site banner
PaperclipPerfector  9hr ago (text post)   233 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for March 18, 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).

Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Question for those more experienced at the gym: If focusing on hypertrophy, is it better to start with the heaviest weight I can lift and manage 6-8 reps before having to do a drop set, or is it better to use a lower weight where I can do 10x3 without becoming absolutely exhausted till near the end? To clarify, the initial approach doesn't involve a single extended set, but I find that if I do this, I have to use progressively lower weights to finish.

My understanding is that my approach is likely suboptimal, unnecessarily fatiguing at the very least. But I'm curious about experiences.

Just generally try to do a bunch of hard sets.

The advice seems reasonable, but I'm a chronic noob and I'd appreciate clarification on what exactly counts as a hard set. Does it mean that I'm spent by the time I reach the last set?

High quality sets refer to those that employ exercises that are likely going to be limited by the muscle you’re trying to train, through the longest range of motion you can maintain with safe form, taken within 2-3 reps of failure*, and performed when you’re adequately recovered from your previous set (generally around 1.5-2 minutes of rest for isolation lifts, and 3-5+ minutes for heavy compound lifts).

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats