Fitness Standards

[origami_itto]

So I've been going to the gym in the morning with my wife lately. Give her a little moral support and motivation, mainly. Maybe get a little more mass in the shoulders/upper body I dunno, seeing how it impacts my movement and going slow. I don't like the tightness I feel after a workout and have to spend time releasing it.

It's a planet fitness, they're basically the fisher price herpes of gyms. They have basic equipment, no trainers, all kinds of rules set up to help the most easily intimidated newbies feel comfortable enough to sign up for a contract they can never break without going on a secret mission for the catholic church to retrieve one of Jesus's fingernail clippings from a convent overrun by satanists in Guatemala.

One of the machines is a seated mechanical crunch. You sit upright, put your arms in a rack and bend at the waist to pull the weights up.

I don't really know too much about this stuff, and the only exercise I do is Taijiquan.

I strap in to the rack and put 55 lbs on, and I just cranked out 50 of those without even feeling it. Not even a burn. So I brought it up to 100 and did 3 sets of 10 where I had to work for the last two reps so I felt good about that.

I searched this out: https://strengthlevel.com/strength-stan ... -crunch/lb

People submit their one rep max (1RM) and get comparisons against their database to let you know where you rank.

We went back a couple days later and, unfortunately, the machine tops out at 160 lbs (that fisher price "my first gym" equipment for beginners), which is about 30 lbs lighter than "intermediate" but I was able to lift that without too much trouble so I estimate I could do at least 200, which puts me a little above intermediate for this exercise. I did 3 sets of 10 at 120 lbs for my workout and felt appropriately challenged there.

I see, directly, Taijiquan's an and the XIngyi dragon using this exact group of muscles, so we're talking about dropping almost 400 lbs on somebody when you let that rip. I guess, I don't know math.

To reiterate, I don't do crunches, I don't lift weights, I don't run, I walk to get places but not to work out. I do Taijiquan and live my life. With that level of physical activity at 47 I'm pulling intermediate-advanced abdominal/core strength development. It makes me wonder where else I rate. What assumptions about what the training might be lacking are we incorrectly making?

These arts are not, generally speaking, approached with data in mind, but I would be very interested in seeing what sort of data we could collect from ourselves and our students as regards fitness standards and their own development.

What I mean is a standard battery of tests or measurements of strength, balance, flexibility, and movement to be taken at the beginning of training and on a continuing basis to measure the effect of the training on the individual's overall fitness. Mood, pain, and energy levels would be interesting but I'd want to avoid drawing any conclusions from that.

I know there is some data out there from Harvard and Princeton, et al that examines this, but the power of the numbers representing one's own ability can be compelling.

[everything]

Zero pain Mobility before strength and certainly 1RM

Kneesovertoes has some “standards” for leg mobility.

Such as Palms to floor in toe touch kind of stretch

[wayne hansen]

My standard at 73 seeing all my fit mates drop around me
No questions to ask

[origami_itto]

My standard at 73 seeing all my fit mates drop around me
No questions to ask

Yeah I call my 40s the sea turtle/normandy years. So many of my peers just dropping right and left. I imagine it just gets worse.

Life's too short for all the negativity out there.

[everything]

Probably depends on so called jibengong

When you do an art or sport, you likely aren’t using full mobility. E.g. kicking a ball isn’t a high kick.

Maybe some MA use way more ROM, though, depending on the art. Grappling twisting like a pretzel, TKD with high kicks and acrobatics.

[wayne hansen]

The other thing I find at my age is increased flexibility

[Trick]

swimming in air, pulling and pushing against imagined objects sends the same amount electric impulses through the nerves as if actually swimming or pushin and pulling objects.
in taijiquan and similar one do this while relaxing the ”outer” muscles as much as possible while holding the stance, which put the ”inner” muscles att core.use in a dynamic tension kind of way......one gets an ”hidden” throughoutly strengt exercise while apparently not.

[yeniseri]

When one really thinks about fitness is USA today, they are nothing compared to 50 years ago!
All manner of physical movements, articulations, bending, etc have disappeared complete, for the most part, in population demographics.
People use blowers, they can hire migrant landscapers and I am not surprised when I rake and sweep my own "lawn', I am looked upon as being
"out there" .

I bring back the the historical record where 'fitness in Old China" didn't exist as today but agricultrual work of many kinds were
the basic way that stamina, conditioning and other criteria were integrated beyond the specific jibn3gong of the specific CMA.