The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Probably efficiency of some combination of time and learning curve as those exercises hit a bunch of muscle groups, and build a foundation to transition to other exercises later on. I often skimp on leg exercises altogether as they make no difference to my attractiveness unlike big arms, capped delts, and 3D traps (strength/dominance signals that chicks love).
A common argument for free weights, especially dumbbells instead of barbells when relevant, is stabilizer recruitment and operating in a 3D as opposed to 2D plane. However, personally, I'm not convinced stabilizer recruitment is a plus, as it just means more imprecise targeting of muscles. What I like about free-weights (especially dumbbells) is the increased range of motion and greater flexibility in defining the start point, end point, and traveling path of the exercise. Using machines can be pretty awkward relative to free weights once the weights get heavy enough.
Another argument for dumbbells is symmetry, which I agree with. With barbells and machines oftentimes peoples' dominant sides are leading their weak sides. It's harder to cheat with dumbbells in this manner. Safety can also be a concern. It's generally easier to bail out of exercises with heavy weights using dumbbells than barbells.
I think this depends on your objectives: if your goal is to maximize something very specific like bicep size or a very specific motion for a sport (I've heard of swimmers doing some particularly funky lifts to recreate specific stroke mechanics), you are probably right. But for a random person looking for "fitness", those stabilizer muscles kick in for plenty of real-life scenarios: when you have to awkwardly lift something, or stumble on uneven terrain. When I lift I want stability because I'm really training for other sports, but your mileage may vary.
For anyone either unfit or inexperienced, really any (non-injuring, gradually ramped up) work is good.
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