alliwantsoda

I use text messages and send to a blocked number, such as 555-0100 (any area code) and that way I never need to worry about the app crashing or them paywalling useful features after becoming reliant on the "free" app.

It's extremely simple and you can add that person as a contact and give them a name such as "calories" or whatever you find useful. You can then pin that conversation to your text messages so it's always at the top of your texts.

Screenshot as an example: https://i.imgur.com/HpLM2yu.png

Best of all, it doesn't require a specialized app, which can be shut down or made unusable at anytime. You are at their mercy, which is their business model once they sell or start paywalling their most useful features.

I gladly welcome the criticism! I want to get very strong side delts but I want to minimize mental fatigue. I have a tendency to push myself to the extreme because I enjoy the challenge, which is why I take ice baths 2-3 times per month and always on the lookout for new mental or physical challenges. 2 months ago, I knew I needed to dial back my mental fatigue caused by the gym about 80% so I came across the GtG protocol which seemed promising.

My priority is weight loss and I'm struggling with deficits at the moment, but I'm still down 80 pounds from where I was at 2 years ago. I'm doing low-carb with digital timers for salty drinks every 3 hours as that works great for me as long as I stay hydrated and consume plenty of salt. For whatever reason though, I feel like my mind is putting excessive priority to strength gains, which is exacerbated due to my daily gym habit. From July 2024 until November 2025, I would go to the gym 4-6 days per week and mostly do treadmill for 30 minutes at zone-2 pace. I would also do 1-2 working sets each visit to the gym with very little motivation or RPE because treadmill was my main focus and I didn't enjoy any of the exercises except leg press.

Starting later this week, I'll start doing cable lateral raises 2-3 times per week with proper volume of 3-4 sets per session of 8-15 reps with 3 reps in reserve.

My biggest question is simply why you would want to train pure isolated side delt strength.

My biggest motivation is to be able to lift this heavy blue cooler from my passenger seat, over my body, and then to lower it to the ground without it bumping into the armrest. It was the reason why I (incorrectly) focused so heavily on dumbbell shoulder presses and increased my 1-rep max so much this year (a little over 20% in 3-4 months). If you've ever seen the "fly episode" of breaking bad, I'm similarly motivated on this 1 singular endeavor only to come to the slow realization that my cooler-lifting goal is probably more side-delt focused than front delt. 🤦‍♂️

Honestly, my biggest thought is that if your goal is general health, fitness, and weight loss, you should just save yourself the time and effort and drop side delt exercises entirely.

If I had no other life responsibilities, I would honestly spend 4-5 hours daily in the gym. I genuinely enjoy lifting heavy stuff and I never tire of it! However, I have about 2 hours daily I can devote to the gym but my bottleneck is mental fatigue. I obsessively try to optimize my daily habits but have regrettably noticed that gym fatigue negatively impacts all other parts of my life by seemingly depleting my will-power. I'm still experimenting but it seems lat exercises and arm exercises are my best options for minimizing gym fatigue so I wish to embrace those. My glute bridge stuff is about to be dropped. I'm only doing it because I had chronic back pain for 3 years, before getting a 90% improvement last year. I'm trying to get strong glutes to get that last 10% of improvement but I plan to quit doing glute bridges and find better glute exercise.

But if going to the gym is fun for you and you just like training side delts, then I’d say that you can give it a shot, but I wouldn’t expect a sure result. We gain strength in two ways - neuromuscular recruitment, and growth of muscle tissue. Muscle tissue grows when it is pushed close-ish to its physical limit, which is why we usually see more reps used for smaller muscles - with a small muscle like the side delts, 5lbs is a big jump, and doing 2 reps with, say 30lbs might be easy while doing 3 is impossible. But doing reps with 15lbs, we can do 10 or 20 or 30 reps until we find muscular failure. Meanwhile, if you are chasing pure strength, a lot of the gains come from learning alignment of the body, which comes into play less for isolation moves. So hopefully you are also practicing Pavels feed-forward techniques, or else I expect your gains to level off pretty quick. Not to say you won’t see strength or hypertrophy gains with this protocol - just saying that you are n=1 here

Fully agreed and I will look more into Pavel's feed-forward techniques as I'm still new to his stuff. I'm reading his "Simple & Sinister" book for kettlebells because I can do them at night before bed or when winding down late in the evening. I must admit I was extremely skeptical of Pavel's claims because I previously believed 100% in the "reps in reserve" theory and that you should minimize junk volume or leaving too many reps in reserve. But now I'm fully convinced that Pavel's claims are valid after all my lifts went up significantly in just 2-3 months with his GtG style with high rest times. 💪

I have been slowly learning 2 knots and practicing them every weekend for the past 6 weeks. I wanted to ask how useful is the "tarp corner knot" in climbing and/or general outdoor activities? My local climbing gym 1 hour away includes a free 2-week membership if you pay $65 for their 90 minute beginner group lesson (capped at 6 climbing noobs) for people who have never climbed before, so I thought it might be useful for that maybe? Here is the link to a 10-second video showing the knot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_Fjq4xt68I

The worst type of troll or bad actor is the one I have put in bold:

Trolls often provoke others into displaying emotional responses,[3] or manipulating others' perceptions, thus acting as a bully or a provocateur. I quit my niche youtube channel of 500 subscribers and 70 videos because of one extremely motivated troll.

I thought you're just not supposed to talk to them if they reach out first (i.e. if you're a suspect) but it's fine to reach out to them as long as you're not a possible suspect to any unsolved crime in the last 90 days?

Then leg lifts while lying down—one at a time at first, then both at the same time.

Were you lying on your back? Or lying on your stomach?

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkUNt4QBtA0

Specifically at 5:11 with the broomstick in between your legs

The only thing which finally helped my back was physical therapy. It was the list of 7 exercises she told me to do. I searched each on youtube and one of the videos included 2-3 extra beyond the one I was searching, and 1 of those extra exercises finally worked like a miracle! 😁 I still have the video bookmarked if you want me to search for it and link it.

For the second, I think for writing a program, that notation is fine, but if you’re keeping notes on your actual workouts, I’d write them separate if they end up different. For example, if you program 3x10 on the bench press, that will have to change workout to workout, since you’ll likely have to build up in reps. You might have 8-8-7 one day, 9-8-8 the next, 9-9-9 etc. It’s worth keeping track of that progress.

In a slightly related question, isn't it much less common now (compared to 20 years ago) to keep the same number of reps across all 3 sets? That typically means your first set was too easy or your last set was too hard, if I understand Jeff Nippard's explanation about sets/reps/rests correctly from youtube?

Have you thought about using a tracking app for your note taking? Written notes seem like a pain the butt. There are lots out there. For recommendations I used to use jefit but it’s hot garbage these days, I hear good things about Hevy but can personally highly recommend gymstro.

I hate note-tracking apps because you are letting an important part of your life be in someone else's control. I don't want my app to wind up like the John Deere tractors and farmers who must wait 2-8 weeks for an authorized repair that can be done in 5 minutes with ordinary tools & screwdrivers but the app will brick your tractor for doing so. I use text messages and keep it all in a contact called "Exercises" and the phone number 212-555-0100 which is a phone number that is illegal for any carrier to assign to any individual or org.

It also (ostensibly, per my programming friend on discord) allows you to export all your exercise data to a json file and a simple 5-line Python script can clean up and convert it to any other format such as csv or excel. Many apps restrict allowing exporting of your data without sideloading hacks in order to keep you loyal to their app, when they eventually raise prices or paywall the most useful features behind a higher tier.

Ideally, I would like to follow a pre-calculated workout plan from my printer and leave my phone in my car. But I'm nowhere near ready as I'm still learning the exercises and still having tremendous difficulty finding a tricep exercise that doesn't hurt my elbow and also doesn't encourage "cheating" on your form. I am terrible at keeping my elbows locked in and might need to wrap a belt around my upper arms if I'm unable to fix it.

For 1, the point of greasing the groove seems to be training neuropathways on perfect form, so you should probably stick with your ideal perfect form (slow eccentric).

Also, much appreciated!

How to deal with the excess skin?

Comparison is the thief of joy. Don't compare yourself to other people -- compare yourself to who you were back when you were 40kg heavier. I've also lost a massive amount of weight and have loose skin. Even though I have far more loose skin than you do, it truly doesn't bother me, unlike my thinning hairline which bothers me more than I care to admit... 😂