What exercise books to buy and what not to buy
Everybody wants to lift weights, but practically noone has any idea on how to do it. I have to critique the most common book in this field, Starting Strength. The book teaches the squat (not inherently a bad exercise, but one without much backing in our evolutionary history) and (worse) the bench press. The squat results in the bar positioned behind the neck, which is inherently dangerous. The bench press can be done properly if the chin is moved away from the feet with the eyes looking straight up at the ceiling, but it is an unnatural exercise and risks moving a person into flatback posture. The shoulder press (following the Russian physical therapy), push-up, and the deadlift are more than sufficient to build muscle for the average person. The advice for “chest up” and “chin down” are completely wrong -the chest should be small, shoulders up, and chin always either up or forward, in the manner of George W. Bush at the 2004 debates (remember, he was in the top 2% of aerobic fitness his age):
Tucking the chin results in a hyperextended mid-back, which increases the risk of spinal cord injury, while moving the chin up results in low back extension and both protects the low back from pressure and the mid-back from hyperextension. Remember, all proper posture stems from chinsleep. The back should never be flat. Even as of October of last year (his insight probably inspired by me), Larsen was still mostly wrong on head posture:
This is the correct deadlift form:
Notice the spine is not locked and the low back is extended once the bar is fully lifted.
Regardless, Larsen remains correct on the military press:
Like Kevin N. Bass, I am not against strength training. All I ask for is an awareness of the techniques used by Ridley Scott and Larry Moss.
As for the only book on exercise I recommend so far -though I haven’t read many - I endorse Tuttle’s Tai Chi for Beginners. The author seems to be a complete nonentity, but the techniques he teaches (with the exception of a brief and irrelevant instruction in favor of flatback posture at the beginning) seem to a faithful reproduction of the PRC’s 1956 form of Tai Chi, which, being planned in a low income country, was inherently difficult to mess up. It’s very easy to go wrong with yoga, especially in regards to low back flexion -it is very difficult to go wrong with Tai Chi.