has been able to kind of sell people as ideas because of what they can't sell to them as products - there's only so many weights and barbells that can be sold, but BCAA's, preworkouts, fat burners, and protein powders can all be sold to the same individuals for daily consumption.

    Which I think creates an incredibly funny image: all kinds of people wanting to look like a barbarian, but they're mixing up more powders than a wizard.

    I believe the fitness industry has also done some clever things with using ill-founded ideas to sell more products, too. Specifically, I'm thinking of ideas that we need to cause "muscle confusion", to "shock our body", and that sort of thing, in order to make progress.

    If one can't lose weight or get fit without switching up one's workout routine often to "confuse" and "shock", then one will need to be buying the latest fitness toys and exercise programs, not just the consumable foods/supplements.

    Pushing products may also be some of the impetus behind trendiness in programs, too. Remember when we all needed to stay in "the fat burning zone"? Now we need to "do HIIT" in order to get that "24-hour afterburn".

    We also get varying emphasis on body parts over time, too: Six pack, core, booty, . . . .

    Sell, sell, sell; overcomplicate, obfuscate. :lol:

    Back at the OP: I agree with your feeling, if I'm correctly understanding you. Plus we know that people typically overestimate exercise calories, and underestimate eaten calories . . . even people with actual expertise. I'd assume wishful thinking has something to do with that. Not much of a surprise that non-experts make even worse assumptions. Add in the degree of "bad at or averse to math" innumeracy that seems quite common, and here we are. ;)

    I'm tempted to add that it seems common for people to think in generalizations, and in static pictures of reality, when in practice systems thinking is more functional. Bodies are complex systems. In that context, I like @Chieflrg 's post:
    Chieflrg wrote: »
    I agree that the fitness industry is absolutely polluted with horrible content.

    That being said, there are people who are putting out excellant content.

    I mean we all know that protein in needed for hypertrophy, but do the majority of people understand if your protein is plant based you would definitely want to check your EAAs are adequate and probably up your protein for optimal results?

    Macros question can be important for many people once you get them on the right track for hypertrophy long term.

    Need that Awesome button back.

    I'm eternally humbled by the sheer brilliance that life exists in any way, shape, or form.
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    aokoye wrote: »
    SnifterPug wrote: »
    aokoye wrote: »

    Had your personal trainer given me the same challenge it would have taken well under a minute

    Indeed. It only took me about a minute as even then I could sustain around 600cal per hour for the requisite minute to burn the ten calories. But even now I'm sure I couldn't sustain that pace for an hour even though my all-out sprint pace can reach 1000cal per hour for 30 secs or so.

    I do choose to use exercise to help with a deficit but it's damned hard work. I speak as one who spent 12 years mooching about on a treadmill at a fast walking pace for half an hour a day fondly imagining I was getting fit and earning a dessert to boot.

    And see that's the thing, last winter I was routinely burning 500-700 calories over the course of 30-60 minutes three days a week on an erg. But that was after multiple seasons of bike riding and with an organized plan.

    On the one hand, that's a nice calorie burn. On the other hand, it's less than a fancy sweet latte and a bagel with cream cheese.

    ;)

    It ends up being more than my typical breakfast actually! Two thin bialys with butter (adds up to about 1 bagel), black coffee (fancy freshly and locally roasted pour over), and a small pastry. Sometimes there are benefits to not liking cream cheese ;) That and the person who typically prepares my bialys, knows that I don't want them slathered in butter. He'll even check from time to time, "You don't like a lot of butter right?".
  • Phirrgus
    Phirrgus Posts: 1,902 Member
    aokoye wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    aokoye wrote: »
    SnifterPug wrote: »
    aokoye wrote: »

    Had your personal trainer given me the same challenge it would have taken well under a minute

    Indeed. It only took me about a minute as even then I could sustain around 600cal per hour for the requisite minute to burn the ten calories. But even now I'm sure I couldn't sustain that pace for an hour even though my all-out sprint pace can reach 1000cal per hour for 30 secs or so.

    I do choose to use exercise to help with a deficit but it's damned hard work. I speak as one who spent 12 years mooching about on a treadmill at a fast walking pace for half an hour a day fondly imagining I was getting fit and earning a dessert to boot.

    And see that's the thing, last winter I was routinely burning 500-700 calories over the course of 30-60 minutes three days a week on an erg. But that was after multiple seasons of bike riding and with an organized plan.

    On the one hand, that's a nice calorie burn. On the other hand, it's less than a fancy sweet latte and a bagel with cream cheese.

    ;)

    It ends up being more than my typical breakfast actually! Two thin bialys with butter (adds up to about 1 bagel), black coffee (fancy freshly and locally roasted pour over), and a small pastry. Sometimes there are benefits to not liking cream cheese ;) That and the person who typically prepares my bialys, knows that I don't want them slathered in butter. He'll even check from time to time, "You don't like a lot of butter right?".

    Off topic but...I've never heard that from anyone before lol.

    On topic - I've found that if I get 2.5-4 hours of resistance training a week, and eat a proper amount of calories I maintain my muscle mass (not a huge amount lol) and stay lean. Nothing complicated required.

    In light of that, I constantly get numerous comments regarding my age and appearance and have (fill in the blank) diet/workout/magic pill brought to my attention by coworkers/friends/family and they don't seem to believe me when I push back against both the marketing hype and the over aggressive "You need to train to failure 7 days a week" strategies.

    The latter there is an exaggeration, but it's in response to being pushed to limits occasionally that I simply do not need to go to in order to achieve my goals.
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    J72FIT wrote: »
    I blame this on the diet and fitness industry, who, IMO purposefully overcomplicate this stuff to keep themselves in business.

    I think it is interesting what the fitness industry has been able to kind of sell people as ideas because of what they can't sell to them as products - there's only so many weights and barbells that can be sold, but BCAA's, preworkouts, fat burners, and protein powders can all be sold to the same individuals for daily consumption.

    Which I think creates an incredibly funny image: all kinds of people wanting to look like a barbarian, but they're mixing up more powders than a wizard.

    I believe the fitness industry has also done some clever things with using ill-founded ideas to sell more products, too. Specifically, I'm thinking of ideas that we need to cause "muscle confusion", to "shock our body", and that sort of thing, in order to make progress.

    If one can't lose weight or get fit without switching up one's workout routine often to "confuse" and "shock", then one will need to be buying the latest fitness toys and exercise programs, not just the consumable foods/supplements.

    Pushing products may also be some of the impetus behind trendiness in programs, too. Remember when we all needed to stay in "the fat burning zone"? Now we need to "do HIIT" in order to get that "24-hour afterburn".

    We also get varying emphasis on body parts over time, too: Six pack, core, booty, . . . .

    Sell, sell, sell; overcomplicate, obfuscate. :lol:
    How muscle confusion became a thing is confusing in and of itself. Potentially there's a tiny grain of truth - I've heard of some studies suggesting exercise staleness, but on the scale of a macrocycle. In general though, hypertrophy relies on the exact opposite of muscle confusion - one has to become proficient in an exercise before adding weight to it puts a strain on muscles that elicits growth, otherwise initial increases in performance are just skill, not muscle.
    I suppose it works as a sales pitch because it can really make people feel like they're making progress by constantly switching to something they can progress at with skill acquisition.

    I imagine it probably originated with bros who didn't understand the reasoning behind rotating programs.

    Instead of understanding that the reasons range from "refocusing on muscles that weren't worked as hard in the last program" to "adding increased volume overall" or a host of other reasons behind choosing to cycle through lifting programs, they mistakenly assumed "Oh! I've gotta keep changing things up to keep my muscles confused!"
  • I agree with anyone that says the fitness industry and bodybuilding industry has to sell products to people which is why there is so much focus on what you eat. Gotta sell those powders, mixes, aminos, creatines, etc. Oh and those bars as well. Just buy your way to a better body. People buy all that stuff and forget they still gotta put the sweat in and still some people struggle to put muscles on due to their metabolism. Just my two cents.
  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,257 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    J72FIT wrote: »
    I blame this on the diet and fitness industry, who, IMO purposefully overcomplicate this stuff to keep themselves in business.

    I think it is interesting what the fitness industry has been able to kind of sell people as ideas because of what they can't sell to them as products - there's only so many weights and barbells that can be sold, but BCAA's, preworkouts, fat burners, and protein powders can all be sold to the same individuals for daily consumption.

    Which I think creates an incredibly funny image: all kinds of people wanting to look like a barbarian, but they're mixing up more powders than a wizard.

    I believe the fitness industry has also done some clever things with using ill-founded ideas to sell more products, too. Specifically, I'm thinking of ideas that we need to cause "muscle confusion", to "shock our body", and that sort of thing, in order to make progress.

    If one can't lose weight or get fit without switching up one's workout routine often to "confuse" and "shock", then one will need to be buying the latest fitness toys and exercise programs, not just the consumable foods/supplements.

    Pushing products may also be some of the impetus behind trendiness in programs, too. Remember when we all needed to stay in "the fat burning zone"? Now we need to "do HIIT" in order to get that "24-hour afterburn".

    We also get varying emphasis on body parts over time, too: Six pack, core, booty, . . . .

    Sell, sell, sell; overcomplicate, obfuscate. :lol:
    How muscle confusion became a thing is confusing in and of itself. Potentially there's a tiny grain of truth - I've heard of some studies suggesting exercise staleness, but on the scale of a macrocycle. In general though, hypertrophy relies on the exact opposite of muscle confusion - one has to become proficient in an exercise before adding weight to it puts a strain on muscles that elicits growth, otherwise initial increases in performance are just skill, not muscle.
    I suppose it works as a sales pitch because it can really make people feel like they're making progress by constantly switching to something they can progress at with skill acquisition.

    This is precisely the core of many of these programs.

    It is very challenging for humans to see the value in sacrificing the present for the future, especially when one goes through days/weeks/months without seeing results.

    Over the long term this is why all trending ends up in statistically identical points, but exhibit dramatic change at the beginning.
  • RovP6
    RovP6 Posts: 108 Member
    J72FIT wrote: »
    When it comes to building muscle, people often put too much emphasis on food, when it comes to fat loss, people often put too much emphasis on exercise.

    IMO, it should be the other way around.

    Thoughts...?

    I actually think people don't put enought emphasis on food when trying to build muscle. People are generally scared to put on any weight after they've been successful losing it for the first time. You need to be in a surplus to build muscle but it's difficult to build muscle without putting on fat too, even when we try to "lean gain".

    I agree that people often put too much emphasis on exercise for fat loss. I did a 5 minute presentation to colleagues on metabolism recently and most were surprised to see how little EAT contributes to TDEE.

    Someone quoted here that "abs are made in the kitchen", which is a quote I've often use until someone pointed out that abs are made in the gym and revealed in the kitchen, in much the same way as all other muscle definition is.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    J72FIT wrote: »
    I blame this on the diet and fitness industry, who, IMO purposefully overcomplicate this stuff to keep themselves in business.

    I think it is interesting what the fitness industry has been able to kind of sell people as ideas because of what they can't sell to them as products - there's only so many weights and barbells that can be sold, but BCAA's, preworkouts, fat burners, and protein powders can all be sold to the same individuals for daily consumption.

    Which I think creates an incredibly funny image: all kinds of people wanting to look like a barbarian, but they're mixing up more powders than a wizard.

    I believe the fitness industry has also done some clever things with using ill-founded ideas to sell more products, too. Specifically, I'm thinking of ideas that we need to cause "muscle confusion", to "shock our body", and that sort of thing, in order to make progress.

    If one can't lose weight or get fit without switching up one's workout routine often to "confuse" and "shock", then one will need to be buying the latest fitness toys and exercise programs, not just the consumable foods/supplements.

    Pushing products may also be some of the impetus behind trendiness in programs, too. Remember when we all needed to stay in "the fat burning zone"? Now we need to "do HIIT" in order to get that "24-hour afterburn".

    We also get varying emphasis on body parts over time, too: Six pack, core, booty, . . . .

    Sell, sell, sell; overcomplicate, obfuscate. :lol:
    How muscle confusion became a thing is confusing in and of itself. Potentially there's a tiny grain of truth - I've heard of some studies suggesting exercise staleness, but on the scale of a macrocycle. In general though, hypertrophy relies on the exact opposite of muscle confusion - one has to become proficient in an exercise before adding weight to it puts a strain on muscles that elicits growth, otherwise initial increases in performance are just skill, not muscle.
    I suppose it works as a sales pitch because it can really make people feel like they're making progress by constantly switching to something they can progress at with skill acquisition.

    I recall it in the cardio arena some years prior to lifting - where at least it made a tad more sense in the context I saw it first. (the lifting arena comments were from people on MFP)

    People doing the Zumba and other controlled movement type workouts, where you can basically only move so fast in general, or to the beat of the music. Some of the early programs with light weights fell into this group too like Les Mills.
    You could go to advanced classes with faster beats and therefore movements, requiring more muscle control, or more weight. And more Les Mills programs created. But at some point progress stopped.

    But the difference between just starting out and attempting to get the movements down and being jerky and using lots of muscle (comparatively), to being very fluid and it coming easily and much less work - showed itself in lower HR's and what people saw as lower calorie burn reported by HRM, and likely in reality a lower calorie burn by some amount.

    Switch it up, difference class, different movement, felt like more work. Different movements with the light weights body was not used to, ect. Looked to be a harder workout.
    I know I heard those phrases thrown out at the classes, because that room was beside the spin bike room when I'd do my private long rides on a Sat raining afternoon, and didn't play the house system loud to not get attention. (yes, I asked permission to use their equipment outside of classes and they trusted me)

    That's where I first heard encouragement to confuse and shock, ect. The official Les Mills classes with trained instructors for it, who also did the Zumba classes. Shoot, even the certified spin bike gal used a few phrases like that and had official training program changes through year for all the instructors at the gym.
  • Safari_Gal_
    Safari_Gal_ Posts: 1,461 Member


    ;)[/quote]

    It ends up being more than my typical breakfast actually! Two thin bialys with butter (adds up to about 1 bagel), black coffee (fancy freshly and locally roasted pour over), and a small pastry. Sometimes there are benefits to not liking cream cheese ;) That and the person who typically prepares my bialys, knows that I don't want them slathered in butter. He'll even check from time to time, "You don't like a lot of butter right?".[/quote]

    @aokoye It makes my day that someone on MFP mentioned bialys 🤗

    (- lifetime fan of Kossar’s )

    Sorry off topic - ahem proceed. ☺️
  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,257 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    J72FIT wrote: »
    I blame this on the diet and fitness industry, who, IMO purposefully overcomplicate this stuff to keep themselves in business.

    I think it is interesting what the fitness industry has been able to kind of sell people as ideas because of what they can't sell to them as products - there's only so many weights and barbells that can be sold, but BCAA's, preworkouts, fat burners, and protein powders can all be sold to the same individuals for daily consumption.

    Which I think creates an incredibly funny image: all kinds of people wanting to look like a barbarian, but they're mixing up more powders than a wizard.

    I believe the fitness industry has also done some clever things with using ill-founded ideas to sell more products, too. Specifically, I'm thinking of ideas that we need to cause "muscle confusion", to "shock our body", and that sort of thing, in order to make progress.

    If one can't lose weight or get fit without switching up one's workout routine often to "confuse" and "shock", then one will need to be buying the latest fitness toys and exercise programs, not just the consumable foods/supplements.

    Pushing products may also be some of the impetus behind trendiness in programs, too. Remember when we all needed to stay in "the fat burning zone"? Now we need to "do HIIT" in order to get that "24-hour afterburn".

    We also get varying emphasis on body parts over time, too: Six pack, core, booty, . . . .

    Sell, sell, sell; overcomplicate, obfuscate. :lol:
    How muscle confusion became a thing is confusing in and of itself. Potentially there's a tiny grain of truth - I've heard of some studies suggesting exercise staleness, but on the scale of a macrocycle. In general though, hypertrophy relies on the exact opposite of muscle confusion - one has to become proficient in an exercise before adding weight to it puts a strain on muscles that elicits growth, otherwise initial increases in performance are just skill, not muscle.
    I suppose it works as a sales pitch because it can really make people feel like they're making progress by constantly switching to something they can progress at with skill acquisition.

    I'm aware that this is more a rant or a tantrum than a rational debate point, but it seems mystifying to me that this "confuse/shock" rhetoric often seems to arise in programs (such as some of the Beachbody-type empires) where otherwise-useful skills are not really so much ever acquired, it's more like "dance and do circuits this way" or "do aerobics that looks kinda like a martial art but isn't" or "hip hop aerobics" vs. "salsa aerobics".

    I'm not saying that these kinds of programs don't build/sustain fitness or strength (at least to a point), but it's arbitrary movements for the sake of exercise (and maybe fun), not skill-building in any kind of otherwise potentially useful skills (as might be the case for dance performance, or progressive strength programs, or useable martial arts, or something).

    And I'm not criticizing people who do these programs, who find them fun and productive from a fitness/exercise standpoint: I think that's just great.

    It's just the marketing I'm fussing about, pushing people from one aerobics-y, circuit-y program to the next, because "shock" and "confusion".

    I also think Heybales makes good points about people thinking they're burning lots more calories because the new program "feels harder" than the familiar program they've gotten better at executing, in the cardio realm especially; and Carlos makes good points about more complex reasons for switching up strength routines getting transmogrified into arbitrary platitudes about switching things up to "shock" and "confuse" (either because the marketer doesn't think very subtly, or is cynically convinced that the audience can't handle actual nuanced information, which is just insulting).
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    J72FIT wrote: »
    I blame this on the diet and fitness industry, who, IMO purposefully overcomplicate this stuff to keep themselves in business.

    I think it is interesting what the fitness industry has been able to kind of sell people as ideas because of what they can't sell to them as products - there's only so many weights and barbells that can be sold, but BCAA's, preworkouts, fat burners, and protein powders can all be sold to the same individuals for daily consumption.

    Which I think creates an incredibly funny image: all kinds of people wanting to look like a barbarian, but they're mixing up more powders than a wizard.

    I believe the fitness industry has also done some clever things with using ill-founded ideas to sell more products, too. Specifically, I'm thinking of ideas that we need to cause "muscle confusion", to "shock our body", and that sort of thing, in order to make progress.

    If one can't lose weight or get fit without switching up one's workout routine often to "confuse" and "shock", then one will need to be buying the latest fitness toys and exercise programs, not just the consumable foods/supplements.

    Pushing products may also be some of the impetus behind trendiness in programs, too. Remember when we all needed to stay in "the fat burning zone"? Now we need to "do HIIT" in order to get that "24-hour afterburn".

    We also get varying emphasis on body parts over time, too: Six pack, core, booty, . . . .

    Sell, sell, sell; overcomplicate, obfuscate. :lol:
    How muscle confusion became a thing is confusing in and of itself. Potentially there's a tiny grain of truth - I've heard of some studies suggesting exercise staleness, but on the scale of a macrocycle. In general though, hypertrophy relies on the exact opposite of muscle confusion - one has to become proficient in an exercise before adding weight to it puts a strain on muscles that elicits growth, otherwise initial increases in performance are just skill, not muscle.
    I suppose it works as a sales pitch because it can really make people feel like they're making progress by constantly switching to something they can progress at with skill acquisition.

    This is precisely the core of many of these programs.

    It is very challenging for humans to see the value in sacrificing the present for the future, especially when one goes through days/weeks/months without seeing results.

    Over the long term this is why all trending ends up in statistically identical points, but exhibit dramatic change at the beginning.

    Along these same lines, I think many of us struggle not just with deferred gratification (which we certainly do), but also with the sort of thing that requires, after a certain point, continuing practice and refinement to increase skills so very slowly at the margin, that progress is only observable over quite long time-scales. To a certain extent this applies to fitness (fast gains initially, slower gains later, typically), but also to things like learning to play a musical instrument, mastering a profession, practicing a visual art or complex craft, etc.

    This is also one of the root causes of disparity and will get worse. If there is one practice to impart to your children I would put it all into this.

    Epigenetics is providing objective evidence that man cannot fully reach their potential without struggle and resistance, which lends credence to the old curse "I wish you a long and easy life".
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,717 Member
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    J72FIT wrote: »
    I blame this on the diet and fitness industry, who, IMO purposefully overcomplicate this stuff to keep themselves in business.

    I think it is interesting what the fitness industry has been able to kind of sell people as ideas because of what they can't sell to them as products - there's only so many weights and barbells that can be sold, but BCAA's, preworkouts, fat burners, and protein powders can all be sold to the same individuals for daily consumption.

    Which I think creates an incredibly funny image: all kinds of people wanting to look like a barbarian, but they're mixing up more powders than a wizard.

    I believe the fitness industry has also done some clever things with using ill-founded ideas to sell more products, too. Specifically, I'm thinking of ideas that we need to cause "muscle confusion", to "shock our body", and that sort of thing, in order to make progress.

    If one can't lose weight or get fit without switching up one's workout routine often to "confuse" and "shock", then one will need to be buying the latest fitness toys and exercise programs, not just the consumable foods/supplements.

    Pushing products may also be some of the impetus behind trendiness in programs, too. Remember when we all needed to stay in "the fat burning zone"? Now we need to "do HIIT" in order to get that "24-hour afterburn".

    We also get varying emphasis on body parts over time, too: Six pack, core, booty, . . . .

    Sell, sell, sell; overcomplicate, obfuscate. :lol:
    How muscle confusion became a thing is confusing in and of itself. Potentially there's a tiny grain of truth - I've heard of some studies suggesting exercise staleness, but on the scale of a macrocycle. In general though, hypertrophy relies on the exact opposite of muscle confusion - one has to become proficient in an exercise before adding weight to it puts a strain on muscles that elicits growth, otherwise initial increases in performance are just skill, not muscle.
    I suppose it works as a sales pitch because it can really make people feel like they're making progress by constantly switching to something they can progress at with skill acquisition.

    I'm aware that this is more a rant or a tantrum than a rational debate point, but it seems mystifying to me that this "confuse/shock" rhetoric often seems to arise in programs (such as some of the Beachbody-type empires) where otherwise-useful skills are not really so much ever acquired, it's more like "dance and do circuits this way" or "do aerobics that looks kinda like a martial art but isn't" or "hip hop aerobics" vs. "salsa aerobics".

    I'm not saying that these kinds of programs don't build/sustain fitness or strength (at least to a point), but it's arbitrary movements for the sake of exercise (and maybe fun), not skill-building in any kind of otherwise potentially useful skills (as might be the case for dance performance, or progressive strength programs, or useable martial arts, or something).

    And I'm not criticizing people who do these programs, who find them fun and productive from a fitness/exercise standpoint: I think that's just great.

    It's just the marketing I'm fussing about, pushing people from one aerobics-y, circuit-y program to the next, because "shock" and "confusion".

    I also think Heybales makes good points about people thinking they're burning lots more calories because the new program "feels harder" than the familiar program they've gotten better at executing, in the cardio realm especially; and Carlos makes good points about more complex reasons for switching up strength routines getting transmogrified into arbitrary platitudes about switching things up to "shock" and "confuse" (either because the marketer doesn't think very subtly, or is cynically convinced that the audience can't handle actual nuanced information, which is just insulting).
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    J72FIT wrote: »
    I blame this on the diet and fitness industry, who, IMO purposefully overcomplicate this stuff to keep themselves in business.

    I think it is interesting what the fitness industry has been able to kind of sell people as ideas because of what they can't sell to them as products - there's only so many weights and barbells that can be sold, but BCAA's, preworkouts, fat burners, and protein powders can all be sold to the same individuals for daily consumption.

    Which I think creates an incredibly funny image: all kinds of people wanting to look like a barbarian, but they're mixing up more powders than a wizard.

    I believe the fitness industry has also done some clever things with using ill-founded ideas to sell more products, too. Specifically, I'm thinking of ideas that we need to cause "muscle confusion", to "shock our body", and that sort of thing, in order to make progress.

    If one can't lose weight or get fit without switching up one's workout routine often to "confuse" and "shock", then one will need to be buying the latest fitness toys and exercise programs, not just the consumable foods/supplements.

    Pushing products may also be some of the impetus behind trendiness in programs, too. Remember when we all needed to stay in "the fat burning zone"? Now we need to "do HIIT" in order to get that "24-hour afterburn".

    We also get varying emphasis on body parts over time, too: Six pack, core, booty, . . . .

    Sell, sell, sell; overcomplicate, obfuscate. :lol:
    How muscle confusion became a thing is confusing in and of itself. Potentially there's a tiny grain of truth - I've heard of some studies suggesting exercise staleness, but on the scale of a macrocycle. In general though, hypertrophy relies on the exact opposite of muscle confusion - one has to become proficient in an exercise before adding weight to it puts a strain on muscles that elicits growth, otherwise initial increases in performance are just skill, not muscle.
    I suppose it works as a sales pitch because it can really make people feel like they're making progress by constantly switching to something they can progress at with skill acquisition.

    This is precisely the core of many of these programs.

    It is very challenging for humans to see the value in sacrificing the present for the future, especially when one goes through days/weeks/months without seeing results.

    Over the long term this is why all trending ends up in statistically identical points, but exhibit dramatic change at the beginning.

    Along these same lines, I think many of us struggle not just with deferred gratification (which we certainly do), but also with the sort of thing that requires, after a certain point, continuing practice and refinement to increase skills so very slowly at the margin, that progress is only observable over quite long time-scales. To a certain extent this applies to fitness (fast gains initially, slower gains later, typically), but also to things like learning to play a musical instrument, mastering a profession, practicing a visual art or complex craft, etc.

    This is also one of the root causes of disparity and will get worse. If there is one practice to impart to your children I would put it all into this.

    Epigenetics is providing objective evidence that man cannot fully reach their potential without struggle and resistance, which lends credence to the old curse "I wish you a long and easy life".

    This is a total aside to the thread, but:

    I think there are at least two possible paths to appreciating/practicing those skills (and I think things like persistence and patience are skills (vs. "talents" or something). One path is simply learning to chip away patiently at a long, worthwhile goal, for the goal's sake. The other path is to learn to enjoy the process of chipping.

    So many worthwhile things are long-term investments, in one way or another. Fast gratification is fun, but can be a trap.

    And I say that as a ridiculously self-indulgent hedonist. ;)
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    J72FIT wrote: »
    I blame this on the diet and fitness industry, who, IMO purposefully overcomplicate this stuff to keep themselves in business.

    I think it is interesting what the fitness industry has been able to kind of sell people as ideas because of what they can't sell to them as products - there's only so many weights and barbells that can be sold, but BCAA's, preworkouts, fat burners, and protein powders can all be sold to the same individuals for daily consumption.

    Which I think creates an incredibly funny image: all kinds of people wanting to look like a barbarian, but they're mixing up more powders than a wizard.

    I believe the fitness industry has also done some clever things with using ill-founded ideas to sell more products, too. Specifically, I'm thinking of ideas that we need to cause "muscle confusion", to "shock our body", and that sort of thing, in order to make progress.

    If one can't lose weight or get fit without switching up one's workout routine often to "confuse" and "shock", then one will need to be buying the latest fitness toys and exercise programs, not just the consumable foods/supplements.

    Pushing products may also be some of the impetus behind trendiness in programs, too. Remember when we all needed to stay in "the fat burning zone"? Now we need to "do HIIT" in order to get that "24-hour afterburn".

    We also get varying emphasis on body parts over time, too: Six pack, core, booty, . . . .

    Sell, sell, sell; overcomplicate, obfuscate. :lol:
    How muscle confusion became a thing is confusing in and of itself. Potentially there's a tiny grain of truth - I've heard of some studies suggesting exercise staleness, but on the scale of a macrocycle. In general though, hypertrophy relies on the exact opposite of muscle confusion - one has to become proficient in an exercise before adding weight to it puts a strain on muscles that elicits growth, otherwise initial increases in performance are just skill, not muscle.
    I suppose it works as a sales pitch because it can really make people feel like they're making progress by constantly switching to something they can progress at with skill acquisition.

    I'm aware that this is more a rant or a tantrum than a rational debate point, but it seems mystifying to me that this "confuse/shock" rhetoric often seems to arise in programs (such as some of the Beachbody-type empires) where otherwise-useful skills are not really so much ever acquired, it's more like "dance and do circuits this way" or "do aerobics that looks kinda like a martial art but isn't" or "hip hop aerobics" vs. "salsa aerobics".

    I'm not saying that these kinds of programs don't build/sustain fitness or strength (at least to a point), but it's arbitrary movements for the sake of exercise (and maybe fun), not skill-building in any kind of otherwise potentially useful skills (as might be the case for dance performance, or progressive strength programs, or useable martial arts, or something).

    And I'm not criticizing people who do these programs, who find them fun and productive from a fitness/exercise standpoint: I think that's just great.

    It's just the marketing I'm fussing about, pushing people from one aerobics-y, circuit-y program to the next, because "shock" and "confusion".

    I also think Heybales makes good points about people thinking they're burning lots more calories because the new program "feels harder" than the familiar program they've gotten better at executing, in the cardio realm especially; and Carlos makes good points about more complex reasons for switching up strength routines getting transmogrified into arbitrary platitudes about switching things up to "shock" and "confuse" (either because the marketer doesn't think very subtly, or is cynically convinced that the audience can't handle actual nuanced information, which is just insulting).
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    J72FIT wrote: »
    I blame this on the diet and fitness industry, who, IMO purposefully overcomplicate this stuff to keep themselves in business.

    I think it is interesting what the fitness industry has been able to kind of sell people as ideas because of what they can't sell to them as products - there's only so many weights and barbells that can be sold, but BCAA's, preworkouts, fat burners, and protein powders can all be sold to the same individuals for daily consumption.

    Which I think creates an incredibly funny image: all kinds of people wanting to look like a barbarian, but they're mixing up more powders than a wizard.

    I believe the fitness industry has also done some clever things with using ill-founded ideas to sell more products, too. Specifically, I'm thinking of ideas that we need to cause "muscle confusion", to "shock our body", and that sort of thing, in order to make progress.

    If one can't lose weight or get fit without switching up one's workout routine often to "confuse" and "shock", then one will need to be buying the latest fitness toys and exercise programs, not just the consumable foods/supplements.

    Pushing products may also be some of the impetus behind trendiness in programs, too. Remember when we all needed to stay in "the fat burning zone"? Now we need to "do HIIT" in order to get that "24-hour afterburn".

    We also get varying emphasis on body parts over time, too: Six pack, core, booty, . . . .

    Sell, sell, sell; overcomplicate, obfuscate. :lol:
    How muscle confusion became a thing is confusing in and of itself. Potentially there's a tiny grain of truth - I've heard of some studies suggesting exercise staleness, but on the scale of a macrocycle. In general though, hypertrophy relies on the exact opposite of muscle confusion - one has to become proficient in an exercise before adding weight to it puts a strain on muscles that elicits growth, otherwise initial increases in performance are just skill, not muscle.
    I suppose it works as a sales pitch because it can really make people feel like they're making progress by constantly switching to something they can progress at with skill acquisition.

    This is precisely the core of many of these programs.

    It is very challenging for humans to see the value in sacrificing the present for the future, especially when one goes through days/weeks/months without seeing results.

    Over the long term this is why all trending ends up in statistically identical points, but exhibit dramatic change at the beginning.

    Along these same lines, I think many of us struggle not just with deferred gratification (which we certainly do), but also with the sort of thing that requires, after a certain point, continuing practice and refinement to increase skills so very slowly at the margin, that progress is only observable over quite long time-scales. To a certain extent this applies to fitness (fast gains initially, slower gains later, typically), but also to things like learning to play a musical instrument, mastering a profession, practicing a visual art or complex craft, etc.

    This is also one of the root causes of disparity and will get worse. If there is one practice to impart to your children I would put it all into this.


    Epigenetics is providing objective evidence that man cannot fully reach their potential without struggle and resistance, which lends credence to the old curse "I wish you a long and easy life".

    What type of disparity do you mean and where, geographically, are you talking about?
  • SnifterPug
    SnifterPug Posts: 746 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    This is a total aside to the thread, but:

    I think there are at least two possible paths to appreciating/practicing those skills (and I think things like persistence and patience are skills (vs. "talents" or something). One path is simply learning to chip away patiently at a long, worthwhile goal, for the goal's sake. The other path is to learn to enjoy the process of chipping.

    So many worthwhile things are long-term investments, in one way or another. Fast gratification is fun, but can be a trap.

    And I say that as a ridiculously self-indulgent hedonist. ;)

    You are so right, and I have to comment even though we are off at a tangent to the thread.

    One of the huge eye-openers for me in coming late to fitness is exactly this. I come from an educational background where results were everything. Thus you dropped what you were not immediately good at and concentrated on what you were good at. For subjects you simply had to take due to the national curriculum the school coached you on how to pass an exam.

    I was poor at sports and never realised a) the physical pleasure to be gained from some sheer hard work and b) the sense of achievement when you've spent weeks or months trying to do something and you finally get there.

    Now I love finding something new I can't do (yet).
  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,257 Member
    SnifterPug wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    This is a total aside to the thread, but:

    I think there are at least two possible paths to appreciating/practicing those skills (and I think things like persistence and patience are skills (vs. "talents" or something). One path is simply learning to chip away patiently at a long, worthwhile goal, for the goal's sake. The other path is to learn to enjoy the process of chipping.

    So many worthwhile things are long-term investments, in one way or another. Fast gratification is fun, but can be a trap.

    And I say that as a ridiculously self-indulgent hedonist. ;)

    You are so right, and I have to comment even though we are off at a tangent to the thread.

    One of the huge eye-openers for me in coming late to fitness is exactly this. I come from an educational background where results were everything. Thus you dropped what you were not immediately good at and concentrated on what you were good at. For subjects you simply had to take due to the national curriculum the school coached you on how to pass an exam.

    I was poor at sports and never realised a) the physical pleasure to be gained from some sheer hard work and b) the sense of achievement when you've spent weeks or months trying to do something and you finally get there.

    Now I love finding something new I can't do (yet).

    I hope you share this discovery with others. Inspiration is contagious.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,717 Member
    SnifterPug wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    This is a total aside to the thread, but:

    I think there are at least two possible paths to appreciating/practicing those skills (and I think things like persistence and patience are skills (vs. "talents" or something). One path is simply learning to chip away patiently at a long, worthwhile goal, for the goal's sake. The other path is to learn to enjoy the process of chipping.

    So many worthwhile things are long-term investments, in one way or another. Fast gratification is fun, but can be a trap.

    And I say that as a ridiculously self-indulgent hedonist. ;)

    You are so right, and I have to comment even though we are off at a tangent to the thread.

    One of the huge eye-openers for me in coming late to fitness is exactly this. I come from an educational background where results were everything. Thus you dropped what you were not immediately good at and concentrated on what you were good at. For subjects you simply had to take due to the national curriculum the school coached you on how to pass an exam.

    I was poor at sports and never realised a) the physical pleasure to be gained from some sheer hard work and b) the sense of achievement when you've spent weeks or months trying to do something and you finally get there.

    Now I love finding something new I can't do (yet).

    Exactly. I don't know that I would've been able to "do weight loss" effectively if I hadn't first learned to row starting at age 46. I completely s**ked at it when I started, to the point of needing to learn skills before I could learn skills (I had no kinesthetic sense to the point of absurdity, nor visual-learning skills; had to learn physical skills entirely through verbal description, which is Majorly Disfunctional, for example - I couldn't refine my rowing stroke past a certain point until I got some ability to feel and see . . . which was slow, slow, slow.)

    Somehow, implicitly, that process - which I wasn't really even fully conscious of until much, much later - taught me some skills I hadn't had, with respect to patiently chipping away at something. (I already had some deferred gratification circuitry, in some domains, like retirement savings; but that's not exactly the same as those persistent-small-progress how-to skills.)

    I'm pretty sure that contributed to my ability to use calorie counting to lose weight, and I'm 100% sure it contributed to my deciding at age 57 that I was finally going to try to teach myself to play bluegrass banjo. At 63, I still s**k at that, and I'm going to do so for a really, really long time. :lol: Enjoying the process, though.
    aokoye wrote: »
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    J72FIT wrote: »
    I blame this on the diet and fitness industry, who, IMO purposefully overcomplicate this stuff to keep themselves in business.

    I think it is interesting what the fitness industry has been able to kind of sell people as ideas because of what they can't sell to them as products - there's only so many weights and barbells that can be sold, but BCAA's, preworkouts, fat burners, and protein powders can all be sold to the same individuals for daily consumption.

    Which I think creates an incredibly funny image: all kinds of people wanting to look like a barbarian, but they're mixing up more powders than a wizard.

    I believe the fitness industry has also done some clever things with using ill-founded ideas to sell more products, too. Specifically, I'm thinking of ideas that we need to cause "muscle confusion", to "shock our body", and that sort of thing, in order to make progress.

    If one can't lose weight or get fit without switching up one's workout routine often to "confuse" and "shock", then one will need to be buying the latest fitness toys and exercise programs, not just the consumable foods/supplements.

    Pushing products may also be some of the impetus behind trendiness in programs, too. Remember when we all needed to stay in "the fat burning zone"? Now we need to "do HIIT" in order to get that "24-hour afterburn".

    We also get varying emphasis on body parts over time, too: Six pack, core, booty, . . . .

    Sell, sell, sell; overcomplicate, obfuscate. :lol:
    How muscle confusion became a thing is confusing in and of itself. Potentially there's a tiny grain of truth - I've heard of some studies suggesting exercise staleness, but on the scale of a macrocycle. In general though, hypertrophy relies on the exact opposite of muscle confusion - one has to become proficient in an exercise before adding weight to it puts a strain on muscles that elicits growth, otherwise initial increases in performance are just skill, not muscle.
    I suppose it works as a sales pitch because it can really make people feel like they're making progress by constantly switching to something they can progress at with skill acquisition.

    I'm aware that this is more a rant or a tantrum than a rational debate point, but it seems mystifying to me that this "confuse/shock" rhetoric often seems to arise in programs (such as some of the Beachbody-type empires) where otherwise-useful skills are not really so much ever acquired, it's more like "dance and do circuits this way" or "do aerobics that looks kinda like a martial art but isn't" or "hip hop aerobics" vs. "salsa aerobics".

    I'm not saying that these kinds of programs don't build/sustain fitness or strength (at least to a point), but it's arbitrary movements for the sake of exercise (and maybe fun), not skill-building in any kind of otherwise potentially useful skills (as might be the case for dance performance, or progressive strength programs, or useable martial arts, or something).

    And I'm not criticizing people who do these programs, who find them fun and productive from a fitness/exercise standpoint: I think that's just great.

    It's just the marketing I'm fussing about, pushing people from one aerobics-y, circuit-y program to the next, because "shock" and "confusion".

    I also think Heybales makes good points about people thinking they're burning lots more calories because the new program "feels harder" than the familiar program they've gotten better at executing, in the cardio realm especially; and Carlos makes good points about more complex reasons for switching up strength routines getting transmogrified into arbitrary platitudes about switching things up to "shock" and "confuse" (either because the marketer doesn't think very subtly, or is cynically convinced that the audience can't handle actual nuanced information, which is just insulting).
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    J72FIT wrote: »
    I blame this on the diet and fitness industry, who, IMO purposefully overcomplicate this stuff to keep themselves in business.

    I think it is interesting what the fitness industry has been able to kind of sell people as ideas because of what they can't sell to them as products - there's only so many weights and barbells that can be sold, but BCAA's, preworkouts, fat burners, and protein powders can all be sold to the same individuals for daily consumption.

    Which I think creates an incredibly funny image: all kinds of people wanting to look like a barbarian, but they're mixing up more powders than a wizard.

    I believe the fitness industry has also done some clever things with using ill-founded ideas to sell more products, too. Specifically, I'm thinking of ideas that we need to cause "muscle confusion", to "shock our body", and that sort of thing, in order to make progress.

    If one can't lose weight or get fit without switching up one's workout routine often to "confuse" and "shock", then one will need to be buying the latest fitness toys and exercise programs, not just the consumable foods/supplements.

    Pushing products may also be some of the impetus behind trendiness in programs, too. Remember when we all needed to stay in "the fat burning zone"? Now we need to "do HIIT" in order to get that "24-hour afterburn".

    We also get varying emphasis on body parts over time, too: Six pack, core, booty, . . . .

    Sell, sell, sell; overcomplicate, obfuscate. :lol:
    How muscle confusion became a thing is confusing in and of itself. Potentially there's a tiny grain of truth - I've heard of some studies suggesting exercise staleness, but on the scale of a macrocycle. In general though, hypertrophy relies on the exact opposite of muscle confusion - one has to become proficient in an exercise before adding weight to it puts a strain on muscles that elicits growth, otherwise initial increases in performance are just skill, not muscle.
    I suppose it works as a sales pitch because it can really make people feel like they're making progress by constantly switching to something they can progress at with skill acquisition.

    This is precisely the core of many of these programs.

    It is very challenging for humans to see the value in sacrificing the present for the future, especially when one goes through days/weeks/months without seeing results.

    Over the long term this is why all trending ends up in statistically identical points, but exhibit dramatic change at the beginning.

    Along these same lines, I think many of us struggle not just with deferred gratification (which we certainly do), but also with the sort of thing that requires, after a certain point, continuing practice and refinement to increase skills so very slowly at the margin, that progress is only observable over quite long time-scales. To a certain extent this applies to fitness (fast gains initially, slower gains later, typically), but also to things like learning to play a musical instrument, mastering a profession, practicing a visual art or complex craft, etc.

    This is also one of the root causes of disparity and will get worse. If there is one practice to impart to your children I would put it all into this.


    Epigenetics is providing objective evidence that man cannot fully reach their potential without struggle and resistance, which lends credence to the old curse "I wish you a long and easy life".

    What type of disparity do you mean and where, geographically, are you talking about?

    I'm not CSARdiver . . . so, so not. ;)

    FWIW, I took him to be nodding at the concepts behind the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment and its follow-ons (in the deferred gratification aspect) and the very applied skills (not just platitudes or concepts) behind goal setting (especially big, complex goals) and goal accomplishment, including problem solving (obstacle-busting or obstacle-skirting included, if you will). If that's a correct interpretation, I think he's right.

    (It doesn't explain the epigenetics aspect of the comment, but I know squat about epigenetics; I took that as "there is no persisting/accomplishment if no resistance, from gene expression on up", but that's speculative on my part.)

    I'm not educated much about education/pedagogy, but I'm challenged to see how children learn these things viscerally without exemplars in their lives, most probably family members, and opportunities to practice, probably from quite a young age. It would be hard to address via some curriculum, I think. Since these are skill sets that many/most of us aren't super-duper at (me included), that's a tough issue, but it's one that definitely has big consequences for individuals, as well as consequences at a societal level.

    Sorry OP. So far off topic! I'll try to stop . . .