I don't think a style of training is better than any other, people can get outstanding results or get injured in all types of practice - it all boils down to the program detail and the individual.
What works best for me in terms of maximizing wellness is low-volume (3x3 or 3x5), high intensity (but not too high) strength training with compound lifts, a few accessories (rotational, abs, rear delts, etc.), plus any cardio that's not heavy on the joints.
Bodybuilding uses a very wide variety of movements incorporating dumbbells, barbells, and machines to train every single muscle periodically (even focusing on little tiny ones no one else would care about).
Here’s a good example of a bodybuilding training routine: https://thinksteroids.com/community/threads/first-bodybuildi...
That said, I’m also curious what GP was referring to, specifically. Was he saying like “don’t do dumbbell curls”?
IMO, those are classic powerlifting exercises. From what I can tell, the pro body builders typically do a lot more machine work and other isolated movements because it has a better stimulus:fatigue ratio than large compound movements.
I competed in powerlifting in my 20s; my life revolved around squat/bench/deadlift. I enjoyed it, but yeah, he's right: training like that is very specific, like anything else, I suppose. I could squat, bench and deadlift a ton, but literally anyone could beat me walking up the stairs, or even arm-wrestling. The first time I tried CrossFit, it nearly killed me. And yeah, powerlifting tore my body to shit. Back then, the only time I wasn't in pain, was when I was lifting.
They are also classic bodybuilding exercises.
Competitive bodybuilding however is a totally different thing (very different lifts- mostly light weight, very high rep), and I think the extreme diet and drugs alone takes a toll on your body regardless of the workouts.
* Weightlifting (Clean & Jerk, Snatch)
* Powerlifting (Squat, Bench, Deadlift, Maybe Bentover Row)
* Bodybuilding (High volume isolation exercises)
An amateur doing a standard squat, bench press, curl, deadlift etc. routine with manageable weights and good guidance/form is absolutely going to benefit from it. A quick, high intensity weight routine few times a week is probably the best lifestyle change you can make for long term health.
Dancers, gymnasts, Martial artists, and calisthenics guys show up and tend to do pretty well at climbing straight out of the gate. They bothered to learn how to move, and the skills translate at least somewhat.
When it comes to health and longevity, simply going for a brisk walk on a regular basis will realize the lion's share of benefits.
Finger strength, overall strength, flexibility, coordination, balance, and technique all play a massive role as well.
I don't know why the bodybuilders I've climbed with seem to be worse than overweight/obese people I've seen climbing for their first time, but I've had this observation as well.
Who? The heaviest I can honestly think of would be Chris Scharma, Magnus Midtbo, Jimmy Webb and maybe Jan Hojer, but all of them would be considered pretty skinny by normal standards. Scharma and Webb are probably around 6' 160-170 lbs, Jan is around 175 I think but he's 6'3", and Magnus is 5'8" and 158 lbs or so but has incredibly strong fingers.
Climbing is a strength to weight sport, so being heavier will almost always be worse than being lighter no matter what. It's why you don't see as many tall professional climbers as you would expect.
Here is a larger climber who is sponsored by a lot of climbing companies: https://www.instagram.com/drewclimbswalls/?hl=en I'm not sure the extent to which he might be considered a professional, but having multiple sponsorships suggests it's semi-professional for him.
He's not pushing the limits of the sport, but he's promoting a more inclusive attitude. Climbing for a lot of people is about having fun, and very few people will send the hardest climbs, but you can be professional without being elite.
Klem Loskot: 190 lbs
John Gill: 200 lbs
However, None of these guys are performing at a top level today, none of them have sent V16 or higher. Gill is the father of bouldering in America, and was setting standards from the 50s-70s, and claims the hardest problem he has done was about v10, at a time when no one else was anywhere near that good. Bouldering was a lonely pursuit in those days. He was able to hold one-arm levers and do one-pinky pull-ups.
Gill was also plagued by tendon pathologies in his elbows throughout his career, and those issues are more common amongst heavier climbers. Don't let that stop you from trying climbing if you're heavier, amongst mortals it's not such a big deal.
The "not happening" was that my weight distribution feels like it was ripping me off the wall. I just can't get much percentage of my bodyweight supported by my toes because my big back, ass and quads are going in another direction. Turns into an upper body exercise and one-arm pull-ups on a sheer face aren't happening.
Strong people that start climbing tend to use their upper body strength to get up the wall, fat people don't have that option and naturally fall into using technique and their leg strength to get up the wall.
When I started climbing I could do 3 pullups, and now I can do 18 in a set. I don't train pull-ups, just climbing.
Climbing is adaptive, and usually there is more than one way to solve a problem, and one is encouraged to use their body any way they can to get through a section. Many elite climbers have distinctive trademark styles and are instantly tecognizeable just by how they move.
Jan Hoyer is an outlier who posesses both a freakish abundance of power and span. He trained the muscle up to outrageous extremes.
Jan is the only climber to ever throw a 1-9 on the campus board. He performs many outrageous stupid climber tricks throughout this 8 minute video;
Here's Alex Honnold talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDUeh8nyLT0&t=490s
He demonstrates he can only do 5 pullups (though it's possible he was being modest).
Rock climbing is especially upper body strength intensive. It’s why the guys have ripped upper bodies and tiny legs.
The fat old climber is some inspiration. https://explorersweb.com/fat-old-climber-gordon-robb/
There is a pot-belly 35 year old at my bouldering gym that is better at overhangs than most of the people there, including myself.
I was curious about this so I did a little searching. I found some studies showing that resistance training has lower injury rates than contact sports, and youth resistance training in particular is safer than pretty much any other athletic activity. But I didn't find any studies that covered bodyweight strength training, so I couldn't evaluate GP's claims. Regardless, given the low injury rate for resistance training, I think it's fair to recommend people lift weights, and I mostly agree with your last sentence.
What you did wrong was not weight training but following an unbalanced training regimen. No judgement there, I was guilty of the same when I was younger. I think younger/uninformed lifters tend to "ego lift" and focus on size over aspects of physical training. It is easy to fall into this trap when social media is heavily skewed toward steroid users.
Building physical strength is no sin. But you have to approach it from a health and not ego-centered perspective. This means lifting within your ability and with good form, practicing mobility exercises, and understanding the kinetic chain.
Developing a healthy body is a lifelong and rewarding journey. I recommend anyone starting their fitness journey to ground themselves in functional strength and physical therapy instead of the bro culture that is rampant in the fitness industry. I recommend the channels AthleanX and Kneesovertoesguy on YouTube if you want learn from people who teach safe and balanced approaches to strength.
However, for those interested in practical science for strength training, I would recommend Barbell Medicine's content (by actual physicians) and Stronger by Science, perhaps.
For example, bodyweight pullups or dip are way more weight than I would do for a 12 rep working set and doesn't allow for warmup weights.
Issue with bodyweight activities, is they're pretty poor for developing and maintaining lower body strength, and that (i.e broken hips) is one of the top reasons people break themselves in later life. It doesn't take much for one badly leveraged move climbing/gymastics/martial arts to enter snap city. Especially with explosive concentric components, i.e. something like depth jump is considered extremely high risk injury exercise. There's a lot of bodyweight movements especially in context of activities where one can over-exert/commit. Modest weight training is calibrated and repeatable and less risky in that sense.
A genuine full-body movement(like the various modes of crawling, my go-to for general exercise) involves more joints and stabilization than bodybuilding motions, which tend to be isolated. Training naturally, it's easier to experience overall healthy results with a balanced approach since everything supports everything else.
At the same time, bodybuilders tend to be as big as they are in large part because of an intense drug culture. Advanced natural bodybuilders will top out around the physique of a Steve Reeves, which is big, but nothing like a Schwarzenegger or later pros where the drugs are in play. With that degree of hypertrophy it's going into a realm where the muscles are often stronger than the joints; mobility tends to suffer and injury rates rise. Olympic weightlifters and powerlifters don't have quite the same problem because their training emphasizes overall strength, which also improves their mobility, so you can find video examples of heavy lifters who break their PR and then jump up in the air and do splits. Those guys are still using PEDs, and they are still heavy and gas out quickly in another athletic setting like climbing, combat sports etc., but they avoid having precisely the same kinds of issues.
I do think the weights are good at being efficient, which is a different aspect of this. Programming in some weights as a way to progress through a plateau elsewhere can be a great idea. But they add a ton of fatigue because they're so efficient, so it's quite easy to overtrain without a periodized approach, and in my weightlifting days I was basically always near or over that line of overtraining.
Nowadays I use bands, but as a supplement, just as with the weight vests.
It's also worth keeping in mind that many "natural" bodybuilders are also using drugs, just less aggressively. Apart from the rampant "fake natty influencer" phenomenon, there is simply no way for competitions to catch every possible stack/cycle (especially stuff like HGH or insulin).
The excercises I've been doing for years now (apart from other activities (climbing, gymnastics, martial arts etc)) are mostly own-weight ones (pull ups, push ups, dips, squats etc with variations). Every now and then I perform them using a weighted vest with a maximum of 20 kilos. This has kept me in very good shape, injury free and agile.