The0Self

You’re welcome.

Explore it with n,n-DMT or miprocin.

Muscular balance is not a simple thing to achieve. The minimum 6 movements you need for complete development: a horizontal or incline press, a horizontal pull, a squat, a hinge, something for the external rotators (preferably facepulls, and optional dumbbell rotations), and some knee flexion (a leg curl; for the head of the hamstrings left out by the hinge, which can only be activated via knee flexion). Horizontal pulls work everything that vertical pulls do (but with slightly less intense lat involvement), PLUS other muscles that vertical pulls leave out -- and as it happens, these muscles left out by vertical pulling are particularly problematic to have as weaknesses, so always include horizontal pulling. What you have looks great, but there are some issues. You have resistance bands, right? You are certainly going to want to add facepulls... if you're not already doing them. You also MAY lack a horizontal pull (you didn't list your 6 upper body movements) -- pull ups are a vertical pull, which is great, but for shoulder spacing health you do need a horizontal pull (such as rows). Technically you are lacking in hip hinge, though the burpees can sort of count as one -- get creative to find some means of doing a more effective hip hinge movement: while the Good Morning w/ Safety Squat Bar is very likely the absolute best option for this slot, if you lack the equipment, you may have to improvise; Alternate Toe Touch is a good option for a hinge exercise that doesn't require a ton of weight... but good mornings of some type are best. And for the knee flexion, you're going to want to find a way to rig the bands up for hamstring curls. Direct abdominal training isn't absolutely necessary, but it is optimal to do. You have plenty of it. The best exercise for this is probably hanging leg raises though -- if you add that, in addition to your standard & side plank, your abs will be covered. And second best is probably standing band crunch. If that includes facepulls and a horizontal pull, then you're golden for the upper body. 20-35 rep sets are perfect for resistance bands, so nice job on that. For free weights though (and weighted pull ups; etc; most exercises), 5-30 rep sets is actually the optimal range. That includes push ups with bands. 20-35 reps/set is only optimal for exercises wherein the resistance is entirely mediated by the bands -- push ups are primarily a body weight exercise, so even if you make them harder with bands, the optimal rep range will be 5-30, not 20-35... though that's speaking very broadly, as band push ups in particular tend to lend themselves best to 10-20 reps per set. Also note: maximum adaptation rate always requires at least 10 (but not to exceed 20) weekly sets per muscle, not to exceed 10 sets in any 48-72 hour period for any one muscle. Apart from that? Perfect. And if you're a male and some portion of your goals involves being more attractive, the best bang for your buck by far is neck training, especially targeting the sternocleidomastoid, as this will contribute to that goal more rapidly and efficiently than anything else, besides maybe decreasing bodyfat toward 12% IF you're significantly above that.

What about low, moderate, and also moderate-high doses of T3-only? Zero T4, maximizing the T3/T4 ratio in the body. I'd be surprised if you haven't tried each of those, but if not, it could be worth a shot. If you're concerned about unintended and unforeseeable consequences of having no T4 (I'm not aware of any avenues for those but obviously can't know for sure), you could maybe take basically a micro-dose of T4 with a significant dose of T3.

Thyroid releases T4, which is later deiodinated to T3, the more active form. You have it backwards -- T3 is 3-4x more potent than T4, which is kind of like a storage mechanism for T3 (kind of like how DHEA-S acts as the hormonal storage mechanism for DHEA). I saw you mention you're a doctor, but it appears you just got those mixed up. The problem is not everyone converts T3 to T4 efficiently, it's just rare enough that it would seem to be a better idea to introduce the molecule further back in the hormonal chain -- T4 is the form the thyroid gland directly releases, not T3 -- it seems more prudent to use T4... But the reality is, using T4 can have unintended consequences, because (of course) the T3/T4 ratio decreases when T4 is introduced exogenously... and the T3/T4 ratio may actually be critically important for mood. So unbeknownst to many doctors, you pretty much never want to give a patient T4-only -- just to be safe, always give either T3 alone, or T3 and T4 combined... That's not commonly practiced, but it should be.

Thank you, Leo! It's gotta be difficult teaching such advanced stuff, knowing that not only will some understand it the wrong way, but others will be looking out for those people and, themselves misunderstanding, will try to get you to doubt whether you're doing the right thing teaching such advanced topics. Just comes with the territory though. Keep on keepin' on!

It's actually a very common talking point in the "people with diet or thyroid related mood disorders" space that switching to triiodothyronine (T3) works far better than levothyroxine (T4). There's some evidence pointing to the notion of T3/T4 ratio being somehow important for mood -- T3/T4 too high is associated with euphoria; the inverse (T4/T3) too high is associated with overstimulation, elevated heart rate, hot flashes, and depression -- well, directly introducing T4 into the system would seem to be a great way to wreck that ratio. What worries me is the number of people being prescribed T4, when so many people I've seen switch to T3 felt so much better on it. It forces me to intuit that maybe T3 should be more first-line. How did you feel on triiodothyronine/T3?

While much of the evidence is all over the place, I have repeatedly seen signs that you want EPA intake significantly higher than DHA to allay the potential negative effects of DHA, yet the bulk of both the negative and positive effects primarily come from the DHA intake. With that said, it seems you likely need at least 300mg DHA per day to get noticeable positive effects (cognitive and otherwise), but there can be negative cognitive (particularly mood/focus) issues if EPA intake doesn't sufficiently exceed that; preferably double the DHA; 600+ mg EPA if 300mg DHA... but if you don't like any of the formulations with those ratios, at least don't take more DHA than EPA. The brand matters too. Canadian supplement companies are probably some of the best quality, and certainly superior to USA, at least for fish oil. Two companies I can confirm are great choices: Nordic Naturals, ATP Labs.

@Leo Gura Yeah I hear he used to live fast / max credit cards out, etc

If you’re talking about JAL his game is mostly bar and club but what you’re talking about is the excuse (not just for plausible deniability of sex but also to take the pressure off the girl) to leave the club. The party, if there is one, which there often isn't, will be one of his friend’s or someone in his social circle or someone he met that night. After-party venue changes like that are available to to me too — and in fact to many people that go to bars and clubs in the same area a lot. The excuse is very often something like “let’s go rip shots and come right back” and sometimes the “after party” if it’s mentioned is just shots back at your place. The only significance of the party is plausible deniability of sex, so the girl doesn’t have to feel slutty (which is essential).

Fair enough. I’m not basing my evaluation of him on anything abstract like his purported lay count, his game (which of course includes far more than the approach, date, etc) merely checks-out in my mind based upon my own experience with game and relationships. “Best” is perhaps a poor choice of term — I’ll soften my position to: his game is both very simple and very effective. And yes I’ve watched his infields. Nothing special — that’s the point though.

@ivankiss Maybe see if you can make it open on your end and hers but only for women. No guys, because that dynamic simply doesn't work well. That's the best possible scenario for basic dating in general imo.

Polyamory is just a concept. Even if she has that proclivity, if @ivankiss is not okay with it, as he probably shouldn't be, then she will just have to forfeit the actions associated with it, if the relationship is worth it to her.

Todd V (usually very good but sometimes kind of bad) John Anthony Lifestyle (the drama around him doesn't change the fact that he simply has the best game you can find -- on the internet, anyway) Playing With Fire (only older content; he sold out big time last I checked) Honest Signalz seems fine too, but I can only really vouch for those 3 at the moment because, while other sources might check out as legit too, I'm out of the loop and don't have time right now to research.

These are your results on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Your score is 10, out of 40. Higher scores indicate greater levels of narcissism. Rock-bottom exhibitionism and entitlement (which is weird because I'm rather entitled in some respects), but vanity is maxed out. What the fuck? Based on the (very black and white, as a previous poster said; and toss-up) questions, it's probably not a perfectly accurate test though.

You may want to actually sit her down have a conversation with her. In my experience, men are actually more promiscuous than women, so usually if you're a great guy who asserts boundaries, she won't stray. But if she's both hot and flirty, it's only a matter of time before a really high value man triggers some attraction in her and pushes her buttons enough for her to (possibly, though you obviously know her better than me; without you having warned her about the situation beforehand) have an experience that you would not be okay with, and that she will justify as not her fault, because it "just happened." So you may want to talk about this with her. It's not that big of a deal, and you know your girl better than any of us will, but you two might need to have a talk. I encourage my girlfriends to dress hot, if they want to, but I do warn them about how players work and sometimes just casually mention how they need to be on guard somewhat for the guys who will be trying to lead them into a line-crossing situation that "just happened."

You seem serious about this, and seem to be at a stage that I remember and was not fun, so I will say what I probably don’t say often enough, but I don’t say it because it cheapens how firmly rooted it should already be if you’re practicing game and don’t want it to be a shit show. Also / Yet / Not to mention, there’s an element of not wanting it too well known, not because of potentially “increased competition” (we’re talking about no-agenda fun-having and spontaneous life-loving; competition doesn’t have to be a factor) but just an intuitive feeling that it doesn’t need to be talked about at this time. Take a deep breath. Forget about everything you’ve ever heard about game/pickup. This is what “game enlightenment” is: Always assuming… 1. The interaction is going well. And 2. That you are super awesome. ( disclaimer: …until the interaction ends, of course, as it often will, and btw sex to phone number ratio is only 1:10 at the highest peak level of game, so don’t get too excited. Yes you can actually do this and yes it can feel weird at times — the male mind can’t imagine what it’s like to be female, so when a particularly total egoless connection of them is about to happen, the male just might feel extremely disillusioned, and disoriented, but you can just keep on doing it anyway — not just assuming attraction, but also raising energy to rise to the level of “value” you can feel comfortable enough with, simply to be able to assume the aforementioned two points — you don’t even need that if you assume already even with a life in ruins or in whatever condition, though there’d be a limit, of course… homeless / etc, but that’d still work and it’d be god-tier mental gymnastics and obviously not in a good way so I don’t recommend it. ) Verbatim. It means exactly what it says. Good luck ? And then you have to move things forward without putting any pressure on the girl whatsoever, as if she could be POOF gone at any time and it wouldn’t matter and you’d hold nothing against her. It’s like a gravity well of the shared-orgasm, pulling two people toward itself by way of this particular vibe. You also need actual experience and know-how in dealing with logistics, cockblocks, etc… so the above isn’t sufficient, but with it, the 90% is done, and without it, you’re missing the 90%… for the 10%…

Okay by Bulgarian Lite I thought you meant something else. I am familiar with the Bulgarian method, which I've always known to mean ramping to a training max at >90%1rm every day with no days off... I assumed Bulgarian Lite meant basically the same but specifically on 1-2 upper lifts, and then doing the same with 1-2 lower lifts the next day, and then repeating, with up to 1 day off per week... instead of using only Olympic lifts like Bulgarian was designed for. I was under the impression that Bulgarian only refers to maxing -- that's all I've ever heard it referred to as.

From what I understand it’s just like the opening set of ME day on Conjugate (<5% of the Conjugate program’s total volume), but that’s all you do, and you do it every day (or almost every day) instead of twice a week. Not super balanced, but it definitely works very well in phases brief enough (7 days to 14 days max) to circumvent the immense detraining that will ensue after 3-5 weeks or so. It can break plateaus, but on conjugate that’s a moot point because plateaus technically aren’t possible on that program, since any time a stall happens, you swap that exercise for a detrained exercise so that the focus becomes the low hanging fruit of detrained muscle fibers, while the overworked fibers recover. That is, unless you’re cutting fat so quickly that a plateau/stall is guaranteed — though even then you can still make progress or maintain on exercises, since they’re never allowed to get too far from detrained status, but if cutting quickly enough, the best you can hope for on any program is controlled reversal of progressive overload on exercises positively affected mechanically by bodyfat itself (mainly pressing), and maintenance on exercises that aren’t negatively affected by bodyfat loss itself (particularly hip hinges). But a calorie deficit wouldn’t be the time to do Bulgarian lite anyway. So I would strongly recommend against doing Bulgarian lite for more than 14 days.

Energy is infinite but it’s also zero. Even in physics you can see they’ve figured out that the energy of a billion suns is cancelled out by negative energy in the form of gravity. So the degree of energy you’re talking about is really the degree of polarization or a differential of energy. There may be infinite energy but there is also infinite potential energy and therefore also zero net energy.

“Watching it go by forever” already assumes time.

If you want to add more work or save time, you can SS the bench press with the rows. I would recommend doing strict (Pendlay) rows though — back still; scapulae apart at bottom (don’t maintain scapula retraction at bottom); as explosive as possible; for 10-15 reps, not 5. You can easily do 5 sets of 10-15 with strict row because of its very good stimulus to fatigue ratio. The advent of the stimulus to fatigue ratio has revolutionized training. Adaptation is stimulus minus fatigue. Every exercise or training modality provides some amount of stimulus and some amount of fatigue. So it stands to reason you want as much stimulus and as little fatigue as possible. Examples of exercises with bad s/f: deadlifts, wide grip bench press. Examples of exercises with good (high) s/f, which I therefore highly recommend: close-grip bench press, strict row, inverted row, good morning, facepull, reverse hyper, isolateral leg press, Bulgarian split squat, 45° back extension, hamstring curl, glute ham raise. Until you get very strong, the fatigue doesn’t really matter — certainly not as much as the stimulus. So even though standard barbell back squats have a pretty bad stimulus/fatigue ratio, the stimulus is so high it doesn’t really matter. However, the deadlift has such a poor ratio that even novices should be wary of using it more than once a week. A novice can get away with squats twice or sometimes even thrice a week for a while, but that’s not so for deadlifts. The supersets you listed all look fine except the lat pull-down and bicep curl — my suggestion for better options: lat pull-down SS w/ lateral, and tricep machine ss w/ bicep curl. And I would do the hamstring curl on both lower body days. And you really want to spread each lower and upper 72h from themselves, respectively — which could be accomplished by moving your Wed & Thu, to Thu & Fri, respectively. And don’t begin a session with abs — do them at the end. You don’t want fatigued abs on squats. That’s the most glaring issue I see. And you might want to restrict deadlift to 1x/wk, and you might want to do 1-3” deficit deadlifts, as the deadlift is only a partial ROM for all the muscles involved and it has a really…quite bad stimulus to fatigue ratio. I only use deadlifts for max work and speed work, and even then it’s almost always deficit or snatch grip, so as to be less of a partial movement. I would omit the 1x12 deadlift and do both 3 sets of good mornings and 3 sets of hamstring curls that day. And instead of one top set of 1x5 on the DL, I’d do 6x2 (6 doubles) as explosively as possible with 30 seconds rest between sets, with 65%1rm or 50%1rm + 75lb of chains or even band tension if your gym has hooks for bands at the deadlift station. Bands are super cheap and very useful. Make sure you rotate grip-width, stance, exercise substitutions, etc occasionally on everything, to avoid overuse and increase the range of muscle fibers being trained maximally. Though most pressing should be close grip and most squatting should be wide stance. Also, all benching and no OHP has long been thought to be a bit of a no-no… but really the reason why that often causes problems is the fact that benching works internal rotators while OHP works external rotators… You don’t want internal rotators to overpower external rotators — it’s very bad for the shoulders. However, the OHP doesn’t even work the external rotators that well anyway, so you don’t need them, but you DO need to find a way to work the external rotators somehow! I recommend both facepulls (necessary; 3-5 sets of 20+ reps, preferably twice a week), and also lying dumbell internal-external rotations (optional; with about 10%1rm BP, for 2-3 sets of 8-16 reps, perhaps with some external-only reps tacked on at the end). Otherwise, not bad at all. Good job! ?

Yeah that’s probably the best subreddit for this topic.

This definitely happens. It goes away for a man when said man just pays attention.

I’ll just add: It’s not impossible. It can, however, be just about the hardest thing ever. Looking back, it’s nothing, but yeah, like anything else, it’s something you really just have to get honest about how badly you want. Go figure. I’ll add again: For me it was so bad, for the first girl I approached sober (already had dozens of approaches with alcohol assistance), I was so nervous I asked her her name but even after she told me hers I forgot to tell her mine… visibly shaking… and blushing. About 7 approaches later, it wasn’t too bad. That was after years of just working on general/social anxiety. Years prior to that I was so anxious I couldn’t even give presentations in class (it’s not that I had difficulty; I couldn’t do them because I’d physically be shaking too hard for my words to be heard). It wasn’t an easy road. To some, death would be preferable to the work required to get good at cold approach. I would certainly NOT say that was true for me, but I DO believe I was far closer to that than the vast majority of men. I did it, it was worth it, I’m still not “done improving,” and now I can’t imagine living without this skill and I’m very glad I took the plunge. Be prepared to be humiliated. If you’re afraid of that, honestly consider whether suffering some humiliation is worth it for getting good at understanding non-platonic interactions with women via personal experience. It was for me and it probably is for you, you’re just afraid to come to terms with it and stop fucking around. As the suffering from loneliness/etc increasingly gets worse, the scale will tip further and further until your decision will happen automatically. You already know this; you’re masturbating and victimizing yourself otherwise. Oh and btw, do you have excessive blushing? If you don’t, then I don’t want to hear a single peep out of you, because you don’t even have a clue how much harder cold approach could be for you, and just how lucky you are to be so well-poised for getting good at this skill… just by virtue of not having that “disability.” And even if you do have it, it very much can still be done. Luckily mine went away to a large degree with meditation practice, but I still had to roll with it when it still occasionally happened, and eventually realized it didn’t really matter… but tell that to someone with excessive blushing. So forgive me if I don’t have much compassion for these matters at this point. fwiw