Tell us about your home gym....

Jimmythebull

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Wow ...this interview is Gold..I never knew about his interest in martial arts.
PFOOM...PHOOM
 

Alan0354

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This guy is correct about losing muscle as we age & someone on the thread mentioned bone density. I think he needs to watch his diet though, looks overweight.
One Form of weight training I've found very useful, & as you'll see this isn't new is a system Bob Gadja used.
It is similar to what I do.

The guy is OUT OF SHAPE!!! I do more weights than him and I am smaller and almost 70!!!

I started losing muscle about 65.

In my gym before, we have guys older than him pushing over double he's doing. 3 years ago, I was doing 75lbs dumbbell flat bench press 3 sets of 10. I was a little weakly amount people in the gym.
 
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Jimmythebull

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It is similar to what I do.

The guy is OUT OF SHAPE!!! I do more weights than him and I am smaller and almost 70!!!

I started losing muscle about 65.
Yes he is Alan, was just trying not to be too hard. He could be a member here 🙂
 

MetalBoar

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I don't use it as a metric, but other people do. There's an entire industry built off that very same metric that goes by appearance.


They aren't the exceptions. There's a difference between being able to do those things and being able to do those things on a professional level. That's when ignore genetics. Go to any basketball court in the park or in a recreation gym and you'll find short people playing basket ball. As much as I used to play basketball there was always someone short on the court. That may be different when it comes to professional basketball, but people can have basketball skills without being a professional.

If this guy can play basketball then there's no one else has an excuse to say that genetics is why they can't play. They may not be a professional player, but being a professional is not a requirement for being able to play basketball.


You are focused too much on trying to be the best instead of just doing your best. I'm a sprinter and I rand 5ks and 10ks. I wasn't a natural at that and I had to put in a lot of training for that. Where some runners at my school had more than 10 years of experience with running distance, my entire Cross country and distance running was only 3 years. Year 1 was my first time ever. I'm short 5'9. There were girls out there who were shorter than me running. There were some guys out there who were also shorter than me and they beat me on the regular. Through that entire time I didn't care about being the best. I just focused on me being my best. My only competition was the clock. My only goal was to run faster than I did in the previous race. Genetics doesn't matter because I'm racing myself. So the only person I have to beat is myself.
So, I really think you're still missing my point. When I say that you're using appearance as a metric I don't mean that you're evaluating peoples' results by how sexy they get, I mean you seem to be observing how people who are good at an activity look and saying that doing the activity is the main reason they look that way and that looking that way means they're training optimally. I'm saying that people who are good enough to be used to exemplify a particular sport are usually people who have some level of genetic aptitude for that sport and so saying that the sport made them look that way is far from the whole picture and that training like them may not get you the results you expect if you don't have similar genes.

For example, in my opinion, the rock climbers in your pictures have extremely visible tendons in part because they rock climb, but in part because they have the genetics that make them good rock climbers who can easily develop extreme grip strength and have naturally wiry builds. I knew a lot of rock climbers in Seattle and none of them had physiques like the rock climbers in your pictures. They were perfectly competent to quite skilled rock climbers, but they weren't good enough that anyone was bothering to take pictures of their forearms. When people think of rock climbers they think of people with builds and forearms like your pictures, but I don't think that represents anything like the average rock climber. There are a lot of people who lift weights wanting to look like Mr. Olympia, but if you google bodybuilder you won't see pictures of the average bodybuilder.

Nowhere did I say that genes prevented people from participating in whatever sport they choose (barring very extreme genetic conditions) but they do impact how easy people find it to learn and improve at sports and it does put some limit their absolute potential. Most people gravitate to things they're good at, a lot of people give up on things they struggle with. I'm not judging here, I'm making an observation. It's something that's a well known problem in designing and completing a lot of exercise studies. When you have your test group who is going to perform the exercise that's being studied and a control group that's not supposed to exercise, it's really hard to keep people who want to exercise from doing so or dropping out, and vice versa.

You've made statements that seem to indicate that you think that regardless of genetics, basically everyone would have forearms and hand tendons that looked like those of the rock climbers in your posts, if they were to just train like a rock climber. I'm saying that a lot of people would not and don't. You've implied in this thread and I believe you've stated more directly in other threads (I may be misremembering) that if someone lifts weights like a bodybuilder they'll look like an iconic bodybuilder. I'm saying that a lot of people would not and don't. The same goes for pretty much every other athletic endeavor.

I'm also not saying that people should avoid things they don't have a genetic aptitude for or that something is only worth doing if you can be great. I am saying that looking at a power lifter and believing they'd look like an iconic rock climber with super visible tendons if they just spent a lot of time rock climbing and training like a rock climber, or that a marathoner would develop the huge thighs of a iconic sprinter if they just spent a lot of time training to sprint, misses the actual results of the majority of people and can lead to false assumptions about how to most effectively achieve the results you want.

This is my real point. Believing that doing the things that the genetically gifted do will lead to the same results if you aren't genetically gifted in the same way is a mistake. A lot of bodybuilders can train successfully in ways that are counterproductive if you don't have their genes and/or their chemical regimen, but a lot of people try to emulate them and get very poor results that could be improved dramatically by following a more suitable protocol. Believing that because rock climbers that are good enough to have photos taken of their hands and forearms all have amazing hand and forearm development means that it's the best way or even a great way to develop hands and forearms for an average person is a mistake. It may be accurate and it may not, but there's a lot of assumption and selection bias going into that conclusion.
 

Jimmythebull

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not sure if i would do this myself but Bob Gadja can explain why (seeing as grip & fingers seems to be a topic here)


PFOOM PFOOM.....
 

JowGaWolf

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I hope the guy has a good orthopedic surgeon near by. I noticed on YouTube the comments are turned off for that particular Video.
I wonder why 😶
Probably because there are people out there who would make fun of him. Sometimes it's just best to leave that the comments off If we use this forum as an example, things can get pretty rough in the comment arena. As bad as it get here, it's probably worse on youtube. I used to share my videos on youtube so that anyone can see them. But now I keep all of my videos unlisted. I still leave the comments on in case someone has a question, but no one ever does. lol
 

Jimmythebull

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As bad as it get here,
it´s not bad on here..:D but some videos on youtube are just absurd. sorry but some should even be banned as some gullible people might try the stupid training & end up in a spinal clinic with an injury which could plague them for life.
But don´t get me wrong, i´ve seen some utter muppets in the Gym too!!
 

JowGaWolf

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not sure if i would do this myself but Bob Gadja can explain why (seeing as grip & fingers seems to be a topic here)


PFOOM PFOOM.....
Interesting. There's a traditional martial arts exercise where all you to is open and close your hand similar to this but you have to open your hand all the way up to where the fingers are straight. I still do them from time to time in between weight lifting sets. Not because I know a few thing but I simply just don't like the idea of just sitting there. When I workout with my son I have 1 minute breaks. When I workout by myself my breaks are 15 seconds.


It seems like a stupid exercise but it's a forearm killer. So the way I learned this drill is that the hands have to open completely and then close but not gripping. The moment you feel your finger tips touch your palm is the moment you quickly open your hand. The goal is that you go as fast as you can for 30 seconds. I've never done them as it's sBranchown in the video. I've always had my arms at a 35 degree angle and pulled my hand back so that my palms are facing forward. When I saw students do it like this guy is doing it, I would correct them.

maybe 10 years ago I watched a video about a climber from India who was said to learn how to climb from monkeys. The scientist learned that his finger strength and development were off the charts. They determined that it was the finger strength that allowed him to have such a good grip. The open and closing of the hand in the video makes sense as well. If I want to have strong muscles in my hand then I would want to workout the full range of those muscles. Similar to how we work biceps, Full extension and full contraction.
 

Jimmythebull

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Interesting. There's a traditional martial arts exercise where all you to is open and close your hand similar to this but you have to open your hand all the way up to where the fingers are straight. I still do them from time to time in between weight lifting sets. Not because I know a few thing but I simply just don't like the idea of just sitting there. When I workout with my son I have 1 minute breaks. When I workout by myself my breaks are 15 seconds.


It seems like a stupid exercise but it's a forearm killer. So the way I learned this drill is that the hands have to open completely and then close but not gripping. The moment you feel your finger tips touch your palm is the moment you quickly open your hand. The goal is that you go as fast as you can for 30 seconds. I've never done them as it's sBranchown in the video. I've always had my arms at a 35 degree angle and pulled my hand back so that my palms are facing forward. When I saw students do it like this guy is doing it, I would correct them.

maybe 10 years ago I watched a video about a climber from India who was said to learn how to climb from monkeys. The scientist learned that his finger strength and development were off the charts. They determined that it was the finger strength that allowed him to have such a good grip. The open and closing of the hand in the video makes sense as well. If I want to have strong muscles in my hand then I would want to workout the full range of those muscles. Similar to how we work biceps, Full extension and full contraction.

try doing this letting the bar roll down your fingers. you´ll feel it.


he was actually curling the bar up high here but still a great workout for the forearms & hands. Most don´t do these though very old school.
 

JowGaWolf

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it´s not bad on here..:D but some videos on youtube are just absurd. sorry but some should even be banned as some gullible people might try the stupid training & end up in a spinal clinic with an injury which could plague them for life.
But don´t get me wrong, i´ve seen some utter muppets in the Gym too!!
I agree with you on that. As bad as we think some of the martial arts videos are. There's stuff that's 100 times worst like a youtuber giving hair advice where the advice was to use gorilla glue. Lets just say that the advice required some medical attention in the form of surgery. The only good thing is that her error was live and she showed the surgery. The bad thing is that this wasn't her only big mistake. Gorilla Glue isn't sold as an hair product so I'm not sure why someone would make that connection.

But you are right there's some crazy stuff out there.
 

JowGaWolf

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try doing this letting the bar roll down your fingers. you´ll feel it.


he was actually curling the bar up high here but still a great workout for the forearms & hands. Most don´t do these though very old school.
I like this exercise as well. You definitely feel it. Unfortunately I'm not able to do this exercise anymore.
 

Jimmythebull

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I like this exercise as well. You definitely feel it. Unfortunately I'm not able to do this exercise anymore.
I haven´t done it for a long time as i wrote on one post i just do reverse curls. I use an EZ bar. i can honestly say that stick work has helped my grip strength too.."feeling the stick". definetly helped my wrist flexability. It´s like look at the forearms of a guy who in the olden days worked in a Garage. most had decent forearms & grip from just using tools all day ..twisting etc. I remember as a young lad doing scaffolding work for a while. some of these guys could climb like a monkey & had great strength. was hard work.
 

Jimmythebull

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I never heard of this guy until today.. I learned something new
Yeah back in the day he was Mr America. A clever maybe a bit radical man. was apparantly a Black belt in Judo. Teaching military personnel during his service. I never knew that myself until watching a video today...so i learned something too. he sadly passed away i think this year in 2022.
 

JowGaWolf

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I haven´t done it for a long time as i wrote on one post i just do reverse curls. I use an EZ bar. i can honestly say that stick work has helped my grip strength too.."feeling the stick". definetly helped my wrist flexability. It´s like look at the forearms of a guy who in the olden days worked in a Garage. most had decent forearms & grip from just using tools all day ..twisting etc. I remember as a young lad doing scaffolding work for a while. some of these guys could climb like a monkey & had great strength. was hard work.
I'm like you. I do the reverse curls, but I use the dumbbells. I try to get what I can when I can. I'll up my training once I lose weight. lol.
 

Jimmythebull

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I'm like you. I do the reverse curls, but I use the dumbbells. I try to get what I can when I can. I'll up my training once I lose weight. lol.
Yeah most do Hammer curls but do you know Zottman curls ? old school again, most young dudes have never heard of this.



the secound video was another old timer, Vince gironda
 

JowGaWolf

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Yeah most do Hammer curls but do you know Zottman curls ? old school again, most young dudes have never heard of this.



the secound video was another old timer, Vince gironda
The movement looks like one of the martial arts moves for redirecting punches. I haven't done this before.
 

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