Socal77 wrote: ↑Tue May 18, 2021 8:28 am
alfaspider wrote: ↑Mon May 17, 2021 2:12 pm
Socal77 wrote: ↑Sun May 16, 2021 4:07 pm
Neither. Only body weight exercises. If you must, dumbbells doing almost exclusively biceps curls.
I'm not sure what the fixation on bicep curls is. They are mostly just useful for bodybuilders as they are mostly an isolation exercise that doesn't do much for anything besides the bicep. Nothing special about curls, and you can certainly hurt yourself from curls same as any other exercise. They can put a lot of strain on wrists and elbows.
If you are fixated on bodyweight only, you can build your biceps with pull ups and variations thereof. If you are going to allow dumbbells, curls wouldn't be my first exercise to add.
That wasn't my point at all. My point is to try to stay away from all fitness technology and only perform movements that the human body would do naturally.
The only technology that is somewhat close to picking up rocks and logs to build something is dumbbells.
I learned this the hard way after gyming for 30+ years.
The gym is full of tech your body was not meant to perform.
I agree there on not forcing the body into non-functional movements (like many machines do), but I still don't understand why bicep curl would be the only weighted exercise you do. You can replicate most functional movements with either a barbell or dumbells (or no weight at all). You can deadlift a dumbell same as a barbell, and either could be analogous to picking up rocks or logs to build something.
As a general matter, I think the human body will do its best to adapt to its environment and the stresses you put on it. If you run marathons, it will try to adapt to running long distances. If you lift barbells, it will try to adapt to lift heavy things. If you do pushups and jumping jacks, it will get good at those things.
A modern human that doesn't need any of those things for immediate survival will need to figure out which things can help prolong vitality and avoid injury. I think we agree that being good at silly machines like the hip add/abductor (the leg squeeze/open machine) is probably not one of those things, but being able to pick up something heavy off the floor (like a deadlift) probably is.
But with most functional movements, there's different ways you can train the body and achieve a pretty similar results. You can train core stability and chest with a pushup or a bench press. You train deadlift motions with barbells, dumbells, kettlebells. You can squat with our without weight. It's a mix of personal preference and desired goals. Your body will get good at the one you train for. If you train pushups, your body will get good at high rep pushing. If you train heavy bench press, your body will get good at heavy pushing. There is some crossover, but it's not exact. Nobody ever achieved a 500lb+ bench press by doing a lot of pushups and never getting under a bar, but having a 500lb+ bench press won't necessarily mean you can do an insane number of pushups. Even though they are the same basic movement, you are asking your body to make a slightly different adaptation.