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Post by Oti on Apr 28, 2012 23:01:09 GMT -5
He's serious about the calories, but that's only for ridiculously tall, skinny kids who have no muscle or fat on them. Those kids won't gain weight if they eat 3,000 calories a day, thanks to their hormones and whatnot. Drastic measures are necessary in those cases. Unless this applies to you, you can probably start at a modest 3,000 calories and see how your body responds. If you gain a pound every week or two, you're doing alright. Less than that, eat more, and more than that, eat less. The idea is to recover and gain weight slowly, but not get fat.
The gains are real and not uncommon for any beginner who takes on a program like this and eats and recovers adequately*. You can take a beating in the weight room because as a beginner, you're too weak to cause any serious damage to yourself. You can squat more and more weight each time because to you, every session is just practice. Every intermediate or advanced lifter wants to be like you. Intermediate progress slows to weekly instead of daily, and advanced progress can take over a month.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
*I'm a good example of this. In my ANW4 entry video, I squatted 250 lbs for one rep. That was my absolute a**-busting max at the time. Not even two months on Starting Strength, I worked up to five reps with 250 lbs. Right before ANW4, I squatted 300 lbs (for a heavy single). And that's not even impressive. Kids work up to 3x5 with 315 lbs sometimes using SS. It's crazy.
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Post by Shuberb674 on Apr 29, 2012 9:10:12 GMT -5
My dad told me that doing heavy weights (especially when you're young)can damage your joints and give you arthiritis at an early age, which is why i'm kind of apprehensive about doing heavy weights. If my dad was 99 other people out of 100 i would ignore him but he happens to be a VERY experienced orthopaedic surgeon.
And besides, i thought that heavy weights and lots of food wasn't good for sasuke. I mean look at yuuji, he can barely lift a 50 kg wall but can still achieve kanzenseiha twice!
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Post by Oti on Apr 29, 2012 9:59:29 GMT -5
That's not true. startingstrength.com/articles/young_strength_starr.pdfThe whole idea that you need to be a twig to conquer Sasuke is pretty off. Most people seem to think that if you gain five pounds, you're screwing yourself over because now you have to carry that weight with you through stage three. But what if your weighted pull-ups improve by 50 lbs? You're obviously benefiting here. Yuuji is a great competitor, and would be even greater if he were stronger. Strength always makes you a better athlete.
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Post by milktruck on Apr 29, 2012 11:03:32 GMT -5
Sort of an anecdote: Maybe 3-4 years ago I went back to school and had a little more free time than I had when I was working and really got back into lifting. All I did was lift, no sports or anything, not even jogging or sprinting. My classmates would all go to the beach some weekends and play volleyball and, even though we were all terrible and just out for a good time, some people were college athletes in other sports. They were all completely shocked at my vertical leap, and all I did was strength train.
Also, I go to parkour lessons every once in a while. There are a lot of situations where they expect to need to give me a boost or something to get through a new maneuver. Most of the time I have been able to get through whatever it is, without assistance, totally due to (leg) strength and power (its certainly not finesse!). Again, I havent done any sport seriously since high school, and I graduated 2000. I just lift, and I would say its a huge piece of the puzzle. It wont make precisions easier, though! Haha..
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Post by Oti on Apr 29, 2012 11:33:11 GMT -5
And that's where a lot of people get mixed up. They think we lift to practice for the course. Lifting is general conditioning. It's not practice. We do parkour and play on replicas and all that silly stuff to build the skills we need on the course.
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Post by milktruck on May 1, 2012 19:05:22 GMT -5
Something i read today on elitefts reminded me of this recent discussion: There is a point of diminishing returns where getting stronger won’t transmute into increased speed and power. When this happens, you have to shift the training to include more power exercises and maintain the athletes’ high strength levels. However, this level of strength is likely to be somewhere around a double body weight squat or more, so your athletes need to be pretty damn strong before you have them go on to exclusive power phases! articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/sports-training/how-to-introduce-power-phases-for-athletes/So, no new conclusion from the article - getting stronger will help your power till you are pretty strong. Kind of interesting that the author gives a level at which you might reassess your programming to include all-power blocks, too.
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Post by Oti on May 1, 2012 21:31:31 GMT -5
Exactly. The problem is that nobody's strong in the first place anymore. People just want to focus on practicing obstacles. Hell, I'm guilty of that when I first started too. But if you can put everything else on the back burner until you've got decent strength levels (which doesn't take that long), you'll find your new strength actually makes things a lot easier. I know it certainly did for me at ANW4. That was the first time I actually took my strength training seriously and was able to compete with nearly a double body weight squat and triple body weight deadlift.
And once you get that strength, a thrice weekly strength routine turns into a very short once or twice a week maintenance routine instead, which is much, much easier and allows for all the practice you want.
It's not terribly complicated stuff. I hate that it took me this long to come around full circle like this.
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