For anyone looking to get started I highly recommend the StrongLifts program and the associated app, both free [1].
I neglected strength training for a long time because every time I tried to get started I would feel overwhelmed. Then I tried StrongLifts and loved the fact that it's just 5 exercises, but provides pretty much a full body strength workout.
The guy who developed the program has put a ton of effort into making sure it's detailed and accessible so that pretty much any question you could have is answered.
The StrongLifts program, while still pretty good, is not for absolute beginners. The app and the website has videos and detailed instructions, but that doesn't replace a human coach being able to point out in real time mistakes in your form that you do not even realize. And if you are a beginner, any attempt to do these exercises will invariably contain so many mistakes that they are not worth doing any more.
Just find a human coach. An app is not a substitute.
Counterpoint: there's plenty of coaches out there that teach/reinforce bad form.
> And if you are a beginner, any attempt to do these exercises will invariably contain so many mistakes that they are not worth doing any more.
I totally disagree. StrongLifts (and the Starting Strength book it derives from) starts you with the empty bar. Unless you have a serious medical condition, putting 20kg on your back / chest is unlikely to result in serious bodily harm or damage to musculature. As you slowly and steadily increase the weight on the bar, you discover places where your form needs improvement. At least, that's how it worked for me (I only made it to ~100kg squats though).
Of course it's great if you can find a good coach. But I think an app like StrongLifts is a viable+reasonable substitute for a coach.
It's not that a beginner cannot put 20kg on their back or chest. It's that a beginner does not know how to safely put that 20kg on their back or chest. Especially the chest.
Also some exercises like the deadlift can't be done with an empty bar. Stronglifts would ask you to start with 95lbs which is too much.
To me your comment is toxic and reeks of a sense of superiority and elitism from your own experience. You labelled everyone who can't put 20kg to be someone having a serious medical condition. That's both untrue and disrespectful.
> As you slowly and steadily increase the weight on the bar, you discover places where your form needs improvement.
Please no. The beginner does not discover places where the form needs improvement. The beginner simply fails to lift after increasing the weight. The beginner injures themselves when they thought they could lift but they did not.
The StrongLifts program starting with an empty bar is not right. They should've started with a PVC pipe with the same dimensions as a bar to practice form.
My advice: find a coach and ask him/her to supervise you if you can afford it. If you can't, still find a coach for your first month doing these exercises and then switch to the app.
> Please no. The beginner does not discover places where the form needs improvement. The beginner simply fails to lift after increasing the weight. The beginner injures themselves when they thought they could lift but they did not.
This assertion is contradicted by the hundreds of thousands of people (myself included) who have progressed beyond the beginner stage after starting out with the 20kg bar and without ever requiring the intervention of a human coach.
That said, I would have benefited from one. I had to completely deload and relearn my squat form because I was consistently leaning forward and de-emphasizing my posterior chain (now it's my best lift).
Speaking from experience, it's really pretty difficult to cause yourself an acute injury (i.e., worse than a nasty bruise) with 20kg if your form even resembles the squat, bench, or deadlift.
Granted, 20kg can be a big starting weight for overhead press, and if you're a petite woman you may initially need an alternative to the Olympic barbell even for the others.
Also, deadlifts are kind of tricky: a bare bar on the floor is a deficit deadlift. But a couple of blocks can solve this issue.
Wow, weight lifting is seriously ‘gate-kept’. GP needs to chill, he’s being elitist, and forgetting PTs are super expensive. I followed Stronglifts to 110kg, and just started again after 4 years. It’s fun. It’s easy. You focus on few, simple exercises, so form is easy to do well if you try.
Sorry I don't mean to offend, but this comment rubs me entirely the wrong way. This attitude strikes me as gatekeeping and turning people away from barbell training.
> mistakes in your form that you do not even realize.
form is entirely overrated in lifting. There's little evidence that a particular way of moving in the gym is more or less injurious, even if it looks funny.
Efficiency is another matter, but don't nocebo anyone into not touching barbells in fear of "bad form".
And while coaching is surely useful, it is entirely unnecessary for a beginner who just wants to get started. You can make plenty progress for years without a coach, but it might be faster with one.
> And if you are a beginner, any attempt to do these exercises will invariably contain so many mistakes that they are not worth doing any more.
this is also clearly untrue and way too generic. Even inefficient lifting is healthy.
Youtube is all you need to get started. There's plenty dumb info there, but plenty good also
Yep, the modern view is that injuries happen due to doing too much too soon rather than any technique problems. Either way injuries are super rare if you follow a program with a good build up of stress over time.
> bad form will absolutely lead to at least tiny injuries that you will notice the latest after a few months.
(Citation needed)
> youtubers who want people to fail with free programs and ignoring proper form or even teaching slightly wrong form so that they have to get coaches and see doctors at some point.
(Citation needed)
What is your personal experience with lifting? Have you learned these lessons the hard way, or are these just common myths in the bodyweight fitness community that you've regurgitated without any critical thought in order to justify why you aren't enjoying the benefits of progressive resistance training?
I don't know any bodyweight fitness myths and I do not exercise with my bodyweight alone.
The amount of critical thought I have put into the things I have not elaborated on is insane.
I cannot back up my statements with data. Partially due to laziness, partially because the data does not exist yet and mostly because athletes lie too much.
never start with lifting weights except if you have somewhat athletic hobbies or if you did more than a bit of physical labor.
your joints and tendons can't do their jobs properly yet and you have no feeling for your skeleton and the correct positions of shoulders, hips and spine. your nerves will get pinched and your muscles will push to grow into their genetically intended position while you will bring nerves and tendons in bad positions due to habit.
joint strength, posture, bodyweight core training, 200 bodyweight squats in two sets, 200 pushups in 4 - 6 sets, 2 - 3 min hang from bar or rope (holding it as tight as possible all the time) and be sure you can roll forward and backward and wrestle with a big dog or young and strong child for fun on the ground without hurting yourself. now you can start lifting low weights.
We use seasoned cast iron for eggs with very few issues. We used to use butter which led to some sticking, however recently we've been using olive oil and it's much better, with little to no sticking depending on what style we're cooking the eggs.
Thanks for the replies everyone. I've loved and cooked on my cast iron and carbon steel pans for years but recently life got busy and I went back to non stick for some things (like scrambled eggs or salmon skin).
I think we just forget how low maintenance a non stick pan is for normal people who don't care about cooking. To normal folks, the idea of preheating a pan slowly, or wiping some oil on with a piece of paper and reheating the pan to dry it (after cooking!) are extra steps that take time out of your busy day. I do notice I use fewer paper towels once switching back to nonstick. I probably also use less oil in my cooking too!
I just smoked a batch of salmon, skin-on. When we eat some, some very happy dogs get the skin. I would be curious if there was a good prep for human consumption though.
I'm not usually a fan of the texture straight off the meat, but frying it up does sound good! And after all, this has been smoked already, so there's a ton of flavor.
Humans can eat it the same way. I just pan fry until it's crispy and add some salt to taste. My kids love fried salmon skin (along with salmon + rice + dry seaweed wrap).
Once properly seasoned (not in the r/castiron sense, but cooked on for a while on top of a solid base coast of seasoning) I just don't really get any sticking at all on my lodge pans. Oil or butter. There's recommendations for pan temp, etc, but I'd say just cook on it some more and it stops mattering.
When I first get a new pan it's very picky with technique, but cooking some bacon and steak on it for a few weeks, and nothing sticks anymore.
I love my Lodge but modern cast irons like Lodge can never get that true non-stick texture that people talk about, although it can reach a not bad level [1]
Higher heat means there's a more robust steam layer, but then that means you either need to be stirring or flipping or adding some water and a lid for steaming.
To heat the pan I turn the electric range to high for a bit and then down to 4 (of 10), and then I turn it off before the eggs are done, as the thick cast-iron pan and the glass and coil has enough residual energy. Same for popcorn, same for pancakes, etc.
Interesting, I've also got a Lodge. I use a low heat with a longer preheat, usually somewhere between a 3 or 4 out of 10 for for I'd say 2-3 minutes or so to preheat (not sure if that's relatively long or not).
Maybe it's the seasoning? I haven't seasoned ours in a long time but the last time I did I used flax seed oil.
I generally preheat my cast iron until drops of water instantly sizzle away or for searing dance around the pan . I pretty much only use extra virgin olive oil (low heat cooking) or avacado oil (high heat cooking, like searing a steak) in a well seasoned cast iron pan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect
Same here. One thing that works really well to cook eggs in our daily-use cast-iron pan is to add a tablespoon or so of water and put a lid on; the steam cooks the top of the eggs this way. Not great if you like your eggs brown and crispy, but it is very easy to clean; if there are any stray bits I just wipe them out with paper and put that in the compost.
yeah I use my hexclad or well seasoned cast iron for eggs. An unsung hero is also carbon steel, as it's lighter and smoother (unless want to pay arm and a leg for super smooth bottom ground cast iron). Stainless is great for sauces or something that has a lot of acid (which can eat away at your seasoning in in cast/carbon steel). Carbon steel is super easy to season as well because it's extremely smooth.
but y tho? I use (in addition to my carbon steel pans) the standard cast iron el cheapo version of Lodge and nothing sticks if you season your pan and heat to the proper temperature.
I think French people, especially younger ones, are much more open to the use of English than stereotypes suggest. My favorite example is the French name for the movie "The Hangover", which is "Very Bad Trip". Not "Very Bad Trip" translated into French, but the exact English.
Note that "bad trip" is the french word for a (drugs related) bad trip, like "weekend" is the french word for weekend. So that explain a bit the name of the movie.
> You would think at least some of those issues could be avoided by living somewhere “more expensive”, but it seems like affluent areas actually have more ads.
For whatever reason there are no (or very few) billboards in Northern Virginia, so that's one option. I wish there were more places like that, it's so refreshing driving through and not being bombarded with ads fighting for my attention (which is supposed to be on the road...).
But in general I think you're right it's extremely hard to get away from. I think the main reason it's hard to "buy out" of advertising it that the very fact that you can afford to "buy out" makes you that much more valuable to advertisers.
> Nb: I recently took a trip to the USA and was appalled that they play full volume video advertisements while you’re filling up with gas. At least that’s not a practice that’s caught on elsewhere.
In case you visit again or it comes up for others, you should be able to push the second button from the top on the left to mute the video.
Interesting. I don’t think it’s a big enough annoyance for me to install yet another extension. Moreover, since I use old Reddit on my phone, I’d still have to change it back.
I got hired from a "Who's Hiring" post about 5 years ago and it's been an amazing experience. I've been able to work on interesting problems without having to deal with a bunch red tape as I had become accustom to in previous roles. I also got to go through a successful IPO which has been incredibly gratifying.
I later found out that the company doesn't regular post to those threads and someone did it on a whim which made me feel even luckier for having happened to come across it.
Then, early in the pandemic when lots of companies were laying people off there was a thread for companies still hiring. I posted something and we got a ton of applications but sadly none of them panned out. Later I was talking with some coworkers about how we all found the company and someone mentioned they found it via HN. Turns out it was actually my post and I just didn't realize someone had gotten hired from it which was pretty cool.
I used to have the same issue understanding the benefit. One simple example that helped it clicked for me was considering the `when` or `unless` macro.
They're just very simple macros based around the `if` special form. Because they're macros, they can just treat the body as data, i.e. it's not executed as part of argument resolution.
If you wanted to make a `when` function in Python, the "body" would have to be a callable like a lambda or named function.
I know this probably isn't the most compelling use case but I found it to be a really simple way to understand some of the benefits of macros and how they could be used elsewhere.
So let's say i have a lisp macro along the lines of
(analyze 1 2 expensiveComputation)
In python, to prevent evaluating all arguments when running analyze, I'd have to pass expensiveComputation as a callable or a function partial and remember to call it if I need it.
Whereas in lisp, I can pass whatever expensive variable I want into the macro because it will only get evaluated when using (expensiveComputation ...) and that's baked into the language.
> When Buffalo NY's Tops International Market fired their baker for literally urinating in the cake batter used to make the store cakes, the union stepped in to defend the employee because as part of the union contract employees were not supposed to be on camera to perform their duties. They fought hard to get their baker reinstated and won.
Do you have a source for this? It's a rather serious claim to make without any evidence and I haven't been able to find anything other than your comment when searching.
That kinda buries the lede there. I imagine that type of defense (being able to have input on whether or how cameras are employed) would seem pretty sweet to a bunch of Amazon drivers right now.
Now as far as the urinating in batter? Abhorrent, and disgusting. Totally worth a firing or severance with cause. Contract's a contract though. You catch that sort of thing, when you're doing something you've promised specifically not to do, you better bloody have an alternate way of acting on it.
Also, I'd need deets. I'd actually not be convinced of a breach if the work was being done somewhere with a security camera and somebody caught him doing so on unrelated footage. There's a difference between "here's your company issued camera to surveil yourself" and "WTF the security guy was reviewing some footage for something else, what the hell do you think you're doing?!"
It's called good faith. Not everyone has it, and it leads to some shitty behavior, but it is what it is. No reason to demonize a union over.
> It's a rather serious claim to make without any evidence and I haven't been able to find anything other than your comment when searching.
It's also the kind of thing that every party involved would try very hard to keep on the down low. I can definitely see it not making the news since there's probably only about half a dozen people party to it and nobody is a celebrity or otherwise public personality.
Because it's the kind of thing that makes it around the workplace.
Nobody's gonna leak that to the news because "trashy line cook does something trashy" isn't really a story worth getting a new job over. You just joke about it with your coworkers friends and move on.
> so maybe it’s normal to immediately record anything out of the ordinary?
It does does seem to be fairly normal today. I once witnessed a woman struck by a car on a busy street. It was shocking to see how many people had their phones out and were filming the poor woman on the ground. There was thankfully some people trying to contact an ambulance and assist her.
Likewise I'm always amazed how many videos there are on the news from kids in locked down classrooms during school shootings. It's a different situation obviously since they're filming their own suffering as opposed to someone else's but it's still surprising to me.
I neglected strength training for a long time because every time I tried to get started I would feel overwhelmed. Then I tried StrongLifts and loved the fact that it's just 5 exercises, but provides pretty much a full body strength workout.
The guy who developed the program has put a ton of effort into making sure it's detailed and accessible so that pretty much any question you could have is answered.
[1]: https://stronglifts.com/5x5/