My opinion on this as a parkour and fitness coach is that those routines are quite bad. Without explanations on how to do the moves well, it's much likely that the moves will be done wrong and lead to injuries, and even without that concern in mind, they're barely acceptable. Number of repetitions is generally too high (ideal set is 3x5 rep to 3x8 rep with 3 minute rest), exercises aren't grouped in any logical way (some pages feature both legs and arms, some don't, etc.). Practice this kind of workout regularly would most likely lead to muscle balance issues, pain or even injuries.
If you are interested in bodyweight fitness, /r/bodyweightfitness wiki is a great start to find recommendation and routines.
Where did you get your info though? Like how do you know your way is correct?
There are multiple studies[1] showing that lifting to exhaustion yields the same results regardless of the weight and number of reps, so it already seems like you're repeating conventional wisdom rather than verifiable science.
There seems to be so little science in the fitness world, I have trouble trusting anything. My friend is a physical therapist and shocked me by saying almost nothing they do has been verified by double-blind trials. I had always thought they were evidence-based practitioners, but they don't seem to be that much better than chiropractors.
Beware when retread football coaches think they are "exercise scientists".
For a good example of how inbred the exercise field is, consider what happened when a serious researcher actually read the "references" in exercise textbooks and found they had nothing to do with the received dogma on the strength-endurance curve.[0] So what happened? The major journals refused to publish the article! This podcast episode has its Kafkaesque moments.[1]
> Beware when retread football coaches think they are "exercise scientists".
Honestly, that's a step above what I encounter most of the time. I feel like most people who think they're exercise experts are just reading message boards and watching YouTube videos.
Aye. There are SO many confident coaches, practitioners, athletes, nerds; but they'll just as confidently tell you to never skip breakfast to kick-start your metabolism, use cup-suction to massage your muscles, and all sorta of firm advice on exercises grouping intervals posture etc; and yet, it all just seems to trickle down to "common wisdom" and "accepted truths", or most of all "This is what I've personally observed works" for some given value of "observed" and "works".
I think it's an area that IS hard to scientifically study - the bodies, goals, and progress are all so frequently and radically different, and confounding variables are everywhere - but for a lot of coaches it's not even a goal; there's a complete lack of humility in any coach, fitness trainer, or even phys ed teacher I've ever seen. There's a LOT of anecdotal certainty ("I've seen this work well"), and little solid demonstrable repeatable evidence.
>There are multiple studies[1] showing that lifting to exhaustion yields the same results regardless of the weight and number of reps
Worth noting: for both of the studies cited the high end of reps for light weight is 25 while the low end for reps in heavy is 8, both well within "conventional wisdom". What I mean by that is not that conventional wisdom is right, but that the truth probably lies somewhere in there, frankly the state of things is one that I hate, I'd love to be able to just take an exercise plan tested and true, the most similar thing I've found is Julian's Shapiro workout plan[1] which, from a google search, doesn't even have a good reputation in different fitness communities. Would love a larger discussion about that but it isn't that popular to begin with.
>My friend is a physical therapist and shocked me by saying almost nothing they do has been verified by double-blind trials.
I'll one-up you here. A friend of mine is a physical therapist and as such most of my friends who exercise follow her word as gospel. Said gospel states that rest times above 90 seconds are way too much and that they should be preferably kept to 40 to 60 seconds. All I can argue is that about nothing points to that being optimal but it's not my field so it gets complicated.
> Where did you get your info though? Like how do you know your way is correct?
I studied biomechanics & sports in an University. What I said, I learnt it in class, from people who actually run some of the studies we're talking about.
It's not rocket science tho, as you mentioned, studies are weak, methodology is harder to implement than in most fields, so I'm not saying "those are facts and deal with it". It might change. But AFAIK, it's the consensus in universities (or at least, was 5-6 years ago when I was studying there). And it seems to be that it's far to be common knowledge amongst coaches and trainers, I rarely meet people I agree with in these communities.
I'm not sure how that's relevant as an argument. They say you can do it but it's less efficient. Good, but why promote it then ? Most people want their routine to be short and efficient. And this is one thing amongst dozen of other problems. Muscle imbalance, lack of personalisation, risk of wrongdoing and injury, etc.
How do you double-blind telling a person to do push ups versus the person that does bench presses versus the control that watches them while eating dingdongs?
That isn't the kind of medical intervention (practiced by PTs) that I was talking about.
I was referring more to the different manipulations and exercises they choose for people. You can blind those studies by using sham exercises. They do the same thing (within ethical boundaries) for certain surgical procedures[1].
"ideal set is 3x5 rep to 3x8 rep with 3 minute rest", ideal for what?
Ideal for hypertrophy? Strength? Power? Fat loss? Probably not endurance... Perhaps the exercise routines on this site aren't great (I don't know), if you have evidence to support your claims I would definitely be interested.
> Ideal for hypertrophy? Strength? Power? Fat loss? Probably not endurance...
Small (3-8) sets for strength, bit longer ones for hypertrophy (10-12), but outside of specific extreme endurance training (e.g. long runners), training strength is often better than training endurance regarding to endurance tasks. You'll eventually do more regular PU if you train harder variations than if you simply increase PU volume. Strength work is also amazing for fat loss. Amongst other benefits, training for strength is much faster, and (in my very subjective experience) more psychologically rewarding.
Sources on this matter hard indeed scarce. I'm not saying those are just common knowledge, there are studies pointing toward what I said. I had access to those mostly during my biomechanics classes at University. But it's not amazing meta-analysis with double blind methodology and 3000 subject. Far from that. I'm open to change my mind when new (and better) studies will be released, but as the time of my studies, that's what you learn in universities
