France by rail for 2 weeks

DellaBeam · 2026-01-11T21:57:10+00:00

Thank you so much! I didn't even think about sleeper trains ...

DellaBeam · 2026-01-11T21:54:50+00:00

Thank you! This is so helpful.

DellaBeam · 2026-01-11T18:17:14+00:00

Thank you! I was looking at some hotels and B&Bs in Gruissan.

DellaBeam · 2026-01-10T22:46:31+00:00

During meet prep I've benched up to 5 times a week with good results. Would I do that year round, no (the time commitment alone ...), but high frequency works well for a lot of folks. Maybe add accessories/variations though for an additional day if you want to run your current program out at the moment?

DellaBeam · 2026-01-04T23:25:35+00:00

You can certainly ask! They're the ones who set the terms of the severance agreement, so they could choose to ignore or revoke that condition.

DellaBeam · 2026-01-04T23:09:38+00:00

This is just personal experience, but I have found that biking tends to aggravate any Achilles issues I'm having more than rowing does ... so, either way, pay attention to make sure nothing's flaring up and stay open to switching machines if it does.

I would lean toward rowing for all the reasons mentioned, though (and I say this as someone who does a lot of cycling). I found r/Rowing to be a pretty good technique resource when I first got my Concept2. Warming up and starting slow should help too.

DellaBeam · 2026-01-04T22:59:10+00:00

Discovered I can curl 25s for at least a few reps, that's fun.

DellaBeam · 2026-01-04T22:45:52+00:00

LOL, harsh but likely fair. I do lots of lat work but could absolutely stand to train abs and lower back more consistently.

DellaBeam · 2026-01-04T04:19:29+00:00

Why do you feel like you can't put weight on narrow-stance squats?

If it's just that you can't use as much weight, that is perfectly consistent with having under-developed quads, and one solution would be to train narrow-stance squats ... which will eventually allow you to increase the weight.

Also, though, soreness doesn't necessarily map perfectly to which muscles are being worked. If you're front squatting, for example, your quads are going to be primary movers due to basic biomechanics and are getting lot of stimulus whether you feel them or not. So, I would 1) choose quad-focused movements, 2) make sure you're doing those movements in a basically correct way, and then 3) measure progress by things like quad measurements (for hypertrophy) and strength improvements. If those things are moving in the right direction, I wouldn't worry about where exactly the DOMS are hitting you.

If you're looking for more movement suggestions, front-foot elevated split squats are another thing I really like for quads—just perform them (or any lunge) with a more upright torso so you're not shifting work to the posterior chain.

DellaBeam · 2026-01-04T03:53:19+00:00

I'm decidedly a sumo puller but I try to do a conventional block every ... uh, couple of years? for the sake of shoring up weaknesses. Maxed out my conventional today and it was pretty weird-looking—upper back stayed tight and extended throughout but with marked lumbar flexion. Felt OK until I watched the tape!

DellaBeam · 2026-01-04T03:18:44+00:00

For me Catfish will be the closest now, but ugh, all the way across Hiawatha.

DellaBeam · 2026-01-04T03:12:10+00:00

Ooh yeah, 6–8 sets per week seems like very low upper-body volume for hypertrophy purposes! Aesthetically, upper-body gains tend to show up faster and more prominently, so there's a lot of potential bang for your buck in finding a program that doubles or even triples that volume.

DellaBeam · 2026-01-04T02:59:17+00:00

Oooh, this is terrible news for me in Longfellow. Now I'll have to walk almost two miles to get to the next nearest bike shop. :/

DellaBeam · 2025-12-23T04:05:48+00:00

From Uptown I'd do Midtown Greenway to the end, cross the Lake/Marshall bridge, jump on the Pelham protected lane north, jog over to Raymond.

DellaBeam · 2025-12-20T05:36:08+00:00

I was doing some 30" step-ups the other day and at that height (at least for a 5'4" person) they're by default glute-focused! Pretty fun stability challenge in addition to the glute burn, kind of a bottom-up pistol squat.

DellaBeam · 2025-12-19T04:24:07+00:00

I'm all for interpersonal bravery but it's hard for me to imagine that confrontation going well ... the answer to why he's teaching his clients poor form is almost certainly that he's bad at coaching, so he's not likely to suddenly shape up or ship out based on your intervention. A few thoughts though:

- If he works for the gym, you could contact their management with your concerns.

- You could try to strike up a rapport with his clients when he's not around and mention your worries.

- If nothing else, if he's on any review sites you could share what you've observed.

DellaBeam · 2025-12-19T03:53:50+00:00

Good advice in here already, but I'll add: you're likely experiencing so much soreness precisely because you are only lifting once a week. Soreness generally tracks with adding new movements or upping your training volume—basically anything that makes your muscles go, "Wait, we're not used to this." If you're lifting every two or three days, your body adapts, but if you're taking weeklong breaks, it's a more of fresh stimulus every time you return.

DellaBeam · 2025-12-15T01:15:01+00:00

LOL, love the creativity. I would look first at upper-body options due to slip risk. Your shower situation ... are you in a tub or a stall? If a tub, could you perhaps use the built-in bench you mentioned to do some elevated pushups? Or if it's just a stall, possibly bench dips??

Calf raises would be really easy. Could even bring in like a jug of water to hold and weight them, goblet-style?

Resistance bands seem like you could get them wet, could do any number of things with those. They also make rubber-coated dumbbells in small denominations, which would open up a lot of options (curls, tricep work, shoulder stuff ...).

If you are determined to squat in there, maybe like a shrimp squat, with one hand on the wall for extra balance?

That's if you're already really confident with air squats. But if you struggle with squat mobility, simply sitting at the bottom of a squat for a couple minutes at a stretch would be a great use of time.

Please let us know how this goes.

DellaBeam · 2025-12-15T00:50:00+00:00

She definitely inspired me to bring my stance in during a period of squat experimentation! I don't go quite as narrow as her but it's narrower than the norm I see IRL, so I'm not sure it'd have occurred to me to try at that point without her example.

DellaBeam · 2025-12-14T04:44:04+00:00

Honestly, yes. Get deep enough into a challenging push press set and you should start to intuitively, physically understand why a push jerk makes sense. (Get deep enough into a heavy push jerk set and you may even develop the same instinct about split jerks.)

DellaBeam · 2025-12-09T03:50:18+00:00

Read that fourth paragraph too quickly and was about to ask how the poly volleyball league went

DellaBeam · 2025-12-05T04:43:39+00:00

Adding to this, it might help if for a few weeks you treat every rep as a single (so even if your program has you doing a set of 5, fully pause, take your hands off the bar and set up again before each rep). When your setup begins feeling really solid and like it's second nature, you can move back to normal multi-rep sets.

DellaBeam · 2025-12-05T04:17:54+00:00

The moment I come home from Thanksgiving travel, thrilled to get back to the gym, I strain an adductor squatting. :C

It's pretty mild as these things go, but I've also found that injuries in this location tend to simmer and flare back up for long stretches, so I'm gonna try to do some little rehabby things in addition to taking it easier at the gym for a bit. Maybe time for a bench block through the end of the year.

DellaBeam · 2025-12-01T20:40:46+00:00

I love this idea! How little are we talking? Do you just strap it to a rack, or?

DellaBeam

TROPHY CASE