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Wellness Wednesday for January 4, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I've done the most clichéd thing ever and bought a gym membership in the first week of the new year, and I'm looking for suggestions for exercises and routines to follow.

My main motivations for working out are to improve my mood, and vanity. I'm not interested in getting "huge" or "shredded", but I would really like to get rid of my beer belly and look generally leaner and more toned. I'm also planning on running a marathon at the end of this year, so any exercises which would assist with that are also welcome.

I don't really know anything about strength training, so currently my only goal is to be able to deadlift my body weight (~83 kg) in a few months' time.

Only 2 things matter when you're starting out - Fun & ease. Do an easy exercise routine, ie. it should be short, repeatable & form advice should be easy to implement. If it isn't fun, you won't keep doing it, period.

If you are already doing deadlifts, you're probably comfortable with barbells & full body work. Then barbell OHP, Squats, Deadlifts, Curls, Rows & Bench Presses will cover basically everything you need. Maybe add pullups & chinups to round it out. The only negative is that I find these to be a little intimidating in terms of form sometimes and gym squat racks can be a little hard to get for a full 1 hour workout. Standard recommendations of (6-12 reps x 3 sets) per exercise apply. Try to find a weight that lets you fatigue in that range. Early on, go lighter and focus on form & being able to engage the right muscle.

I like working with dumbbells more. So I end up doing all of those barbell exercises but with heavy dumbbells instead. Dumbbells allow me to do home workouts, don't need spotting and are just more fun for me.

A couple of caveats:

  1. I am yet to feel comfortable with heavy deadlifts because I have lower back pain. So I do barbell hip-thrusts (booty builder 2000) or cable-pull throughs (dick thruster 1000) instead. Yes, it does look a bit weird. No, literally no-one cares.

  2. Dead hangs are magic. I do them every single time without fail.

  3. If an exercise feels weird. Stop. There are a 1000 variations for every exercise. You don't have to do this one that feels wierd.


On one of my procrastination rabbit-roles, I ended up creating a hyper-optimized routine that covers every muscle, is effective and I like doing. I used Athleax as my source. Feel free to use it if you're interested.

Thanks a lot.

(booty builder 2000)... (dick thruster 1000)

Can't wait to find out if these are legit bodybuilding terms or if you're just being goofy.

Just being goofy, but they are apt. The Barbell hipthrust is famously the exercise of the decade, as every woman will be seen doing it for butt gains. The cable pull-through is literally a explosive thrust that looks straight out of a porn movie.

They're both excellent for your glutes + lower back. More info on both here. Most importantly, the pull through teaches good hinging mechanics which you can use to transition into a deadlift down the line. The hip-thrust gives you the best bang-for-your-buck as a glutes(butt) exercise.

So yeah, go ahead, make those names mainstream. They fit pretty well.