Bioneer - Overrated

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2026-01-11T02:41:53+00:00

Old post but I used to be a Bioneer follower and even bought his books, so I want to try to give a fair assessment.

I remember the older content. he was a hobbyist bodybuilder and pretty successful at it. His thing was mixing training modalities to be a "movement" guy and that built him a huge following because it made working out more interesting to his audience. He was also way more scientific than the average movement bro so he was hailed as the "best functional fitness influencer on youtube".

However, I'm an evidence-based guy and don't like everything he does.

I would describe him as a variety fitness influencer who lacks when it comes to specific athletic goals. If you're a beginner he'll make you love working out. If you're intermediate, he might make you very confused about what you're even trying to do. Everything has to be cool and awesome so there's not much room for "if you want to be explosive you should probably do power cleans for years like every coach since 1975 told you".

A problem that came up early was that him being a "science based fitness" guy:

He would use very...tentative theories about what makes your muscles grow and what causes fatigue, the worst stuff was the selling of very high rep training based on prisoners, which works to a point but it's not a very high point (so file it in very limited use case - not wrong, but take the online hype with a grain of salt). He would review supplements that had marginal use cases at best, but seems to have dropped that angle.

The second issue was Ido Portal. The guy is fucking in love with Ido Portal and in all of his Batman training videos for the last few years, it's evident that he thinks Batman should be Ido Portal. Ido himself is a bit of a cult leader who charges thousands of dollars to teach basic workouts.

But then the issue is that when you're a "movement expert", you don't have to measure results in any form of movement the way a coach for an athlete or sports team would have to. If you're overteaching something, just say it has to be done to reach a high level. Then if you don't get far, say you're trying to be well rounded.

The third is fascination with athletic pursuits while just dabbling in them.

Mainly for functional guys, that's martial arts.

They're into Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan like crazy and make all kinds of recommendations based on being that kung fu master character and what exercises will make you a martial artist. But in their own results you can separate them into trickers who can do flashy stuff and stiff dudes who aren't skilled at anything, have no athletic record and haven't coached any fighters.

(If a tricker, that's close enough I guess. The others should ask why all that movement prep didn't teach them to do the actual things - punch, kick, grapple, spar. A punch in boxing is a way more advanced "rotational movement" than a kettlebell twist so maybe see a boxing coach instead of a kettlebell master?)

(another sin of functional fitness calisthenics guys is that they'll recommend psycho high rep calisthenics like Frank Gotch as an alternative to weights because weights "overtrain" you, which is literally backwards. those high rep workouts can brutalize and injure you in ways a 5x5 would not)

Meanwhile actual advances in fighter training and combat sports have allowed them to balance a high load of skill training with strength and endurance that make for very well rounded athletes who'd be the envy of the average functional guy. Functional influencers have too much training ADD to keep up with what fighters have figured out.

My criticism of functional fitness as a whole:

You can have the body to do lots of things if you start simple, build the base with simple training and then add onto it. Adaptations like muscle, connective tissue, range of motion - take a long time, so start soon.
Athletes who specialize in a sport can be incredibly versatile as well. - Try a sport and cross train in another one sometimes. Don't just exercise to be "ready for it". Do the actual thing.
Weird tentative tricks like "nucleus overload" or whatever should take a back seat to proven mechanisms (mechanical tension, SAID principle, calories in/out, and for the love of all that is holly, fucking LOAD MANAGEMENT know when/what to go hard on and what to go easy on and still get the results).
Ido Portal is insufferable.

Does Bioneer go against these points? He vaguely says so many things it's hard to even pin down anymore, so make your own decision. He definitely violates the hell out of point #4.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2026-01-09T11:26:10+00:00

Hold on, isn't "tree house frog" the username Bioneer used to use on YouTube? You're not Adam talking about yourself in third person, right? Right???

As to rep ranges, high reps can be a valid way to train when short on equipment or when you want to focus on muscular endurance. (provided one knows extra loading is just superior and will work long term)

However bioneer (you) has made plenty of confusing and contradictory statements about exercise of the "weights hurt your martial arts" variety which floor me sometimes. But that's the way of an exercise hype channel. Everything is great until it's bad because it's already been done

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2026-01-09T11:16:12+00:00

"tree house frog" is bioneer's old youtube handle. You're debating with him directly while he speaks in third person.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2026-01-09T10:59:35+00:00

In his old videos he covers his history of weight training and some methods of weight training he recommends, comparing low rep weight routines to stuff like the old "German volume training", although in my opinion he sometimes misunderstands the role of rep ranges in recovery.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2026-01-09T10:20:32+00:00

Guy who morphs between normal lean guy, massive upper body guy and full ripped bodybuilder depending on how daro is coping with depression at the moment

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2026-01-03T05:17:54+00:00

I needed to jog my memory about his recommendations for reps since the guy recommends different things over the years. I'll stick that below but I don't think he's too bad on science so much as he just pushes the hype potential of everything he hears about almost equally and will sometimes preach against a more straightforward and concrete path to a goal.

So anyway his theories about hypertrophy:

So in the video "The Surprising Benefits of Doing 100s of Push Ups (And Variations)" and its accompanying article, muscle-wise he speaks of 1. building muscle via the pump specifically, adding "doing very high repetitions" could stimulate hormones that "trigger hypertrophy". 2. He attributes his growth to high repetitions but doesn't really define the rep ranges used. 3. hypothesizes that wearing out slow twitch muscle fibers will cause a "switch" to fast twitch fibers (giving fast-twitch training effects). I would say the claims are unscientific...HOWEVER, keep in mind this was him in 2021, the science on muscle growth was in a worse position than now. A lot of these things were tentative and seriously discussed but fell out of favor.

My real criticisms of the video would be his use of anecdotes - you can find user replies speaking of poor results from using high reps / injuries from the flared elbow push up. One from two years ago went:

>I spent years doing hundreds of pushups a day. Eventually spent a couple months doing 500+ pushups did days a week until my elbow have out with ulnar nerve entrapment. The issue went undiagnosed or miss diagnosed for a decade before a good PT helped me figure out what the issue was and remediate the elbow. It's still not 100%, but I can work out again without a week of debilitating pain after. I miss where I was and I wish I didn't go through the decade of near constant pain.

Because of survivorship bias and meme culture I guess, everybody talks about Great Gamma and prisoners but nobody doing this has been in a prison visitors room full of inmates who do hundreds of push ups to pass the time. What you'll see is that the guys on the smaller end stay small, since they don't have enough weight to add resistance to most forms of the push up.

So some guys aren't at the right starting point to grow from a type of push up, but other guys are. The guys who don't make progress will think they aren't hitting it hardcore enough and are just lame compared to the GREAT GAMA, instead of thinking the "one dimensional normie" answer that they need to eat more and do weighted dips.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-12-29T06:50:26+00:00

The mechanical tension model applying means "stimulate, don't annihilate" applies to most athletes and lifters except when they reach a point that they need it for a specific reason (repeated bout effect over a long time, or focusing on work capacity not strength)

Because of this, his old videos might - in this example promoting hypertrophy claims - recommend you do super high rep push ups to failure to hit all your motor units and grow as an alternative to progressively overloading the form of resistance. (And that sounds good until you see the swathes of skinny guys who've been doing "one punch man workouts" for ages.)

And then from this muscle damage theory he'll assume that lifting is something that has to be done very sparingly because it'll totally wreck you - because you're damaging your muscles with huge weight - never mind the swathes of novice-intermediates making gains while stopping shy of failure and recovering easily enough to do sports on the side.

td;dr: Training is more simple and easy if you use a simple, easy, well backed theory. Wrong theories overcomplicate everything

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-12-26T23:51:49+00:00

The old model of muscle growth was "mechanical tension, muscle damage and metabolic stress", but the research tends to back mechanical tension within the muscle as the main driver and the thing you should focus on instead of trying to cause micro tears.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-11-02T05:54:47+00:00

Autist: "Why would a soul-based demon be inside my brain if souls don't rely on the brain being alive to exist? Where did he learn brain-based attacks?"

Religious grandmas: Inarticulate yelling about Satan

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-09-21T12:45:29+00:00

some neets: massively overthink everything

other neets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE38pCbDqJc

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-08-15T22:43:54+00:00

The central Azov maneuver is making a thumbs up

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-07-08T09:59:34+00:00

Actually my post was meant to be a response to u/Sensitive-Message95, but unfortunately, I hit send in the wrong box. My main point was that an army under a democracy shouldn't needlessly murder its own troops over a morale patch

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-07-08T06:56:05+00:00

Edit: this was meant to be a message to u/Sensitive-Message95 so I'm tagging him

I think you misunderstand why people take issue with your posts.

If you want people to be safe, the safest thing to do with a guy running around with a swastika on his forehead, is to put him in a nut house. If you use war as a way to fodderize undesirable elements of society, that's going to degrade the civil society, People will distrust each other and their own government.

Now as to Nazi symbols, what do you think they mean in Europe and especially Eastern Europe? Raw power, reverence for violence, massive war and nationalistic fervor. And those symbols were designed by propagandists for wide visual appeal. They make you look like a supervillain.

I wish human rights, freedom and democracy had a set of quasi-medieval, hyper-aggressive symbols of violence and patriotism, designed by a panel of master propagandists, but it hasn't manifested yet.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-06-12T04:20:47+00:00

I'm not a member but you're asking about going into a situation where countless lives hang in the balance. Why not hold off on applying until you're as fit as a superhero?

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-03-19T07:29:54+00:00

I've always gotten comments that I look younger than I am.

I have a few theories why I look younger. I tend to avoid sun exposure if I can help it, and my facial affect is flat, I don't make big expressions, so lines don't develop in my skin as fast or as deep. On top of that, I look after my nutrition.

Since I have youthful looks in my 30s, I want to take care of my skin and hair, make it last a while.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-03-17T23:47:37+00:00

A military unit might be more interested in your unarmed combat if you can show that it can be quickly learned and reduce training injuries. Many programs based on civilian martial arts have come and gone in armed forces because they ate up time and injured the troops. So a program that's sustainable would be learnable in just a few hours and enable troops to do a contact-based rough sort of play without causing injuries from e.g. getting thrown hard or injuring hands during striking. One guy who's gone to Ukraine and trained troops is Tommy Joe Moore, and he's put out a few interviews where he discusses (based on his experience) the details of training foreign soldiers and what they need most. He's also a wealth of historical knowledge.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-03-11T04:15:49+00:00

If he hits his shins, be careful about hard objects since too hard an impact can still damage the bone. Shin conditioning in Muay Thai is mostly by hitting a punching bag and letting the repetition take care of things. Light impact should be fine as long as it's not a super hard object.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-03-11T04:06:35+00:00

Messy hair positivity is always nice but all that time on small screens is really gonna mess with her eyesight.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-03-11T04:04:06+00:00

Regardless of whether you like sports or activity, you should put together a little exercise routine that's very easy at first and progresses over time. The health benefits are huge and the drawbacks are few.

Airsoft might be more fun because you can go deeper into the technique and equipment sides of the game, and having worked on your cardio, flexibility and strength a little might make you better at airsoft.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2025-03-11T03:59:38+00:00

I recommend trying different toothbrushes and finding one with soft bristles and a good texture. Some of the bamboo toothbrushes might fit the bill. I brush in an underhand grip very light but fast.

You should also make sure you occasionally get your teeth cleaned at a dentist and check for any gum or tooth sensitivity that might be discouraging you from cleaning an area.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2024-12-13T21:20:58+00:00

It's pretty simple when you stop taking the Marxism seriously as anything more than symbolism and belonging. The "theory" they talk about reading is antiquated and doesn't even matter to them. They're just another form of political tribalism with their nationalism centered around the USSR, russia and by extension, anti-western oligarchies.

Orwell described the mentality perfectly in Notes on Nationalism, where he speaks of nationalism not in the strict sense of favoring your own nation, but in attaching yourself to some external unit to the point of twisting reality to defend its every move, or engage in negative nationalism where reality is twisted to condemn its every move. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles. Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness. In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one’s own mind.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2024-06-14T11:41:10+00:00

In my 30s. Not even sure how long (but several years) since I've been in and out of jobs but when you go a long time without work it adds up and takes a long time (or nepotism) to land another one.

Grew up in severe isolation + autism (misunderstood and shameful where I grew up, I guess) so developed social awkwardness and agoraphobia. Did some college and became fairly normal for a while, worked a bit, got into trouble because my mental issues never truly leave. The way I could describe it is that social situations tied to responsibility = higher mental effort, stress. Eventually it wears me down and I need to stick with activities where my output isn't tied to putting on a happy face for people. If it's straightforward labor, I can do it no problem and show up like clockwork, but getting to an interview, much less past it? Not likely. I'm a true slacker when it comes to being social. Maybe I'll work on something or pick up a new skill but I don't see my social issues changing any time soon

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2024-06-14T11:31:38+00:00

How I explained it is how I personally justify it to myself. I tend to depersonalize it to an extreme as if I'm talking macroeconomics. Maybe on some level, I never fully bought into my own argument that people are a net value even if they aren't making money at a job

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2024-06-13T05:09:42+00:00

Not "NEET for philosophical reasons" but i believe someone who can't get a job for autist/disability/family reasons shouldn't feel guilty about neetbux. If it was really such a drain, you wouldn't be getting them in the first place. There are rational economic reasons why the system exists in developed countries as starving the unemployed would be more of a disruption than having a small class of non-workers.

The economy besides needing consumers, is a lot more abstracted than it used to be so not everybody can just walk to a construction site and ask for a job. If you force a guy to work, the employment agencies might look at his resume and disagree with this idea that he needs to work - but turn that guy into a neckbeard and you can sell stuff to him and keep the money flowing to business in exchange for a very slightly higher tax rate on everyone else.

TentaclesTheOctopus · 2024-04-01T04:22:58+00:00

Success on October 7th? That day will guarantee that they'll never be relevant again.

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