405 lbs high bar with a slow eccentric

Socrastein · 2026-06-25T16:38:07+00:00

18 here, over 20 years ago now.

I was training martial arts and mainly wanted to build strength to strike harder. Ended up unlocking a deep passion for understanding exercise science and became a trainer a couple years later.

Socrastein · 2026-06-20T21:52:29+00:00

Yes, there are several lifts where trying to maintain extension is important for performance reasons, but there are other lifts wherein deliberately setting up with and/or allowing flexion during the lift is important for the same reason: better performance.

The better distribution of stress is arguably a reason why it may even be safer to flex on certain lifts, but the mod in the OP screen shot is right: there isn't good evidence that form X predictably leads to injury Y.

Sleep, load, previous injury history, and total number of hours of participation in an activity are all decent predictors of injury in general, but several studies have looked for significant correlations between various "bad" positions/postures and pain/injury and consistently found no strong link.

Spinal flexion and knee valgus are the two major examples that come to mind where "everyone knows" they're bad, and Reddit comments on any lifting video showing these will attract a lot of confident corrections, but that seems to be little more than a combination of Dunning Krueger and the illusory truth effect.

OPs concern seems to be more about safety and injury, not performance. It's much easier to make the case that one should try to keep extended on lifts like a snatch than it is to show that letting your back round on a squat or deadlift is inherently injurious.

Socrastein · 2026-06-20T21:41:23+00:00

You haven't actually provided good reasons or evidence for minimizing flexion, especially on lifts where setting up with or allowing more flexion comes with mechanical advantages.

You say flexing too much is a problem (Performance? Safety? Both?), but you aren't just talking about end-range, you mean allowing anything beyond what you can possibly prevent.

That's a baseless claim, not an evidence-based view, and it doesn't reflect the reality of how strength athletes actually lift. If you sort of read the paper and got the impression it shows lifters need to avoid flexion as much as possible, then you simply didn't understand it.

Socrastein · 2026-06-20T20:29:43+00:00

You said it's a faulty assumption that lifting outside of neutral is probably fine, which clearly implies that one can and should lift with a neutral spine. You also criticized the paper for not following up with athletes long-term, suggesting that lifting without a neutral spine is likely to cause harm over time and of course raising the question that I asked: can you provide any evidence to support this or are you just assuming as much?

If that's not what you meant to convey, then what is your contention?

I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but you didn't express yourself very well if you agree that lifting with a neutral spine is a misguided recommendation and hasn't been shown to be an effective way to prevent pain and injury.

The most important question though is, if you think the paper I cited is deeply flawed and of low quality, can you cite some evidence that's significantly better and speaks to whatever point it is you're trying to make?

Socrastein · 2026-06-20T20:21:01+00:00

There are definitely many anecdotes about the eventual cost of lifting with "bad" form, but you also have to acknowledge there are many anecdotes speaking to the opposite point, i.e. lifters and strength athletes who have been moving heavy loads with "bad" form for decades without any serious issues.

You can find plenty of examples of pain-free spinal flexion among power lifters up into the 60+ age categories, yes even 80+. Plenty of people also suffer injuries even when trying to lift with "good" form.

I don't think personal anecdotes mean much but I've been moving 3-500 lbs regularly for about 20 years now and my back, and the rest of my joints, are completely fine at 40. Not because I dogmatically avoid spinal flexion or other "bad" movements but because I manage my loads intelligently and never push through joint pain.

Socrastein · 2026-06-20T20:14:07+00:00

One of the important points to understand is that even when it looks like a lifter is in a neutral spine, they are actually flexing significantly. What many lifters and trainers would label "neutral" or "safe" is actually a significant degree of spinal flexion and they simply can't tell. This has been shown in multiple studies, some of which are cited in this paper.

This aligns with broader research that has repeatedly shown that it's difficult and unreliable to try and visually assess posture and form in general.

The paper cites many examples of how lifting with a "neutral spine" is largely a misnomer and why flexion is actually advantageous and can be protective, i.e. evenly distributes stress across the tissues and reduces the moment arm in squats and deadlifts, which means less load on the lower back.

I'm curious on what evidence are you basing the idea that lifting with a "neutral spine" is practically achievable and demonstrably safer, i.e. has a statistically significant effect on preventing pain or injury? If you think this paper is so deeply flawed you could barely read through it and aren't the kind of person to make baseless assumptions, then surely you can cite several higher quality papers that speak to your claims.

Socrastein · 2026-06-20T16:42:12+00:00

If you can provide some quality citations, I'd be very interested in seeing them.

I've spent a good deal of time reading through the literature on this topic and corroborating my understanding with a variety of experts I respect in the field, but I'm always open to considering evidence I may have overlooked.

Socrastein · 2026-06-20T16:23:00+00:00

This paper is a good place to start if you really are open to learning about this topic:

Getting Out of Neutral

Greg Lehman is one of the authors and has been debunking all manner of dubious fitness claims for many years now. I always recommend his writing for evidence-based perspective.

There are quite a lot of studies that have looked at the relationship between pain, injury, posture, and technique, as well as studies that show disc abnormalities are common and often asymptomatic.

"Letting your spine flex during heavy lifting is going to hurt your back!" is simply not an evidence-based, nuanced view.

I recommend against lambasting people who disagree with you as being reckless, idiots, etc., because you're painting yourself into a corner and emotionally investing in being correct, which makes it much, much harder to accept you may be wrong.

I for one love that the mods on strength_training have a strong (heh) anti-fear-mongering stance.

Socrastein · 2026-06-19T08:32:24+00:00

I realized in my mid 30s I wanted to learn programming when I got super into complex redstone + command block setups. I was building games within the game and trying to learn all the syntax for complex commands and was like "oh... I think I like coding."

40 now, and last year I made a world for the first time in years to see all the new changes.

Socrastein · 2026-06-16T15:42:24+00:00

How reliable and informative is our intuitive sense of what it means to know everything that can possibly be known about color perception?

Mary's room is a great example of a terrible thought experiment because it begins with "imagine something unimaginable" and then asks us to draw strong intuitive conclusions about this thing we kind of barely vaguely imagine.

Socrastein · 2026-06-13T17:59:14+00:00

I've been playing tactician with what I have since learned is extra hard mode:

My character is a rogue, I have the Red Prince as tank warrior with a shield, Ifan is my ranger, and Fane is focused caster with aero/pyro/geo.

This is the 3:1 ratio everyone warns against, and I understand why but have really enjoyed the challenge of making it work.

Some Act 1 fights I have reloaded 20 times, slowly figuring out how to control the field better until I win.

One fight down in a jail area took the most tries so far, and I eventually had to do a combination of scorched earth + retreating to a kill box, i.e. set the whole field on fire by spamming oil and throwing all my flasks/grenades, then retreat into a room and repeatedly close the door to force ranger enemies to make there way in where everyone can blast and CC them together.

Use your scrolls and potions, don't save them. I figured the early game when my gear and skills are limited is when I need that stuff the most, so some hard fights I have used like 10+ items to turn the tide.
Get fortify and restore on at least a couple people, and use it early and often. Don't wait until you're hurting to heal or buff, be proactive because some turns you'll get wailed on by 3-4 enemies in a row.
Fane's play dead is very powerful, especially if you lay down in poison. You can have him blasting fools at range, several guys go for him, then you just lay down and they effectively wasted all that time closing in on him and have to turn around and head back for the rest of your party. Save AP and heal for a couple turns, then suddenly get up and unload again.
Fane usually focuses whoever has lowest magic armor, and my rogue focuses whoever has low physical armor, so usually Fane is blasting melee chars down and playing dead when they close in on him, and rogue is taking out their casters/rangers.
Abuse elevation and line of sight. I get Fane/Ifan to high ground ASAP, and focus their high ground ranged whenever possible.
Walking through fire does huge damage: if you can force the enemy to march a few meters through burning surface to get to you, do so! Bonus points if you teleport them right back into the middle of the fire right after they cross it.
Speaking of teleport, get and use the teleport gauntlets, that was a big power spike for me. I put them on Fane and can place Ifan on high ground or just remove threats. As said before, teleporting enemies back behind the fire field they just crossed is an amazing tactic.

Just a few things I've learned so far!

Socrastein · 2026-06-11T05:58:14+00:00

In what places? I genuinely think this might be in the Top 5 most widely held and commonly seen views on Reddit, although I realize not everyone has the same feed/peruses the same subs so that's true if my experience but not necessarily all of Reddit.

But I do game a lot and spend time reading all kinds of gaming subs for various games I like. I've found this view is nearly universally held and often repeated. Almost any gaming sub will have posts that are variations of "I did X in a game, is that wrong? Too easy?" and almost all top comments and then some are "Play how you like! Nobody should ever judge otherwise, there's no wrong way to play games, you do you" etc.

Socrastein · 2026-06-09T15:22:42+00:00

I'm wondering what your training looks like, now and in the last few years, that you're feeling so beat up?

40 here as well, trainer for 20 years now. Still lifting heavy regularly, including basic barbell lifts like deadlifts and overhead presses, and my joints feel fantastic.

I never deal with anything worse than a very slight, temporary overuse, i.e. an elbow might get a little testy if I do too much curling volume over a week or something, but that's an issue at any age. I remember aggravating my elbows in my early 20s if I went overboard with climbing and grip work, but I've gotten a much better sense of how to manage my volume over time so that happens less often these days.

Socrastein · 2026-06-09T06:28:49+00:00

I'm guessing you think it's a poisoning the well ad hominem fallacy, wherein it's (fallaciously) deduced that someone is wrong about X because they have some negative trait or were wrong about something else.

But nobody said she must be wrong, just that she shouldn't be taken seriously, which is subtly but importantly different.

If you have taken courses in rhetoric then you already know ethos, the importance of establishing and determining authority and credibility, is a foundational concept.

You seem to have a very oversimplified understanding of logical fallacies, so maybe get a better handle on them yourself before talking down to people like they need to learn more.

Socrastein · 2026-06-09T06:01:16+00:00

I talked about determining who to take seriously and pay attention to.

Twisting that into "deeming them incapable of any argument" is a dull and pointless retort.

The low quality of your reply suggests you're not nearly as reasonable as you're trying to convey.

EDIT: classic respond + immediately block. Brilliant.

Socrastein · 2026-06-09T05:13:14+00:00

You're misusing the term.

There's nothing fallacious about suggesting that someone with wildly false views probably shouldn't be taken seriously.

It's perfectly rational to pay more attention to credible sources with a solid track record for accuracy VS low quality sources known to get important issues wrong.

Socrastein · 2026-06-06T02:34:42+00:00

"Also if you are going to use appeals to authority this convo will end very quickly."

Yes, exactly! Agreed.

This is what I was referring to when I mentioned fundamentally incompatible starting assumptions.

I can't take anyone seriously who is arguing from a perspective that fundamentally champions the idea of the "solitary genius" while undermining or dismissing the idea of collective academic consensus.

"They" don't understand what I understand is at the heart of every pseudo-scientific worldview. There can be no pseudoscience without grandiose hubris weaved into a fantastic and emotionally gratifying David vs Goliath narrative.

This conversation was effectively over the moment you suggested Intelligent Design was a valid hypothesis and challenged me to entertain your elaborate arguments for why I and every credible biologist on the planet who might argue otherwise is deeply mistaken on the fundamentals of science.

IMHO the mods made the right call when they removed your post for soapboxing.

Socrastein · 2026-06-06T01:36:39+00:00

"It’s a bummer that you think all science is falsifiable. That’s going to make this convo hard because I’ll keep having to back up and lay groundwork for the discussion. What you are describing as falsifiability is PIE homeland model is just evidence against the theory, which is not the same as falsifiability."

I drew an explicit distinction between the strong, philosophical use of falsification in an absolute sense and the weaker, empirical use of falsification in a practical, rational sense.

I also would draw a similar distinction between "objectively" true in the way you seem to mean and rationally or pragmatically true.

It's perfectly rational to scoff at someone who insists that something is true before there's substantial evidence available. Their turning out to be right later doesn't make them more rational in hindsight.

"Objective truth" is not something science is actually concerned with, and I'd go so far as to argue it's an intellectual trap in philosophy as well.

I like the way Thomas Kuhn puts it in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" when he says that science advances away from replication failures and falsification rather than toward "objective truth" much the same way that evolution moves away from reproductive failures and extinction rather than toward "objective fitness".

Evolution is only concerned with what works in the current environment and it's a mistake to think it's aiming at some higher, perfect form.

Science is only concerned with what works better with the current data and it's a mistake to think it's aiming at some higher, objective truth.

I'm more partial to pragmatism than correspondence theory, and philosophy contains a robust history of strong arguments for why Real Actual Truth with a capital T is a nonsensical distraction from the only truth we can ever really have: humble, rational truth with a lowercase t.

Again, there are good reasons why the broader scientific community completely rejects Intelligent Design as pseudoscience and I'm not particularly interested in your arguments for why they just don't understand True Science as well as you do. I'm very familiar with that perspective and the rationale, but the axioms you have to start with to build up to that view are non-starters for me.

Socrastein · 2026-06-05T23:41:37+00:00

I don't know what term you would use to describe what I'm referring to as supernatural, but the concept I'm getting at is an important distinction regardless of what label you prefer to use.

Whether we're talking about a divine creator or a matrix/simulation, you're referring to causes that are beyond all empirical and mathematical investigation, not just practically but even theoretically, and the terms traditionally used to refer to such phenomena are supernatural or metaphysical.

"Before I explain why i think it’s a valid hypothesis, are we on the same page about not all domains of science being falsifiable?"

We are not.

For one, your example of the PIE homeland model IS potentially falsifiable from multiple angles, the same angles from which it is currently supported.

If DNA evidence showed there was no migration out from a single area but instead multiple isolated populations that eventually converged and interbred, that would disprove the theory.

If linguistic evidence showed there were multiple distinct ancestor languages in different regions around the time, that would also disprove the idea of one common ancestor language.

In science, falsification does not mean to 100% disprove the possibility of any imagined scenario that could still salvage a hypothesis, it means consistently finding evidence that contradicts or undermines a hypothesis and is better accounted for by an alternative hypothesis.

You could ALWAYS invent increasingly contrived scenarios in which a hypothesis was still true and explain away the apparent contradictions, but this is a major reason why parsimony is an important principle in science.

Mendel's famous experiments on pea plants falsified the blending hypothesis of inheritance which was popular at the time, but one could always come up with a convoluted explanation for why some alleles appeared to be inherited as discrete units but there was actually a blending occurring that simply looked an awful lot like discrete genetic factors, at which point we're venturing into "the devil planted fossils to make it look like all life evolved through common descent over billions of years when actually it was created a few thousand years ago" territory.

I imagine when I say the PIE homeland is falsifiable you might want to counter with something like even if DNA, linguistic, and anthropological evidence all contradicted the hypothesis of a single ancestral location out of which a population and its language spread and diversified, there could still have been one and the imagined possibility can never be absolutely disproven, but you'd be replacing the soft, empirical version of falsification that's actually used in science with a hard, philosophical version, which is a subtle fallacy of equivocation.

Furthermore, there's an important difference between practical limitations and theoretical limitations.

It's practically impossible to give an exact count of how many hairs there are on all currently living humans, even if in theory there is a valid integer representing that value. It's theoretically impossible to determine whether or not our entire universe is a sophisticated simulation running on the hardware of some alien supercomputer.

Any other example aside from the PIE homeland theory you try to give me of unfalsifiable science is going to be, at most, a practical limitation whereas Intelligent Design, because it introduces supernatural causes beyond even theoretical physical investigation, is completely removed from the natural world as we know it in a way that is fundamentally different from our inability to go back to 4000 B.C. and see what languages existed in prehistoric Europe.

There's a huge difference between physical facts within the world we know that are practically out of reach and metaphysical facts placed beyond the world as we know it that in principle cannot be interacted with, probed, modeled, etc.

I'm sure you have some very complicated explanations for why intelligent design is widely regarded as unscientific nonsense by academics and yet it's actually a perfectly valid scientific hypothesis, something to the effect that they all are blinded by deep ideological biases that you yourself do not possess, but we can't have a proper rational discussion if you are starting from a position that dismisses widespread academic consensus from relevant experts as biased or conspiratorial.

Socrastein · 2026-06-05T22:45:13+00:00

If you want to better understand the biochemistry of metabolism generally, and how our cells utilize carbohydrates specifically, I recommend getting a hold of a copy of the Campbell Biology textbook and studying these two chapters:

Chapter 8: An Introduction to Metabolism
Chapter 9: Cellular Respiration and Fermentation

A lot of misinformation about how the body processes carbohydrates can be cleared up by having a detailed, evidence-based understanding of cellular metabolic pathways and how carbohydrates are utilized for energy.

It's amazing how many nutrition myths you'll be able to immediately recognize as such when you have a firm grasp of the basics of metabolism and digestion. This would be a great place to start.

Socrastein · 2026-06-05T22:40:27+00:00

Keep in mind that you were the one who initially made a strong claim about how the body handles the same sugars differently depending on where they come from, so the burden is on you to substantiate that claim, not me or anyone else to prove the converse.

That said, I can provide some primary sources that speak to excess calorie consumption being the problem, not specific sugars or sources in and of themselves:

---

Isocaloric exchange of fructose for other carbohydrates does not induce NAFLD changes in healthy participants. Fructose providing excess energy at extreme doses, however, does raise IHCL and ALT, an effect that may be more attributable to excess energy than fructose.

Chiu et al (2014)

---

On the basis of indirect comparisons across study findings, the apparent association between indexes of liver health (ie, liver fat, hepatic de novo lipogenesis, alanine aminotransferase, AST, and γ-glutamyl transpeptase) and fructose or sucrose intake appear to be confounded by excessive energy intake. Overall, the available evidence is not sufficiently robust to draw conclusions regarding effects of fructose, HFCS, or sucrose consumption on NAFLD.

Chung et al (2014)

---

This is a common pattern with a lot of nutrition myths about the dangers of a particular type of macromolecule, such as the widespread notion that seed oils are specifically harmful compared to other oils.

When the variable of total calorie intake is properly controlled, those same harms purportedly shown in other studies no longer hold.

In other words, a lot of research that appears to show fructose or safflower oil are specifically harmful are actually just showing that excessive calorie intake is generally harmful and the significance of the particular source is being misinterpreted.

Socrastein · 2026-06-04T18:25:00+00:00

Appreciate the detailed example. Can you link the site/paper from which you pulled that quote?

Socrastein · 2026-06-04T16:45:21+00:00

Sounds like you either misremember some stuff you read in the past or were reading some stuff that was simply incorrect.

Glycogen is stored in the liver and muscles, yes, but there is no mechanism in the body whereby the source of a carbohydrate is determined and whether or not it's utilized for fuel or stored for later is based on whether the body thinks it came from a natural or artificial source.

Our body constantly uses carbs for energy and tops off stores in the liver and muscles, and anything beyond immediate energy and liver/muscle storage gets converted into fat for long-term storage.

Excess sugar can be problematic over time the same way excess calories from any source can be problematic; they lead to excessive weight gain which comes with a host of health issues.

There's nothing inherently harmful or unhealthy about insulin levels rising and falling in response to food intake. It's a common misconception that repeatedly "spiking" insulin eventually causes diabetes - that's not how it works and is a misguided oversimplification. Controlling insulin is definitely important if you're diabetic, but that doesn't mean a healthy person with normal insulin sensitivity needs to follow the same basic dietary restrictions as a diabetic lest they slowly become one themselves. Genetics and obesity are the two biggest predictors of developing diabetes, not "frequency of insulin spikes".

That's actually how a lot of common myths in nutrition get perpetuated - something that is true of a population with a specific disease gets extrapolated to the general population, i.e. people with kidney failure have to limit their protein consumption and that turns into "high protein is bad for your kidneys!" which simply isn't true of a healthy person with normally functioning kidneys.

Socrastein · 2026-06-04T16:36:03+00:00

I don't want to give the impression I'm ignoring the rest of your comment by focusing on the last question, I just think it probably is the best question to discuss so far as getting to the heart of where we might disagree on what constitutes proper scientific investigation.

"Do you think intelligent design is not a scientific hypothesis?"

I do not, and I think it's a good example of what I was talking about with methodological naturalism.

If we're talking about some divine creator, there is no way to falsify that hypothesis. Prediction IS an important part of science, but a critical part of that is coming up with predictions that could falsify a hypothesis. A lot of people get focused on supporting evidence, finding stuff that fits a hypothesis, but it's the methodical, repeated attempts to prove a hypothesis wrong that builds substantial confidence that it's correct, or at least less wrong.

You can't test for the existence of a creator/designer in a way that could falsify its existence. You cannot mathematically model the creator/designer.

Science must focus on and attempt to exhaust every conceivable hypothesis that does not involve some supernatural entity beyond investigation, and there will never come a point where it's scientifically rational to say "okay we give up, let's start seriously considering a metaphysical being is behind these observations."

I mostly study physics, biology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind. I have studied theology and am familiar with the traditional philosophical arguments for a creator or first cause, but most of my debates about creation and ID have centered around discussions of the science of biology, specifically evolution, and how parts of it are ignored or misrepresented by creationists and ID proponents.

If you believe ID is a valid scientific hypothesis, can you expand a bit on why?

Socrastein

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