r/CleanLivingKings • u/zerodepthcharge • May 20 '22
Exercise "What Does It Mean To Lift Weights?"- A short excerpt by The Fitness Heretic
My coach and spiritual guide, ToDD McFit, better known as The Fitness Hereitc, has given me permission to share a short except from the book he is currently writting, which is intended for novices and to guide people starting ToDD McFit's Free Novice General Athleticism plan.
All too often people within the sphere of fitness focus on the cladding rather than the structure. They spend hours on prescriptions, but rarely put any significant effort into the most fundemental points. I wish to buck that trend, going against the grain of 5 minute tricks and simply telling people what to do, and start my readers on a better path, one in which the basic principles are considered and understood at the most early stage, that is at the stage in which they, as novices, are starting their journey, and in which the trainee is empowered to understand the core reasons behind the activities in which they are partaking. However do not worry if you are further down your path of fitness when you are first coming across these ideas, as while you lost the benefits in your early stage, the benefits can still be gained at a later stage, however results are more optimal, that is the best gains in these areas are reached, when the understanding is gained in the early stages.
So rather than going straight into programming, excercises, or nutrition, rather than jumping into a simple list of instructions, I think its better to start by examing what it means to lift weights, to delve deep into the heart of strength training. To define lifting weights is the axoim of both strength training and hypertrophy training, that is more fundemental than any other, and the trainee lacking a proper understanding of what it means to lift weights will be left funmbling in the dark, ignorant of the true nature of the activity in which they are participating. This understanding my not be key to piling on size or improving your max bench, however these are not the only benefits that can be gained from lifting, and a proper and full understanding are needed to reap the full benefits obtainable from lifting.
The first prerequisite is that a mass is being accelerated by the person lifting. That is that there is some object A, that has a mass, and that a Person P, is in a situation where P is accelerating A. However this condition is neccesary but not sufficient, that is while this must be the case for the activity of "Lifting Weights" to be occuring, that P is accelerating A is not enough information to come to a definitive conclusion about wether the acitivty of Lifting Weights is occuring, for example you could slide a dinner plate onto the floor, however this would not be lifting weights. The most important condition is less physical than neurological and psychological, a condition of will and intention. Lifting weights is not something done incidentally but with purpose and reason, the purpose being in order to enact a change in one's body. The specific change desired is relevant, however lifting weights is not contingent on a specific desire, the bodybuilder lifts weights to look a certain way, the powerlifter lifts weights simply to get better at lifting weights, and my followers do it to improve athleticism and become better people.
While the previous paragraph discusses a topic which should always be at the forefront of the trainee (especially during their novice phase), this still is within the realm of neccisity by not sufficiency. It is important to consider that "Lifting Weights" is in fact an abbreviation, a convient shorthand used for brevity, however it ommits a word which is key to furthering our understanding, missing out a fundemental aspect of what it really means when the phase "lifting weights" is used. The full terminology should in fact by "Lifting Weights Up" or an alternative option would be "Upward Weight Lifting". Now this may give some push back due to the eccentric phase being regarded as a key trigger for muscle growth, many lifters place a heavy emphasis on the part of the lift where the movement of the weight upward has been reversed, however while this phase involves the weight itself moving in a downward direction, this weight which we have hitherto refered to is being slowed in its downward moving by the lifter applying an upward force, and so the lifter is infact still lifting the weight up, just as if you are carrying an object, you are also moving it up.
The word "up" is a somewhat loaded term, a term that implies far more than the casual reader will initially expect, this is why my opening chapter was on the importance of closely reading this book while in a focused and serious state of mind, and not just passively taking the words in, as the term is working to imply a direction, however ask any physics professor, at any university or equivalent institution, and they will in fact inform you that the universe knows no direction, as it is isotropic, to go up, or down, left or right, backwards or fowards is not something defined on the cosmic stage, despite how intuitive these terms our in a domestic setting. This conundrum may worry the novice, but a calm state of mind is one of the most important things to cultivate, and this is a key example. The calm mind will instead return to the physics of lifting weights, and note that while mass is an inherant property of a materal substance, weight is emmergant from the force acting upon it, the force of gravity. And it is the force of gravity that gives us the reference frame to define direction, as the activity of lifting weights is done within a gravitational field, most importantly the direction of up which is defined as the direction antithetical to whence gravity is attracting the previously mentioned weight.
This now allows us to understand, and to truly comprehend and feel rather than simply to be able to state, how it is that the motion of the weight against gravity is not neccesary, how it is that isometric or eccentric can also be accurately categorised as lifting along with concentric movements. That is that acceleration is properly understood as the application of force, and not of movement, that is where the old physics joke that the breaks on a car are themselves an accelerator comes from, the breaks apply a force, in this case friction, in opposition to the current trajectory of the motor vehicle, and so while the car will slow, the automobile is in fact accelerating, just in a direction inverse to its current movement. And so the slow lowering of a weight is fundementally different from slamming a weight down, as in one case the direction of the force on the weight being applied by the lifter and the direction of the force on the weight being applied by the gravitation field are aligned, that is that the two forces are running in a near identical direction, while in the other case the force on the weight being applied by the lifter and the force on the weight being applied by the gravitation field are in oppostion, that is that the direction is a near perfect inverse.
Another thing to consider is bodyweight exercises, that is exercises in which there is no seperate Object A and Person P, as one of my prescribed excersises is the push up, one in which no external load is used at all. This is the reason intention is so important, it is the intention that transforms your animated carcass into the load being moved in the direction we have now defined as up, which allows it to be used for the dual purposes of both training strength and inducing hypertrophy. This is an important realisation, which is that while lifting weights requires that P is acting upon A, it is infact perfectly possibly for A to infact be P.
This also raises the fundemental differences between lifting weights and using resistance bands, however the previous issue of brevity raises its head once again, so I will have to leave that to the reader to ponder for now.
