Mewis
1yr ago
I don't know if any documentary has much legitimacy. Most grossly distort the facts, and I think the medium is too persuasive to ever support the genuine transmission of information about a complex subject.
Mewis
1yr ago
I wrote before on Reddit on the WW threads about negative thoughts and lifting (under a different username). I thought I might continue here.
I have switched to 5/3/1 programming over the past few months. First doing Original, then Forever-style programming last month. I haven't really progressed at all though. It's been very difficult for me to gain weight. Since starting my new job, I have eaten more than ever in my life, but weight gain is still very slow - I have ramped up from eating about 3000 calories a day at the start of June to over 4500 now and only have 2kg to show for it. I still freak out every time my scale gives a lower number, and I am still paranoid about not gaining any muscle. Over the past month I got frustrated with the lack of progress on 5/3/1 and decided to push it a bit further. I am now doing FSL for supplemental work and have cut out rest days nearly entirely so I'm in the gym every day. This is basically the opposite of what Wendler counsels... but I'd rather err on the side of doing too much than doing too little.
Mewis
1yr ago
Well, I've been lifting for about five years and I'm still pretty weak. And I think I am gaining weight again now that I am eating more calories. I don't know if I'm necessarily stronger. Obviously switching from lifting four or five days a week to seven days a week is going to reduce how hard I can push when I am in the gym. My current 5/3/1 template doesn't program AMRAPs for the leader cycles, I'm using 5's Progression instead.
I eat plenty of protein, and though my sleep isn't perfect, I think very few people have perfect sleep. I also have had my testosterone tested and though it was below-average it was still above what people describe as the low range.
Mewis
1yr ago
I'm not sure. My current 5/3/1 template uses 5's Progression, not AMRAP sets. I will start doing AMRAPs again soon when I start the anchor cycle. I have considered Super Squats. Right now I'm avoiding back squats due to lower back pain and doing front squats instead. But I don't know how different it would be. My current program already has me doing FSL Widowmakers, where I use rest-pause to always hit 20 reps, so if this fails I don't really know what to do.
Mewis
1yr ago
Well, like I said, I don't know if this current training cycle is working until I finish it. I agree there is something wrong if I do not progress, and that makes me anxious because I don't know what that is. I would assume it's not overtraining but undertraining, and that I just need to add more volume and intensity. I don't know if the problem is fuckarounditis. What would that mean? That I should just continue to do something that doesn't work?
Mewis
1yr ago
I think it's highly unlikely that I am anywhere near a genetic ceiling, and if I was that would be extremely depressing. In any case lots of people continue to gain muscle and strength after five years.
Mewis
1yr ago
I think this depends a lot on your circle of acquaintances. Where I work there are maybe one or two fat men out of like... 50 people. And even then I wouldn't really considered them fat or out of shape, they can lift and carry as well as anyone else, so it's more like they're just big. On the other hand, ratty t-shirts are not unpopular and general standards of hygiene are low. Thinking about my own circle of friends, there are guys that have let themselves go, but most of the people I know engage in regular exercise.
I was attractive in my 20s because I hit the gym a lot.
Most people in the average gym, and most people who engage in regular exercise don't end up looking like fitness models. I know people who play tennis or squash regularly, or who go to the gym, or whatever, and they just look... normal. And when you consider spending what, 90 minutes in the gym every day plus travel time, yeah, that doesn't sound like that great a tradeoff for the below-average man to reach average.
I use hair loss products which have slowed my hair loss to a crawl and restored some of what I initially lost, returning me to a 'slightly high widow's peak' situation.
I've always been suspicious of finasteride since I was prescribed it to prevent morning wood.
Mewis
1yr ago
Lifting about five years - started with the popular Reddit PPL, tried NSuns, messed around with PPL-style programming, didn't really train over lockdown, did Jeff Nippard's Upper-Lower split when I came back, started 5/3/1 in spring of this year. Started with original 5/3/1 with BBB sets, then did a 5/3/1 Forever mesocycle with BBB sets.
Currently my highest lifts are four reps with 100kg on bench press (which I did a few months ago), 155kg on back squat (again, done a few months ago before I started getting back pain) and 190kg on deadlift (done about three years ago). I currently weigh about 84kg, up from about 77kg this time last year.
Yes, I eat lots of protein. Not hard when you eat over 4500 calories. I don't track it but when I do it is normally about 250 grams or more which should be more than enough since most recommendations go up to 2.2g/kg. Admittedly I do eat a fair amount of processed foods, I'm not much of a cook and I don't really know how to make or grow things from scratch and I often have to eat out when I'm working. Honestly I don't understand what people are getting at when they criticize processed foods. Lots of people have gained weight and muscle drinking milk, eating pizza, and using processed supplements like whey protein and creatine (which you yourself recommend). I don't believe it's somehow necessary to cut all those things out of a diet. You're also wrong about whey protein - it has a complete amino acid profile.
Because powerlifting routines rely on constantly increasing the weight and lifting as close to max as possible as much as possible, you need to give your body the necessary time between sessions.
5/3/1 isn't a powerlifting program and I'm not really interested in powerlifting.
What I read about 5/3/1 is that it does the main powerlifts (DL,SQ,BP) with added mili press. You might want to consider adding a row in to your movements, like a barbell row or something to hit your upper back a little bit.
5/3/1 has assistance work, and I do some sort of row or pulldown variation every day, including barbell rows on press day.
Also, in regards to volume, if you really feel the need to be moving throughout the week then just do calisthenics during rest days.
Sometimes in the evenings I go for a run and do some pullups/burpees/dips in an outdoor gym. I'm not that consistent about it, I need to fit it around my schedule, but I usually aim for going twice or three times a week.
I think this is a bad idea. On top of hitting all your macro and micro nutrients, your body needs plenty of good rest to repair, rebuild, and replenish the proteins expended during your workout.
Well, in the past when I've trained with rest days, I didn't get any stronger. I've read the best thing to do in that case is to train harder or with more volume or great frequency, so I chose greater frequency.
Mewis
1yr ago
I have tried different things, and my current training where I train every day is different from what I've done before - before I was training four or five days a week, and now I am doing seven days a week. But I'm also unconvinced. Lots of people go into the gym and progress just by adding weight to the same lifts every week, and progress far beyond where I am now.
Mewis
1yr ago
Mewis
1yr ago
The Georgist LVT is equivalent to the government owning all the land and leasing it out to the highest bidder.
You say that like it's a bad thing, but shouldn't we want land to be controlled by the people who can create the most value on it? How is that different to landlords owning all the land and leasing it out to the highest bidder?
Mewis
1yr ago
Why not? I think it would be better for cars to be controlled by say, families, or people with long commutes, as opposed to students or people living in cities, who would get less use out of them. This isn't a hard principle - I'm sure there are plenty of individuals in either situation who might get more or less value out of owning a car, depending on their circumstances.
Mewis
1yr ago
I'm sorry you feel like your advice is wasted. You're probably right. From what I read getting big and strong isn't about finding One Neat Trick, it's about working hard... So if I'm failing it's just because I'm lazy and need to work harder. I do want to do super squats, but I don't know if it will make any difference. What matters is hard work and effort, not programming.
Mewis
1yr ago
Who's to say that some phenomenological aspects of being human aren't so complex that no one set of vocabulary is capable of describing it all? Perhaps some qualities of human minds/souls/whatever are ineffable, or so unique and subjective that one cannot help but create a new label for oneself in describing one's personality?
Obviously every individual is unique in a way that defies the ability of language to describe in a single word or phrase. But it's not clear what, if anything, this has to do with gender, or why, having staked out this position, suddenly it's necessary to invent a whole load of new terms to express the things that apparently can't be expressed. The 'demigirl' might feel less feminine (whatever that means), but does that actually justify the word rather than just describing her as an unconventional woman? Cut an arm off an octopus, you just get a wounded octopus, not a septapus.
Mewis
1yr ago
He and She are words already in my lexicon, as is they - they're not particularly loaded down with baggage in the same way that Gloomraven is.
People execute with the military and the information they have, not the military and information they want to have - Putin would hardly be the first leader to be undermined by the incompetence of others. I would be reluctant to say that Putin's war failed because of his personal failings. I don't think, for example, that the US war against Saddam Hussein was successful because of some awesome talent on the part of GWB.
Mewis
1yr ago
Is it? What would checking actually involve? Would it involve Putin personally visiting storage facilities and conducting MOTs on all the thousands, hundreds of thousands of vehicles used by the Army? Unlikely. Certainly that's not what Biden would do. Biden, like Putin, would convey instructions to the ministry in charge of the Army, which would then be written into doctrine, which would then be given to the army, who would then act on that doctrine, write a bunch of reports, that would then percolate back up to officers who might then report back to the President. He would rely on the diligence and willing cooperation of hundreds or thousands of people, which in turn, depends on having a professional and effective military culture which is developed over years, if not decades. On the other hand if the military culture is one of negligence and corruption, then there's countless opportunities for that long, delicate chain of information to be corrupted.
Mewis
1yr ago
I don't know how long it takes to build a nation, or to change a low-trust society into a high-trust one. I would say somewhere between five and five hundred years.
Mewis
1yr ago
Conservatives do not need to articulate a coherent vision of society - by their nature they like things the way they were or at least the way they were when they were kids. Though few really desire a return to the 1950s or the 1920s anymore, I'd say the median right-voter longs for the 90s - peace, prosperity, American power, gays out of the closet but not by much, jokes about transsexuals on TV, and a cordial racial dialogue. If this desire is not articulated by a visionary intellectual vanguard, it's because visionary intellectuals think it's silly and beneath them. Imagine wanting a society that you actually know is possible and desirable because you lived through it! Everyone knows the correct way to reform society is to dream up some ludicrous science-fiction scenario and then try to enforce it on an unwilling majority that just wants to grill.
Mewis
1yr ago
Oh, it's not that the past isn't idealized by conservatives, or that their preferred policies aren't unlikely to lead to its return. The conditions of the 20s, 50s or 90s were as much the product of long demographic and geopolitical trends that are outside of anyone's control, and of course they had their own problems... but it's not that conservatives think that those times were perfect, just that they were good, and they reason that it's better to have a good society than to chase utopia.
housing policies
Are you talking about bringing back redlining to segregate neighborhoods? You're right that this is an issue that conservatives have mostly abandoned.
Mewis
1yr ago
Speaking as someone who finds it very hard to envision positive events in the future or be positive about the future at all, it isn't very fun, and though I do push myself through tasks it's unpleasant. So yeah, I think this is a behavior that can be generalised.
Mewis
1yr ago
We live in a society that I believed had long left behind the settling of feuds and paying of weregilt. Insulting the honor of your neighboring clan might have been an issue for the courts a thousand years ago, but today?
If he'd stuck to defaming the government like a normal person, I suspect he wouldn't be in nearly so much trouble.
Why not? By the ancient standards you appeal to, lese majeste is if anything a far greater crime than to defame an individual subject of common birth. Certainly, it seems far more likely to create 'chaos'.
I've had interest in programming before but I've never really had a goal or anything to actually go with it. Tutorials are nice but trying to learn programming without a problem is like trying to learn to use a gun without any bullets.
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