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PaperclipPerfector  22hr ago (text post)   486 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for February 4, 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.

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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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I HATE doing squats and don't look forward to them at all. Squatting to parallel made them a lot harder and it feels like I am working the hell out of my abs to get back up, and towards the end of the sets it feels like I'm rounding my upper back to not use abs as much.

I hate squats with the fire of many thousands of suns. Between having very long legs for my height and extremely tight hips, squats are always suffering. I'm always in danger of turning a squat into a good morning when I'm getting to parallel (never mind going below parallel, never happening with my proportions and hips).

But I still do them. The weights I'm doing are just embarrassingly low.

I've found that front squats are much preferable.

Thanks to a wellness thread here, I discovered cyclist squats, which I've been finding less awful.

The weights I'm doing are just embarrassingly low.

What's your PR, out of interest?

265 (at 205 lbs), but I haven't tried to go past 225 in a while. That's in comparison to 375 deadlift and 255 bench. The amusing/shameful day when my bench surpasses my squat is not far off.

I'm chuffed that my deadlift is about the same as yours, but if it's any consolation, my squat and my bench are dramatically lower (in freedom units, 198 and 160 lbs respectively).

I was very confused at first since I thought chuffed meant angry, but it means the opposite, so I've been misinterpreting a bunch of speakers of British English for an unknown amount of time.

A number of people around here could probably come in and dwarf my numbers, so I feel unqualified to give advice, but most of my progress has come from the Wendler 5/3/1 program and associated "boring but big" program. Worth looking at if you find the various 5x5 programs not suitable.

I was very confused at first since I thought chuffed meant angry, but it means the opposite, so I've been misinterpreting a bunch of speakers of British English for an unknown amount of time.

I have a helpful mnemonic video for you.

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