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Wellness Wednesday for January 28, 2026

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 did my first roll of shame last Saturday. I got rid of my personal trainer last autumn for failing to produce any sufficient gains in me and reintroduced the incline bench press this year. When I got to 65kg, I failed the second rep. Which was kinda surprising, as I did three with 1 in reserve the week before.

A dude spotting his friend across the aisle bolted to help me, but I told him I was all right (which was true) and that it was deliberate (which wasn't). Anyhow, on an incline bench all you have to do is brace your core to protect the lowermost ribs, and the bar will roll into your hip crease.

I lift alone at home and I've started leaving the collars off and never pushing close to failure. I'm scared about this.

That's why you should practice the roll with low weights first, do it at the end of your workout session. Put 10kg plates on the bar and just let it rest on your chest, then roll it off. Then add some weight and repeat.

I'll look into it.

Try not to wear a sweatshirt with a zipper when you do that. I had a zipper tab-shaped bruise for over a week last time I pulled a roll of shame while I was doing incline bench.

Good advice, thanks. I usually wear a t-shirt, so I should be safe.