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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:

  • 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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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.

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.

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