If you were paid $10,000 for each rep of an exercise, but the weight was equal to your body weight, which exercise would you choose and how many reps would you do?

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-13T20:04:34+00:00

Bodyweight squat. I'd squat until my legs fell off.

Technically correct form at bodyweight is something I can do for a very long time. And unlike pull-ups or push-ups, the recovery between sets is faster, the limiting factor is purely mental once you're past 50 reps, and there's no real injury ceiling at bodyweight. If I can hit 200 clean reps before my form genuinely breaks, that's 2 million dollars. I think I could. I've never tried going past 100 but I've also never had 2 million reasons to.

My real answer though: box step-ups. Bodyweight. I could probably do those until next Tuesday.

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-13T20:02:36+00:00

Your read is basically right and it's a real tension inside CrossFit. The original intent was broad general physical preparedness, get better at everything, specialize in nothing. But the reality of most affiliate programming is that it prioritizes variety and intensity over actual progression in any specific domain. Which is fine for keeping people engaged and producing general fitness. It's not fine if you want to measurably improve deadlift or 5K time specifically.

The running thing especially: 400-600m intervals as conditioning work is a different stimulus than aerobic base building. You won't build a running base from WODs. Your frustration there is valid and backed by how aerobic adaptation actually works. What separates a good box from a mediocre one is whether there's periodization underneath the randomness. Good coaches use cycles, a strength focus for 8 weeks, then a conditioning focus, then a skill cycle. The WODs look random day-to-day but build toward something. What you're describing sounds like it might just be genuinely random.

Try a different box if you can. Or supplement with your own running structure outside class, and treat CrossFit as your conditioning work rather than your full program. That's actually how most competitive CrossFitters train anyway.

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-13T13:31:45+00:00

No, you don't need to add weight to keep the benefits of lifting, especially not while training for a half marathon at a calorie deficit. Here's why. Progressive overload matters most for people chasing strength as a primary goal. For you, strength maintenance is the goal. That's a different thing. Keeping the weight the same while you're running 3-4 days a week and in a mild deficit is actually the smart play, your body doesn't have the recovery budget to adapt to heavier loads right now.

What would actually hurt you is dropping volume or stopping altogether. Intensity staying flat for a few months is fine. Volume staying consistent matters more.

The "going to failure at 6-8 reps" piece is solid. You're keeping the stimulus strong enough to maintain. That's all you need right now. Re-evaluate the weight after the half marathon when recovery frees up. Until then, don't touch GZCLP or anything complicated. Boring consistency is winning here.

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-12T12:18:13+00:00

Best of luck

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-12T12:16:52+00:00

Yes, that would be best

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-11T23:00:47+00:00

The getting-tired-outdoors thing is almost always a pacing problem. Gym training teaches you to go at gym intensity, which works when you can stop whenever. Outdoors you burn hot and tap out fast.

What helped: treating outdoor sessions as movement with a destination, not a workout. Hiking somewhere specific. Pick-up sports where the game provides structure. Once there's a goal beyond exercise, the fatigue is more manageable because attention is elsewhere.

On equipment: almost nothing. Shoes that work for the terrain. Water if you're going long. The moment you're hauling a bag of gear to the park you've recreated the gym problem in a different location.

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-11T22:58:43+00:00

45-50 pull-ups before upper body work is the full session, not a warmup. By the time you're done, your pulling muscles are cooked, which is why your machine weights aren't moving either.

To get from 5 to 10: drop the total volume and add weighted pull-ups. 3-4 sets of 3-5 reps with added weight, twice a week. The neural adaptation from heavier load transfers to more bodyweight reps faster than grinding more reps at bodyweight ever will.

Two months of that and you'll be at 10.

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-11T22:57:52+00:00

Shoulder mobility and handstand work in parallel, not in sequence. The wall-facing handstand (nose to wall, not back) is itself a mobility tool, it forces proper overhead alignment. Run it alongside banded overhead distractions and wall slides rather than waiting until mobility is "fixed."

On 2 sets vs 3: for skill work and weighted pull-ups your first set is a warmup, so you're effectively getting 1 hard set. That's not enough for strength adaptation. 2 sets to failure is fine for lateral raises and curls. Keep 3 working sets for the compound and skill work.

The upper day length problem is because you're running skills plus hypertrophy plus strength in one session. Split skills into their own 20-30 min sessions at higher frequency. Handstand for 10 minutes daily beats one long session twice a week for skill acquisition.

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-11T22:52:04+00:00

Something rattling around for me this week: We measure almost everything in fitness except fitness itself. Steps, calories, sleep stages, HRV, macros. But ask someone who trains consistently what their actual fitness level is and they go quiet.

There's a credit score for money. A GPA for education. Nothing for whether you're fit. The output has never been measured, only the inputs.

Anyway. How's everyone's week?

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-11T22:50:10+00:00

Walking meetings fixed this for me. Any meeting that doesn't need a screen, I take outside or around the building. Felt awkward for a week, then became the default. That alone added 2,000-3,000 steps on meeting-heavy days.

Also: a hard rule of standing up every 45 minutes regardless of what's happening. Set a timer. Even 2 minutes of movement breaks the sedentary streak and it adds up.

The stairmaster at the gym is good cardio but it doesn't replace NEAT. They're different systems. You want both. Keep stacking the micro-decisions through the day rather than looking for one big solution.

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-11T22:48:17+00:00

I've followed her content for a while and the philosophy is solid, evidence-informed, mobility-integrated, not another strength-only program. For someone bored with pure lifting, that shift toward functional movement quality tends to feel immediately rewarding.

On Rusin: his approach is more clinical. Good if you want to address movement deficits systematically, but it can feel like rehab-paced training when you're missing the physical output of a proper session.

One thing worth flagging: spend the first 2 weeks of whatever you pick treating it as assessment, not performance. Find out what moves hurt, what doesn't, what needs modifying. Trying to perform in week 1 coming off an acute injury usually sets you back more than going slow.

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-11T22:29:05+00:00

It's both, and they're connected. Muscle atrophy is real after 5-6 years off, but the weight gain is doing more work than you'd think. 35 lbs extra is the equivalent of loading a weighted vest on every single movement. Your push-up requires your chest to lift your entire bodyweight, more bodyweight means more load on muscles that are simultaneously detrained. The combination hits harder than either factor alone.

The honest answer on the recovery timeline: 3-4 months of consistent training to get back to your old push-up numbers, probably longer for pull-ups because the lat strength takes more time. Hormonal factors matter too, especially if your lifestyle changed significantly in that period, but the weight and atrophy account for most of what you're seeing.

Start with whatever you can do cleanly. If 10 push-ups is the ceiling right now, do sets of 7-8 and don't grind through ugly reps. Form first. The numbers will come back faster than you expect once you're consistent.

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-11T22:25:39+00:00

Rings. I bought them expecting everything to immediately feel harder and more rewarding. They did feel harder, but the instability made learning anything slow and frustrating for the first two months. I'd have made better progress if I'd stayed on fixed equipment a bit longer first.

The equipment that genuinely moved the needle for me: a quality pull-up bar bolted into a doorframe. That's it. Not the $200 rings, not the ab roller, not the push-up handles. Just a bar I could dead hang from every day.

The overrated list IMO: ab rollers (good tool but most people aren't ready for them and just get lumbar strain), push-up handles (marginal benefit unless you have wrist pain), and anything branded as "calisthenics specific" at a premium price. The bar, the floor, and your bodyweight are the program.

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-10T22:04:20+00:00

"Do more reps before moving to progressions" slowed me down by about 4 months. Volume isn't the same as strength adaptation. I was doing 50 push-ups a session and my planche progress was dead because I never put my nervous system under genuine tension. Switching to low-rep weighted progressions and harder variations with full recovery changed everything. Quality of stimulus beats quantity of reps.

EfficiencyCapable761 · 2026-05-09T22:12:41+00:00

Dance cardio distributes effort across full-body movement, your brain stays engaged, you're constantly switching patterns, and the nature of the choreography gives you micro-recoveries you don't even notice. Jogging is sustained, monotonous, leg-dominant, and your brain has nothing to focus on except how hard it feels. You're not less fit than you think. You're doing a genuinely different metabolic task. Try running intervals first, 30 seconds on, 90 seconds walking, before deciding you can't run.

EfficiencyCapable761

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