Bowflex shatters under load

External Since: Mar 19, 2007 Posts: 33

On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 21:04:25 +0000 (UTC), Andrzej Rosa
<bakters.TakeThisOut@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Dnia 2007-03-24 Achim Nolcken Lohse napisa³(a):
...
>>
>> There's nothing safe about one-legged exercises.
>
>Nonsense. You use very little extra weight, so the highest risk of
>injuring your spine is out. You have most (if not all) of your other
>limbs free to self spot yourself. You can hold the extra load below
>your center of gravity (especially if you are paranoid about safety, as
>you seem to be) and finally and ultimately, if you go superslow, you
>probably do not need any extra load.
>
>> You can injure your back
>
>How? Really.
>
>> as well as your knee.
>
>How?
>

You don't need weight to damage your joints or your tendons. Your own
muscles are quite capable of doing the damage. I'm surprised you
haven't noticed that yet yourself.

The danger of losing your balance is not in hitting the floor when you
fall, but in the effect of your muscles contracting automatically to
stabilize your position.

And this can easily result in injury to any area of your body involved
in the recovery action, but particlarly the neck.

>> And you certainly can't do one-legged
>> squats to failure safely.
>
>Sure you can. Just grab onto something with one of your free hands and
>spot yourself.

Tell you what. How about an experiment to settle the issue?

You must have some frail, elderly, relatives or friends of the family
who don't exercise much, if at all. Tell them how safe and good for
them one-legged squats are, show them how to do them safely, and then
get them to do some. Then post the results here.

--

Achim
_____/)
axethetax

External Since: Oct 29, 2005 Posts: 462

["Followup-To:" header set to misc.fitness.weights.]
Dnia 2007-03-24 Achim Nolcken Lohse napisa³(a):
> On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:49:01 -0600, Hobbes <khobman800.DeleteThis@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Knee health in olympic
>>weightlifters is very good and exceeds the general population according
>>to a study done in the 70's.
>
> Well, that's a cheery thought. To think that a bunch of dedicated
> athletes have better knees than the general population.

It should be. They are competitive athletes, which means that they
drive themselves to the limit of their capacity. Would you be
surprised if you learned that F1 car has higher chance of failure than
a passenger car? Would you say that engineers who built it had no idea
about their job if you learned that an F1 cars actually break more
often than the cheapest ones you could buy new?

> Has it
> occurred to you that people with bad knees probably never get into
> weightlifting?

I never met a single person with bad knees outside a gym. It seems
that *all* the people with bad knees get into some sort of weightlifting.

> Or that those who injure themselves while trying it out
> will probably stop pretty fast?

No. They will just switch to benching and curling five times a week.
It's obviously great for your knees.

> A study in the 70's. I guess they figured - quit while you're ahead.
> And after all that time, it's probably impossible to check how well
> controlled the study was, let alone replicate it.
>
> I HAVE noticed quite a few world class lifters with pressure bandages
> on their knees. I guess that's to remind them that there's no chance
> of injury?

You guessed wrong. Knee wraps are there in spite of higher injury risks
they bring with themselves. They are there to win something. Lifters
in general, and world class lifters in particular, really like to win.

--
Andrzej Rosa 1127R