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:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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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.
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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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So, my birthday is tomorrow. Any advice for fighting the "birthday blues"? Particularly around feelings of having wasted one's life, being an utter failure as a human being, and yet likely still having so many more (pointless, futile) years ahead to suffer through?
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.
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.
I'm a tall guy who is all legs. It doesn't have to be high rep for back squats to be suffering.
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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.
What to do? Go hiking in the Grand Canyon and hope to go out like this guy.
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