Further Notes on Gym Going

I have continued going to the gym in the time since I wrote a blogpost with thoughts about going there for six months.
That post logged that I’d made good progress on fat loss goals, enjoyed going to the gym, thought some of the machines in the gym were neat.

Since then, I’ve paid more attention to resistance training.

Here are some scattered notes and links to things I’ve found interesting:

• I use ChatGPT less than I was using it before.

  • I’ve since found resources which I find reputable. Whereas, before, I’d at least found ChatGPT to be better than random blogspam.

• Great resource: https://exrx.net/

  • This has many great pages on topics related to exercise.
  • I constantly refer to this website for its exercise library, which lists exercises grouped by what muscle the exercise targets. (e.g. if you want to know what exercises target the hamstrings, you can find a list there).
  • The exercises each have a video demonstrating how to perform the exercise, as well as a description and comments.
    • You can often find similar exercises done with a barbell, dumbbells, cable machine, plate-loaded machine, selectorized.. or with a smith machine, or bodyweight. – Some exercises are locked behind a premium paywall, but most can be read for free.

• Caveats about content creators:

  • IMO: There are perverse incentives with YouTube channels and blogs:
    • There’s a conflict between “put out quality information” and “get discovered by a recommendation algorithm”.
      • Recommendation algorithms tend to favour things that are fresh/new.
      • In health/fitness, it’s likely that good information is already well known (by some people somewhere).
    • I reckon that, especially for YouTube channels or blogs with high production value, this leads to pushing out repeats of content, in order to stay ‘fresh’.
  • Audience / context.
    • Beginners have a lot of room to grow/improve; for advanced practitioners, marginal increases can be expensive. So, advice targeted at an intermediate or advanced level might not be necessary for a beginner level.
      • For beginners and for casual practitioners, it’s not necessarily worth pursuing 100% efficiency.

• Great resources: Dr Mike Israetel’s RenaissancePeriodization (RP).

  • Especially the channel’s playlists, and its “made simple” series.
  • On the whole.. the channel’s content is geared towards intermediate and advanced lifters.

• Alexander Bromley’s video on exercise science is an interesting “cold shower”.

  • “Science” is catchy in video titles. But the field Exercise Science as a field hasn’t made an impact on powerlifting or bodybuilding competitors.
  • Exercise Science suffers same factors as other soft sciences:
    • Issues with reproducibility (sometimes due to fraud).
    • Many variables to consider deal with, which makes it easy to confound results/understanding.
  • Exercise science content often has to hedge with weasel words like “but if that works for you, it works for you”; this undermines its prescriptive value.

• The LesMills BodyPump sessions that the gym holds have been an excellent way to build confidence with weights. It’s a good exercise.

• Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis:

  • The results I get from day to day vary. I like to think that by taking a frequent number of measurements, (e.g. once for each session), overall the impact of the variation evens out.
  • e.g. Video from RP discussing ways to estimate Percentage Body Fat discusses that using BIA is not as effective as that judging by weight & strength performance. (e.g. “weight goes down & strength stays same” would be positive; “weight up, strength down” would be negative).

• RP’s video on Rep Ranges

  • This is basic/fundamental.
  • “Working set” is a set of repetitions (reps) that is challenging enough that you’re near the limit of what you can do.
    • e.g. ideally, you’re unable to do 15 reps with a weight which you plan to use for a set of 10. (If you could do 15 reps, the weight is too light).
  • Lower reps = heavier weight = better for building strength. (Typically 3-6).
  • Higher reps = lighter weight = better for building muscle. (Anything up to 30 reps).
  • e.g. “Starting Strength” uses sets of 5 reps. (For beginners, 3 sets of 5 reps).

• Menno Henselman has a video discussing key ideas for strength/muscle development.

  • Doing more ‘volume’ of work (more sets, more reps) will result in more muscle.
  • For strength: short term, intensity is good. (Low reps).
    • However, since there’s a limit to how strong a muscle mass can get, in the long term, more strength would require more muscle.
    • Menno describes the relationship between strength/muscle size using an analogy of a race car: a race car might go faster by the driver improving his skills, or by improving the car’s engine.

• I liked RP’s “made simple” series, particularly its playlists about fat loss and cardio:

  • Fat loss:
    • The key factor is “calorie deficit” (calories in < calories out).
      • Diet (in the sense of “what food you eat”) plays a much more significant role than exercise.
        • There’s a limit to the amount of energy you can expend in a day.
          • If you perform too much exercise, your body will conserve energy for the remaining part of the day. (e.g. you’ll not get up & do things).
        • Exercise also accumulates fatigue and risk of injury, so can’t be done to excess.
        • To an extent: reaching (or increasing) calorie deficit involves doing what’s least awful of reducing what you eat or exercising more.
      • An often touted goal of keto diet (low carb) is to burn fat for energy by; but, this doesn’t supersede “calories in, calories out”.
        • Excess calories will still get stored as fat; calorie deficit will still burn fat.
        • However, high-carb food is often not satiating; (e.g. chips; you’d have to eat many potato chips to feel full). So, avoiding high-carb food is a good idea.
  • Cardio:
    • “Stimulus to Fatigue” needs to be considered.
      • e.g. Sprinting burns many calories per second, but is too fatiguing to sustain for some time.
      • Dr Mike rates elliptical machine highly.
      • Dr Mike rates using step-counter and aiming to reach 8k/10k/12k steps per day highly.
        • Good energy expenditure; very low disruption to day’s activities.
        • Very low fatigue / risk of injury.
        • Not ‘fun’, but walking around is an ubiquitous part of the day.

• Nutrition:

  • Discussion of Diet Soda and Aspartame.
    • Although “Diet soda cancer” makes headlines, it’d be foolishly inaccurate to think “diet soda unhealthy; regular soda is healthier”.
  • A few key ideas Dr Mike repeats in various places: So long as you’re getting a certain minimum of macronutrients/micronutrients, the overall composition of where calories come from is not important.
    • c.f. Mark Haub’s Twinkie study, where he was able to reduce fat from a caloric deficit, while two thirds of the calories he ate came from twinkies

• Machines vs free weights:

  • Menno Henselman cites papers which compared training with free weights against training with machines.
    • Supposed thoughts: Since machines are stable, should be able to get more strength out of them; machines worse for joints and muscle growth.
    • The studies show:
      • Due to specificity: you’ll do slightly better on the one you train with.
      • But for health benefits: do whatever you prefer.
      • For machines: it’s slightly better to use plate-loaded machines with a free range of motion, than lever selectorized machines with a fixed range of motion.
  • e.g. I recall seeing that Nassim didn’t like weight machines and thought they’re stupid.
  • RP discusses that “gotta use barbells!” overstates it.
    • Barbell lifts (especially heavy compound exercises) are great; but, it would be wrong to assert they’re the best for all cases.

• Doing cardio and resistance training in the same session:

  • I’ve seen that doing cardio after doing resistance leads to an “interference effect” where the muscle won’t gain as much since the body’s recovering from cardio.
  • This seems plausible to me. But, “no interference effect” also seems plausible.
  • At least, it does seem “trade Peter for Paul”: time spent on cardio is time spent not doing resistance training, and vice versa. It’s easier to perform well when starting fresh.
  • As such, I do split up my gym sessions between “focus on cardio” and “focus on resistance training”.

• RP’s Definition of Beginner (from the Hypertrophy Made Simple series): “when improvement is automatic”.

  • I reckon this is a reasonable and interesting use of the word “beginner”. For beginners, improvement is easy.
    • As opposed to “beginner is someone who has been lifting for up to 6 months” or whatever.
  • The Strength Made Simple series’ equivalent video concurs: it defines beginner as “sees improvement from adhering to basics”.

• ExRx’s page about Gym Etiquette.

  • This is all mostly obvious. Don’t make things unpleasant for others.
  • I’ve noticed that in practice, “unrack weights from the machine you’re using” isn’t intuitive.

• ExRx discussing Locking out on leg press machine.

  • There are some nasty “gym fails” videos which feature injuries on leg press machines.
  • ExRx discusses that the problem is putting the knee under stress it’s not adapted to.
  • This risk of injury can be prevented by always controlling the weight of the leg press. (e.g. don’t lock out in an uncontrolled manner), and don’t use more weight than your legs can handle.

• Alexander Bromley’s Bench Press (“for no gains” series).

  • An interesting point: the two most popular YouTube videos about bench pressing recommend different techniques: Bromley explains that one technique is optimal for powerlifting (where the focus is strength), the other is optimal for hypertrophy (building muscle).

• Fatigue & Recovery:

  • Obvious constraints to exercise are “time available” and “effort you’re willing to put in”.
  • Less obvious to me was that fatigue is an important constraint.
    • Working beyond what the body can recover from risks injury.
    • This also indicates: rest and sleep are important for improvement.

• Number of sets:

  • RP’s discussions
    • for hypertrophy,
      • Per muscle:
        • Aim for muscle to be pumped, and muscle disrupted. (& should feel burn, if using a low enough weight).
        • For beginners, 1-5 sets targetting the muscle can be enough.
        • If can’t recover for the next session, you’re doing too much.
      • Per session:
        • If too fatigued, it’s difficult to push target muscle to failure.
        • 15-25 sets per session.
    • for strength
      • Per movement:
        • At least 1 heavy working set. Higher intensity is better.
        • If you can’t recover for next session, you’re doing too much.
      • Per session:
        • Probably not worth the effort if can’t lift sufficiently heavy weight.
        • If you’re tired, anything will ‘feel’ heavy/difficult.
          • IMO: Seems unlikely that “get tired, then lift light weights” would lead to strength gains.

• RP on rounding the back during exercises:

  • Rounding the back risks injury. Lifting should be done with a neutral back.
  • On the other hand, rounding the back builds resiliency.
  • Synthesising these: keep the back neutral for heavy lifts; train the lower back with suitable exercises (& light enough weight).

• ExRx Workout Templates.

  • These are great.
    • Provides a guide on what kinds of exercises are useful to aim for at the gym.
      • This is useful for more direction than just “uh, I’ll use whatever machines are available”.
  • The pages mention useful qualifiers like “don’t do these kinds of exercises on the same day”.