OS 10: CLAV in the Times, NYMag takes on Pilates, goated NYC fast food, a non-GLP weight loss drug
And how to shoot when you've run up a hill
Good Friday, happy end of week: N.Y. Fashion Week, Olympics, Clavicular in town, middle of winter, low vitamin D, let’s keep it going with OPEN SECRETS the world’s ONLY health aggregation newsletter that toes the line of psychosis health and being completely normal.
Think peptides, casein, lemon-maxxing, tendon health, hair massage swapping, hyaluronic acid, Dr. Raymond Peat, severe sunlight, demon zero-drop shoes, aggressive scalp slapping, ferotin level adjustment, cotton protocols, skincare, physical hygiene, strength, hair and more. Nobody writes about this.
This week: more peptides newsmaxxing, NYMag goes after Pilates, Epstein’s workout (yikes), Satisfy runs out some sponsored athletes, Clavicular walks the runway (and gets a Times profile), a new spin on Happier Grocery, the best fast food in New York City, a pro MAHA substack account (that’s selling like crazy?) and an obscure post-Ozempic drug that spares muscle (and isn’t a peptide and doesn’t require needles).
Onto it:
A-story is Clavicular (sterile looksmaxxer) profiled by the New York Times. Word leaked out this was happening (and he streamed parts of the interview) this past weekend; he walked the runway for Elena Velez on Thursday (she’s edgy), holding his phone. Piece is thorough and funny (Clavicular is insanely funny) and worth reading, a nice skeptical take about what this kid is about and what he brings to the table.
Fascinating character; covered him a bit ago (called him a demon)… I’m of two minds here. One—funny poster… probably the funniest mainstream person in years. Everything he says is hilarious. The Vance quote. Insane Q factor. Fascinating and hilarious young man. Like a younger incompetent Howard Stern. Two—bone smashing probably works, albeit conservatively, and there’s no real user manual here. It’s the same premise behind how Russian knuckle push-ups strengthen the hands and Muay Thai trains shins by repeated wall/cement kicks (Chris Gayomali at Heavies does this).
The bias against… mainstreaming edge of health behaviors is in this story, sensibly, since taking some of this kid’s approaches to the extreme are dangerous. (Though the steroids are worse than the bonesmashing.) Ultimately Clavicular’s expressed perspectives on aesthetics and value and so on aren’t far off from the sleight-of-hand physiognomy that pops up in spurts in Dr. Cate Shanahan’s books, notably Deep Nutrition, the ground zero of the anti-veg. oil movement. The moral argument is: this is what you get in a vacuum.
Olympics Olympics Olympics: fully underway—Canada men’s hockey began yesterday, watching it niow—but for my money the most esoteric sport here is biathlon: skiing cross-country (insanely hard) then doing a full-stop after 5 KM and shooting a CD-sized target, penalties when you miss. Ultimate start-stop behavior: brutal to take an elevated max heart rate into such precise behavior; this helpful explainer piece describes it like running up 20 flights of stairs and threading a needle. The athlete protocols are what we can thread out here into real life—how to chill when you’re stressed—and what are most fascinating to me. Most concede that because you’re shooting with a 150 or 170/180 heart rate (near max/max), then you can’t really… BECOME RELAXED—since you’ll shake if your heart rate drops way too low; and will miss shots—but rather you just breathe slower, do your best, slow your rate down a bit (not a ton), BUT shifts you to a more parasympathetic reaction (and calmer). Much we don’t know, heard to explain in words. Probably just a thing that improves with practice. Mind over matter, even at the top. So cool.
And nice human factor here: Norwegian bronze medal winner admits to cheating on his chick in the post-win press conference. (Bronze for a Norwegian biathlete is an L.)
Happier Grocery in the Times this week, argument here is that it’s… kind of an art gallery. I was interviewed for the story (profiled the store for Ssense last winter) but didn’t make the cut.
Zwift Games start Monday; sort of like a gameified Tour de France. I like the idea of this stuff (biking 3h every day) more and more. Movement. Coach Greg put me on.
Wrote a big piece this week about superfoods, read it here:
Curious what chat thinks.
Skims now doing cotton—(Kim IG post; shop) not organic, but a big step. Skims runs that space so them drifting into cotton may be like when Walmart went organic a decade ago: the market will follow. Has to be related to the massive white space in post-synthetic intimates/natural fiber clothing (in Sam Schube’s WSJ piece; about fellas) and bigger brands like Coucou in the chick space. The non-toxic male fashion space is pretty beat, design-wise. (Wrote about this a bit ago.)
NYMag went long this week on Pilates, meaty reported piece, touching on its origins in ballet, its white history/tilt, its early 2000s popularity and fall (for things like Barry’s) this past decade and its recent opening up. The argument here is the exercise—lots of core work, small muscles, often lying down; lower impact—is a sort of cudgel to/vibe shift from high cortisol/intense workouts and building muscle. Some lines that jumped out to me:
Tay did want to “lean out.” She didn’t want to get “too wide.” So she did the same thing everyone else seemed to be doing: She went all in Pilates….
It became routine to claim that Pilates bodies were different from weightlifting bodies, that they were “longer and leaner,” not “bulky,” as if Pilates were the feminine way to get strong….
Online, Pilates content skews bodychecky and rigid and trad. Instagram and TikTok are stuffed with before-and-after videos in which the before looks no larger than a size six, and influencers refer to thin bodies as “skinny fat” or their own pre-Pilates weightlifting bodies as “bulky.” (Weightlifting may actually increase your metabolism and decrease body fat.)
…influencers refer to thin bodies as “skinny fat” or their own pre-Pilates weightlifting bodies as “bulky.” (Weightlifting may actually increase your metabolism and decrease body fat.)
It’s a thorough and skeptical read. The piece is similar to the Times piece last year on Pilates, if deeper, and unearths a few new nuggets on the guy (Joe Pilates; Kraut) and how it was back then between (funny) shitting on influencers and good stories.
I can’t speak to the political critiques of the activity (or find much fault there) but I do want to talk about story here’s critique and skepticism of the exercises. Actual Pilates. Much of the heavy lifting in the piece… rests on a veiled argument that Pilates is not lengthening—that there is no such thing as tone. That muscle is muscle; that it’s inferior to strength training. That it’s a rich white chick lie.
Anyone with an IG account will recognize this critique, simply and confidently stated in reels, sometimes narrative stories: that one cannot tone and lengthen, that muscles only grow a certain way, and that they only do so through strength training, with heavy weights, and progressive overload.
The argument is the cornerstone of the article (and in the Times story): an IG reel by a creator, interviewed for the story, saying Pilates is authoritarian and lifting weights is better (maybe even more revolutionary). Caption of the post reads “There is a DIRECT correlation between a rise in conservatism (think 1950s housewife) and smaller bodies, and liberal swings during the feminist waves in the 70s with more muscular frames.”
Maybe. Hard thing to prove. Probably, honestly, if we’re being real. It’s a captivating argument, but if we address it in terms of just movement and lifting, the critique of Pilates here is missing a few things. One, size (muscle size) has more/as much to do with what someone eats and doesn’t eat than with a program or a top down aesthetic (and it takes time). Two, some of the work in Pilates is legitimately strength training. Three, much of it veers to traditional Eastern Euro strength training protocols or bodyweight work (sometimes gymnastics work, hinted at in the NYMag piece), which has subtler paths to success than the idea of linear progression alluded to by this IG poster and by the writers.
Mostly, the argument that Pilates doesn’t “lengthen” is wrong. Very simply, Pilates is lengthening in that it helps strengthen postural muscles that affect posture and how “tall” a person looks. It doesn’t make someone taller—nothing does—but it can make someone stand straighter, if only because of its focus on ignored muscle groups (neck, feet, groin, abs). The protocols Pilates is built on—let’s say gymnastics—do this as well as they build up bigger muscles.
There are a couple of explanations here, which are super granular and annoying and out of respect to readers’ attention I’ll explain them after the jump. (One is that Pilates helps isolate antagonistically muscles shredded by sitting and leaning and tendon-maxxes; another is that specific workouts can affect how “long a muscle looks.)
What’s ironic here is while the piece acknowledges… the contradictions of Pilates (doctors like it; but it’s for skinny people; it creates strength; but it’s not a barbell squat), the critiques against the EXERCISE are always framed in a very black and white evangelical pro-barbell language in which the only efficient and competent training is strength. The skepticism against the exercise is misplaced. It does lengthen because a correct protocol (with a good instructor & real feedback) will allow people to use their neck, their stomachs, their foot arches “correctly”/wake them up and activate them better when standing. And doing harder balance exercises, with straight muscle levers allows these muscles to “lengthen” more than traditional, post-1950s strength/barbell work. (Is there any surprise that much of the work Joe P was influenced by was pre-war?) Here’s the explanation:
