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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1045 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for September 16, 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:

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After close to a year of injuries, rehab, recovery, and retraining, I've finally managed to get my deadlift back over 500 lbs.

My calves, transverse abdominal, lower back, and traps are killing me. My shin and right hand look like I spent the night in a muay thai hand job battle because of the bar knurling. It took me three tries to get out of bed.

Nonetheless, I did it and I'm pretty happy with the number. It's not my personal best ever, but maybe I'll get back there one day. In the meantime, I'll move on to building up my squat numbers again. Hopefully that will build up my core enough to keep the deadlift from being so unpleasant.

Woah, nice!

My PR is 105x5, or 231.5x5 in pounds. Which, according to internet magic, means my 1RM is 260 pounds.

I probably wouldn't use me as a point of comparison for anything. I'm a little below average height, and I have abnormally short legs and long arms. I'm almost custom-built for squat and deadlift.

My guess is you're proportioned more like a human than a fantasy dwarf, in which case those numbers aren't bad at all.

Too lazy to go look up the methodology, but for what it's worth, normally your deadlift one-rep max is beyond what those internet calculators estimate it to be. They tend to be more accurate for squat and bench. Be prepared to not be able to move the next day, though, if you do a true one-rep max on deadlift. Bonus points if your nose starts bleeding and you pass out cold.

Edit: Well, my curiosity overcame my laziness. I'm pretty sure that this is the paper, for anyone interested. Assuming you use the Symmetric Strength Wathan calculator.

those internet calculators estimate...

I did 100 reps of 45 lbs (empty bar) bench press, and my app predicted that I had a negative one-rep max after seeing that. I don't trust the equations much anymore.

Interesting, they must have used a funny extrapolation. If you look at the functional form of Wathan’s methodology, it should produce a result strictly greater than the 100-rep result. Roughly 92 pounds in your example. But they do say it’s not very predictive beyond 10 reps, and @Forty-Bot is right: it seems much more predictive at 5 reps. My guess is that the relationship between 2–6 reps, inclusive, is tighter than for a true 1RM or anything beyond that.

You can estimate a squat 1RM, but only from a 5RM or below. On anything lighter you can just keep grinding out reps. The limiting factor is willpower, not strength.

I'm with you. At one point I suggested:

Very roughly, about 50% of a 1RM is a weight you can do indefinitely.

Where indefinitely is defined as rest-pause until form breakdown is so bad the rep is no longer recognizable as coordinated movement. I'm not sure how many people understood I was being serious there. For sure, I agree that serious willpower is involved above 10 reps.

Where indefinitely is defined as rest-pause until form breakdown is so bad the rep is no longer recognizable as coordinated movement.

for example

Thankfully, my nose hasn't bled once since the surgery, whereas before it did so more often than a woman. I'm not hunting for 1RMs, though, deadlift is taxing enough as it is that I have to choose if I'm doing it first and then take it easy for the rest of the session, or I'm doing it after other heavy compound movements and treat it as skillwork.

My primary goals for the rest of the year are fixing my shoulder and getting back into squats. I should be squatting ~85kgx5 given my bench press and my deadlift, but I doubt I will even be able to squat what I bench. The gym is getting a new pendulum squat machine soon, maybe I'll use it for a while instead of the rack.

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