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:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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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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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.
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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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Notes -
I saw some bro science post on X a few days ago making some grandiose claims about how sprinting had excellent health benefits, building musculature and something something increasing testosterone. I stopped scrolling and realized that I probably haven't done an all-out sprint in over a decade. Jogging, trail running, weights, calisthenics, I do all of the above on the regular, but then I figured that sustained cardio at 80% capacity is probably very different from running full-throttle until you have no energy left. Alright, you got me, we'll switch things up and try sprinting this week for the heck of it.
After a moderate warm-up, I did a couple sets of sprints. I didn't have a stopwatch so I can't say how long I lasted, but I would be surprised if it was longer than 20 seconds each run. After I got up to full speed, my arms and legs felt like they were on autopilot trying to get me to go as fast as I could. Like long-distance running, I felt like my attention was focused on monitoring my body to prevent it from injury than the act of running itself.
The next day, I was surprised to feel a mild but pleasant soreness all over in my body that I had never felt before. I hope to do more of these soon. For those with the mobility to do so, I'd recommend incorporating it into your workouts.
Lots of running training literature encourages "strides", which are a lot like what you're describing. I'm not sure I'd start with 20 seconds, but it's within the range. Often they encourage only going, say, 95% of all-out to minimize injury risk.
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