Another example of this approximate law is in exercise physiology.
To a normal person, there are a lot of good proxy indicators of fitness. You could train sprinting. You could hop up and down. Squat. Clean and jerk.. etc.
Running faster,hopping higher, squatting heavier... all indicators of increasing fitness... and success of your fitness training.
Two points:
1 - The more general your training methodology, the more meaningful the indicators. Ie, if your fitness measure is "can I push a car uphill," and your training method is sprinting and swimming... pushing a heavier car is a really strong indicator of success. If your training method is "practice pushing a car," then an equivalent improvement does not indicate equivalent improvement in fitness.
2- As an athlete (say clean and jerk) becomes more specialized... improvements in performance become less indicative of general fitness. Going from zero to "recreational weighlifter" involves getting generally stronger and musclier. Going from college to olympic level... that typically involves highly specialized fitness attributes that don't cross into other endeavors.
Another metaphor might be "base vs peak" fitness, from sports. Accidentaly training for (unsustainable) peak performance is another over-optimization pitfall. It can happen when someone blindly follows "line go up." Illusary optimizations are actually just trapping you in a local maxima.
I think there are a lot of analogies here to biology, but also ML optimization and social phenomenon.
Clean & jerk is one of those movements that I would almost consider "complete". Especially if you are going to mix in variants of the squat.
Not sure these are the best example. I don't know of anyone who can C&J more than their body weight for multiple repetitions who isn't also an absolute terminator at most other meaningful aspects of human fitness.
Human body is one machine. Hormonal responses are global. Endurance/strength is a spectrum but the whole body goes along for the ride.
Perhaps. And you could probably test this but I would gamble that the principle still applies. IE, these weightlifters are probably also very capable (eg) shotputters because of all that weightlifting. But also... their shotput, sprinting and other tangential abilities probably peak at some point. From then on, they are mostly just getting stronger at clean and jerk.
> Hormonal responses are global. Endurance/strength is a spectrum but the whole body goes along for the ride.
This is true, and that is why most exercise is a general good for most people, and has similar physiological effects. However, at some point "specialization" (term of art), kicks in. At that point, a bigger clean and jerk no longer equates to a longer shot put.
Fwiw... This isn't a point about exercise or how to exercise. Most people aren't that specialized or advanced in a sport and the ones who are have coaches. My point is that the phenomenon speculated to be broad in this post applies (I suspect) to physiology. Probably quite broadly. It's just easy to think about it in terms of sports because "training & optimization" directly apply.
I agree with your overall point, but also the person you’re replying to. I think that clean and jerk may be the example that least supports your argument. If I had to optimize an athlete for one movement and then test them on 20, C&J would probably be my pick. Bench press would be lower down the list.
This isn’t just nit picking exercises here. There are some measures to optimize for that lead to broader performance. They tend to be more complex and test all components of the system.
IMO deadlift is another good one. If you could only do a single lift, I think you could make a pretty good case that it should be deadlift. Works damn near every muscle in your body, and gets your heart going pretty good too.
I think that's more an indication that "general fitness" is not a rigorous metric. It's fine as a vague notion of "physical ability" up to a point, and past that it loses meaning because improvements in ability are task-specific and no longer translate to other tasks.
To a normal person, there are a lot of good proxy indicators of fitness. You could train sprinting. You could hop up and down. Squat. Clean and jerk.. etc.
Running faster,hopping higher, squatting heavier... all indicators of increasing fitness... and success of your fitness training.
Two points:
1 - The more general your training methodology, the more meaningful the indicators. Ie, if your fitness measure is "can I push a car uphill," and your training method is sprinting and swimming... pushing a heavier car is a really strong indicator of success. If your training method is "practice pushing a car," then an equivalent improvement does not indicate equivalent improvement in fitness.
2- As an athlete (say clean and jerk) becomes more specialized... improvements in performance become less indicative of general fitness. Going from zero to "recreational weighlifter" involves getting generally stronger and musclier. Going from college to olympic level... that typically involves highly specialized fitness attributes that don't cross into other endeavors.
Another metaphor might be "base vs peak" fitness, from sports. Accidentaly training for (unsustainable) peak performance is another over-optimization pitfall. It can happen when someone blindly follows "line go up." Illusary optimizations are actually just trapping you in a local maxima.
I think there are a lot of analogies here to biology, but also ML optimization and social phenomenon.