Are you talking about something like this, which all non-white people seem to be able to do, and white people find challenging? Is this a sneaky way to argue that Jews are white, too? Lot going on in this post.
Yes! I am going to re-name it for white people and sell it at a profit. It is my private unique discovery.
Jews are definitely white where it counts. (In the deep squat position.)
What is the current thinking on the value of stretching? I get confused. Apparently wheat we all did as kids was terrible and unproductive. Nathan used to get some kind of elite stretching thing through his employer, but I wasn't sure why you would do that rather than see a physical therapist. I mean, if your employer pays for it, of course.
Deep massage of a muscle where there was an injury by a PT was truly transformational.
I think in addition to an annual physical, everybody should get either an annual or once every 5 years preventive physical therapy appointment with zero cost sharing.
When I started Crossfit in 2013, stretching was definitely Bad and Wrong. The idea was that people overstretched before a hard workout, and that left them prone to injury. You were supposed to just do a functional warm-up, where you ran through your natural range of motion in a nice soft way, but no more. Probably after cool down or just on a random afternoon, you were allowed to stretch, but please don't discuss it in polite company.
Now it feels like we're back to regular old stretching, elementary school style, before a workout.
My sample size is generated by the fact that every few months, gym owners decide to buy programming from someone new. Presumably the people who write workouts for a living go to retreats and wellness conferences where they get to hop on the latest trends and then oversell them to us.
I'd like more information about 1. We determined a couple of years ago that my daughter basically can't hold that position (with feet flat on the floor, forget it), while I can -- thus, I can easily v my arms and tip over into a shallow "dive" off the edge of a no-diving-allowed pool, but she had the hardest time copying me. I was so puzzled. We're both overwhelmingly of European descent, and I can't believe the tiny non-European genetic disparity is the key here. I think lourdes possibly found it hard too? I just chalked it up to torso length/center of gravity/EDS...
5.2 the key is to avoid getting an injury by PT in the first place.
I went for a so-called theraputic massage last year amid some chronic back pain and oh, boy was it awful. The goal seemed to be to rub crosswise on muscles to produce pain that I could barely stand and only lighten up if I said uncle. It was therapy for a problem I really don't have, I guess.
I'm confused by 8: You got injured by physical therapy and needed a massage to fix it? But you also got injured by the massage itself? Have you tried deep squats, whitey?
I have thought deeply about this, because I'm horrendously inflexible in a way that's bad enough to be inconvenient for athletic stuff. I'm not saying this is everyone's problem, but the weak link for me, and I think for people who don't squat easily mostly, is ankle flexibility.
Limb length does enter into it -- the longer your thighs are compared to your torso, the more flexibility you need in your ankles -- but being able to flex your feet enough that you can get your weight forward and keep from toppling over backward is the key. It's just a matter of center of gravity; if your shins are vertical when your heels are flat on the ground, there's no place for your bodyweight to be except behind your feet, and you fall over.
I don't know about the racial thing -- if stiff ankles is a whiteness-linked trait, or if it's cultural habits around not doing things that need ankle flexibility when you're young and pliable. I have been working hard at this for years, and I have a lot more flex in my ankles than I used to, but nowhere near enough to squat comfortably.
Have I shared my theory that proper stretching technique is the key to cat's lifelong agility and explosiveness, despite their generally slothful behavior?
My brother never lost the ability to squat comfortably, and it takes me months of steady work to get any of it back. We're both stiff sitty people generally, maybe we should measure our skeletal proportions.
Amiable guy talking about improving your ankles:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/P4WN_q6Nk0c
If this thread is about squatting specifically, then feel free to ignore this comment and I'll return the favor, because I'm definitely white. (Although I thought squatting was a Slavic thing? I'm pretty sure they're white.) I can balance squatting on my toes fairly well, but if I try to go flat-footed, my back winds up almost parallel to the ground.
But if more general fitness comments aren't out of line for the next 27 or so comments, I might as well ask for advice. I don't currently have an exercise routine. For most of the summer I think I did a pretty good job of ad hoc exercise (and right now I'm in the middle of a vacation, so who cares), but all that is going to get harder when the kid is back at home. I can't jog regularly due to plantar fasciitis. (It's better than it was a year or two ago but still present.) I enjoyed biking to work, but biking more rigorously for exercise seems hard to find a good route for, although I admit I've never specifically tried. I've never tried any kind of yoga or other group exercise class (except martial arts when I was a kid) and wouldn't know where to start. We have something like this at home and it's fine as part of those ad hoc exercise options but (a) I feel like I could use some more upper-body stuff and (b) I don't trust myself to stick with it regularly if it's totally self-directed.
I'm not saying "sell me on your routine," partly because I find that formulation annoying in general, and partly because people extolling CrossFit around here have had the opposite effect on me, convincing me it's a cult. But I am looking for ideas.
My new cat is a great cat in almost every way but her stretching has room for improvement. We've been working on it.
Hah! I knew who you meant just from the "amiable" descriptor. He really is pleasant.
Cyrus, I have never in my whole long life been able to do self-directed exercise. If I don't have an appointment with a trainer or a partner, I just don't do anything. I have time and enough know-how, but I do not. Once, though, a friend and I bought an online program from GMB Fitness, and they had daily workouts and a dashboard and access to reference videos. If you are a magic person who can work out without a class or appointment with a trainer, I am sure you could find an online program that would suit your goals. Oh, you say that you are not sure you'll stick with it, but maybe filling in a dashboard is enough to keep you going? (Not me, but you are likely a better person.) I am resigned to always needing an appointment with somebody in some capacity.
9. sorry, I dropped a comment 20 seconds before a department meeting and attended *without any electronic devices* please clap. 8.1 was a failed joke about the way 5.2 was worded, and then I wandered into stuff about massage also because I just read 5.
I can injure myself fine without any help from PTs, and so far it's only that one massage therapist who seemed to want to hurt me more.
14: I just go to the same class, 3x/week. It's not Crossfit anymore, because at some point an owner decided to stop paying for the license.
Actually, since I started going in 2013, it's had 5 owners, 3 locations, and 3 different gym names, so all I can say is that I've been with the same equipment since 2013. I am definitely the longest-running user of the equipment, though, since it was purchased new in 2011.
What can I say, I like a routine. And then I sit down at my computer and post a little blurb to the website that I've been posting at daily since 2008. Possibly I am too habitual a creature.
7: I can't with my feet flat either.
14. Racquet sports, swimming, pole vaulting? I found a group for racquetball, we meet twice week, so there's the disciplinary mechanism of a schedule nobody chooses. Tennis similarly, once you've got a partner or a time, skipping the workout is less easy.
Emerging from a profound squat is hard on my knees but ankles are fine.
I've never been able to get close to touching my toes without bending my knees but squatting has never been an issue and my ankles and calves are generally flexible, though less so as I age. Getting up by standing directly from squatting is not great for my knees. Half my family is from a squatter's society.
What I remember learning w/r/t stretching is that you should warm up a little before stretching rather than stretch first thing. I don't have any evidence for that, but it's what I do if I stretch while on a hike. As I've started to increase my average hiking pace, I've found that I'm a lot more comfortable if I stretch when taking breaks.
I can't get my feet flat if I try to do it like the guy in the photo of 1. I have to plant my feet a bit wider. So that's probably a moral and cultural failing right there.
1: If being unable to squat is the test for whiteness, this Ashkenazi Jew is the cracker of crackers.
but I keep getting hung up on the words "deep squat"
For some reason this immediately brought to mind the words "wide stance" which is what Republican Idaho Senator Larry Craig claimed is what led to his tapping his foot in the stall of the undercover policeman next to him in Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.
Although reading up on it, he himself did not use that exact phrase.
9: No- I fell while walking on ice. And because I'm hypermobile my keg splayed out and the muscle tore. She did some massage so that to help the muscle heal.
She said, that she sees, broadly two groups of people: those who are stuff and inflexible and hyper mobile people, i.e. people who are too flexible. In addition to working on my specific injury, she also emphasized the importance of stabilizing my muscles to prevent future injury and strengthening my core. I think it would be great for super tight people to get appropriate advice BEFORE they injure themselves too.
12: Apparently Joseph Pilates developed his method by watching cats.
14: buy an adjustable kettlebell. Set it to 16kg. Learn to swing it (online tutorials are fine.). Work up to 100 swings per day. When that gets boring and easy, increase the weight.
I can do deep squats easily but I'm mildly hyper mobile so for me it's always been important to keep whatever movement I'm doing controlled and supported instead of having some bendy part overcompensate.
Yes, well this dovetails perfectly with the aging thread doesn't it.
For my PFPS (patello-femoral pain syndrome; if you don't already know it's probably not an issue for you); before I had a name for it, I tried some stretching. As in some yoga moves the gf suggested. And it made things much, much, much worse. Took a solid month or two for things to calm down again. Admit they were pretty aggressive stretches, because damn it, _this needs to be fixed_, etc.
Don't stretch. The activity is already enough. Maybe stretch a bit just to give yourself a smidgin of extra ROM for your chosen activity.
I have a running/walking store that I go to for running shoes, because they have skilled staff who help,you find the right shoes. I want to get a pair of shoes for HIIT, calisthenics and other gym stuff. Does anyone know of national chains with sales people who are trained to fit you for that kind of gear? Are there particular shoes that are good for jumping jacks, jump rope, squats and push ups?
I've had great luck with Mizuno for running shoes but used to wear Adidas and before that Saucony.
I bought some Hoka running shoes when I was back stateside and they're amazing
The Hoka don't work for me. But I'm looking for gym aerobics and lifting shoes and not running shoes.
Nike Metcon is one.
Adidas Dropset 2 is another, but I'd like to find a place to try them on.
Heebie - what do you wear tor shoes doing crossfit?
I just wear Altras. I like the wide toe box.
37:I had never heard of Altras before your comment. No "just" about it.
34, 36: Hoka shoes were recommended to me shortly after the plantar issues. (Or maybe earlier, for the ingrown toenail? I don't even remember if the two issues were the same foot.) I had a pair for like 3 months before giving up; early problems I thought were therapeutic or just part of getting broken in didn't go away. It was a weirdly uncomfortable fit on the side of my foot.
Since then I've mostly worn Brooks sneakers. Comfortable, work well with my prescription insoles, good for walking or jogging the rare times I do that. My only complaint is that they don't last long, but I'm not sure if that's a problem with the shoes or just the fact that I don't use anything else. (Boots in the winter, but that's not relevant now. Sneakers for short trips in hot weather but I find the insoles in the sneakers make a huge difference for longer walks.) It's annoying how Cassandane has 10+ pairs of shoes she needs to have handy at all times, but it probably does reduce wear and tear on any one pair.
Speaking of being a smartass, Pokey made an EXTREMELY ILL-ADVISED joke in school, very similar to the kind of EXTREMELY ILL-ADVISED joke that Chill's kid made years ago. Probably the same age, too. (8th grade?)
The smart-assery leading up to it is kind of funny - he has a class which is basically "study skills" where they make the kids do dumb shit like prepare a powerpoint about a topic they're passionate about, etc. There's no content - I think it's supposed to later on be support for students struggling in other classes, but it feels like a waste of time from day 1.
During Pokey's presentation, he was hamming it up and acting folksy-professional, and kept calling the teacher by his first name, because the teacher is also the soccer coach, so he knows him from last year.
The teacher thought it was funny once or twice, and then no longer found it funny, and told Pokey there would be consequences, and so when Pokey kept it up, Pokey found himself in the hall with a hall monitor who was supposed to deal with him.
The hall monitor admonished him for calling the teacher by his first name. Pokey contritely said, "I know better, I won't do it again [eyeing the hall monitor's nametag]... Michael."
So the hall monitor hauled him down to the principal's office, where he got a warning. Then when he got back to class, that's when he made the EXTREMELY ILL-ADVISED vaguely threatening violence to the school comment. That's when he got an official referral, and goddamn we are lucky it wasn't more severe/zero-tolerance kind of thing.
I've been doing strength training, and stretching is not recommended for that, but it might be good for other types of fitness goals, who knows? There have been studies showing that pre-workout stretching decreases the benefits of strength training. You're still supposed to warm up, but I warm up by walking the 12 minutes to get to the gym. I haven't hurt myself yet, and I'm a fat old lady, so.
If you go on YouTube and ask for a strength training program with machines for beginners, that is what I've been doing. It takes no athletic prowess whatsoever, and you can keep it interesting by trying to beat your previous amount of weight lifted or number of reps completed. (The most important variable affecting my performance, by far, is how much sleep I've had the night before). I also ride a stationery bike 20 minutes every day I don't do strength training at the gym. 20 minutes because that's how long my butt can take it before my sciatica kicks in, stationary bike because it keeps my hands free to play stupid games on my phone so I don't focus too much on whether my thighs hurt right now.
I'm sticking to it so far by not really asking myself if I feel like doing it every time. I think more like, today is the day I go to the gym, or, time to get on the bike now if I'm going to make my bus to work later. I just made it part of my daily schedule. I've been doing this because a doctor told me I would be dropping dead in a very inevitable (though probably slow) sort of way if I didn't lose 10% of my body weight, and I tend to regain everything after diets, so here I am.
This is what happens when Pokey does not take his ADHD meds. Or rather, he took them and then promptly threw them up at cross-country practice, before school.
14, etc:
A fundamentally different doesn't-apply-to-everyone approach to moving the body: if exercise programs don't grab you, find something you long to do that requires physical work.
The best version I've ever heard of this was the son of a relative's neighbor who, at 40-something, decided to build a stone house. No masonry experience. A *two-story* stone house. He finished the house, only lost one finger joint, and was astoundingly buff in the pictures I saw.
More mellowly, my mother in her fifties sistered every rafter in a collapsing garage and went on to heavily renovate a small house using small tools. In my fifties I took up no till market gardening and I have guns like you wouldn't believe. (In my forties I was near a serious waltz and polka dance world and took up running to stay in aerobic condition for it and my legs will probably never be better.)
You may think, I am in a city, no chance for me, but a friend of mine got this in the years his crew was running a vegetable garden on the roof of some building on the ?LES? that had no lift or watering pipes.
Oh! And sometimes, late in the day when I've been wedging myself in among the row crops, I realize I am working properly in a deep squat, which really is the stance for the job. But I can't always do it and I don't know how I get into it when I do.
45.2: I've heard good things about cob.
Update: they switched Pokey out of the extremely stupid study skills class, into an extra elective.
I have very mixed feelings about this, because there are surely a whole lot of other kids who would also like to not be in this terrible class, but aren't so disruptive about it. On the other hand, this probably made everyone's year much better.
The hall monitor admonished him for calling the teacher by his first name. Pokey contritely said, "I know better, I won't do it again [eyeing the hall monitor's nametag]... Michael."
In Pokey's defense, this part is extremely funny.
50 was me. I guess I haven't been commenting enough lately.
I know, I feel secretly delighted at that point. But doing my best to keep a poker face about it.
I just finished my third stint in physical therapy for various back-related ailments. In the first two cases, I was in debilitating pain and therapy was extremely successful. In this most recent instance, the pain wasn't so bad, and it turns out that physical therapy isn't very effective when you aren't incentivized by pain to actually do the exercises.
find something you long to do that requires physical work
I have moved so much dirt and wood chips and leaves this last year. Mountains. My birthday wheelbarrow and my christmas pitchfork were, in fact, exactly what I wanted.
45: I guess it's time to start digging out my basement, then.
32: strengthen your vmo. Leg extensions ( I used a band tied to my desk), backward walking. Ptfp is usually a muscle imbalance.
[ I am no longer one of the lucky citizens of the world to have never tested positive for Covid. ]
I think that means I should have wished you a quick recovery.
Astronauts retain their citizenship. If the spaceport wants to take your passport they're trying to traffic you.
I used to keep quite flexible when I did the French kickboxing, but have lost a fair bit of that. However, I can squat really deep with my feet flat on the floor without any major issues. I had a few sessions with a trainer to work on deadlift and squat technique* and his comment was that my lower body position and movement was really good for squatting, but my upper body flexibility is absolutely woeful.
That observation basically plays out for me. I have terrible upper back and chest flexibility with the thoracic spine and shoulders in particular very immobile. It's bad enough that I almost certainly need physio or some kind of longer term mobility treatment plan.
* and then I tore a shoulder muscle and have basically not squatted with weight on my shoulders since then, ironically, although I do sometimes do goblet squats with a kettlebell, or using a weighted bag, or use a trap bar.
I just saw my first cybertruck. It's not very impressive in real life.
I was rather pleasantly surprised when, after years of being far too senior to do anything of the kind, I was unexpectedly required a few weeks ago to run several km over hills carrying a fifty-pound rucksack, and managed it fairly well. The smug glow persists to date.
Despite his owner's dying wishes, it appears that there is still MM possible to Alain Delon's dog.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/family-of-late-french-actor-alain-delon-defy-burial-wishes
(Horrible, horrible individual.)
I know basically nothing about Delon, but that is a lovely dog, although I'll settle for chaste admiration. (During my brief dog ownership stint, I hired a trainer whose family's business had been training malinois as police dogs; his first dog was a malinois, classic golden child who did everything right, and after she died he got a husky/whippet cross ("whusky"), whose personality he succinctly described as "no loyalty." He still loved the second one to pieces, but the training process was not the same.)
I know nothing about Delon either except that he was a French film actor and apparently a complete psycho who wanted his dog killed out of egotism.
He was a great actor with absolutely stunning good looks who happened to have been in at least half a dozen of the best movies ever made and was also a far right wing asshole who may have been involved in the murder of his own bodyguard.
I think Brigitte Bardot may have been the one to intervene in saving his dog.
If you aren't buried with your dog, just anyone might eat it.
The solution here is for the person's body to be held in storage until the dog dies, right? Then they can be buried together.
What if the people at the self storage notice?
Well the doggie went to see a show
And there he saw Brigitte Bardot
The naughty flea said, "What a feast!
She really is a delicious beast!"
I just heard "settler colonialism" in the wild for the first time in my life.
I've heard Hoka shoes are good, but the women's colorways are all so insane. They look like clown shoes, or like they're made for a Lisa Frank/Care Bears collab. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but I'm always in a dour mood when I'm exercising so they don't seem right to me.
75: Was it in the obvious context or something fascinating and novel?
76: I will never understand this ever. I impulsively bought these in Osaka: maybe not for jogging except incidentally, because they're not really ventilated, but I'm oddly fond of them.
These black ones seem fairly dour. Glare Bears.
77.1: It was in reference to the white peopling of Pennsylvania.
I have absolutely no idea what was involved but if someone had a job at a university and they really liked that job and were told not to ention-may the alestianians-Pay in front of the whole community, then a pretty good way to working around that would be mentioning how we should never lose sight of the original owners of the land on which we were standing and of the damage done by settler colonialism.
Yes, if your boss announces that the invasion of Ukraine is a holy war (his exact words) and your priests are hiding weapons for Russian SF and designating targets for Russian artillery, then your church may not find favour with the Ukrainian government. The Russian Orthodox church is not so much a Christian sect as a real-life version of the 40K Imperial Cult.
80: If the University admin has already expressed pious approval for land acknowledgements, yeah?
The idea is that we stole land in Pennsylvania, but the alternative would have been unbearable (stealing land in Ohio).
Stealing land in Ohio was unnecessary because the surrounding tribes couldn't give it away fast enough. (This is actually kind of true!)
I'm going to assume it is and repeat it.
The Iroquois alone sold it like three or four times.
Oh Teo, I've been meaning to ask you. I read Empire of the Summer Moon over the summer, about Quanah Parker and the Comanches. I couldn't tell if it was sensationalistic, or accurately describing sensational things. Do you know whether that book is respectable?
88: No, they just sort of claimed it by fiat and never did much to resolve rival claims until the US government stepped in and negotiated some treaties.
89: I haven't read it or much about it so I'm not sure. I think it's generally considered on the more sensationalistic end but only moderately so. There are a lot of books about the Comanches with a wide range of sensationalism.
