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PaperclipPerfector  5hr ago (text post)   97 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for August 26, 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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New Year's resolution check-in:

  • Went to the gym three times last week and again yesterday evening. There's obviously something wrong with my squat form: the last two times I did squats, my lower back gave me hell that night. Last night was no exception, and it's still quite stiff this morning. Will have to drop down to a lower weight to correct my form. I can deadlift 1.82x my bodyweight, squat 1.33x and bench press 0.77x.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.

How goes it @self_made_human, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @ThomasdelVasto and @falling-star?

Sorry if you answered this already but what's your deadlift progression like? I'm at 1.6x body weight and had to really fight to get it off the ground for the last workout. I do 3 sets of 5, once a week. Should I back off to 85% and climb back up? Should I add a high rep lower weight workout mid week?

I used to do a fixed number of reps, but now I just do five sets and rep til failure each time. (There have absolutely been days where I couldn't do all five sets.) My progress has been much faster using this method. I only do five strength training exercises (deadlift, bench press, squat, overhead press, pullup) and aim to do three each time I go to the gym, meaning I should be doing each of those exercises twice a week.

There's no point deloading and doing the same thing again. You need to do more to push past a plateau, whether that's more reps and sets at lower weight, more accessory work, or more sets at higher weight. Periodization is the typical approach once trainees can't increase the weight every workout.

Out of curiosity, does your gym have a hack squat machine? I know they get some flack because they're less of a "compound" lift, but they are substantially more gentle on the back from my experience.

My old gym did, but I don't think my current gym does.

Spending is $1,806.68 lower than the same day last year. I had to visit the urgent care yesterday and that put a dent in my savings.

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