Again, arbitrary. But still doable provided intelligent programming.

sn9 Whats your weight btw? I think these goals are probably easier if you're on the lighter end. I'm 210lbs been working out for years and most of these goals seem unachievable.

I feel like these goal would barely be achievable for your average man who is 200 lbs and in his 30's or 40's without a fanatical devotion to weight lifting, a high protein diet, and probably a large supplement intake(creatine).

Even then I would be surprised if greater than 50% of the 200 lb + men could achieve a sub 20 minute 5k, do 30 pulls ups, and a 400lb dead lift.

Yeah part of those goals is that it kinda forces you to be lean, since they're more difficult if you're overweight.

I'm not certain about the 5k goal at 200+lbs, but I think the pullups should still be achievable on a good program.

At any rate, just aiming for them in good faith and with honest effort will provide many health benefits, which was the point of my comment.

I totally agree that running, deadlifts, and pull ups are great exercises.

And while goals can be motivating, un-achievable goals can also be demotivating.

Regarding the comment about exercises forcing you to be lean, you might not familiar with most of the research on exercise and how it affects weight. But the best way to summarize it is "Exercise is a great obesity preventative, it is a completely ineffective cure."

Yeah how lean you are is more diet.

I meant that getting leaner through some combination of diet and exercise will make those goals all more achievable, which has obvious health benefits and is something I had in mind when deciding on those goals.

You'd also be surprised at how little evidence there is that diet is an effective long term weight loss strategy.

That's more a problem with how difficult and expensive it is to design and implement good studies.

Studies that rely on self-reporting eating history skew the results to ambiguity, but studies in which the experimenters have full and unambiguous knowledge of calories and macronutrients consumed by subjects reveal that the difference in calories digested and the calories burned explains pretty much all changes in weight. It gets only slightly more complicated when talking about body composition (basically, eat enough protein to support your lean body mass and any athletic activity), and even more complicated when talking about long term health (e.g., micronutrient levels that support long-term physiological maintenance mechanisms which are neglected in the sub-clinical nutrient deficient states most people find themselves in).

Fairly simple linear relationships can be used to freely manipulate one's weight, as shown by pretty much any bodybuilder or athlete competing in a sport with weight classes.

Studies aside, it's obvious that relationship between calories digested compared to calories burned is the main determinant of weight as starving populations around the world can tell you. You can't create or maintain mass without the required energy to support cellular metabolism. The physiology and biochemistry is understood well enough for this not to be an issue. The problems professed by the media reporting on studies are mainly ones of measurement (as people don't usually know how to accurately measure their caloric intake, which is why self-reporting studies are basically worthless) and commitment to lifestyles in which they don't chronically overeat relative to their activity level.

It's true if you eat fewer calories you will be thinner, but every study done on diets over the long term(3+ years) shows success rates that hover around 5%(for people who have already succeeded in losing significant weight)

Imagine we gave the startup advice "make lots of money, spend very little money". It is advice that every successful company since the beginning of time has followed. And every failed company has failed to do so. However this advice is exactly as valuable as the advice "eat less calories, burn more".

This is 100% because they fail to adhere to a caloric intake that is at or below their TDEE. That's about behavior, not physiology. They aren't violating the first law of thermodynamics and creating new mass and energy out of nothing. They're eating too much. They aren't tracking their weight and modifying their behavior when they see it going in a direction they and their physicians don't want.

It's no different than the fact that you must spend less than you make to avoid going into debt, and that you must save a certain percentage of your income to save up enough for retirement so that you can continue your standard of living once you retire. And yet we find huge portions of the US population in debt with little to no savings. This doesn't mean the advice is bad or invaluable.

This doesn't mean they're mentally incapable of saving up. That's a behavioral issue, too. And behaviors can be modified. There's research about how to successfully do that, too. Entire industries revolve around modifying behaviors to extract profit from people.

That the studies that you are personally aware of show that people have trouble maintaining a healthy weight suggests, not that it's impossible, but that the subjects don't know how to form and maintain habits.

That people can't implement advice doesn't mean it isn't valuable. At most, it just means they need more advice or counsel. But not different, mutually exclusive, advice.

The deadlift is by far the easiest part of what he said. In fact, it's almost trivial if all you're aiming for is 1 repetition.

I know 5 experienced weight lifters and most of them struggle to do 1 pull-up (yes, ONE). None of them run, so doing a 5k under 20 is definitely out of the question (also a factor of age and height).

Also those goals are definitely not for the majority of people, because they require a MAJOR lifestyle change (3x30min/week won't cut it here). It's achievable, but like he said, not easy.

I would say your weight lifter friends are most likely guilty of not using good programs or just not working towards those goals or both.

Plenty of strength athletes can move tremendous weights but don't know how to program pullups effectively. Even fewer spend any time on cardio.

Agreed on 3x30minutes being unlikely to be sufficient, but I wanted to give more of a starting off point. For example, Couch to 5k followed by Bridge to 10k is likely enough volume to get you a large part of the way there. Then increasing your weekly mileage to at least 30 miles per week and you'll be right on your way to sub-20.