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Comment by Kpourdeilami | Hacker News Reader

for me personally the biggest benefit of weight training has been the discipline it gives me. Once I stick to my gym plan, everything else in my day falls to its place.

Knowing I have to be in the gym every other night from 10 to 11:30, gets me to get my chores done quickly before 10 and not waste time on Reddit/Netflix all night. I also listen to audio books between sets to make a better use of my down time

For anyone looking to get started, I have been following a workout plan called 5x5 for a year and it’s been working all right for me. The idea is you do 5 sets of 5 reps of 5 different workouts and increase the weights you do by 5 pounds each workout

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Strong recommendation for the StrongLifts 5x5 iOS app. That said there are some downsides to 5x5.

- the lifts in it are simple, but also very easy to hurt yourself with if you don’t have good form. Form work is not emphasized.

- there is no flexibility work in it. It’s basically impossible to do strength work without flexibility. To the point 5x5 should likely recommend yoga as a central component or something.

- while big muscle groups are very important, for lots of people isolated muscle work is necessary to fix imbalances, old injuries, etc.

None of that should discourage people but realize that the sticker claims of 5x5 about time commitments and completeness aren’t really true.

>That said there are some downsides to 5x5

Among others, listed here[a]. The reasoning seemed sound and I'm easily swayed, so reading that after a couple of weeks of doing 5x5 caused me to switch. Exercises are the same (with the addition of chinups), but configured differently throughout the week. It's easy enough to set up the workouts in the Strong[b] app, but admittedly not as easy as the Stronglifts app.

[a] : https://old.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/4uij/a_detailed_lo...

[b] : https://www.strong.app/

You are supposed to start with an empty bar and progress from there, so you have a good amount of time at low weight to work on form.

That said, I do agree there should be more flexibility work. The suggested warm ups are also inadequate.

As a middle aged lifter I'm finding that the 2.5kg increase every session is one I'm best off disabling in the app as the lifts get heavier, having started from the bar. I still aim to increase once I'm solid at a level, but the important thing is getting consistent workouts. Getting injured runs counter to that.

You could try something like 5/3/1, which has you generally working at submaximal loads most of the time and only increases the weight every 2-3 weeks. One of Wendler's principles is that slow progress is still progress, something I agree with.

Oh thanks, I'll check it out. That sounds very interesting, and might be just what I need.

There are few things they don’t tell you about weightlifting:

- stretching is critical and takes time, without stretching you’ll eventually injure yourself.

- eventually you’ll get some minor injury and will have to manage that and wait for it to heal.

- start by getting a coach to specifically learn good from and find your max weights for different lifts. Strictly control trainer’s desire to add some non-core exercises, once good form is established, dismiss the trainer.

Most people can’t distinguish a good coach from some buff person with confidence and a track suit. There are surely more bad coaches than good ones.

For this audience, I would recommend reading/scanning StartingStrength.com, or the book of the same name by Mark Rippetoe.

Do you know of any recommended stretching routines?

Agile 8 and Limber 11 are the most common ones I've seen. The r/bodyweightfitness subreddit also has a decent routine.

I just do stretches for the muscles I'm training.

This is good book:

https://www.amazon.com/Stretching-Pocket-Book-Bob-Anderson/d...

This strap is really helpful:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00065X222/

Can you point me to a study that shows stretching has a statistically significant positive impact on injury rates?

I know it's the common school of thought, but the studies I've read have found it was beneficial for flexibility, ROM, and soreness but no statistically significant impact on injuries or performance (data is mixed positive and negative for performance).

Anecdotal data is useless, but I've been lifting relatively heavy for years with little to no stretching with no ill effects. I do use warm-up sets but no other warm-up/stretching techniques. However, I am definitely open to changing my routine when the data supports it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1250267/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15233597

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.525...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15076777

Well, my personal take, based on experience, is this:

You have to have enough range of motion for the lift you are doing, if you lift and don't stretch, muscle tends to shorten, and eventually you are not going to have enough range. This leads to two problems:

1) Potential over-stretch under load and injury, which will require time to heal.

2) Pain in joins, like knees or shoulders. Goes away once you start stretching.

If you do some other additional activity which gets you through full range of motion, like yoga or some active sport, then there is really no need to do extra stretching, otherwise, for me, stretching is required.

Lifting is basically weighted stretching. You can't train a movement and lose mobility for the range of motion you're training.

If your training has at its core multi-joint compound exercises, you shouldn't have to worry about your mobility.

That program is basically a rip-off of Mark Rippetoe’s work in Starting Strength which I also recommend.

It's not a rip-off. That doesn't even make any sense in an environment where you see people taking programs and basically remixing them or improving on them all the time. Taking inspiration, maybe. The weaknesses of SS are generally well-known (such as criminally low amount of volume), which is why people recommend programs like StrongLifts, GZCLP or 531 for beginners instead.

I guess Rippletoe stole it from Bill Starr "Strongest shall survive; strength training for football" then.

This study is bloody awful. For all we know it's the fruit loops which improve rat cognitive function.

The only good thing I'll say about it, is when the NYT starts reporting on the health benefits of X, it means X (drinking red wine, high fat diets, etc) has become trendy among the self regarding upper middle class. Weights; it's about time.

> when the NYT starts reporting on the health benefits of X, it means X (drinking red wine, high fat diets, etc) has become trendy among the self regarding upper middle class

I realized long ago so many of my long-term life decisions were based on thinkpieces in The Atlantic, The New York Times, or a similar publication.

Choosing experiences over stuff, eating only "real food" and cutting out sugar, getting more involved in community events and not being such a shut in -- all traced back to thinkpieces.

Could be worse: could be Joe Rogan (aka Oprah for dudes).

The Times definitely wasn't writing about such matters when it was a working class hobby; now that the upper middles have discovered crossfit...

In that context, it makes sense that the greatest danger to a workout plan is having kids.

Since my kid was born, maintaining a regular gym workout has been a lifesaver for me.

I find it's so easy to lose sense of time and what is important when you deal with the constant demands of a little baby - having an exercise routine keeps me grounded - it's away from home, something I do on my own, on my own terms and leaves me feeling good about myself.

Finding time to regularly workout is something I'd recommend to all new parents.

Yes, but they have their own schedule that can mess that up (especially in the infant/toddler stages).

It can be great to have the workout- but it only works if you are able to get sleep, which is in large part up to your kid & the luck of the draw.

5x5 is an amazing starting program. Highly recommend. Just make sure you have good form.

Which is to say get a competent coach or record every compound lift you do and form check the videos. You may think you are doing a lift correctly, but you're rounding out or whatever. It's very hard to tell without that extra evidence. Done correctly powerlifting is about as safe as strenuous physical activity gets, but with bad form you will ruin your knees, your back, and who knows what else.

If you are doing SL 5x5 correctly you don't need coach because you start with an empty bar. What you should do is to read and watch tutorials on how to perform each lift correctly. Then as your progress you can do some recordings to check your form, but there is no need to out source that stuff. Just take things slow.

Only time someone starting has had issues with form is when they rush things. Either they don't start with empty bar and progressively add weight each week and they jump to higher weights or they rush the setup.

When I started I just watched videos of the lifts I was about to make on Youtube and started with empty bar. Now 2 years later I've obviously progressed to programs that better suite me, but I've had no issues. I have no doubt that my form isn't 100% perfect, but seeing the clients of the personal trainers at my gym my form is way better than average and it is completely because I have a check list in my mind for each lift.

Off topic: while I'm writing about SL 5x5 the biggest issue I had with the program was squatting every day. I was fat when I started so even low bar weight made my knees hurt and it put me off on squatting for months, but now with reduced squatting (once per week) I have no issues squatting even heavier weights.

You do you.

However, plenty of people with sedentary lifestyles, which includes many who will read this, will have mobility issues that they may not be aware of without coaching. Sure nobody is going to do major damage with the empty bar, but the bar doesn't stay empty.

That said when I say coach I don't mean some random "functional fitness" type that a chain gym will push on you. I mean a powerlifting coach, ideally one who trains people for competition.

Yes it’s great to start at the gym and get used to that environment. But yes form is very important and you should not progress in weight if all your reps are not 100% ok. This is NOT emphasized in the program but it should be. It’s easy especially on squat and deadlift to progress quickly with bad form. And then you get injured...

While I'd always recommend barbell training, I actually got my start from a dead simple book called Body For Life, and I still think it makes a great beginners plan.

The amount of volume stronglifts 5x5 expects you to for your legs compared to other body ports is just much to high. It‘s not really balanced.

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