Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Current standings

OK, I've been working on body weight workouts now for a few months after being turned on to it by Dan Giles in Liverpool England. Current standings: 4 sets of handstand pushups (still against a wall), 4 sets of 4 reps each of over- and underhand one-arm pull-ups. Bench press: 3 sets of 6 at 100Kg+. Deadlift: 3 sets of 6 or 5 sets of 3-5 at 190Kg. 

Keep a lookout for videos of my progression here...

----

My main theoretical perspective: Evolutionary Biology. Evolutionary history did not result in the creation of metal or rubber weights. Rather, during our human evolutionary history we survived by using our body to our advantage. Without claws, teeth, etc we were forced to use our brains and the little muscular prowess we posses - all of which came from throwing around our own body weight or dealing with animals (i.e. fighting with wild critters!).  So, from an evolutionary perspective, we should not end up as super-males (e.g. your average body builder), but we should end up as individuals that are better able to deal with the everyday use of muscles. For example: throwing around heavy objects (i.e. deadlifting), or even shaking hands. Recent data from researchers (Gallup et al.) at the State University of New York-Albany have found that the strength of your handshake indicates your underlying genetic fitness; i.e. how likely you are to leave "good" offspring and consequently be chosen as a mating partner.  

Similarly, the classic V-shaped body shape also has evolutionary 'benefit'. Females of our species really dig (find attractive) the V-shaped male body shape. The reason, males with V-shaped torsos are better mates; i.e. the offspring they leave behind have a better chance of dealing with environmental and developmental infarct or insults. So doing pull-ups, push-ups, chin-ups, and abs (yes, I said abs) may actually make you appear to be a "better" mate (i.e sex) partner to the opposite sex. Not a bad outcome if you ask me. 

The V-shaped male torso is similar to the female waist-to-hip ratio, which signals similar reproductive quality such as likelihood of surviving child birth. 

At the end of the day, Dan Giles got me thinking about strength training in a new way. His blog is focused on wilderness survival training. Imagine being chased in the wild by does curling allow you to climb the tree to escape to your safety or does your ability to do repeated one-arm pull-ups from branch to branch? I am going to rest my wilderness survival bet in the latter. So hence forth, I will track my training about body weight training in an effort to 1) communicate my progress and 2) think about the broader evolutionary and survival benefits of such training. 




2 comments:

gilesdm said...

In my opinion there are many different ways to look at things, some argue one point, while other argue another point and in the end it can be difficult to know what is true, and what is false. But, I think that this post makes sense, some would argue for it, some would argue against, but in my mind what you wrote makes perfect sense, and you can’t really argue with that!

I hope you don't mind but I have linked your blog on my blog!

I can tell this is going to be an awesome blog, and I am really looking forward to more postings. Keep posting!

Prof. Steven M. Platek said...

Thanks. I appreciate that people may or may not agree with my perspective. That's totally cool with me, as long as something I say and / or post is of some use, even if only to myself as a personal reflection on thoughts and training.

Thanks for the link to my blog, I hope you don't mind I have returned the favor by adding a link to yours.