alternative to stronglifts forum

[piranha]

hey there.

i am doing stronglifts 5x5, started in early november. have serious mobility problems that are so far preventing me from doing proper barbell squats, so i have replaced them with goblet squats for now (at lower weights, but i am progressively increasing them). am working on improving my mobility, and am otherwise progressing well; just slower than normal. but hey, i am fat, old, and have lived a sedentary life for much too long. i don't mind the slow part, i just want to get stronger.

i signed up for the "inner circle", but i am having a hard time with it because i have plain run out of patience for sexism and homophobia. "pussy", "sissy", and "fag" are commonly used to denigrate outsiders, the former two also to exhort insiders (eg "don't be such a pussy, and work through it") and nobody sees anything wrong with it. and while i don't identify as a woman, i hate the way women are treated as well; ostensibly supported, but that often results in flirtatious calls for more booty pictures, which marginalizes fat women (because only conventionally attractive women are asked for those). the majority of women on the site are silent, the only ones who participate are the ones who seems to enjoy all that male attention. motivational images often consist of bikini babes beckoning. in short, the place oozes testosterone poisoning.

there is also not much room for people who diverge from the basic program; if you pursue other sports and activities you're lucky if you don't get written off or insulted (don't mention crossfit. ever.). doing your own research to find what works for your own body is frowned upon. i understand some of that -- a lot of the guys come from self-designed gym routines that never did much for them, so the thrust is "stick with the program and don't mess with it". but i have to "mess" with it because i am not a healthy, young guy.

nutrition-wise the place is a total mess, with broscience paleo clogging every artery. no room for veg*ns.

and i find it hard to justify supporting those attitudes with my money. but i am in need of support, advice, and encouragement, something at which that forum is pretty good (if you can overlook the above problems). nobody in my circle of friends can provide that. do any of you know of a decent forum that's less macho?

Comments

[abyssinia]

Yay lifting! Lifting is awesome and I'm glad you're enjoying it, though I'm sad that online group sounds awful.

I still do my lifting with a coach (I go to a crossfit gym but do a lot of the lifting / olympic lifting classes with our super awesome strength coach) and I find that super helpful with form corrections and suggestions, especially when I was learning. If it's at all in your budget and local availability, even a few sessions with a good lifting coach can be really useful. Sometimes it's hard to feel/notice form problems in yourself.

I don't know much about stronglifts or this inner circle, but some resources that you might like, though I'm not sure they're quite what you're looking for:

1) I read breaking muscle (http://breakingmuscle.com/) a lot. I like some of the authors/coaches more than others, but there are definite pearls of wisdom (and occasionally idiocy) and it's pretty good with gender/age/body type/etc issues. There's discussion of anatomy and how to choose coaches and form modifications and lots of packaged workout suggestions for a range of goals.

2) One of the coaches there whose articles I've liked has an online weightlifting academy here: http://weightliftingacademy.com/ - note that I have not really used this site and can't vouch for anything about it.

3) http://www.stumptuous.com/ seems to only update sporadically, but has good tips

Hopefully some of that will be helpful.

(also, goblet squats are supposed to be awesome for helping develop proper form - that's awesome that you've figured out how to modify what works for you)

[piranha]

sorry for not being more clear:

i'm great at research, but i need a sensible sounding board.

i am looking for a forum where i can interact with other strength athletes, where i can post my workouts to track them and be accountable and get some cheering, where i can post form checks and get a decent analysis, where i can share my own knowledge with others and develop a better understanding. all that, and please no misogyny / homophobia / fat shaming; preferably not rife with people who confuse "fitness" and "health" and to whom weight loss / looks are the ultimate goal. i know that is a tall order. i can compromise on the latter two, but i can apparently no longer compromise on the former three.

i agree, there is nothing quite like a good coach. i tried hiring a PT but couldn't find anyone who actually knew about heavy lifting; they were all into cardio, barbie weights, and bozo balls. there is no gym in town that caters to power lifters. we do have a crossfit box, but i definitely do not want to do crossfit in general. i checked the local classifieds; it's hard to believe that there wouldn't be any strength coaches around here at all; it's not that small a place (~80,000 people), but i suspect the ones that exist work for sports teams / the university. maybe i should place an ad myself; can't hurt.

breakingmuscle's forums are not really what i am looking for. but the site itself is cool -- "Strong, Healthy, and Vegan? (Yes, It Can Be Done)", "The Real Biggest Loser Is the Show Itself"; that sounds right up my alley.

weightliftingacademy is for olympic weightlifting. looks interesting for people who're into that; i don't have the mobility for olympic lifting. yet. maybe some day. ;)

stumptuous has some eclectic stuff, very neat. "fuck calories", indeed. but, no forum. worth bookmarking though.

thanks!

[abyssinia]

*nods* That is a tall order, though it would be awesome if such a thing exists. A lot of it sounds like coaching - I wonder if there are people who will coach online (the ones I know about are more for advanced lifters and Oly or crossfit focused)?

And, yeah, it definitely sounds like you want a strength coach and not a personal trainer. I wish I knew about good places to look for strength coaches - I don't know where you live, but in the US you usually want someone who is a certified USAW (USA weightlifting) coach and you can go to their website to find gyms/coaches. I totally understand not wanting to crossfit (I love it, but it's not for everyone and my box has amazing coaches which is not true everywhere) but it could be worth checking if they have a strength coach. At our box our strength coach also does personal strength training for non-members. They might have something like this, or be able to make recommendations in the community.

I do like parts of nerd fitness, mentioned below, though there is a weight loss bent to some of it. I'm pretty good at just ignoring the parts I don't want to focus on. And crossfit as made me immune to paleo stuff - I believe some of the science from a biochemical perspective, none of it from an evolutionary perspective, and have found that paleo means different things to different people. When I convert it to mean "eat real food, as unprocessed as possible", which is the base message, it works for me.

Anyway, good luck on your search and I hope you find something that offers what you're looking for.

[piranha]

i'm in canada. i checked the website of the BC powerlifting association, but no luck there. i'll probably email them and see whether i can get a contact. and i guess it can't hurt to check the local crossfit box, even though i don't want to do crossfit. i like what crossfit has done in regards to building community, and i very much like the basic principle of becoming competent in all human movement. but i think their workouts privilege speed over form and are consequently very injury-prone, and too many of their coaches are just as badly educated as your average personal trainer. i really do like kelly starrett, however; his mobilityWODs are working wonders for me. and maybe as at your box, there's a good trainer at the local crossfit who also does private strength training. have you heard of ido portal? his philosophy is where i want to go once i have some basic strength.

"real food as unprocessed as possible" is what i eat too, but it's not compatible with what people sell as paleo. i eat almost completely vegetarian now, and that means no meat, plenty of legumes, whole grains, and some dairy. the only thing i have in common with paleo is that we all eat vegetables. ;)

yeah, upon giving it a closer look nerdfitness is ok. it's certainly much more my kind of people than the stronglifts forums. and they don't actually have the paleo police run rampant in the forums. ;) i've even found some vegetarians, and the NFers across the strait in vancouver have regular meetups.

in case anyone else reading this is interested, i've also found something called the "fit fatties" forum at http://fitfatties.ning.com/ where there is blessedly no weight loss and diet talk because they subscribe to HAES. that could be great, but it's not very active, and i think part of that is the software; it's very hard to find anything and follow conversations.

Weightlifting Academy

[theninjamanatee]

Hi, all. I followed a link back from the Weightlifting Academy dashboard, since I'd never heard of this site. I'm Tamara, one of the owners of Weightlifting Academy along with Nick Horton. If you are looking for a non-homophobic, non-misogynistic, non-douchebag place to post your workouts, then we can definitely offer that. We have yet to have a problem with any of those things give our own personal beliefs, and it's a private forum, so we would gladly kick off anyone who did cause a problem in that way.

We are a membership site for that reason - the pay wall discourages douchebaggery - but if anyone here would like to join and post on the forum, just send me an email and I can add you for free. I'm not sure how to do messages on this site or if that's possible, but my email is sparkleglitterelite-at-gmail.com.

While we focus mainly on Olympic weightlifting, we have everything from CrossFitters to powerlifters to national-level weightlifters. Nick was a competitive powerlifter before he was a weightlifter, and we have both trained a lot of athletes and people who are just interested in getting stronger or more fit.

[redstarrobot]

The Nerd Fitness forums are pretty good, and pretty inclusive when it comes to gender and starting fitness level/physical limitation.

nerd fitness

[piranha]

i drifted by there before and didn't really go into the forums because in the introductory materials they seemed very focussed on weight loss and in specific the so-called "paleo" diet. i am totally not interested in the former, and the pseudo science of the latter drives me batty.

maybe i judged the book too much by its cover. will check out the forums. thanks!