so me n the girls (punk band) just played our second show last week, and I’m pretty stoked. we sounded really rough in practice and definitely still have a lot of improvements to make but we at least sounded cohesive and the crowd was really into it!! someone even reached out about booking us for another show, which is super unexpected given how new and just-getting-used-to-playing-in-public we are.

apparently someone posted a video to IG and we’re also doing numbers on the “sjw cringe compilation” side of the internet so… there’s that. I really wouldn’t care - we are cringe and very comfortable with that - but they harassed our vocalist bad enough to delete all of her public facing social media. Kind of still wrapping my head around the reception in person vs. online, but I think the idiots online are just reacting to queers in public. It’s all of our first time doing this and I’m just happy to be doing it at all tbh. definitely not gonna let the chuds get us down!

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This is a context where what works for different people tends to vary a lot, so experiment with a few different strategies and find what you like best! As long as you’re pushing yourself close to muscular failure for a couple sets, you probably will see an increase in strength regardless of the particular loading strategy.

Usually it’s best for warmup sets to not be fatiguing at all - you want to save your energy for the heavy working sets close to failure that will provide the most stimulus. So I’d go for 6-8 reps at about half the weight you want to do in your first working set. Warmups are just to get comfortable with the movement and make any adjustments before you do your working sets.

You may like “wave loading” - progressively lowering the reps and increasing the weight over the course of your sets. All sets are performed within a rep or two of failure, but e.g. the first set is failure after 8-10 reps, second set is failure after 6-8 reps, third is failure after 4-6 reps, or something similar. You can use a 1RM calculator to estimate what difference in weight would bring you down from one rep range to another.

It may or may not also be helpful to bring yourself completely to failure in the first set to ensure you’re stopping only when you cannot possibly do more reps, and not due to sensation of weakness, slowing of the movement, or moderate reduction in range. To do this, you’ll want to keep doing reps until the cable absolutely will not move - you might have a few more reps in the tank on your first set than you realize. Raising the rep range a bit can also help with this.

(also, re: another question from the original post, you can do less than 6-7 reps of a movement and get stronger if you’re getting close to muscular failure. I do a lot of sets in the 3-5 rep range, not all the time, but especially for big compound movements it can be great.)

Might just be the flare of the pant legs, but it looks like her knees are hyper extended way beyond fully straight to me lol. The stretch itself doesn’t have to be too hard on your knees though!

knee crunching noises

It’s pretty much a standing pancake stretch, a common stretch for people working on flexibility in their splits and straddles. I was unaware it’s seen as a horny pose lol. It’s pretty intense in your hamstrings and adductors. Definitely possible to train past 30, but requires starting light and doing it consistently over many months.

I was just about to say this too!! Seriously so good. The gameplay is an understandable turnoff, personally I love it but RPG NBA Jam probably won’t do it for everyone. but WOW the story is incredible. The personal stakes of each liberation rite make each feel like a must-win; the fact that the story continues if you lose makes it all the more nerve-wracking.

And that’s not even considering the revolutionary bent of the whole thing, too, or the beautifully realized world with deeply strange history, or one of the best goddamn soundtracks I’ve ever heard… deserves some more love as a cult classic imo.

Shame is unfortunately a very bad way to encourage someone to desist from behavior. We can especially see this in addiction management. If someone is ashamed of something they are dependent on, the shame causes them to think about it more, makes them more likely to become entrenched and defensive about the subject, and causes them to use it in private.

The more effective route is in education and harm reduction. Teaching people what AI is capable of and what it is not capable of won’t immediately make someone stop using AI, but it has a much better chance of leading to desistance in the long run.

I think there’s an exception to be made here for shaming very public evangelists, but that’s less to discourage them from using it so much as it is about discouraging others from taking them seriously.

Spines are mobile in three axes: extension/flexion (front to back), rotation, and lateral flexion. (side to side) For a lot of people, deadlifts can involve some extension and flexion and remain safe so long as there’s no rotation or lateral flexion. It’s ideal if the flexion/extension stays consistent through the motion (even if it’s not completely neutral)

That’s why it’s possible to safely deadlift 500lb then go home and throw out your back putting a 50lb box on a shelf at your side. It’s possible to train yourself to lift from awkward spinal positions safely, but it requires starting at a lighter weight and progressing carefully. Gladiator deadlifts are a neat way of introducing flexion + rotation.

congratulations on your progress, being able to get into alignment is a huge milestone!! on a similar journey myself, it’s a daily struggle but these things really can get better.

I mean, in that it requires you to go out, be somewhere in person, and makes it easier to do something else on the way back home. Not a lot better but if your movement is otherwise unstructured it’s better than nothing.

setting up for some simple movements at home can really go a long way though. and definitely wish more offices had some simple weights, mats etc on hand (excluding the offices that have a gym to encourage you to be at work all the time)

is there a name for the reverse of this? like making a change for yourself that works great for your needs, but then assuming that others just need to do the same thing?

I listen to a lot of music while I’m doing things as background, but when I get a moment for it focused listening is a great experience. I don’t listen to the same type of music for both, though there’s definitely some overlap. But I’m not listening to funeral doom at work or Lightning Bolt sitting in bed before I go to sleep. I think both experiences are equally valid ways to enjoy and appreciate music.

The gym has given me an interesting middle ground as it is something that requires some planning and thinking at times, but at some point my body knows the movements well enough to do it more or less on its own. So the music I listen to ends up being the most diverse. It can either fade into the background while I’m setting up, making notes, etc. or be the main thing I’m focusing on toward the last reps of a movement I know well.

personally I like them a lot for cursors, it takes some getting used to but ig I’ve used laptop track pads a lot and I find it very comfortable and natural to use my thumb for it. definitely haven’t used it much for e.g. camera control in a 3d game though, feels awkward every time I’ve tried.

I have studied so much goddamn math in my life…

…and yet the hardest parts of being a trainer has been a) counting reps and b) subtracting 45 from a number and dividing it by 2.

Gallows Bound!! Depends on if bluegrass is in, but in spirit I think they fit. They’re damn good either way. Dogs a Howlin, Mad Dog 2020, and Empty Flask / Empty Heart are some of my favorites.

Holy Locust is great too. For a folk punk playlist my picks would probably be Breaking the Wheel or Trash Pile but they’ve got a lot of range outside punk too. Tangled in Ropes is too gorgeous not to share.

Bridge City Sinners, worth a dive too. Break the Chain, Kreacher

I’m significantly less convinced by the supposed mechanics of craniosacral therapy - adjustment of the fused cranial joints in particular - but more generally, gentle rhythmic manipulation of lumbar fascia and neurofascia is something I don’t see focused on often in traditional deep tissue massage and subjectively it’s had surprising effect, especially when done by someone who specializes in it. There are a lot of important nerve connections in both areas that gentle, surface-level manipulation can affect. The aspects of craniosacral therapy that are probably bunk are at least not going to hurt you, unlike chiropractic. Worst case, it just won’t do much. I am interested to see if some of the basic manipulation techniques are integrated into other modalities in the future, even though their origin doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. And yes, like other alternative therapies, anyone claiming CST can cure illnesses is a grifter.

Several did show some positive short term effects, but it’s no surprise that several don’t. Dry needling isn’t going to cure pain on its own or work for everyone, much like other forms of bodywork. Individual results vary and it needs to be done over a long period of time alongside other work to restore stability and mobility. A supplementary treatment just needs to be low-risk, accessible, and possibly beneficial enough to try. The risks associated with dry needling are less severe than those of several common PT interventions such as corticosteroid injections. To say nothing of the risks associated with chiropractic.

The lack of a standardized placebo is a problem, yes. This study had pretty good results from using a blunted needle glued in an introducer. The patient feels the sensation of the introducer being pressed against skin and “pistoned” in, but the needle doesn’t actually make contact. In the group of people who had not received dry needling before, only one correctly identified that they had received the placebo.

sameeeee! It’s a form of self-massage, and massage is well understood more generally. it won’t make muscles longer but it’ll help a lot with adhesions, tender points and postural tension.

recently I’ve been getting some great results out of using a harder plastic massage ball for some areas, seems to get deep into my psoas, quads and calves especially. also love using a racked barbell to mobilize triceps, rotator cuff, and hamstrings! it hurts so good!

You’ll find more study in the West of “dry needling”, a technique directly inspired by acupuncture. Here’s one recent review.

I see an acupuncturist because the results for me are great, she’s good at what she does, she does believe in germ theory, she practices in a sanitary way, and she doesn’t claim to cure illnesses. These are the norms for modern licensed acupuncturists. I’m not saying every acupuncturist out there is like this, hokey grifters do exist in alt medicine spaces, and that’s kind of my whole point. It really depends on the practitioner.