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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   1155 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for November 5, 2025

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'm not sure this will actually help your situation, but I'm still going to suggest birthday squats. Whatever scheme you want. The formulation I think of is (BW + BW load) for one giant set of (age) reps. So a 185 lbs 40 year old would squat 185 lbs of external load for 40 reps. Pause at any point, but don't rack the bar until you've finished the set (or collapse). It seems unlikely you will be worried about future suffering after finishing, with any luck you'll be in so much pain you won't have any spare capacity to worry about anything else.

The formulation I think of is (BW + BW load) for one giant set of (age) reps. So a 185 lbs 40 year old would squat 185 lbs of external load for 40 reps. Pause at any point, but don't rack the bar until you've finished the set (or collapse).

This smells of https://xkcd.com/2501/

The number of BW + BW load reps your average American can do can be counted on the fingers of one carpenter's hand.

It is decently advanced.

That being said, a 2X body weight squat is a pretty achievable strength standard for most men. Very roughly, about 50% of a 1RM is a weight you can do indefinitely. It is supposed to be a challenge though. It's also about half of the 405x50 mark set by Tom Platz. So if the left tail of the log normal stops at 0, and the right tail is Tom Platz, halfway in-between doesn't seem that far out there for the average person to shoot for as a benchmark.

Very roughly, about 50% of a 1RM is a weight you can do indefinitely.

Hm, my squat 1RM is 1xBW or so, and I think I can squat 0.5xBW with rest, but without racking not literally indefinitely, but 40 times, so the math checks out.

I have no idea where the median of the distribution lies, so I can't say how reasonable your goal is.

That 180-lbs 65yo at the gym is in for a rough birthday.

Yes, but his friends will be proportionately more impressed by the tough old bird, and high rep back squats are all about suffering anyway.

high rep back squats are all about suffering anyway.

I'm a tall guy who is all legs. It doesn't have to be high rep for back squats to be suffering.

That's part of the appeal.

The first time you can't do it you have to face down the question of: "Have I just let my self go, am I just not trying hard enough, or am in that era of appreciable physical decline."

If it's because you've let yourself go it gives you the opportunity to correct with no more than a years lag.

I also assume your ability to grind through progressively more unpleasant tasks grows with experiencing life's shit, so you'll be able to try hard enough?

Having a benchmark to know when you need to acknowledge when you are in decline is the real value though. Not that the day you can't do it is the end, but maybe that day is a sign that you should figure out what to do for when the decline gets serious. How many people do you see who should have retired before their job destroyed their body. Or should have long ago given up driving and are now a hazard on the road. Or had plenty of opportunity to make a living will but instead are rotting in agony leaving their family in an impossible position.

a sign that you should figure out what to do for when the decline gets serious.

What to do? Go hiking in the Grand Canyon and hope to go out like this guy.

All of this requires access to a weight set.

Edit: not to mention that in my case, it would probably destroy my knees.

Edit 2:

with any luck you'll be in so much pain you won't have any spare capacity to worry about anything else.

Isn't using physical pain as a distraction from emotional pain the idea behind cutting, and other forms of self-harm?

"lift heavy stone make sad head voice quiet", it's not necessarily the pain that does that.

Isn't using physical pain as a distraction from emotional pain the idea behind cutting, and other forms of self-harm?

Yes. The difference is that the scars from cutting leave you externally disfigured, while the scars from lifting leave you swole.

hile the scars from lifting leave you swole.

Again, assuming you don't horribly injure yourself in the process (such as by trying to squat over 300 lbs with bad knees).

Uhh, sorry if you've posted more extensively about your training history in the past and I didn't remember it. The only themotte fitness I readily recall is that 5hour is training for a century ride, jdizzler sometimes posts about veganism and general endurance training (mostly running I think), and Skookum did not actually attempt The Hock (though in my head canon he's still out there climbing the glacier).

Squats for (BW + BW load) x age

is decently advanced. Although I did say

Whatever scheme you want.

I apologize if I completely misunderstand and you are 6'7" and yours knees are shot from playing O-line in the NFL. Based only on the implication that you do not lift weights regularly and weigh over 300 lbs, I would for sure suggest some easier scaling. If you are looking for a serious suggestion for a physical birthday activity for a total novice at >300# body weight <40 Years old, I would maybe suggest no external load and breaking it up into 5-10 sets of body weight squats.

I don't think some sort of physical challenge for your birthday is all that bad of an idea or even that unusual. For example @thejdizzler:

running my age in miles on my birthday

It's a way of regularly measuring where you're at. More importantly, it's a physically manifestation of facing the continuing but ultimately futile battle against entropy that makes up life.

@orthoxerox did already summarize the broader point I was gesturing to though:

lift heavy stone make sad head voice quiet

It's not at all unusual for people to find that lifting (and other exercise, jdizzler making the rest of us look bad casually running 28 miles) can have a positive impact on physical and mental health.

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