weights #2396
The Weights Mailing List
DYSMORPHIA & NORMS
by <Mcs...@aol.com>
Re: Mel HIT Comments
by <Mcs...@aol.com>
HIGH INTENSITY LIFTING?
by <Mcs...@aol.com>
HELP!!!! Desperation sets in.
by Williams, Jonah <jo...@braintree.gov.uk>
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Subject: DYSMORPHIA & NORMS
From: Mcs...@aol.com
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 22:38:16 -0700
If we examine the concept of "muscle dysmorphia" (exaggerated perception
that you don't have enough muscle), then we will note that it is one of
many such syndromes which reflect some sort of dissatifaction that afflicts
the human being.
Its inverse, "anorexia nervosa", has already been commented upon, but if we
scan through the learned literature, the popular media articles and the
records of various medical professionals such as cosmetic surgeons, we
discover that the human may exhibit dissatisfaction (pathological or
otherwise) with some perceived structural or functional 'ugliness' or
undesirability of the human condition, including:
Structural Characteristics
Body Size (too large or too small)
Body Proportions
Skin colour (hence the tanning 'psychosis')
Breast size and shape
Hips
Waist
Thighs
Calves
Ankles
Feet (size, shape and appearance)
Face (nose, lips, eyes, ears etc)
Height (too short or too tall)
Hair (baldness, texture or colour)
Penis
Butt size and shape
Skin appearance and texture (basis of the cosmetics industry)
Nudity (a central focus of many laws, religions and rituals)
Functional Characteristics
In sport and health, individuals may perceive imperfection, deficit or
'ugliness' in various functional indicators of human ability:
Coordination and motor skills ( 'clumsiness' deters many children from
taking part in sport)
Sports competition (Winning, losing and belonging to a team)
Posture (high heeled shoes are one of many 'solutions')
Cardio fitness (massive focus of sports medicine and the sports industry)
Ageing
Vocal features
Social or group acceptability ("social anxiety" is selling a new class of
drugs)
Work performance (job output, publications, earnings etc)
Status (ranking relative to one's peers)
This list may be extended, but it suffices to illustrate that we humans
display an inordinate degree of dissatisfaction with some structural or
functional aspect of being alive among a group of fellow humans who are
feared to be judging your worth in terms of such characteristics.
Psychologists and scientists such as Abraham Maslow, Alderfer, Olds, and
McLelland have examined human behaviour and produced models to identify and
understand the role of needs in life, with Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs"
becoming well known in many circles. These models have stressed that we
are driven or motivated by any perceived need, be it physiological, safety,
social, self-esteem or self actualisation.
What all the models have in common is that we have to experience stress
created by need or the perception of need ("want") if we wish to be
motivated to do anything in life. This raises some interesting
implications for the entire concept of "dysmorphia" or other aspects of
perceived 'ugliness' relative to a given situation or group.
Suppose that we all felt totally satisfied with all structural and
functional aspects of our being - would there be any motivation to achieve
anything in life, other than be driven by sheer physiological need to eat,
drink, have sex, move and sleep?
Probably many will answer something like this: " Yes, we do need some
needs, be they real or imagined, otherwise the human would be no better
than the lowest form of life, but it is when the need or want becomes
exaggerated that the problems arise. And, as we all should know, an
exaggerated want or preoccupation with something in life becomes an
obsession or psychosis. It is just that one must maintain the right
balance to stay sane and happy."
If we apply this to sport, then we immediately sense a contradiction. If a
top level athlete does not show exceptional motivation and dedicate a large
part of daily life to preparing for sport, then progress will halt and
winning surely will become a memory. So, at what stage does passionate
dedication and devotion to achieve a goal become an obsession, a
dysfunction, a pathological condition? Ah, we might say, that is easy to
recognise, because these disorders become apparent when they dominate above
most other interests in life and often cause physiological signs of
dysfunction.
The critic might retort: "But that is just a sign of imbalance in one's
life, not necessarily a psychosis or a disease. Regarding the accuracy of
physiological indicators, there are many distance athletes who frequently
are very weak, thin and almost chronically fatigued."
If we return to the above list, we will note that it is probably very
difficult to find anyone who is entirely satisfied with her/his body and
its function. It would appear that we all perceive some deficit in what we
look like and what we do, largely because we are inordinately concerned
with what others think of us.
That raises the age-old question of what exactly is normal and who decides
what is not normal or acceptable. If we lie at either extremes at both
sides of some Gaussian distribution, we are deemed to be "abnormal"; if we
show characteristics which fit into the "majority" interval, then we are
"normal", with no need to be treated, exterminated, legislated against,
medicated or incarcerated.
In the medical world those who fit into one of the extreme categories may
be deemed to be suffering from a psychosis or pathology, the reference
framework being the society in which we live, replete with many subjective
laws, perceptions, religious undertones, biases and operational models.
Yesterday's psychosis and obsession may become today's norms (and vice
versa), such as the Western preoccupation with sport and fitness, earning a
large salary, owning a large home, using cosmetics to "look more
attractive", wearing fashionable clothes, listening to"canned" music,
relying on psychologists to resolve personal problems, eating "health
foods" and going on vacation. The entire fashion industry is founded upon
the perceived need by humans to look attractive according to some totally
arbitrary standards. The acceptability of the naked body in public has
been legislated against so vigorously by State and religious organisations
that it has almost become the ultimate symbol of depravity and ugliness
(unless indulged in the privacy of one's bedroom). To some, this fear of
public nakedness is a sign of severe national and religious psychosis, to
others quite the norm. The symbolism here is that we often fear physical
nakedness because we are terrified of our minds being exposed naked for all
to see.
In short, how accurate and universally applicable is it to identify a
psychosis which is based upon one's perception of the human body and its
functions, when those who decide upon the definitions are part of the
system itself? If we liberally apply an analogy of Gödel's Incompleteness
Theorems to society, we might humbly caution one another to state that we
cannot truly explain a system if we have to rely on constructs that are
part of that system. On the other hand, as some wag once said: "It takes
one who has a problem to recognise that problem!"
This is what Hofstadter (in his fascinating book, "Gödel, Escher, Bach")
had to say about the implications of Gödel's work (which is often ranked
alongside Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty
Principle in terms of fundamental scientific importance.)
" How can you figure out if you are sane? ... Once you begin to question
your own sanity, you get trapped in an ever-tighter vortex of
self-fulfilling prophecies, though the process is by no means inevitable.
Everyone knows that the insane interpret the world via their own peculiarly
consistent logic; how can you tell if your own logic is "peculiar' or not,
given that you have only your own logic to judge itself? I don't see any
answer. I am reminded of Gödel's second theorem, which implies that the
only versions of formal number theory which assert their own consistency
are inconsistent.
The other metaphorical analogue to Gödel's Theorem which I find provocative
suggests that ultimately, we cannot understand our own mind/brains ...
Just as we cannot see our faces with our own eyes, is it not inconceivable
to expect that we cannot mirror our complete mental structures in the
symbols which carry them out? All the limitative theorems of mathematics
and the theory of computation suggest that once the ability to represent
your own structure has reached a certain critical point, that is the kiss
of death: it guarantees that you can never represent yourself totally."
Mel Siff
Dr Mel C Siff
Denver, USA
mcs...@aol.com
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Subject: Re: Mel HIT Comments
From: Mcs...@aol.com
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 22:42:19 -0700
On 8/4/00, Marty Pavelka<Martin_...@urmc.rochester.edu > wrote:
<<
The core of it is to train hard, infrequently without doing very high
volume work. I realize that part of your arguements have been on the
definition of "hard workouts" and so this description may be lacking. I
just thought my interpretation of HIT might be helpful to you. >>
***Thank you very much for your further comments. They serve to reiterate
what some others have been stating all along, namely that there are so many
definitions of HIT that even the HIT fanatics do not agree on what really
is "classical" HIT. Often it seems as if HIT is what someone says it is
and not what is universally agreed upon.
Mel Siff
Dr Mel C Siff
Denver, USA
mcs...@aol.com
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Subject: HIGH INTENSITY LIFTING?
From: Mcs...@aol.com
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 22:41:01 -0700
On 8/4/00 , Tom Incledon<hps...@mediaone.net> wrote>
<<
Some additional thoughts occurred to me as I was driving home last night.
If I recall correctly, besides the number of training days, there were some
other factors of my training that bear mentioning. One was that I spent a
good deal of my training at percentages over 90%. This was most likely too
high, too often. Recently, I incorporated planned recovery weeks. I never
did this before and the effect it had on my progress was very impressive.
>>
*** It is well known that the effectiveness of a given intensity (max
training load or average load lifted as a % of 1RM) decreases as the lifter
becomes stronger and more efficient, so that one progressively has to
increase the training load or at least increase and periodically decrease
it in a gradual upward progression. So, while even the lightest loads will
increase the strength of someone who has undergone hospitalised bed rest
for a long while and while 20-40% of 1RM can be highly productive for a
novice lifter, anything short of about double that intensity will have
minimal effect on a more advanced lifter. In other words, the training
threshold (TT) naturally rises, which means that the lifter has to raise
training intensity to ensure that progress continues.
This is because of the well-known phenomenon of adaptation in terms of what
is now known as "supercompensation" or "superadaptation", the adaptation to
higher levels of stress. This implies that the advanced athlete has to and
will be able to train regularly with much higher loads without causing
"overtraining" (chronic overtraining) or "over-reaching" (acute overtraining).
Let us for a moment move away from the world of sport and examine the world
of manual labour. Here we often witness working folk lifting, pushing,
carrying, throwing and otherwise handling heavy loads day after day with
little evidence of injury if some basic rules of good technique, adequate
rest and accidents management are followed. Certainly, there are many
overuse injuries in this world, but the point here is that the experienced
manual labourer is able to work daily with very demanding loads without
breaking down.
It is obvious that adaptation to be able to work at a very high level has
taken place. No doubt there is an intensity and volume or combination of
both that predisposes one to injury, but, up to a point these folk are able
to work for many years under very high levels of stress, very often
enjoying a far better quality of physical life than their more sedentary,
white collar colleagues.
If we imagine that we know little of the science behind training, we will
now be faced with the following questions:
1. Is there a limiting level of training intensity that one can apply
daily for prolonged periods without stagnation or injury?
2. Is it not possible that one can regularly punctuate training sessions
with regular 1RM or other highly intensive (high intensity, low volume)
shock activities to raise the training threshold?
3. Does lifting training threshold (TT) increase with more extensive (high
volume, lower intensity) training?
4. Why does one's 1RM increase if a certain weight is your limit and you
are never able to exceed that limit in a complete lift? Surely, the
theories suggest that one has to exceed one's current maximum to stimulate
a rise in TT? Doesn't this raise some problems for the whole
"supercompensation" idea?
5. If one trains to be able to handle progressively heavier loads all the
time, shouldn't the body be able to adapt so that one can work at those
high levels for prolonged periods?
6. Are many of the limits to using heavier training loads more in the mind
than the body? Does the fact that we show increasing uncertainty as we
move closer to our current 1RM limit us more than the physiological factors
alone?
There are several other questions that we may ask, but the above list will
suffice to make us examine the training process more carefully.
If we now go back to what has been written and reported about training, it
seems that the solution to the above questions lies in the use of one or
more of the following approaches to training:
1. Use of some carefully preplanned periodisation scheme in which the
intensity and volume of training are cycled up and down to suit the individual
2. Use of a more intuitive approach in which one works as close as
possible to one's daily perceived maximum and adjusts the training
intensity to suit how one feels at any given time.
3. Use of a largely random training approach in which one does without
much more planning than the choice of exercises and a routine choice of any
old combination of sets and reps.
4. Method X - the future method that will revolutionise all sporting
progress.
Immediately we notice that the first option is described by the well known
basic model of traditional periodisation popularised by Matveyev and which
is widely used by strength coaches in the West.
The second option is closer to what the Bulgarians apply. A variant of
this I call "Cybernetic Periodisation" in which one's loading is guided by
one's RPE (Rating of Perceived Effort), Rating of Technique (RT) and a few
other objective and subjective indicators of current performance status
(Siff & Verkhoshansky "Supertraining" 1999 Ch6).
The last option tends to be used widely by the average gym user who is
there more because it is trendy to be there and because of various
psychosocial needs. Numerous marketing companies and some fitness gurus
claim to have discovered Option 4 in the form of some secret potion, some
herb from a fallen asteroid, energised water, training secrets from some
obscure champion and so forth, and this makes loads of money for those who
are looking for a quick fix to their physical needs - but the fact remains
is that nobody has yet discovered the "Holy Grail of Training".
It would be interesting to hear other comments on the above issues and your
experiences or educational findings relating to them. Tom has just told us
that he has learned that a little less may be more and that any training at
regular high levels of volume and intensity may not be the best way to go.
What have others found?
Mel Siff
Dr Mel C Siff
Denver, USA
mcs...@aol.com
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Subject: HELP!!!! Desperation sets in.
From: "Williams, Jonah" <jo...@braintree.gov.uk>
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 22:38:59 -0700
Hi,
I am in the UK and am *desperately* searching for a product
featured on a program on Sky a couple of months ago. Sadly it is an old
program and the makers cannot help me...
It is a weight lifting system that takes the pressure off the wrists
etc. by incorporating a swivel ball joint in the middle of the bar that is
gripped and keeps the wrist in the same
plane as the weight is lifted, reducing strain on them.
I have very weak wrists but have to lift weights to gain strength
more than conventional "wraparound" systems that I could use.
I have tried so many places trying to locate the manufacturer of
these unique weight systems and hope you can help by pointing
me in the right direction.
Jonah Williams ñ Customer Support Analyst
Braintree District Council (01376) 552525 xtn 2727
ìUnless stated explicitly, this information does not
necessarily reflect the view or policy of Braintree
District Council, nor does it form any kind of contractî
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