Is it possible to do both of these things. 100% - I can do both of these things. And I’m a fairly fat 37 year old man with 2 kids, working 50+hours a week. I’d also call myself fairly average when gaining strength if above average when working on getting fit.
Could not agree more with this. It took my YEARS to get to 200kg squat. But only a few months to move my grace time from average to pretty good.
I also credit this to a youth spent being very fit and working in some pretty full on sport environments. So training through discomfort is something I’ve not unfamiliar with.
I know an Ex pro (competed in UK and European events) and he talks of “minute fit” for strong man. That is all. Doing 3-4 bouts of 45 seconds with limited rest. He used to champion 3x100m on the rower than 1x300m. There were days we would have to peel our selves off the floor after.
I could do it in my military days. Never considered myself elite. Didn’t like running distance but we had to. I would do hi rep bodyweight squats to train for running. Was also a powerlifter at the time.
Concurrent training is highly regarded by many in athletics. Prevents degradation of any of the components not being trained that you get in a single focus cycle. Also helps to avoid injury due to restarting unused training methods after a period of focussing (exclusively) on another area.
It does not assume you work all areas equally, there should be a major and a lesser focus during the training cycle.
This is a fair assessment. But I would still argue that elite crossfitters are truly the fittest athletes in the world. and the training and events they go through really do test all aspects of fitness. I would say elite decathletes are more naturally talented however.
IMO, the difference between the best of the cross fitness athletes and the best of the decathletes is that the decathletes are better athletes (skill) though don’t have the level of fitness of the crossfitters
Alex Viada has a 705 lb deadlift and 465 lb bench @ 220 lbs bodyweight, as well as a 4:15 mile time. He once deadlifted 700 lbs and ran a 50 mile ultramarathon in the same week. So for extreme outliers like him, it seems possible to build truly elite levels of strength and fitness concurrently.
*Edit: with about 5 more minutes of googling, it appears that some of his claimed accomplishments are contested.
Most elite crossfitters (including myself) are former athletes that couldn’t make it in their original sport. Just imagine if you had top NFL athletes or olympians train for CrossFit. They would most likely smash the best crossfitters as long as they have the right mindset and work ethic.
The best crossfitters are good athletes with great mindsets. If you took a great athlete with a great mindset, I think it would be insane to see what some humans could do with their fitness.
Yeah bro…I’ve never heard of this Alex Viada guy. Personally I’m extremely skeptical of a guy weighing 220 and running a 4:15 mile. Even a sub 5 min mile at 220 is really hard to believe. I’ll have to look him up and decide for myself.
I disagree here. Relative strength tends to goes down the bigger an individual gets (even it the bigger individual is just as lean). In powerlifting they use coefficients to compare different size lifters and determine who is better or “more impressive”. The former lift here would be deemed “better” in a competition using “Wilks” coefficient to determine the winner.
Wilks may have some flaws. At a certain point the formula breaks because it is based on competition data. For example the same lift done by a 400 lb lifter and a 500 lb lifter would give the 500 lb lifter a better score. That is because there hasn’t been very many 500 lb lifters that are decent (which makes sense).
In almost all cases being 400 lbs doesn’t help that lifter with the deadlift. In almost all cases it makes it harder compared to if the lifter was smaller. Outliers exist (Thor, Brian Shaw, Hall). Giant men.
One interesting thing to look at is individual lift and total records from the different weight classes. There is a good increase in strength going from the low weights to the middle weights (say up to 242), but the records from the heavier guys compared to the 220, and 242 lifters are only a bit more usually.
Agree to disagree. Not saying that I have the expience or desire to argue otherwise, simply that I’ve seen 350lb fatasses waddle up to a squat bar and put up 225 on their first squat ever while it takes the 175lb dude 6 months to a year for those numbers.
Not going to get into outliers because the are insignificant honestly, but there’s a reason most guys competing in powerlifting have a BMI of 40+
Either way, I’ve got no skin in the game because I don’t compete
I think I would agree with you if the lift you had chosen was the squat instead of the deadlift.
I think this is a perception thing. Weightlifting has the same perception issue. A lot of powerlifters and weightlifters have pretty good physiques. Because the heaviest weights are done by the top (heavier) weight classes those are over represented in what people outside the sport see. Should also mention strongman. The U105 class has a lot of jacked dudes too.
Not sure if you agree with me or this is a typo lol
Probably, but it’s a strong enough perception that it’s fueled a meme empire that effectively calls powerlifters fatasses. Obviously there are many people who lift impressive weights in lighter weight-classes, but those numbers are irrelevant when it comes down to visibility; people only care about how much was the most lifted, which always falls to the dudes weighing as much as small cows
In the first post I responded to, you compared a 400 lb and 200 lb lifter doing 800 lb and 600 lb deadlifts, and saying the 200 lb lifter is more impressive. I would have agreed if instead of deadlifts you would have used squats. I think a 200 lb lifter squatting 600 lbs is more impressive than a 400 lb lifter squatting 800 lbs. I don’t think the same if the lift is the deadlift.
Gaining weight all through fat gain will usually make the squat go up. It will usually make the deadlift stay the same or go down.
Says it was a downhill mile, essentially reckons he was misquoted.
His real mile time is not that fast but would not say what it was - I have never met a runner who has genuinely forgotten a PB.
IMHO there is a a lot of verbal diahorrea and self pity.
Alright I just checked this guy out…he’s clearly very strong and fit. I’ve never pulled sumo, I am curious to know what weights he could pull if he was pulling all conventional
