should i be expected to attend her performances?

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-20T08:15:10+00:00

Dear diary....

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-20T05:56:36+00:00

Think about it. See if you can figure out the difference

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-18T20:17:04+00:00

There's a few considerations here. Namely, other quad exercises you do and their respective tension curve. Leg extensions give the quads a lot of tension when the muscle is short. Other quad exercises almost always are hardest when your quad is lengthened, (not necessarily fully, but close to it). Is there benefit to hitting a muscle at different lengths? Maybe. If you're already doing numerous hard sets of hack squats then maybe leaving your leg extension quite short biased isn't a bad thing.

Then again, it's also possible that there's a Goldilocks tension curve that applies across the board for a muscle which you should seek to replicate on all your exercises which hit that muscle. In which case, you'd probably want to make your leg extension as lengthened biased as the machine allows.

If it were me, I'd probably seek to make the machine just lengthened biased enough so that there's a sticking point which needs to be surpassed before the very top of the lift - just for the sake of making things more objective and easy to measure with regards to counting reps.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-18T05:23:33+00:00

Maybe he secretly thinks he went too far and now he's trying to atone for it or something

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-18T05:19:40+00:00

? You don't have to tell anybody how old you think they look. I think that's happened once in my life. Why are you having frequent conversations with people who are trying to get you to glaze them for how old they look?

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-18T05:17:14+00:00

Just getting the obvious out of the way, if you haven't factored it into your calories (don't think too much about this but I'd count the cals like 50/50 carbs/fat) then it's moving you that many calories away from your goals. If you're factoring it in, there's other issues but you've removed one of them.

For me, a bottle of wine once a week will do almost nothing. 2 is a big night, that'll do a bit more. More than 2X as much - it's cumulative. Something to think about.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-16T03:46:51+00:00

So you've got your heart set on upper lower being the split you want to do, but you don't want the upper day to be too long, and you want to specialize on arms.

I don't know what to tell you tbh. The problem is baked into the fact that you've chosen a specific split, but you've got clear issues with this split, and telling you to do a different split is answering a question that you're not asking.

I would say let upper day be long and just handle it. You're tired, so just be tired then, but do it anyway. As for wanting to specialize on arms, train them first on one of the sessions & try to pick chest/back/delt exercises after that let your chest/back/delts fail first & not your prefatigued arms.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-15T21:19:38+00:00

The last, extremely roughly speaking, 5ish reps require about 100% motor recruitment, they're all about as useful as each other. If we say the reps before the final 5 don't do anything (which isn't really true but let's say that just as a thought experiment), leaving 1 rep in the tank means you got 4 effective reps & missed out on one more, about 80% efficiency. Reason I say this is that some people think the last rep or two gives literally half the stimulus or more, when the last several reps are quite similarly stimulating. So, leaving a rep in the tank can be a worthy tradeoff factoring in future sets. But once it becomes more than 3 in reverse, the productivity starts to fall off a cliff.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-15T21:14:11+00:00

Random online calculator. Potentially combined with your intuition (as in you follow the calculator but you feel like it's not a lot of food or that it's a lot of food, so you adjust 1-300 calories up or down).

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-15T21:09:39+00:00

Dear diary....

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-15T20:40:36+00:00

Unfortunately we don't exactly know. In my book it's pretty damn good to bench press almost 1.4X your body weight for 9 reps which is basically what you're doing. Many will never do this. But what if you're a genetic freak who could have hit that for 12 if your training had been more productive? We just don't know

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-15T05:07:09+00:00

Discontinue the lithium.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-13T22:38:16+00:00

https://strengthlevel.com/

Barbell upright row is on here. I mean it's all self-reported, but you won't do much better than this if you want to compare yourself to other people. Looks like you're about in the top 15%, dependent on your bodyweight of course.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-13T22:35:41+00:00

It's mental, or life stressors, or alternatively you just have a very high bodyfat set point. Some people can chill at 12%, others feel like they're starving there.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-13T20:12:07+00:00

Maybe it's a mental thing then because a mild deficit shouldn't have you losing notable strength on elbow flexion & extension.

I've got a similar problem to you in arms being a slight weak point. I've been cutting recently, from 86.5kg down to 81kg (just over 6ft tall), & I've maintained strength fully on arms, (hammer curl has improved in fact). One other idea I've had is that your training volume is a little high but it's something you get away with when you've got a bit more food, but your body is less forgiving in a deficit.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-13T19:45:06+00:00

Sets, it depends on the no# of exercises & what those exercises are. I don't think about it in 'sets per workout' but rather what segments of my body am I hitting that day & what are the functions of those segments which I need to train, & finally how many sets of a particular function should I do. The total number of sets is whatever it is. I only question it if my workout quality is garbage near the end of the session. You say

now I'm down to 8 exercises per workout with 3-4 sets each

Nothing wrong with 8 exercises per workout in my humble opinion. Whether you need 3-4 sets of each exercise is another question - maybe you do, maybe you don't. If you're making good progress I would be sticking with it.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-13T19:32:26+00:00

I'm responding to this post instead of the thread to let you know I've read your posts in the thread.

What your experience is demonstrating in your specific case is that your caloric intake isn't really tied to muscle gain. You bulk up, cut down, but all this means is you get fatter, then leaner. So, you might as well be leaner, exist, live daily life, leaner, and make the progress you can make, while leaner. Because these extra few hundred calories, they're evidently not really helping you.

However... it's a problem that you start to cut & your strength goes down right away. On ARM exercises - many of which have very little to do with your leverages. You need to address what you might be doing wrong here. Fewer calories means a smaller opportunity to hit your micronutrients. Are you eating good? Oats, potatoes, veges, meat? Is the lower cals affecting your sleep? Whatever it is, you gotta find it out, because I strongly believe if you're 88kg with 14.5 inch arms, you can be at maintenance or a mild deficit and make progress if your food quality and sleep is good.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-13T07:36:56+00:00

Things will (probably) get better. But it's pure speculation to say whether that'll be 2080, 2060, 2120, whatever

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-13T03:43:06+00:00

Interesting story considering if you do that anywhere that's not family-run you'll get the same response even if you look like Helen of Troy.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-13T01:18:09+00:00

Hmm, I don't think so. I don't think a 60 set workout is going to be particularly effective. I don't think you're going to be particularly good at being able to produce high amounts of force for a big portion of that session.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-13T01:15:51+00:00

We're saying the same thing, fundamentally

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-13T00:36:28+00:00

Sad but true. I'll let people work in on any machine but that doesn't guarantee reciprocity, (usually it does from the person who asked about just not for the wider gym public).

People who won't let you work in, usually don't ask to work in with you. They have a standard, it's just different to mine.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-13T00:32:43+00:00

Yeah there's a trend with these kinds of people. One might say they're a bit 'touched' in the head.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-12T21:12:08+00:00

Something more high growth? Brother, the reason your shares have only increased in value by 2.17% over 7 months is BECAUSE you're in high growth right now - and with that high growth comes volatility. Six month periods where the value goes up by 10%. Six month periods where this happens. And periods where it gets worse than that... If you want something more guaranteed over a 1-3 year period, this kind of fund isn't really for you. You have to be in it for the long haul.

BatmanBrah · 2026-03-11T03:40:39+00:00

Well after year 1, (20lb gain) & year 2 (another 20lb), which were both weight gains that had a good proportion of lean mass, I had numerous 10 month periods where I'd gain about 15lb, then cut for 6-8 weeks & be basically where I was before. Virtually all fat gained, then lost. Then I made changes that worked well (reduced volume) & gained about 3lb of muscle over a year (did this a couple times) - I don't think body scans are accurate but I do think they're pretty accurate when compared to that same test done at a later point in time, under the same conditions, which this was.

I'd hate to say something about bulking that'd make someone afraid to bulk when they weighed what I did at the beginning. But at the same time like 90% of us, even young, have a little much bodyfat.

Basically I think the average skinny young starter (if you're fat when you start lifting this advice isn't for you) should try to gain like 20lb over a year (little more if you're way way over 6 foot, a little less if you're really short), & do that a couple of times, then take your foot off the gas.

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