Content creators!

[shubhamsharma]

@Leo Gura what are some of the channels have you subscribed to on youtube? Others can share too!  

thanks in advance! 

[LastThursday]

I have a whole list of these I enjoy on my journal here:

 

[The Renaissance Man]

@LastThursday Seems you'd love Harry Mack

@shubhamsharma personal development channels?

[shubhamsharma]

8 hours ago, The Renaissance Man said:

@LastThursday Seems you'd love Harry Mack

@shubhamsharma personal development channels?

@The Renaissance Man yes sir!

[LastThursday]

I hadn't heard of Harry Mack, but he's phenomenal.

[Soulbass]

One channel I discovered recently is "Productivity Game"

https://www.youtube.com/@ProductivityGame/videos

[The Renaissance Man]

Alex Hormozi for business is insane.

Mike Israetel (Renaissance Periodization) for strength and hypertrophy training is another special one. Despite having a huge following, the quality of the information is at the very very top.

For more typical personal development I either read books (currently going through Leo's book list), study courses, or watch Leo's videos. Most other channels are much more surface-level (but I'm sure there are quality ones I'm missing).

[shubhamsharma]

On 9/3/2025 at 10:35 PM, The Renaissance Man said:

Alex Hormozi for business is insane.

Mike Israetel (Renaissance Periodization) for strength and hypertrophy training is another special one. Despite having a huge following, the quality of the information is at the very very top.

For more typical personal development I either read books (currently going through Leo's book list), study courses, or watch Leo's videos. Most other channels are much more surface-level (but I'm sure there are quality ones I'm missing).

Thank you so much. I really appreciate! 

[shubhamsharma]

On 8/3/2025 at 5:32 PM, Soulbass said:

One channel I discovered recently is "Productivity Game"

https://www.youtube.com/@ProductivityGame/videos

On 8/3/2025 at 5:32 PM, Soulbass said:

One channel I discovered recently is "Productivity Game"

https://www.youtube.com/@ProductivityGame/videos

good one! Thank you.

[Carl-Richard]

On 9.3.2025 at 6:05 PM, The Renaissance Man said:

Mike Israetel (Renaissance Periodization) for strength and hypertrophy training is another special one. Despite having a huge following, the quality of the information is at the very very top.

I have a huge bone to pick with Mike Isratael. His "slow and controlled" approach to seemingly all exercises is seriously problematic and the way he arrives at that position could be an example of "epistemic scoundrelness" in my book. I think critics like Eric Bugenhagen who you could consider a meathead is much more on point about how you should generally approach lifting ("gusto", intensity, while keeping full range of motion). I think slow and controlled is best reserved for only some exercises or if you are working to fix muscle imbalances or recovering from an injury.

Edited April 23 by Carl-Richard

[The Renaissance Man]

@Carl-Richard The slow and controlled eccentric has some advantages though:

• Best way to maximize time under tension (a fast eccentric means skipping all of that juicy eccentric tension, because gravity does that for you, for a not-that-big decrease in load). So this should get you more growth not less. A slow concentric is problematic because load would drop too much, but Israetel doesn't advocate for that for that reason.
• It's A LOT SAFER. I guess this is less of a problem for beginners and intermediates, because they're "too weak to get hurt" pretty much. But when you become more advanced, and very strong, you're always threading the needle between volume and injury. Exercises that you could've half-assed before now become super dangerous, and as soon as you do one thing wrong (and very often even if you do everything right)... inflammation. Any time you can make the same gains for A LOT less risk it's a huge long-term win.

Overall though, this is a nuance. Either training like Bugenhagen or slowing down the eccentric will lead to almost identical results (if you don't get injured). Because what counts is training hard, and training a lot. It must be that way.

If you're recovering from an injury you need everything to be controlled, not just the eccentric. Avoiding rebounds, controlling everything, and keeping loads as low as possible, so staying in higher rep ranges (20+).

Edited April 23 by The Renaissance Man

[Lauro Chapa]

I like these ones:

hoe_math . https://www.youtube.com/@hoe_math

HealthyGamerGG . https://www.youtube.com/c/HealthyGamerGG

Actualized.org . https://www.youtube.com/ActualizedOrg

DIEGO DREYFUS . https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvpHJfsx8itotRe1o2kaYEw

Brendan Graham Dempsey . https://www.youtube.com/@BrendanGrahamDempsey/featured

Coach Kyle . https://www.youtube.com/@Kyle_Froonjian

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, The Renaissance Man said:

Either training like Bugenhagen or slowing down the eccentric will lead to almost identical results (if you don't get injured)

That's the problem: they don't. When you overly control everything, you make yourself weaker. You reduce the energy output during the exercise (this is a tautology: control is about holding yourself back. We can also go into the neuroscientific details of inhibitory signalling, etc.). You get less neurotransmitter recruitment, less hormonal recruitment, you feel like a sissy. Try horsing tremendous weight and compare how you feel then vs anally controlling some pencilneck weight.

The results might be closely the same if you only care about hyperthrophy (which is also highly questionable, and in fact, I don't believe it, for the same reason I stated above). But if you care about how lifting makes you feel, not just during the session but days after (and the direct "side effects" like increased cognitive functioning), you should go for intensity as the number one goal. That is why I like sprints, because there is nothing else that makes me feel the same way. It's like cranking my veins full with nitroglycerin, like the real Limitless pill.

Looking at the studies he and his buddy Jeff Nippard have been cooking up lately, the field of lifting-based exercise science for hyperthrophy is in its infancy. I would love for them to do a study comparing experienced lifters who train while maximizing for flow and intensity vs slow eccentric. And I'm not talking about just cranking weights like some lunatic who doesn't know what he is doing. I'm talking about intentionally and specifically trying to cultivate the state of flow, the state that is as far as I know the best predictor of performance in professional athletes.

Edited April 23 by Carl-Richard

[The Renaissance Man]

19 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

flow, the state that is as far as I know the best predictor of performance in professional athletes.

Maybe when we're talking about skill sports: basketball, football, golf. But lifting weights it's not about flow. It's about providing dumb, heavy-ass stimulus to your muscles.

You've completely disregarded injuries. Maybe in your personal reality they're not much of a problem, but for advanced athletes they're the very thing that's stopping them from making progress. Because to make progress when you plateau you need, unsurprisingly, more training. But there's a limit to how much you can train before you get hurt. So if you can train without getting hurt, that's a competitive advantage.

19 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

That's the problem: they don't. When you overly control everything, you make yourself weaker. You reduce the energy output during the exercise

This is just false by the way. Have you seen how strong jacked people are? Even the ones who control their repetitions (which at some point they must do otherwise they get injured 3/4 of the time).

Both Mike and Jeff Nippard are EXTREMELY strong by the way. Like top 0.01%. The kind of guy that when walks in a gym he's the strongest by a long shot.

19 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

The results might be closely the same if you only care about hyperthrophy

Which is what we're talking about. We're not talking about training philosophy. In the realm of training philosophy it's all subjective. If you like to do sets of 100 half-reps of inverted foot curls then go for it, as long as you're happy.

I feel like you haven't listened to the other side of the argument with an open enough mind. If you try to make elite strength athletes or bodybuilders train like Bugenhagen 85% of them will be crippled with injuries. They might get stronger in the first 2 months, but then they get hurt and eventually get surpassed.

[Carl-Richard]

On 24.4.2025 at 8:02 PM, The Renaissance Man said:

Maybe when we're talking about skill sports: basketball, football, golf. But lifting weights it's not about flow. It's about providing dumb, heavy-ass stimulus to your muscles.

You can't claim that before it has been studied. Flow might be the optimal way to provide stimulus to your muscles, just like it provides optimal athletic performance. Generally, flow produces optimal results in everything, be it physical or mental endeavors.

 

On 24.4.2025 at 8:02 PM, The Renaissance Man said:

You've completely disregarded injuries. Maybe in your personal reality they're not much of a problem, but for advanced athletes they're the very thing that's stopping them from making progress. Because to make progress when you plateau you need, unsurprisingly, more training. But there's a limit to how much you can train before you get hurt. So if you can train without getting hurt, that's a competitive advantage.

I trained the Mike Isratael way for maybe two years after an injury I got from playing volleyball, which is also when I decided to correct my muscle imbalances. It's helpful for that and for some niche exercises (e.g. light isolation exercises), but for the big compound movements, I think going all out and getting into that flow state will be the best thing you can do for hypertrophy, just like it is for strength gains (but within the 3-20ish rep range and generally full range of motion). I'm back to training that way on at least a few of my big exercises in each of my workout routines (I rotate between 4 different routines).

I have become more aware of the risk of injury over time and that there are certain places I'm careful to enter, but even while being careful, there is a stark difference between training while optimizing for flow and training while optimizing for slow and controlled eccentric. And the times I optimize for flow, in my personal experience, I get much more out of the exercise every time (pump, soreness, the feeling of the muscle, etc.). That said, I do incorporate deep stretch and "myoreps" (microreps) at the end of some of my exercises. But the bulk of the exercise I try to do at high intensity (within the conditions of flow), because again, theoretically, flow is about optimal performance, and performance in bodybuilding is performance after all (but again, this should be studied empirically and put one-to-one with slow and controlled eccentric).

 

On 24.4.2025 at 8:02 PM, The Renaissance Man said:

This is just false by the way. Have you seen how strong jacked people are? Even the ones who control their repetitions (which at some point they must do otherwise they get injured 3/4 of the time).

Both Mike and Jeff Nippard are EXTREMELY strong by the way. Like top 0.01%. The kind of guy that when walks in a gym he's the strongest by a long shot.

Surely, you do know I said "weaker", not "weak"? Mike Isratael and Jeff Nippard are both weaker than Eric Bugenhagen.

 

On 24.4.2025 at 8:02 PM, The Renaissance Man said:

Which is what we're talking about. We're not talking about training philosophy. In the realm of training philosophy it's all subjective. If you like to do sets of 100 half-reps of inverted foot curls then go for it, as long as you're happy.

That is of course what most people like to talk about with working out, but it should actually not be assumed that this is the number one goal for everyone who lifts (to build muscle). Why should it? For me, it was when I started, and it still is one of my goals, but honestly, my number one goal now is how it makes me feel on a bodily and mental level and also the cognitive benefits. And there, aiming for flow and intensity is without a doubt way above aiming for slow and controlled eccentric.
 

On 24.4.2025 at 8:02 PM, The Renaissance Man said:

I feel like you haven't listened to the other side of the argument with an open enough mind. If you try to make elite strength athletes or bodybuilders train like Bugenhagen 85% of them will be crippled with injuries. They might get stronger in the first 2 months, but then they get hurt and eventually get surpassed.

Just like Mike Isratael writes off the injury risk of doing things like deep-stretch dips or curved-back deadlifts, I think the injury risk for lifting the "meathead way"/Bugenhagen way, or my way ("carefully with flow in mind"), excluding obvious recklessness, is overblown. You are much more likely to get injured playing sports, like, heh, volleyball, but there too, it depends on things like being familiar with the activity and the intensity levels (which I was not).

It is a valid fear to have when starting out and when not being familiar with certain exercises that you can hurt yourself, but once you build yourself up gradually, carefully, and you get very familiar with the movement and the weight, it takes quite a lot to suddenly hurt yourself, even when lifting at higher intensities. Even strongman, probably the most unhinged strength sport, has fewer injuries than soccer and baseball; basketball has more than twice as many. The level of control you have in a gym with carefully measured weights and strictly defined movements that are repeated identically every single rep is in a different league than contact/limited-contact sports.

When you see those videos of people getting hurt lifting, it's very often because they are doing something they are not familiar with. If you have never lifted deadlifts before and suddenly rip 225 lbs with no warm-up, you will definitely pull your back (a friend of mine did that). But if you lift deadlifts in a high rep range the same way every week and gradually increase the weight by 0.5% every week until you can only do one rep, given the same form (no breakdown of form at the end of a set), the risk for injury is low.

 

On 24.4.2025 at 8:02 PM, The Renaissance Man said:

I feel like you haven't listened to the other side of the argument with an open enough mind. If you try to make elite strength athletes or bodybuilders train like Bugenhagen 85% of them will be crippled with injuries. They might get stronger in the first 2 months, but then they get hurt and eventually get surpassed.

It's quite funny, because the Bugenhagen way is actually the way most people train, even bodybuilders. It's a whole shtick with Mike Isratael and Jeff Nippard that they sometimes try to "coach" established bodybuilders and lifters with their "science-based lifting" approach. It's such a counterintuitive way to train, and maybe for a good reason. Slow controlled eccentric, deep stretch, pause at the bottom, take your time with each rep, is such a testosterone-draining way to train, you might as well get out the pegging equipment and get some reps in that way.

Edited Monday at 12:46 AM by Carl-Richard

[The Renaissance Man]

@Carl-Richard Ok a couple points to clarify my perspective:

• Mike Israetel and Jeff Nippard explicitly teach in the context of maximizing hypertrophy, and not other training philosophies. It is NOT assumed that this is the number one goal of lifters. The two can easily coexist.
• By injury I mean injury prevention not rehab. I was not specific, my bad. A controlled eccentric enables you to prevent injuries more, by lowering the load you use, with seemingly the same level of gains.
• Not being reckless is enough injury prevention when you're beginner-intermediate. But when advanced, you're so strong that even perfect training, where you carefully warm up and everything, leads to injury. That's why top athletes still get injured despite all the attention they get from trainers. Because when you are very strong, and when you train a lot, you're stressing your body no matter what. So if there are ways to obtain the same gains without as much stress, that's a win. Again, this becomes more of a problem as you get advanced.
• It's not about fear of injury, but about long-term optimization. When you get hurt, first, it fucking sucks because you have to stop training, and second, since you can't train, you are clearly not growing optimally. I'm not talking about absolute injury rates. So it's no use comparing the injury rates of other sports. I'm talking about relative injury rates within bodybuilding or strength training. And I'm saying that training with lower weights for the same gains will lead to less injuries. That is not an opinion.
• By the way the injury rate in strongman is extremely high. And the injury rate at the pro/advanced level is also much, much higher than with beginners, so injury prevention needs to be taken a lot more seriously. But this is very apparent when you actually do become advanced, because you just keep getting hurt as soon as you push a bit if not extremely careful.
• Training like Mike Israetel is not at all easier by the way. It hurts like a motherfucker and requires more discipline, more "testosterone", not less. It's actually easier to push higher weights around with less control. More fun, less painful, more ego-stroking. That's why everybody does it that way. But it may be sub-optimal because you skip the time under tension of the eccentric, and there's a higher risk of getting hurt. 

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, The Renaissance Man said:

Not being reckless is enough injury prevention when you're beginner-intermediate. But when advanced, you're so strong that even perfect training, where you carefully warm up and everything, leads to injury. That's why top athletes still get injured despite all the attention they get from trainers. Because when you are very strong, and when you train a lot, you're stressing your body no matter what. So if there are ways to obtain the same gains without as much stress, that's a win. Again, this becomes more of a problem as you get advanced.

Do you know of any athletes who train "slow and controlled"? Here are two who don't:
 

 

1 hour ago, The Renaissance Man said:

It's not about fear of injury, but about long-term optimization. When you get hurt, first, it fucking sucks because you have to stop training, and second, since you can't train, you are clearly not growing optimally. I'm not talking about absolute injury rates. So it's no use comparing the injury rates of other sports. I'm talking about relative injury rates within bodybuilding or strength training.

You can lower your injury rate by not walking outside too. That doesn't mean it's necessarily a smart thing to do.

 

1 hour ago, The Renaissance Man said:

And I'm saying that training with lower weights for the same gains will lead to less injuries. That is not an opinion.

*assumed same gains.

Let's also not forget the myriad of methodological constraints of the actual studies that Mike Isratael cites for stitching together his training philosophy (e.g. using primarily inexperienced lifters, doing straight out dumb shit like training only one arm with one technique and then other arm with another technique, having a scientist stand over you and control every rep you do, etc.).

It's also funny because I've heard critiques of Mike that his training philosophy is actually outside of his wheelhouse. He is a PhD in sports science, which when you are an undergrad, you learn a bit of everything, but when you go for a PhD, you have to specialize yourself in something, and allegedly, he decided to go the exercise physiology route rather than the kinesiology route. So him trying to teach the world about how to move during a lift while waving his scientific credentials around is misleading at best and problematic at worst. And ironically, someone who has a degree in kinesiology is Eric Bugenhagen. He might actually be more formally qualified than Mike in this area.

 

1 hour ago, The Renaissance Man said:

By the way the injury rate in strongman is extremely high.

But not higher than most other sports, so how high is it really?

 

1 hour ago, The Renaissance Man said:

Training like Mike Israetel is not at all easier by the way. It hurts like a motherfucker and requires more discipline, more "testosterone", not less. It's actually easier to push higher weights around with less control. More fun, less painful, more ego-stroking. That's why everybody does it that way. But it may be sub-optimal because you skip the time under tension of the eccentric, and there's a higher risk of getting hurt. 

It's not easier, because it sucks. It's like role-playing an 80 year old grandma in the gym.

[Nilsi]

On 24.4.2025 at 0:35 AM, Carl-Richard said:

That's the problem: they don't. When you overly control everything, you make yourself weaker. You reduce the energy output during the exercise (this is a tautology: control is about holding yourself back. We can also go into the neuroscientific details of inhibitory signalling, etc.). You get less neurotransmitter recruitment, less hormonal recruitment, you feel like a sissy. Try horsing tremendous weight and compare how you feel then vs anally controlling some pencilneck weight.

The results might be closely the same if you only care about hyperthrophy (which is also highly questionable, and in fact, I don't believe it, for the same reason I stated above). But if you care about how lifting makes you feel, not just during the session but days after (and the direct "side effects" like increased cognitive functioning), you should go for intensity as the number one goal. That is why I like sprints, because there is nothing else that makes me feel the same way. It's like cranking my veins full with nitroglycerin, like the real Limitless pill.

Looking at the studies he and his buddy Jeff Nippard have been cooking up lately, the field of lifting-based exercise science for hyperthrophy is in its infancy. I would love for them to do a study comparing experienced lifters who train while maximizing for flow and intensity vs slow eccentric. And I'm not talking about just cranking weights like some lunatic who doesn't know what he is doing. I'm talking about intentionally and specifically trying to cultivate the state of flow, the state that is as far as I know the best predictor of performance in professional athletes.

I agree, but I'm mostly with Mike Mentzer on this.

One set per exercise, machines only, maximum intensity, music blasting.

I can just feel my nervous system getting flooded with - I don't even know what - but whatever it is, it feels damn good.

And to throw in some locker room talk: when I train like this, I fuck like a stallion. When I try that "slow and controlled high volume" stuff... yeah, not so much.

[Carl-Richard]

29 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

I agree, but I'm mostly with Mike Mentzer on this.

One set per exercise, machines only, maximum intensity, music blasting.

I can just feel my nervous system getting flooded with - I don't even know what - but whatever it is, it feels damn good.

One set per exercise, interesting. I've heard about Mike Mentzer's training approach but never tried it.

 

29 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

And to throw in some locker room talk: when I train like this, I fuck like a stallion. When I try that "slow and controlled high volume" stuff... yeah, not so much.

There is a reason why Buges calls it "horsecocking some heavy ass loads" 

[Nilsi]

10 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

One set per exercise, interesting. I've heard about Mike Mentzer's training approach but never tried it.

It really only works when you do it on machines - at least for me. And that's also how Mike did it.

You just can’t push that hard with a barbell or whatever when you’ve got something that could crush your lungs or snap your neck if you go too far. Even with dumbbells and all that, I notice I can't really go all out - too much energy and focus goes into just balancing the damn thing.

I don't know if it's really optimal for gains, but I'm happy with mine, it makes me feel good, and I spend way less time in the gym.

So yeah, you should definitely try it sometime.