Vali2003

I agree. I was brainwashed by RIR. Going to failure or at least close to it on every set feels more natural to me.

Basketball is by far the best sport in terms of the aesthetic and vibe of it. Much better than ice hockey. p.s. I’ve never watched ice hockey in my life

Just by watching the first hour of the video I grasped how conformist my mind is. And how, there actually is no difference between my conformity and a religious person’s except for contents. It made me partly realize the openness of mind I could achieve if I free myself from all this conformity. Leo’s videos are the most powerful permission slips for me to have insights. When he says something and tells me to consider something, I always give myself permission to fully step outside of my own bias and truly see if what he says is true. Leading to many insights. With conformity it took more time now. Several times when he said it before, I didn’t get it. Now I did. It’s fascinating. Now I think, why didn’t he just say this is what he means. But, of course, I realize he did actually say it, my mind was just too closed up.

I care more about getting athletic and improving my movement quality anyway nowadays. Don’t do weightlifting anymore.

You’re definitely right about the tendency to over-intelectualize lifting in regard to RIR. It can be useful to be strategic about systemic fatigue though, if you have joint pain (especially over several weeks of training). I think it’s less relevant for controlling the eccentric and ROM. You imagine controlling the eccentric as some slow ass shit, but - for me at least - it just means controlling the weight instead of letting gravity do the work. This doesn’t contradict the primal vibe you mean. I’d say you probably train like this, actually - I may be wrong, of course. With the more extreme ROM’s, like with Mike’s barbell rows for example, it most definitely eliminates the primal energy. With squats and deadlifts it also takes all the primal energy out. But with bench press for example, I don’t think it’s a problem.

@Carl-Richard So the notion of “pushing yourself,” doesn’t exist in your vocabulary then? Pushing myself is fun to me. But it’s not what I’d usually call listening to my body. Maybe we have a difference of definitions here. it seems like what I said kinda triggered you though? I said it more in a fun kinda way and didn’t intend it to be received like this. Personally, I think weight training, pushing myself and training hard is very fun, but still I prefer more dynamic movement like basketball that requires more athleticism.

If I listened to my body while doing squats, I’d stop doing them after the first few reps 😩

@Carl-Richard Do you train every set you do until failure? I’d say that’s not sustainable over a 6 week training cycle.

Gym work, PT, chiropractor etc. can also help but will likely not fix the issue 100% and not permanently.

The root solution is likely to work on your fascia. Roll your calves, glutes and feet with a tennis ball and check how painful it is. If it’s very painful, the lower back pain likely stems from fascial adhesions in these areas. Lower back pain often also is the result of asymmetric (left vs. right side) energy distribution that stems from past injuries or something like that. Weight lifting can actually make fascial adhesions — the fascia, aka connective tissue, being sticky and therefore pressing on nerves, which causes pain — worse. Especially if you work out often and don’t have periods of several weeks where your fascia can completely recover. I used to have lower back pain and it has completely resolved now. I’d stop with weightlifting for now, except if you really enjoy it or, in general, you do it for other things than health benefits. Do the first exercise in this video everyday. Start with 2min at a time and build up to 5min at a time. Do the next two exercises two or three times per week and continue doing this for twelve weeks. Sleep well, and potentially supplement vitamin c, to help with collagen production (a main component of fascia). If you do this for twelve weeks straight, your back pain will likely be completely gone. Don’t let yourself be fooled by how easy these exercises look. Make sure to follow his advice on the first exercise accurately.

I highly recommend reading the book How to Become a Straight-A Student by Cal Newport. It‘s a fantastic book on how to succeed at university, without being a grinder — a person that spends all day in the library. He interviewed many of the most successful students from Ivy-league colleges, who don‘t spend their entire day studying. The book is a collection of their methods. I don’t think AI changes that much in terms of studying.

Totally agree on letting the body do what it wants to do on its own in things like sprinting, basketball, powerlifting. Bodybuilding is a bit of an exception there, I think. Assuming you want to maximize hypertrophy it can be beneficial to control it more. But we went over that -- it depends on your goals with it. I agree also on athletes at the highest level being able to access flow-state better than the rest. However, if I understand flow state correctly, it happens when skill level meets the challenge. The highest level of athletes primarily access this more often, as a result of their higher skill level, compared to the rest. Not because they are mysteriously better at tapping into flow-state. The higher level of skill is a direct function of greater fascial stiffness throughout their entire body. Higher fascial stiffness changes the way energy is distributed throughout the body fundamentally. While a person with lower fascial stiffness will be quad/lower back dominant, a person with high fascial stiffness is glutes/abs dominant. This is just the way the fascial tensegrity network distributes energy at a higher level of stiffness. The difference of athletic potential between these two is enormous. I know this from direct experience.

@Carl-Richard To let the momentum drive you forward, so to say?

I don’t know about all of the west, but I can speak a bit for Germany. Everything here has been getting more expensive — in terms of purchasing power. Inflation always happens and the goal is to keep it at around 2% per year. But usually the GDP of the country also grows each year, which is why the purchasing power doesn’t change or even increases potentially — ergo: enough money to have food in the fridge. In Germany the GDP hasn’t really grown that much since 2019. Even before Covid if I recall correctly. Then Covid and Ukraine war happened, which again fucked the growth rate of Germanys economy, as well as rising costs of electricity and some other stuff, which again reduces purchasing power. Then tariffs coming in now from the US also help tank the GDP. Lack of GDP growth leads to the wages not being adjusted to the inflation, which is why you have less money in the wallet or, struggle to put food in the fridge. I could imagine that things are similar in Romania or in other countries. I’m not very confident that all this is correct to be honest hehe, but this is the best I could do.

I definitely see the distinction you’re describing now. I’ll try sprinting like you say, to drive the understanding home. It is true that my weightlifting is always mind-heavy. I’m not sure I know it any other way if I’m Being honest. I always tried to perfect my technique — and that’s a never ending pursuit because you can always tweak little things.

What's fast and forceful about letting the barbell fall on your chest on the eccentric of a benchpress? That was how I meant it. I understood what you describe as "the spirit of good moving through me" as what happens while I try to push the weight away from me with my last bit of power. So for me there was no contradiction. But I see the "face punching" distinction, I think. You mean, controling the eccentric control in this way pierces through the constant "face punching" vibe you want during a work out, right? I can't quote the other parts of your answer normally for some reason... I don't think I understand the distinction you make of it being the difference between punching someone vs. being punched. Being punched is a very kind of emasculating feeling. It feels like your boundaries have gotten seriously violated. I cannot line this feeling up in any way -- it's obvious you mean it more in terms of the direction, but even that way I can't understand it -- with controlling the eccentric and punctuating the deep stretch of an exercise. It's just peaks and valleys for me while lifting. It's like a spring loading, before it releases (or tries to in the case of lifting) the energy and springs up. The eccentric creates tension, because I know it will be difficult to move the weight, and the concentric is the release of that tension. This doesn't feel like a "neurotic self-inflicted torture technique" to me. Actually, I find the contrast of the eccentric (tension) and the concentric (release) turns the concentric into an even bigger flow state experience than it'd otherwise be. You're strawmanning my argument now, cmon. I am speaking from experience... Working out by punctuating the deep stretch was so much more effective than how I worked out before. I'd get sore after every single workout, even after working out consistently for several months. All with less joint pains, even though I did a larger range of motion than before on pretty much every exercise. It is "harder," but the rest of your points are fair. This is a more holistic picture of training. If concentrating on things like this negates the mental effects, then I think it's smart not to focus too much on controlling the eccentric or the deep stretch. One more thing. I believe you have an exaggerated picture in your mind of what it means to "control the eccentric." And I think this is the thing that bothers you the most about what Dr. Mike preaches. But "control" doesn't mean that you must have a 5 second descent. It just means that you should control the weight on the way down. Control just means not letting gravity do the task for you. Sam Sulek, in the video you show, also controls the weight. And this can be done much quicker than most people would think. So I believe it doesn't even contradict the "face punching" vibe you aim for all that much. The deep stretch is something different. And I think it can be added into the face punching vibe, without negating anything else, while increasing hypertrophy, no?

@Carl-Richard You misunderstand the type of lifting Dr.Mike proposes (I can’t speak directly Jeff Nippard as I didn’t watch a lot of his videos). He doesn’t say that you should go extremely slow on the eccentric. Just slow enough that you actually control the weight, rather than let it fall down. Obviously, this is different if you do powerlifting. The thing that he preaches the most in my experience is emphasizing the deep stretch of the muscle and maybe pausing there for a moment. Doing this has made my training so much more effective it’s incredible. If you understand the principle of stretching your muscle to its limits, the effectiveness of weight training takes off. At least it was like this for me. When I did this (I’m currently not weightlifting), I had to do less total sets per workout with less weight and got much more muscle stimulation. The reason most people don’t train like this is not because it’s boring, it’s because it’s actually harder and more painful to do. You lean into the growth-inducing pain this way. Also, you’re wrong in that it goes against what your body tells you to do, if what your body tells you to do is lift the weight super fast and forcefully. You can still do that on the concentric? And I always did it, because it’s fun and feels nice, like you described. Dr.Mike doesn’t at all speak out against it too. You should look at some of his old leg-training videos with guests on his YT. I’ll link a good one. The intensity is brutal there so I don’t think your description or perception is accurate here. I agree with you that you should listen to your body. Some people follow the advice blindly, try to lift “scientifically” and end up wasting their gym time in the name of science. It’s obviously fine if you don’t enjoy lifting like that, but if you want to maximize hypertrophy, that’s the way to go speaking from my experience. https://youtu.be/7Nhb7-zaws8 I don’t see this lacking the “the spirit of god moving through them” workout energy.

@Recursoinominado dude… this story sounds absolutely incredible.

@Natasha Tori Maru Is there a specific reason you take 10g as opposed to 5g for example? I’ve been seeing it more often lately that people advocate for a higher dosage of creatine than is usually recommended (by the scientific consensus). What’s the rationale behind that?

I don’t have any smoking-specific advice since I’m not a smoker. But I’d say first, your intention to stop smoking must be really strong. Then you use whatever method/tricks seem best for you, and try to quit. I think it’s normal that you will fail quitting many times until you don’t and actually quit. This is good, though. Each time you fail, you will learn new things that trip you up, which you can then solve for. I remember Leo saying somewhere that most people just don’t try things often enough. They lose hope after they try 2 or 3 times. The key is to keep going, and improve each time. At some point you’ll figure it out!

@Sugarcoat Ah, in terms of by hand vs. laptop. For me, laptop is much better because I can write faster, it's less painful for my hands, and it's easier to organize the notes. But I see how it would be difficult to do it for chemistry. My suggestions is, to research if there's a computer program for chemistry stuff so you can have the benefits of a laptop, while still being able to do all the proper symbols etc.

@Sugarcoat Do you mostly have technical classes, where you solve stuff like math problems? In that case, your number one priority should be to note down the given problem and the solution. However, if the problems are given on the slides and you have access to them, then no need to write it down. Second priority would be to note down wherever you get confused. You can go to the professor after class and ask them about those sections and fill in your notes. In classical lectures where the professor reads from his slides more or less, it's useless to copy the slides. As you say, you can access them later anyways. However, not doing anything is really unproductive because you drift into monkey mind so easily. The best thing to do is to summarize the key insight from each slide in your own words, in one sentence. Don't look at the slide while writing. It has to be from memory. This forces you to stay present during the lecture and go over what you just learned. When you go through this process, you discover what you understand poorly. The things you understand well, will stick to your brain. You're basically already studying during the lecture, while staying really active. Your understanding will be so much better this way, and studying for the exam at the end of the semester will be much less effort. It really pays off and going to class becomes a lot more fun, because you feel smarter and more competent than before. What degree are you pursuing?

You should watch leo‘s video is gender a social construct?

Oh . thanks for letting me in on it.

Oh . thanks for letting me in on it hahah.