Post: #1

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-a...ass-85221/

Quote:I first heard the term strength sports—referring to football, weightlifting, and any other sport dependent upon sheer muscular force—in my early 40s. I’d spent half a lifetime dedicated to athletics more common among urban liberals like myself—jogging, cycling, swimming, pursuing cardiovascular fitness instead of brute force. But then somebody told me that these so-called endurance sports do little to counter the muscle-wasting sarcopenia and bone loss we all suffer in middle age.

One way to slow that slip into frailty, it turns out, is by lifting weights, forcing your body to increase bone density and muscle fiber. So I bought a book by a Texas gym owner named Mark Rippetoe titled Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training. I learned to squat, deadlift, and bench press. I came to love the emotional catharsis of channeling aggression into the bar. I made new friends: A former Force Recon marine chatted with me between lifts, describing the first Gulf War and how he’d nearly died falling from a helicopter; a massively muscled, bald kickboxer, who happened also to be a handsome gay biotech lawyer, stood behind me during bench press sessions, fingers under the bar, making sure I didn’t hurt myself.

I adored lifting with these men. It was the happiest I had ever been in a gym. A faster runner abandons you; a stronger lifter hangs out, kindly critiques your form, and waits his turn. My strength numbers shot upward, and so did my body weight: 190 pounds, 200, 210, 215. I bought baggy pants and shirts. Walking down the sidewalk, I felt confident. At parties with my wife, I saw men who ran marathons, and they looked gaunt and weak. I could have squashed them.

Upper middle class Americans avoid “excessive displays of strength,” viewing the bodybuilder look as vulgar overcompensation for wounded manhood.
Soon, however, I suffered a creeping insecurity. Looking into the eyes of a banker with soft hands, I imagined him thinking, You deluded moron, what does muscle have to do with anything?

One day, a skinny triathlete jogged past our house: visor, fancy sunglasses, GPS watch. I caught a look of yearning in my wife’s eyes. That night, we fought and she confessed: She couldn’t help it, she liked me better slender.

Friends came for dinner. A public-interest lawyer, noticing I was bigger, asked what I’d been up to.

“I’m really into lifting weights right now,” I said. “Trying to get strong.”

The lawyer’s wife, a marathoner and family therapist, appeared startled, as if concerned about my emotional state. She looked me in the eye and said, “Why?”

Sociologists, it turns out, have studied these covert athletic biases. Carl Stempel, for example, writing in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, argues that upper middle class Americans avoid “excessive displays of strength,” viewing the bodybuilder look as vulgar overcompensation for wounded manhood. The so-called dominant classes, Stempel writes—especially those like my friends and myself, richer in fancy degrees than in actual dollars—tend to express dominance through strenuous aerobic sports that display moral character, self-control, and self-development, rather than physical dominance. By chasing pure strength, in other words, packing on all that muscle, I had violated the unspoken prejudices—and dearly held self-definitions—of my social group.

For a while I fought back, cursing the moronic snobbery that, at some self-hating level, I shared. I thought of doubling down by entering a powerlifting competition.

Rippetoe visited my gym one day. I liked him immensely—funny, eccentric, a brilliant technique coach. He told me that to become competitive, I would have to get vastly bigger—to something like 275 pounds. But I didn’t want to be 275 pounds. I love my wife dearly. I didn’t want to become less attractive to her, and I was already too heavy for the running, biking, and swimming that I’d long enjoyed and now missed. For a short time I tried to have it both ways: I signed up for the Escape From Alcatraz Triathlon; bought a visor, fancy sunglasses, and a GPS watch; and told myself I would somehow maintain my hard-won muscular strength throughout triathlon training.

Jogging up our block, however, for that first run, I discovered that heavy weightlifting makes endurance workouts deeply unpleasant. My legs felt like dead tree trunks. The next day, when I tried to do squats, I learned that running undermines strength gains. It turns out that these two physical adaptations—like liberal and conservative political leanings, or elitist and working class cultural affinities—do not easily cohabit inside one human being (despite the excellent exception embodied by my kickboxing, bodybuilding, tech-lawyering gay friend).

I mentioned this to a legendary strength coach named Dan John, who’d once deadlifted 628 pounds. “I trained for a triathlon once,” John said over lunch. “I’ll never do that again.” He shook his head as if still emotionally traumatized by the loss of muscle and strength he’d suffered during all that cardio work.

In the end I made the same basic decision that Dan John had made, defaulting to the familiar sports I’d grown up with. In my case, that meant adopting what Stempel calls “the most class exclusive approach to strength-building,” one that “moderately incorporates strength into a sporting lifestyle.” Backing off the weights and ramping up the running, biking, and swimming, I lost 30 pounds of muscle in three months. I loved Escape From Alcatraz so much that I’m still doing triathlons three years later. My wife does seem to like me a little better, and sometimes I think our friends even respect me more. But I can’t stop thinking I’ve betrayed Rippetoe, and I dearly miss the Force Recon marine. I miss the biotech lawyer, too, and no matter what I’m supposed to feel about physical dominance or moral character, I dearly miss feeling huge walking down the street.

Apologies if this is in the wrong section, but I think the dynamic of class and exercise is different than exercise advice and/or game.

I have not ever done running or "long distance" or "endurance" sports. I've always considers myself a weightlifter/body builder. At 5'7" with a small build, I've always worked out to come across as more masculine. Since I work out in a university gym, I see people who are training for all types of purposes - boxing, basketball, soccer, rowing, running, bodybuilding, powerlifting etc. Since most students are broke anyway, class distinctions aren't so obvious to me.

So. What do you all think?

Post: #2

I think this perception goes back to the days when only the upper class didn't have to engage in manual labor to make a living. Prior to the 1960s or so, when bodybuilding began to become popular, the only way to put on muscle was to engage in the lowest form of manual labor, i.e. moving around heavy things. That's definitely a prole activity and not something that upper class people would be doing, so it's easy to see how a muscular build came to be associated with lower class men, guys who were swinging sledgehammers or delivering furniture, things like that.

Of course this is no longer true today, with modern gyms everywhere and the benefits of strength training well known to anyone who cares to investigate. But the stigma remains.

The hamster justification is pretty amusing though, about how aerobic sports "display moral character, self-control, and self-development". That's a big load of horse shit. Guaranteed the guy who wrote that never willed his way through a brutal set of 20 rep squats that made him puke afterward. There's at least as much (if not more) self control required to build and maintain muscles than to run 5 miles a day or train for triathlons, or do whatever sort of aerobic sport these SWPLs do. And let's not even mention boxing, BJJ or MMA training, which are even lower class than lifting weights but require significantly more discipline and personal fortitude than any aerobic sport. It's also really pathetic that the author admitted to enjoying lifting weights and being bigger, but hamstered his way into quitting simply because his wife and her snobby friends didn't like his muscles (read: they felt vaguely threatened by his increasingly masculine presence). What a doofus.

Verdict: Effete SWPLs snobs grasping for a sense of physical superiority over the lower class men who could easily smash them into the pavement. It's very fitting they pick sports that would aid them in running away.

Post: #3

Scorpion's verdict is more reason why men should not get caught up in class faggotry in regards to exercise and well being.

Post: #4

This dude worries way too much about what other people think. I'm happy being myself, fuck anyone who doesn't like it. Class? I grew up in the upper middle class, and I've spent time in the lower and lower middle class too. Haters are everywhere. People suggest it's uncouth to become stronger because that way they don't have to justify their own sloth and weakness.

As far as the marathon chick, obviously she wasn't going to get it. Why would her opinion even matter? Would an aspiring pro basketball player question himself because a kid in clown school thought his goal was stupid?

His wife was trying to sabotage him so he wouldn't be attractive to younger, hotter, tighter women.

As far as strength training being incompatible with any sort of aerobic/endurance exercise, he's straight up clueless.

I'll also add, he's full of shit. If he put in the time to gain 25 pounds of honest muscle, he wouldn't give a shit what other people think. And he lost 30 pounds of muscle in three months? How? Was he in a coma, in a fucking hot box?

Post: #5

CAN lifting make you look plebeian? Yes. Does it necessarily make you look plebeian? No.

The quick answer: if you do not do steroids, are fairly lean, dress well and groom well, muscle will probably not make you look plebeian. Without seeing a picture of the author, I'd bet that at 210-215, if his body fat was reasonably low, he looked fine. If you're fat, huge and swathed in bro wear, yes, people may perceive you as plebeian.

I'm sure you could check out a top flight business school and find many guys there who are decently strong and built, and don't suffer at all in the eyes of their peers or teachers.

The middle and upper middle classes in America are horrendously insecure. That is their signature feature. They are desperately afraid of showing any marker of being low class, so they incessantly ape each other and strenuously avoid any hint of being plebeian. The author's wife was anxious about losing status among her circle because her husband now had an unapproved aesthetic. She didn't want to be thrown out of the tribe.

And when it comes to girls, even upper class girls like muscle - just not to the exclusion of everything else. When girls say they don't like big guys, it means that they don't like roided out freaks and one-dimensional muscleheads - or they actually do and they're lying. Even those who are telling the truth are small in number, and can be won over anyway with good game and style.

Edit: I forgot I had run into this clown before. SURPRISE: He talks like a queer. Do you really fucking need to know anything else?

Speak so I shall know thee

Post: #6

You can either be the alpha predator who is big and strong and knows how to fight, the one who conquers his territory, the one who eats from the slain corpse of pray first by scaring lesser predators away, the one who mates with the female whenever he wants and sleeps the rest of his day pondering the big questions of life.

Or you can be the sneaky beta predator who runs away from bigger predators when they come to feed from a slain herbivore or when they come to mate with females, the one who runs away from taken grounds to yet vacant grounds where the dominating predator is sleeping or is away, the one who is never resting, always ready to run and resorts to eating grains when all meat is monopolized by the large and strong predators.

Most of these SWPL type cardio bunnies were weaks who as children got picked up by strong guys, but their pride didn't let them to become like those who picked up on them instead they develop this new image of themselves as being athletic "in another way" and then they take false pride by convincing themselves that his is the intellectual way how to be athletic altrough it is just an excuse.

The problem of the author of the essay in OP s that he was a beta in heart and his body choose what was congurent with his heart.

Post: #7

Quote:aerobic sports "display moral character, self-control, and self-development"

(in response to the guy's wife) Sure.

Go to a 5k and check out how incredibly out-of-shape most of the casual runners (about 90 percent of the field) are. They sure are showing that they are so in control that they have controlled themselves to not train at all before running.

Go to a powerlifting meet and check out the casual lifters. Oh yeah, there aren't any. What you see are all of those people lacking in moral character, self-control, and self-development....

Post: #8

This sounds fake, and it kind of sounds like it was written by a woman.

Post: #9

"Finding a place in the domestic sphere after the birth of my child."

What?

Dude looks like Hugo Schwyzer - and shares the same sexual preferences, no doubt.

Post: #10

It rings very true in Australia. In offices, filled with white-collar social strivers, marathon, biking and triathlon are the sports you do to fit in and social climb. Middle-aged, executives love to boast about their endurance runs for charity. They are always skinny, though often with a gut due to excess cortisol, and prematurely aged, with the red-capillaried faces of those with elevated coronary risk. The last thing they would do is lift to gain size, which would be a social faux pas.

Post: #11

Interesting find. This is why I never like to admit to girls how much I exercise.

There's a balance though. There is a limit where lifting is not necessarily healthy for you, and you can tell when a person invests so much in their body to the point it becomes a 'narcissistic disease.'

I don't agree with the article in its totality though. I don't know a single woman who prefers marathoners to other athletes. Perhaps triathletes with a muscular build, sure, but in general becoming proficient at endurance sports can also be unhealthy, and therefore in some respects a turnoff.

Funny how he also doesn't talk of the real lower social class... those that can't afford gyms, eat like shit, and inevitably balloon as they get older.

TLDR - I don't like women who run or lift too much. A lot of women feel the same way about men.

Post: #12

(07-30-2014 12:05 AM)RawGod Wrote:  It rings very true in Australia. In offices, filled with white-collar social strivers, marathon, biking and triathlon are the sports you do to fit in and social climb. Middle-aged, executives love to boast about their endurance runs for charity. They are always skinny, though often with a gut due to excess cortisol, and prematurely aged, with the red-capillaried faces of those with elevated coronary risk. The last thing they would do is lift to gain size, which would be a social faux pas.

There was an older professional guy at my old gym who looked like an emaciated Mitt Romney. About 6'1" and no more than 140 lbs. He'd come in and hit the treadmill hard as fuck all the time. He's probably worth much more than me and attends much fancier parties, but in all the times I saw him he never once looked me in the eye.

Nobody has visceral respect for a marathon runner the way they do toward a guy with a thick build.

Post: #13

(07-29-2014 11:17 PM)Mage Wrote:  You can either be the alpha predator who is big and strong and knows how to fight, the one who conquers his territory, the one who eats from the slain corpse of pray first by scaring lesser predators away, the one who mates with the female whenever he wants and sleeps the rest of his day pondering the big questions of life.

Or you can be the sneaky beta predator who runs away from bigger predators when they come to feed from a slain herbivore or when they come to mate with females, the one who runs away from taken grounds to yet vacant grounds where the dominating predator is sleeping or is away, the one who is never resting, always ready to run and resorts to eating grains when all meat is monopolized by the large and strong predators.

Most of these SWPL type cardio bunnies were weaks who as children got picked up by strong guys, but their pride didn't let them to become like those who picked up on them instead they develop this new image of themselves as being athletic "in another way" and then they take false pride by convincing themselves that his is the intellectual way how to be athletic altrough it is just an excuse.

The problem of the author of the essay in OP s that he was a beta in heart and his body choose what was congurent with his heart.

Strongest and most intimidating dude I've ever met in my life is practically scrawny. If you saw him without a shirt you'd see a bit of muscular definition, but he really wasn't a big dude at all.
Didn't stop him from being an utter leviathan in a verbal conflict or physical fight, and getting an incomprehensible amount of ass. And the reason? He's a crazy ass motherfucker.

Lifting and eating right is great and everyone ought to be doing it, but still I think 90% of the battle is upstairs.

Post: #14

Quote:Without seeing a picture of the author, I'd bet that at 210-215, if his body fat was reasonably low, he looked fine. If you're fat, huge and swathed in bro wear, yes, people may perceive you as plebeian.

He did Starting Strength. It's a guarantee that he's fat and unfit. And of course Rippetoe advised him to get even fatter. I used to get that sort of silly advice from some old school coaches, but it doesn't fly anymore. Eating your way past sticking points and mass-moves-mass are antiquated.

Many people in my social circle are SWPL cardio bunnies who love their runs. Some are fit enough to do half-marathons, Tough Mudder etc. I'm a powerlifter with a 2.5xBW squat, 1.5xBW bench and 3xBW deadlift. I can keep up with them just fine, having done a couple of TMs myself with those guys.

If you do strength training correctly, you'd have very good GPP which means you can keep up with cardio bunnies easily. Of course my TM time is nothing to write home about as I don't train for it, but when you are strong, you have plenty of strength to endure.

The flow of strength:

Absolute Strength -> Starting Strength -> Explosive Strength -> Endurance Strength

Weak people have very little strength to endure.

Admittedly a lot of strength athletes neglect their GPPs and aren't very fit, but there are plenty who are both strong and very fit. If you train and eat smartly, you can have both.

The problem with the author though is that his mental backbone is as weak as a toothpick. The moment it gets challenged by some women, it snaps in halves. That has nothing to do with his exercise choices.

Post: #15

(07-30-2014 03:08 AM)StrikeBack Wrote:  He did Starting Strength. It's a guarantee that he's fat and unfit. And of course Rippetoe advised him to get even fatter. I used to get that sort of silly advice from some old school coaches, but it doesn't fly anymore. Eating your way past sticking points and mass-moves-mass are antiquated.
...

That's what I was wondering too. In my best times I always coupled extreme workouts with long cardio-runs through the woods (I enjoy the experience). I sometimes see those fat strong guys in the gym. Never wanted to replicate their bodies. While they are indeed strong, the fat makes them look way more massive than they really are.

I would estimate that the gay lawyer he mentioned was strong and had low body fat, which made him appear also way slimmer and by far more capable to do any chosen runs.

________

Yes - managers in the corporate world and intellectuals are usually moving towards high intensity cardio like marathons, triathlons and triple-triathlons. But as soon as you meet entrepreneurs and the actual owners you find out that this by far more wealthy group has many fat guys and also quite a few highly muscular dudes among them. And they often command greater authority and strength than their corporate drone counterparts.

It is similar to getting a tan. In times past only the lowest classes had a tan due to menial work outside. Then it became a sign of leisure. But with a muscular build there is the added problem that it shows raw masculinity and our current society certainly does not approve of that.

Best is to get muscular with low body fat - most guys don't grow that big even if the do a little added TRT.

Post: #16

The guy just failed a major shit-test.
Divorce rape incoming.

Post: #17

(07-30-2014 05:44 AM)Glaucon Wrote:  The guy just failed a major shit-test.
Divorce rape incoming.

Also, SWPL writing on SWPL site advises that SWPL fitness is superior to non-SWPL fitness.

Post: #18

(07-29-2014 10:32 PM)Tytalus Wrote:  http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-a...ass-85221/

Apologies if this is in the wrong section, but I think the dynamic of class and exercise is different than exercise advice and/or game.

I have not ever done running or "long distance" or "endurance" sports. I've always considers myself a weightlifter/body builder. At 5'7" with a small build, I've always worked out to come across as more masculine. Since I work out in a university gym, I see people who are training for all types of purposes - boxing, basketball, soccer, rowing, running, bodybuilding, powerlifting etc. Since most students are broke anyway, class distinctions aren't so obvious to me.

So. What do you all think?

While I have noticed that cardio based sports such as triathlon form a mainstay within the corporate world I don't think they currently hold a significant social class advantage over strength based sports.

Perhaps this is just my location [Sydney] but muscle creates a far greater leg up in most social circles [& Specifically with women]. I wouldn't go so far as to say a bodybuilding physique is ideal [It isn't] - But at 6'0 - Between 200 - 220lb is definitely the sweet spot.

Post: #19

As everyone knows, the class system here in the Uk is fairly rigid; moving between strata is usually done over generations and money is rarely a shortcut to jumping the queue.

Behaviours and norms are therefore equally as rigid and infrequently change.

Here, building significant muscle is definitely a proletarian activity looked down upon by the upper middle classes and above. As social standing affects everything we do here in this country, one has to be very aware of this at all times.

My father was a bodybuilder, an all natural competitor in the 60s; it was ok for him though as he was an immigrant and entrepreneur. For me as the child of a newly rich immigrant, who was sent to expensive schools and therefore firmly rooted in upper middle class Britain, it is not ok.

I struggle with this as I love lifting weights and the only way to preserve social standing is to combine that with playing rugby…apparently it's ok then to be big and strong. I try not to even mention my martial arts and fighting in "polite society" conversations; heads would literally explode.

It's ridiculous to any free thinking person.

Sadly it is impossible to change such ingrained societal beliefs, especially in a country such as this. It's a fascinating but ultimately mental place.

Post: #20

(07-29-2014 10:32 PM)Tytalus Wrote:  I adored lifting with these men. It was the happiest I had ever been in a gym. A faster runner abandons you; a stronger lifter hangs out, kindly critiques your form, and waits his turn. My strength numbers shot upward, and so did my body weight: 190 pounds, 200, 210, 215. I bought baggy pants and shirts. Walking down the sidewalk, I felt confident. At parties with my wife, I saw men who ran marathons, and they looked gaunt and weak. I could have squashed them.

Just look at those numbers - and the baggy clothes. Dude got fat.



My guess is he went from skinny fat/chubby fat to somewhere past builtfat. It's entirely possible to lift heavy and have a body type somewhere around ripped/athletic and built but it requires nutritional discipline - which he doesn't mention at all in his article.

Besides that his basic premise is BS. I work out at a classic powerlifting gym and a lot of triathletes come in and lift during their off season. There's no rivalry. Even the few (male) marathoners I know lift heavy when they're not training for a race - it's just part of being a good athlete.

Post: #21

The author felt the power of testosterone for the first time in his life, and he got scared. He felt confident, he felt that other men were weak, and he literally ran away from it.

Of course his wife spoke out against it. A husband with options would be her worst nightmare. He failed the test.

Everything else he wrote is rationalisation for his cowardice.

"I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak." - Arnold

Post: #22

(07-30-2014 01:18 AM)Ziltoid Wrote:  

(07-29-2014 11:17 PM)Mage Wrote:  You can either be the alpha predator who is big and strong and knows how to fight, the one who conquers his territory, the one who eats from the slain corpse of pray first by scaring lesser predators away, the one who mates with the female whenever he wants and sleeps the rest of his day pondering the big questions of life.

Or you can be the sneaky beta predator who runs away from bigger predators when they come to feed from a slain herbivore or when they come to mate with females, the one who runs away from taken grounds to yet vacant grounds where the dominating predator is sleeping or is away, the one who is never resting, always ready to run and resorts to eating grains when all meat is monopolized by the large and strong predators.

Most of these SWPL type cardio bunnies were weaks who as children got picked up by strong guys, but their pride didn't let them to become like those who picked up on them instead they develop this new image of themselves as being athletic "in another way" and then they take false pride by convincing themselves that his is the intellectual way how to be athletic altrough it is just an excuse.

The problem of the author of the essay in OP s that he was a beta in heart and his body choose what was congurent with his heart.

Strongest and most intimidating dude I've ever met in my life is practically scrawny. If you saw him without a shirt you'd see a bit of muscular definition, but he really wasn't a big dude at all.
Didn't stop him from being an utter leviathan in a verbal conflict or physical fight, and getting an incomprehensible amount of ass. And the reason? He's a crazy ass motherfucker.

Lifting and eating right is great and everyone ought to be doing it, but still I think 90% of the battle is upstairs.

Obviously that for humans the mind is more important than the body, but generally the body either consciously or unconsciously mimics the mind. Although there are cases when body compensates for minds defiance as well.

Post: #23

   
the ideal

My brother is a world champion power lifter...he's doing over 500 bench, over 900 squat...it looks like hell to me, living like that. I'm the alternative, at 165 I'm in ideal shape I'd say (drink too much though), slim and trim but cut.

I lift weights, play basketball, volleyball, watch what I eat (more quantity than quality), etc. Most of my friends in good shape do both lifting with cardio of some sort.

Post: #24

One of the worst looks, in my opinion, is bodybuilders with distended stomachs. It's freaky. Looks so wrong.

e.g.

Post: #25

(07-30-2014 05:19 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  That's what I was wondering too. In my best times I always coupled extreme workouts with long cardio-runs through the woods (I enjoy the experience). I sometimes see those fat strong guys in the gym. Never wanted to replicate their bodies. While they are indeed strong, the fat makes them look way more massive than they really are.

One of the most influential coaches on my training is Marty Gallagher who wrote The Purposeful Primitive (if there's one strength book you must get, this is it). He was a world class powerlifter and record holder until injuries stopped him from competing at that level. He then coached a series of the most famous and strongest powerlifters ever, including Ed Coan and Kirk Karwoski. He's probably the best writer in the iron game.

Marty Gallagher always, as you do, coupled tough workouts with long runs through the woods, like many of the Primitives (old time strongmen) he wrote about did. The long runs make good physical preparation for hard lifting and are a form of active recovery for your body and your mind.