site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   1824 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 29, 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).

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The weather has been nice for the past month and I have been trying to increase my running days/amounts, but even with a day of rest prior, it seems to be negatively effecting my deadlifts. I think I complained about this recovery time problem around this time last year. It's one of those things that makes me strongly suspect the "hybrid athletes" who are running huge miles one day and deadlifting big numbers the next are on all gear.

Define huge miles and big deadlift numbers

400+, 15-20+ miles at under 7 min/mile paces.

That's an astounding number. I can do a set of 5 400lb deadlifts.

At multiple points in my life, I have been able to run a sub-seven mile.

There is absolutely no way in hell I'd ever be able to do both of those things in succession, much less multiple miles at that pace.

I used to run <40 10k's and then either go to the gym the day after or even the same day, when it was young and fit. At that point I was deadlifting maybe ~350lbs.

Running more than twice that distance at only a slightly higher pace in addition to lifting more sounds fairly unrealistic to me. Maybe it's possible but it sounds like it would completely wreck you and not something that could be sustainable.

I know people who run that far that fast regularly but they're built like reeds.

I can't really rack up impressive deadlifts while expecting to do serious run workouts. It's one or the other. And I need to put them two days apart.

all on gear

Did we talk about that Ryan Hall video where he deadlifts 500 pounds while standing on a track and then immediately attempts to run a sub 5 minute mile?

Did we talk about that Ryan Hall video where he deadlifts 500 pounds while standing on a track and then immediately attempts to run a sub 5 minute mile?

If so, I missed it. I watched the video now for the first time. Talk about a guy on the most extreme end of the distribution tail.

He used to be a skeleton dipped in a thin coat of wax when he was a distance runner too. He put all of that muscle on in a superhumanly fast amount of time.

I'm sure it was natural for a guy in his mid-30s to put on 40 pounds of lean muscle in a short amount of time.

Somewhere, Barry Bonds felt a chill go down his spine and he doesn’t know why.

Far be it from me to get in the way of a good "everyone stronger than me is on gear" post, but consider that people naturally at the tail of the work capacity distribution get amplified on social media.

consider that people naturally at the tail of the work capacity distribution get amplified on social media.

It takes a serious suspension of disbelief to consider people have not just found a workaround to "big, lean, natural... pick two," but also doing so while simultaneously putting up big run distances at fast times.

It's not a workaround. Big and lean are relative terms. Anybody could be bigger and leaner on gear than they can be natty. Nevertheless, it's a mistake to think that everyone has the same natty bigness and leanness ceiling.

Some people are just better.

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