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Thread: Perception of Weight

  1. #1
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    Default Perception of Weight

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    I missed my squats today for the first time. It was an odd experience. I figured it would be too 'hard' or 'heavy' but it was a case of just not enough energy in the tank.

    Now this got me thinking about perception of weight...

    During the movement I can't tell the difference between 315, 365, and 395. It all feels 'sorta' heavy and the only difference is 'how much more tired' I feel after each rep.

    Is moving heavy weight similar to cold (in that -35 + wind doesn't feel colder than -25 + wind... it just feels cold)?

  2. #2
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    This tends to be the way that humans perceive things. I started noticing this well before 395 pounds though. 225 is much heavier compared to 135 than 315 is compared to 225. People are weird.

  3. #3
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    Do diminishing returns apply to perception? Anything above 85% of a max effort squat feels "heavy", it's just some weights move faster than others.

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    If you pay attention and review video after each set, you can cultivate what Hanley dubbed "bar speed mindfulness". The difference between 85 and 90 and 95 is pretty clear to me.

  5. #5
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    Hey OP,

    The perception may be proportional to the natural logarithm of the stimulus. Your eyes and ears work this way, I believe. I just now googled to find a page about the eye's response, and found a wikipedia page that I think is interesting (mostly because it has math!).

    Weber?Fechner law - Wikipedia

    The claim is all perception may be logarithmic. There's a section in the linked article, with references, about the perception of weight.

    PS Hi, manveer.
    PPS I don't know anything about weight perception, so I can't answer questions. I'm sure it's been studied and others have more knowledge.
    PPPS I don't know how this relates to manveer's post and Hanley's bar speed mindfulness, except that maybe that too has a constant (incremental change / value).
    PPPPS I'm only into my second cup of liquid caffeine, so please forgive any errors.

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    dafaq

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    Quote Originally Posted by Savs View Post
    Weber?Fechner law - Wikipedia

    The claim is all perception may be logarithmic. There's a section in the linked article, with references, about the perception of weight.
    That's pretty cool!

    Quote Originally Posted by Savs View Post
    PS Hi, manveer.
    Hey Savs!

    Quote Originally Posted by Savs View Post
    PPS I don't know anything about weight perception, so I can't answer questions. I'm sure it's been studied and others have more knowledge.
    PPPS I don't know how this relates to manveer's post and Hanley's bar speed mindfulness, except that maybe that too has a constant (incremental change / value).
    Here's an interesting study: Novel Resistance Training?Specific Rating of Perceived Exert... : The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research

    I can probably tell you the velocity of my last squat rep in a set within .02 m/s after 1.5 years of tracking actual bar speeds.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Savs View Post
    Hey OP,

    The perception may be proportional to the natural logarithm of the stimulus. Your eyes and ears work this way, I believe. I just now googled to find a page about the eye's response, and found a wikipedia page that I think is interesting (mostly because it has math!).

    Weber?Fechner law - Wikipedia

    The claim is all perception may be logarithmic. There's a section in the linked article, with references, about the perception of weight.

    PS Hi, manveer.
    PPS I don't know anything about weight perception, so I can't answer questions. I'm sure it's been studied and others have more knowledge.
    PPPS I don't know how this relates to manveer's post and Hanley's bar speed mindfulness, except that maybe that too has a constant (incremental change / value).
    PPPPS I'm only into my second cup of liquid caffeine, so please forgive any errors.
    The engineer in my appreciates this greatly. Thank you. Also, you're an entertaining individual.

  9. #9
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    Thanks for the link, manveer. I'll definitely read the paper later. (I'm away from my office right now, and therefore away from journal access.)

    I can probably tell you the velocity of my last squat rep in a set within .02 m/s after 1.5 years of tracking actual bar speeds.
    Very interesting! So, if I assume a bar speed of 1 m/s (is that too fast?), then you have a precision of 2%. Pretty good! Wow. So, that has me thinking about uncertainties in the mass of all the plates I use in my commercial gym. The tolerances are probably spec'ed to ± 2%. (Maybe those old York plates we have with the milled backs are better. I dunno.) Now I realize I've probably been thinking about it wrong all these years. Say I pull "four plates" (so eight plates, all with ± 2%, or ± 0.9 lb ≈1 lb (pounds because Freedumb!). I was thinking that week to week, I could be pulling 405 lb ± 8 lb, but that's wrong, right?! The uncertainties should add in quadrature (take the square root of the sum of the squares). So, the total value for the weight W is W ± 0.9√n lb, where n is the number of plates. The uncertainty is smaller than I thought. It's not 405 lb ± ≈8 lb, it's 405 lb ± 2.5 lb. Huh. Wow. I guess I need to think about that now.

  10. #10
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    starting strength coach development program
    Quote Originally Posted by Dalton Clark View Post
    The engineer in my appreciates this greatly. Thank you. Also, you're an entertaining individual.
    You're welcome, and thank you for the compliments. (I don't take compliments well, so I'll just try to move on here.)

    This board used to be highly entertaining and mentally stimulating. Quite often I would find myself thinking about questions in the Training, Programming, and E&P forums and as a consequence I'd look at things in a new light or going back and review some things I'd forgotten. I'll drop this avenue of discussion.

    Take care, Dalton. Thanks, again.

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