Optimal? Fact or opinion..

[MyEgoProblem]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClcEh...d=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Top banter by bret.

But makes great points that many of the things people like to say.. Are actually not universally true, often with no real backing and just peoples opinion.

[Spanishdream]

Have you ever encountered one of these in the wild? I moved to a new area last month & joined a new gym. Overheard one of the personal trainers talked about the not having protein too close to your workout as it can be "catabolic" as it confuses the muscles under load.

Must be one of the easiest jobs to scam people. Get big, spin a bunch of BS how you got big, profit of inducing anxiety.

[BeginnerGainz]

God I hate that word “optimal”.

I know for a brief period I was like “oooooh that makes sense” then came to my senses and realized basic movements built big dudes forever without thinking too much about what is “optimal”

Im utterly convinced that people who make these kinds of videos just want to either a) stir controversy b) sound smarter than they are even though they all rip off of each other c) make some kind of content for views d) some mix of the 3

[TAWS6]

Most people just copy the pros in most gyms. Probably not “optimal” but better than nothing.

[TolerantLactose]

Everyone has their head canon. Do whatever works for you.

[GeneralSerpant]

Everyone has their head canon. Do whatever works for you.

Exactly. Just pick whatever's most optical and you'll be fine.

[MyEgoProblem]

Have you ever encountered one of these in the wild? I moved to a new area last month & joined a new gym. Overheard one of the personal trainers talked about the not having protein too close to your workout as it can be "catabolic" as it confuses the muscles under load.

Must be one of the easiest jobs to scam people. Get big, spin a bunch of BS how you got big, profit of inducing anxiety.

Everywhere these days 😂
Running a gym i see everyone from national level+ powerlifters and bodybuilders to no effort Twinks and thots who come in to take pics and leave and everything inbetween.

All small wanna 'bodybuilders' with delusions of actually competing.
Terrified to loose their abs even tho they carry no muscle what so ever. Gotta optimise bruh.

Can't barbell row a plate with without humping the air like its a power shrug or touch their chest on bench without pushing their dink to the ceiling

but will do 1arm lat pull arounds and 1arm cable Xovers with 15k for 10x15 each side while filming for their fewhundred followers on insta pushing their main gaining diet..

[jaxqen]

One could improve his arms just by doing waiter curls and db kickbacks, with the right frequency, volume, being close to failure and having some progressive overload.
Most likely not "OPTIMAL" at all, but just something regarding the "this exercise is COMPLETELY useless" or "this exercise doesn't train this muscle group AT ALL" dogma

When it comes to biomechanics gurus, I think about Paul Carter and Kasseem.
The first one build his body using the old school methods {vitamin S helped him too}, but now he changed his views completely.
I guess maybe his joints are ****ed up and he thinks he came with better ways of training without ****ing up the joints, but 99% he wants some money by coming up with something new.
About Kasseem... he has some interesting things, but most of his exercises just don't work for me...

But I don't see this biomechanics stuff in my commercial gym.
Just what TAWS6 said, usually people copy the pros.

chest - bb bench / incline bb/ db / machine / smith presses + cable flies + machine flies.
That's it! Extremely rarely some Svend press... not something that biomechanics gurus like, just something weird.

back - pulldowns, pullups... rows come after vertical pulls, but it's usually cable seated, cable standing with the low handle, db, the machine chest supported, bb row or landmine row.
And many straight arm pull as a finisher... something that I personally hate!
Nothing weird!

legs - leg press, extensions and curls, some lunges... more rarely, squat, rdl/stiff or bulgarian squat.
Again, no weird exercises.

arms & delts - same old stuff... db presses, machine presses, smith press... very rarely a military press.
db, cable or bb curls, cable pushdowns, some skulls...
Very rarely a waiter curl, I think I've seen 2-3 guys doing it. Hell, I've done it once out of curiosity.
Not implying that the waiter curl belongs to the biomechanics gurus, I think Cavaliere made it somewhat popular.
Just thinking about weird exercises.

What I like is the kneeling one arm cable row, I think I've seen it on Kasseem.
But it's probably and old exercises and it makes sense.

--------------------------

I remembered about Mike Van Wyck, I found out about him 2 weeks ago from Camarija.
The guy is an old bb.
He makes fun of biomechanics gurus, while somewhat imitating them.
He also has this "elbows tucked during db presses" because if not the chest is not working.
And I've found out an old video of him doing heavy db presses with elbows not tucked at all... just like all bb do.
It's funny how these people change their opinions.
Just like Paul Carter.

God I hate that word “optimal”.


Im utterly convinced that people who make these kinds of videos just want to either a) stir controversy b) sound smarter than they are even though they all rip off of each other c) make some kind of content for views d) some mix of the 3

How about "better"?


They make money out of youtube.
Even the "science-based" channels.
All of them!
These days, Mike Israetel says the same things over and over again, in different videos, Greg Doucette or Cavaliere style.

A serious youtube channel, without repeating the same information in different videos, should have no more than 30-50 videos for the beginner-intermediate lifter.
Probably 100 for the advanced who want to compete in bb.
That's it, end of the channel!
But this doesn't make money.

[EliKoehn]

^^ My general guideline is that if I see someone's catchy-looking face plastered onto the thumbnail, there's a good chance that there's some kind of monetary motivation for the channel at large. Whether or not that's to the chagrin of the quality of information seems to depend on who it is. Sometimes it's not even purporting to be sage advice but just commentary about one's own training with some basic things strewn in (like Candito's channel), but if it seems like the former, I try to avoid it. Ever since I learned the T-Nation was pretty scammy, I don't watch much of the clickbaity stuff anymore.

Like Ego was saying though, it is kind of weird to me how many people are clearly not very far along at all and yet go around advertising their purported success and their special methods, etc. Why not just quietly put in the work over the long-haul on the tried and true before being a self-styled expert?

Even though this kind of thing is common and everyone's seen it, I remember a couple of years ago there was one guy, probably 19-20 years old, who had 225 on the bar doing "rows," and they were one or two of legitimately the ugliest, 3" RoM, barely bent over, full-body-squirmed lurches I've ever seen, then I noticed from his phone screen that he posted his Snap story "225!" with all of this flare about how impressive he was. Arguably the biggest eye-roll experience in a commercial gym I've encountered.

[jademonkey]

Everywhere these days ������
Running a gym i see everyone from national level+ powerlifters and bodybuilders to no effort Twinks and thots who come in to take pics and leave and everything inbetween.

All small wanna 'bodybuilders' with delusions of actually competing.
Terrified to loose their abs even tho they carry no muscle what so ever. Gotta optimise bruh.

Can't barbell row a plate with without humping the air like its a power shrug or touch their chest on bench without pushing their dink to the ceiling

but will do 1arm lat pull arounds and 1arm cable Xovers with 15k for 10x15 each side while filming for their fewhundred followers on insta pushing their main gaining diet..

Running a gym you must have a lot of time to watch people. When I hit the gym I don't usually notice in detail what other's are doing... But I guess I do notice the really weird stuff:

This couple of girls and one of them is trying to teach the other how to clean, but she can't even figure out how to lift the bar off the ground properly.

Or the dude quarter squatting 275 with knees trying to cave in.

Or the girl that's in the cage for 90 minutes doing like 60 sets of squats followed by 60 sets of step ups followed by 60 sets of hip thrusts.

Or the girl the other day who was using the small barbell in the squat rack with the sleeves on the supports and the plates spaced out to land outside the rack.

There's always a semi-skinny dude or three who are never seen doing anything but arms.

Or the other van dweller who walked straight to the showers, then drank a cup of free coffee while doing one weird twisting exercise machine, refilled her coffee and left. Why did she choose Anytime over Planet if she's just there for the coffee and showers?

[Camarija]

As my boy Zyzz once said, we're all going to make it

I'd rather keep an open mind and try new things.

If I like it I'll keep it in the tool box.

No energy given to hating.

If there's a psycho who's working out with the objectove of not killing people, I'm happy to see them swinging from cable machines like spiderman.

* edit *

My point is optimally can't be guaranteed, so try hard, have fun, learn new things, enjoy, etc.

I like a lot of RP concepts but I can't guarantee they are always right

I like a lot of Mike Van Wyck training cues but not all

I also watch hypertrophy coach, chris bumstead, hd muscle training videos etc

Just seeing what looks fun to try out

E.g. i trued out hypertropht coach's cable cross tricep extensions for several months. Worked great at the start, but now i think theyre kind of dumb compared to single arm pushdowns with better stretch and leverage

[BeginnerGainz]

One could improve his arms just by doing waiter curls and db kickbacks, with the right frequency, volume, being close to failure and having some progressive overload.
Most likely not "OPTIMAL" at all, but just something regarding the "this exercise is COMPLETELY useless" or "this exercise doesn't train this muscle group AT ALL" dogma

When it comes to biomechanics gurus, I think about Paul Carter and Kasseem.
The first one build his body using the old school methods {vitamin S helped him too}, but now he changed his views completely.
I guess maybe his joints are ****ed up and he thinks he came with better ways of training without ****ing up the joints, but 99% he wants some money by coming up with something new.
About Kasseem... he has some interesting things, but most of his exercises just don't work for me...

But I don't see this biomechanics stuff in my commercial gym.
Just what TAWS6 said, usually people copy the pros.

chest - bb bench / incline bb/ db / machine / smith presses + cable flies + machine flies.
That's it! Extremely rarely some Svend press... not something that biomechanics gurus like, just something weird.

back - pulldowns, pullups... rows come after vertical pulls, but it's usually cable seated, cable standing with the low handle, db, the machine chest supported, bb row or landmine row.
And many straight arm pull as a finisher... something that I personally hate!
Nothing weird!

legs - leg press, extensions and curls, some lunges... more rarely, squat, rdl/stiff or bulgarian squat.
Again, no weird exercises.

arms & delts - same old stuff... db presses, machine presses, smith press... very rarely a military press.
db, cable or bb curls, cable pushdowns, some skulls...
Very rarely a waiter curl, I think I've seen 2-3 guys doing it. Hell, I've done it once out of curiosity.
Not implying that the waiter curl belongs to the biomechanics gurus, I think Cavaliere made it somewhat popular.
Just thinking about weird exercises.

What I like is the kneeling one arm cable row, I think I've seen it on Kasseem.
But it's probably and old exercises and it makes sense.

--------------------------

I remembered about Mike Van Wyck, I found out about him 2 weeks ago from Camarija.
The guy is an old bb.
He makes fun of biomechanics gurus, while somewhat imitating them.
He also has this "elbows tucked during db presses" because if not the chest is not working.
And I've found out an old video of him doing heavy db presses with elbows not tucked at all... just like all bb do.
It's funny how these people change their opinions.
Just like Paul Carter.





How about "better"?


They make money out of youtube.
Even the "science-based" channels.
All of them!
These days, Mike Israetel says the same things over and over again, in different videos, Greg Doucette or Cavaliere style.

A serious youtube channel, without repeating the same information in different videos, should have no more than 30-50 videos for the beginner-intermediate lifter.
Probably 100 for the advanced who want to compete in bb.
That's it, end of the channel!
But this doesn't make money.

I find myself rereading old articles of Paul’s on T-nation and his now defunct blog vs what he puts out now on Instagram where he is basically trying to repackage Mike Mentzer’s “heavy duty” style of training.

He bases his opinion off of guys like hypertrophy coach, Kassem, etc

[jaxqen]

I like a lot of RP concepts but I can't guarantee they are always right

I like a lot of Mike Van Wyck training cues but not all

I also watch hypertrophy coach, chris bumstead, hd muscle training videos etc

E.g. i trued out hypertropht coach's cable cross tricep extensions for several months. Worked great at the start, but now i think theyre kind of dumb compared to single arm pushdowns with better stretch and leverage

RP - good information. A little annoying to see that he is reusing the same information in different videos. I think he had 3-4 videos lately about a curl tip {shoulder flexion}... the same cue. And he deleted the last one.
But I get it, it's a business, views = $
But, step by step, you can easily turn yourself into Cavaliere or Doucette, just by doing that.
Many channels started with good information and then, little by little, they changed.

Wyck - no comment about his cues. I havent' seen much of him , but the tricep pushdown one makes sense.
Annoying to see that he has this superior attitudine of "those ****heads db press differently then I do it, so they are wrong, because they are not working chest"
Especially since he built his body doing the same stuff.
Or maybe I am just a hater because I don't understand why someone would tattoo his skull and face... except for 16 year old wannabe rappers.

Hyp coach - he doesn't have this superior douchebag attitude and I like him.
I also tried his cross extensions, but the distance between my 2 cables is fixed, so maybe that's why I didn't get much out of them.


Another channel that I discovered lately and I like - Will Ratelle - small channel, mostly about strength/athleticism, little about hyp

[GrouchyUSMC]

Have you ever encountered one of these in the wild? I moved to a new area last month & joined a new gym. Overheard one of the personal trainers talked about the not having protein too close to your workout as it can be "catabolic" as it confuses the muscles under load.

Must be one of the easiest jobs to scam people. Get big, spin a bunch of BS how you got big, profit of inducing anxiety.

The first gym I signed up for when I got out of the Marine Corps had some goofy trainers. One was deadlifting with the squat bar pad so he could rest the bar on his thighs between reps. I didn't care enough to ask why, it was super weird though.

If I'm in a gym I'm just there to work, if someone tries telling me something I'm doing is "wrong", I just thank them and keep doing it the way I'm doing it. They usually go bother someone else after that.

[Camarija]

Wyck - "those ****heads db press differently then I do it, so they are wrong, because they are not working chest"

Curious about this

Will make a thread asking opinions later

[GeneralSerpant]

Most any no-no rules have to do with pushing as hard as you can as your only approach to training. Done right, it is just linear progressive overload. Done wrong, it is doing deadlifts as a shoulder isolation.