Deadlift Stiffness (Taleb)

[Maybach]

Supplementing lifting with some aerobic exercise isn’t objectionable. Replacing deadlifts with power cleans, as a 65-year old, would indicate a childlike understanding of strength training. (Or an unwavering belief in meta-analysis). But, a normie actually preferring the power clean is too rare to believe without proof.

The deadlift has gotten a lot of pushback among casual fitness guys, and it's usually the first thing to go (back for your back, you know). The power clean is a pretty popular replacement because it's what NFL S+C says you should do instead, if people can be convinced they need to do any pulling from the floor.

[Satch12879]

Taleb would probably reply in French with some obscure quote about how the Levantine Arabs invented powerlifting.

I presume he means that deadlifts cause delayed onset muscle soreness that interferes with flexibility and other exercise activities.

Sounds like he’s deadlifting incorrectly. But Taleb has been incorrect about a great many things in the past several years.

[TommyGun]

Taleb would probably reply in French with some obscure quote about how the Levantine Arabs invented powerlifting.

I've read everthing Taleb wrote and this is the perfect summary.

[madig]

I was wondering the same thing after the Odd Lots interview, so I shot Taleb an email and he replied with

1. Effects of Regular Exercise on Arterial Stiffness | SpringerLink
2. One needs to compensate by spending at least 75% of the exercise time doing aerobic things, i.e. 1h gym and 3h aerobic something.

I'm still trying to figure out how this would look like in practice, but from what I can glean from Twitter, he achives this by using his bike a lot. Also, lognormal distributions: https://x.com/nntaleb/status/1577978418792128513

[Jason Donaldson]

I was wondering the same thing after the Odd Lots interview, so I shot Taleb an email and he replied with

1. Effects of Regular Exercise on Arterial Stiffness | SpringerLink
2. One needs to compensate by spending at least 75% of the exercise time doing aerobic things, i.e. 1h gym and 3h aerobic something.

I'm still trying to figure out how this would look like in practice, but from what I can glean from Twitter, he achives this by using his bike a lot. Also, lognormal distributions: https://x.com/nntaleb/status/1577978418792128513

So, the study looks to be behind a paywall, but just looking at the abstract:

Regular aerobic exercise is effective in preventing and reversing arterial stiffening associated with aging.
…
In contrast to the effects of aerobic exercise, an intervention incorporating strenuous resistance training increases, rather than decreases, arterial stiffness in young adults. However, the arterial stiffening effect appears to be absent when older adults with already increased arterial stiffness perform moderate resistance exercise programs.

Emphasis added.

So, sounds like this study suggests older adults shouldn't worry about the effects of strength training on their arteries at all.... If anything, maybe it suggests that old farts should do a little cardio ALSO, but the abstract doesn't seem to support ZOMGDON'TDEADLIFTIT'STOOHARD!!!.

Of course, it's hard to evaluate not knowing what the study or the sources it used categorize as "aerobic" and especially "strenuous resistance training". This makes an attempt to apply a particular mathematic model look pretty contrived, in my opinion.

[madig]

FWIW, you can get access to the full text by googling "SciHub" and pasting in the link.

I personally find it hard to understand how Taleb comes up with some of this stuff due to the terseness of Twitter. I don't think he has written about it elsewhere.

[Jason Donaldson]

FWIW, you can get access to the full text by googling "SciHub" and pasting in the link.

Well, look at that... Thank you very much.

I personally find it hard to understand how Taleb comes up with some of this stuff due to the terseness of Twitter. I don't think he has written about it elsewhere.

I like a lot of Taleb's stuff, but he does often take 6 good pages to convey 2 paragraphs of information, then turn around and fire off something incredibly dense and pithy. Concision is not consistently his strong suit.

Being self-taught deeply in multiple areas, he does seem to miss the mark with remarkable confidence from time to time, as well. Power cleans over deadlifts appears to be one of them.

[Shiva Kaul]

I was wondering the same thing after the Odd Lots interview, so I shot Taleb an email and he replied with

1. Effects of Regular Exercise on Arterial Stiffness | SpringerLink
2. One needs to compensate by spending at least 75% of the exercise time doing aerobic things, i.e. 1h gym and 3h aerobic something.

I'm still trying to figure out how this would look like in practice, but from what I can glean from Twitter, he achives this by using his bike a lot. Also, lognormal distributions: https://x.com/nntaleb/status/1577978418792128513

Here's an alternative explanation: after lifting weights, blood has to perfuse to peripheral skeletal muscle, so central arterial compliance drops to maintain hemodynamic equilibrium. This leads to a chronic adaptation of increased arterial stiffness balanced by dilation / decreased sympathetic modulation of the peripheral arteries - what gym bros would call "vascularity". Overall, this increases neither blood pressure nor CVD risk. Let's step through the fallacious reasoning cited by Taleb:

1. Isolate one variable in a dynamic, multivariate system. Presently, the variable is compliance of the carotid artery --- one component of the cardiovascular system.

2. Correlate this variable with bad outcomes. Yes, a serious kind of arterial stiffening is atherosclerosis, i.e. buildup of plaque in arteries. However, the two conditions are not synonymous: arteries can stiffen for other reasons, such as sympathetic modulation.

3. Show some intervention increases that variable. The book's key study demonstrated that lifting chronically reduces carotid arterial compliance. Conditioning is known to have the opposite effect.

4. Ignore other relevant variables. To its credit, the study measured compliance at the femoral artery, which is technically a peripheral artery, and found neither lifting nor conditioning affected its compliance. However, that's not where you'd expect hyperemia after lifting. Another study measured acute vasodilation at actual muscles (calf and forearm) and, unsurprisingly, observed an increase after lifting but not after conditioning.

5. Ignore actual outcomes. Lifting decreases blood pressure chronically, and lifters don't die more often from MACE.

6. Nonetheless declare the intervention unsafe. Again, I don't take issue with doing some conditioning alongside strength training. But Taleb's insistence that he do 3 hours of aerobic something to balance every 1 hour of lifting is ridiculous.

[biggah_traps]

I was wondering the same thing after the Odd Lots interview, so I shot Taleb an email and he replied with

1. Effects of Regular Exercise on Arterial Stiffness | SpringerLink
2. One needs to compensate by spending at least 75% of the exercise time doing aerobic things, i.e. 1h gym and 3h aerobic something.

I'm still trying to figure out how this would look like in practice, but from what I can glean from Twitter, he achives this by using his bike a lot. Also, lognormal distributions: https://x.com/nntaleb/status/1577978418792128513

But if I spend an hour in the gym, I'm probably only doing at most 10 work sets, so I'm only doing 5-10 minutes of actual lifting. I easily get 15-30 minutes of aerobic exercise per day just from moving around, and I work a desk job. Hell, I probably spend 15 minutes per day briskly walking just as part of my work commute.

Seems like his advice is literally correct, but also so trivial no one actually needs to hear it.

[madig]

Being self-taught deeply in multiple areas, he does seem to miss the mark with remarkable confidence from time to time, as well. Power cleans over deadlifts appears to be one of them.

Where did he even say that? I remember him responding to someone on Twitter he still deadlifts.

Let's step through the fallacious reasoning cited by Taleb [...] But Taleb's insistence that he do 3 hours of aerobic something to balance every 1 hour of lifting is ridiculous.

I lack the statistics-fu to fully understand the studies and their limitations, but I trust Taleb to know what he's doing. I'd love to talk at length with him about the topic or have him write up his findings somewhere so I can better understand what he's trying to say and why. I suppose that talking it up or down further without more information from him is useless.

FWIW, he recently retweeted https://twitter.com/MohammedAlo/stat...59759413874773, which summarizes the findings of Combined association of aerobic and muscle strengthening activity with mortality in individuals with hypertension | Hypertension Research:

While this study highlights that aerobic exercise, in combination with muscle-strengthening activities (MSA), offers significant benefits for reducing cardiovascular mortality, it does not diminish the value of resistance training. Resistance training remains crucial for overall health and fitness. However, for comprehensive cardiovascular protection, it should be paired with aerobic exercise. Emphasizing both components in public health guidelines can provide a more balanced approach to improving heart health and reducing mortality risk.

I mean, that sounds sensible and we probably knew that already. All in all I suspect that Taleb is going in the right direction.