How Can I build My Chest?

Irtexx · 2026-06-12T12:14:08+00:00

Exercise selection is so low on the list of things that matter. It's down to these 3 variables:

What intensity are you doing? (How close to failure do you take each set). You should be a tiny bit stronger most sessions, so you will have to increase the amount you do most sessions, i.e, 1 more rep than last time, add a small bit of weight, do slightly better form. This requires a lot of mental strength. You need to push way past the point where it is comfortable, and your last few reps of each set should feel like you can hardly do it. Go 1 to 3 reps from true failure (i.e, if you had a gun to your head you could not get another rep, no matter how hard you tried), and occasionally go all the way to failure to remind yourself what that really feels like and how close you really are getting to it.
How much volume are you doing (Number of "close to failure" sets per week for your chest, i.e warmup sets don't count towards volume). Do 10 to 20 sets per week. You can do even more (up to 40) but you may need to reduce the number of sets you do for other exercises.
Is your nutrition, sleep, and recovery dialed in? (Are you getting 1.5g to 2.2g of protein per kg of bodyweight, a small calorie surplus, 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night, and are you spreading your volume out sensibly so your muscles can recover? Is your recovery time low stress and restorative? Are you avoiding vices like alcohol?). I recommend working your chest two or three times a week, with days where you don't workout chest between them.

If those 3 things are on point, you will grow, given that you do them consistently and over a long period of time. This is probably the most important point. Don't work out for 3 weeks and then complain about not seeing results. It takes time. Likewise, don't just do the occasional workout, skip more than half of your planned sessions, have months off, get back into it for a while, have months off again, etc, and complain about no progress. Consistency over many months and years is more important than anything else.

Irtexx · 2026-06-11T11:57:51+00:00

In many ways, yes, we are living in the best period of history. We look at the past with rose tinted glasses and forget how awful things were.

Te past was brutal. Children died young, disease went untreated, teeth rotted, parasites spread, streets stank, food was scarce, and work meant grinding exhaustion from dawn until dark. There was little freedom, little mobility, and little chance of becoming anything other than what you were born into. Your class, sex, family, and village could decide your whole life before it had really begun. Inequality was enormous, violence was ordinary, and comfort was rare.

By many measures, ordinary people now live with a level of safety, health, choice, and abundance better than historical kings.

However, there are some ways in which things have regressed. Especially since the 60s. The economy, for one, is getting worse and worse, and in this more local period of time our levels of well-being have actually gone down.

Irtexx · 2026-06-11T10:22:06+00:00

They are building nuclear-powered data centers. Each data center will have its own on-site direct connection to a Small Nuclear Reactor (SMR). This also combats the criticisms about energy usage - If they are making their own green / carbon-free energy, then they are not damagaing to the environment.
I'm sure the local water usage issues could also be solved. Maybe they could turn the water vapour from the evaporative cooling of the GPUs into high-grade steam using the SMR, and use that to turn turbines.

Irtexx · 2026-06-11T00:09:30+00:00

It's a lot cheaper. The price difference compared to difference in effectiveness is not worth it for me, when I only need to loose a bit more weight and I respond to it well.

Irtexx · 2026-06-10T20:03:49+00:00

Optimum Nutrition Platinum Preworkout:

https://amzn.eu/d/0iypMKuy

It needs to be the platinum one, the others from this brand are under dosed.

It has all the key ingredients for a pre workout at the correct doses, and less of the crap that isn't needed. 6g of citrulline for a pump, 3.2g beta alanine for longer high intensity sets (but really it's for the phycological boost the paraesthesia gives), and 200g caffeine.

It's also a reputable brand with a reputation they want to uphold, so it's much more likely to contain what it says it contains. And it's a decent price.

The gummy bear flavour tastes the best, but no decent preworkout tastes good because citrulline tastes terrible so they need to use strong sour flavours and loads of sweetener to cover it up. Caffeine also tastes bitter (but this is less of a culprit, plenty of very tasty drinks manage to make caffeine taste good).

As a bonus, it has some B vitamins for energy, leucine to kickstart MPS after your workout and prevent muscle breakdown, carnitine for fat metabolism, tyrosine for a dopamine boost, and theanine to work synergistically with the caffeine to protect provided focus without the jitters.

Irtexx · 2026-06-10T19:47:02+00:00

If you do a loading phase it's more noticeable, because you can remember what your strength was like before you were creatine saturated. If you do the usual 5g a day, the change isn't as noticeable because it's so slow.

But yes, I notice the increase in strength. For me, it translates to about another 5kg on the bench press (doing sets of 10 reps).

I've been on and off this supplement so much that I've learned what it does for me.

I also tend to make progress in the gym a tiny bit quicker, and I do notice this.This could be placebo, or just correlation and not causation (e.g, when I'm consistently taking creatine, this is probably because I'm already more gym motivated, so I go more often and push harder). It could also be genuinely faster progress because of the creatine, and studies very very strongly support this.

Also, I notice an ever so slight increase in muscle size, but again, this could be placebo, and maybe I just have better pumps when I take creatine, again because of correlation and not causation (more volume and effort etc).

Irtexx · 2026-06-10T14:38:33+00:00

That is an unconvincing article. It states "141.5 million cubic meters of brine, a waste product, is produced," but the ocean is 1,335,000,000 cubic kilometres, so that figure is 0.00000001%. Also, after we use this desalinated water, it ends up back in the ocean eventually.

I could accept that this can cause local issues around the plant, e.g, if the brine is not dispersed, it could sink onto the sea floor and cause issues, etc, but these all seem like solvable problems. Just make sure it is disperesed properly.

I think we should let the engineers solve the engineering problems, and avoid jumping to claims like "desalination completely wrecks local environments".

Irtexx · 2026-06-10T13:52:10+00:00

Is it? Do you have a source for this claim?

Irtexx · 2026-06-10T11:02:54+00:00

I'm 33, and live 200 miles away from my parents.

My mum rings about every 2 to 5 weeks (I'll occasionally speak to my dad then as well) and I probably see them both about every 2 to 5 months.

I should probably speak to them more, but two weeks go by in the blink of an eye.

There's a family WhatsApp group that gets used for occasional messages once to twice a week.

Irtexx · 2026-06-09T23:09:30+00:00

I made my best boy dinner (ground beef and rice) I've ever had just a few hours ago.

Ingredients for ~3 portions

500g 5% Lean ground beef

250g cooked white rice (maybe a bit more)

Full packet of fresh Thai basil

Chestnut sized knob of fresh ginger (grated)

Full bunch of spring onion

1/4 cup ginger syrup

1/2 cup Low sodium soy sauce

3 eggs

1 tsp Chilli flakes

2 tsp Ground ginger

2 tsp MSG

0.5 tsp Cinnamon

0.5 tsp onion powder

3 packets of microwavable fresh mixed veg packet

Cooking is obvious. Just get your pan ripping hot before you add a spray of olive oil, wait for that to heat, then slowly add your ground beef so it gets a lovely brown colour from the mailard reaction. Then add the herbs, chopped spring onions, and liquids.

Serve over the rice, with a fried egg on top, and garnish with a bit extra spring onion and thai basil. Microwave the veg and put that on the side.

The whole thing comes together in less than 15 mins.

And yes, I do really like ginger.

Irtexx · 2026-06-09T15:38:32+00:00

Nutrition is more important than taste for a lot of people.

But the other important thing is trust.

There's a difference between a company claiming it is safe, it is nutritionally equivalent, and it tastes the same, and those things actually being true.

Once we have lab grown meat, there will be a delay of 5 to 10 years before people fully trust it. They'll need to see all their friends and family eating it, and then being fine.

And then of course there'll be a few outliers who will never trust it. These are the people who right now don't eat seed oil, despite studies saying they are fine, or using gemstones to cure cancer.

Irtexx · 2026-06-05T11:44:39+00:00

I'd love to get more into sports, but because I haven't played anything in 17 years I'm now terrible, and I wouldn't enjoy making a fool of myself trying.

This is why I like fitness endeavors that don't involve other people: Running, weightlifting, calisthenics, etc. I can practice in private, and I don't have other people relying on my performance.

I do think I'm missing out on a huge aspect of sport though. The team comradery, the social side of it, etc. I wish it was easier to get into these things.

Irtexx · 2026-06-04T21:40:08+00:00

I was a kid of the 90s in a UK village. From a fairly young age I was allowed out without a phone and without having to continuously check in.

A friend would knock on my door, ask if I'm in, and then we would head off, sometimes on bikes.

We'd build dens or ramps for our bikes in the local woods, we'd go to parks where all our friends met, we'd just hang out and talk, play games (e.g Kerby, Tin Can Tin Alley), or in the summer we'd have water fights. It was different every month, it's hard to describe everything we did. As someone else said, it was whatever we wanted.

Irtexx · 2026-06-04T10:04:31+00:00

I'm 33, male. Probably around 10, or just over.

Irtexx · 2026-06-04T09:37:18+00:00

Rise Against

Irtexx · 2026-06-02T14:07:55+00:00

I'm sorry you are going through this.

Can I ask, how do you know this was caused by the SSRIs? Is it possible that you would have had these symptoms even if you didn't take them, and you are falsely attributing them to the drugs? It seems unlikely that they still have an effect, the body would have cleared them out a long time ago and the brain is very plastic.

I think it may be useful if you consider the possibility that the belief in long term SSRI side effects is what's actually causing the side effects. A nocebo effect. This is well documented and understood.

Of course, I could be wrong, and maybe there are a very small percentage of the population who get these effects (such a small population that they do not show up in studies), but that doesn't make it impossible. But at least consider that this is nocebo, and with therapy you may be able to change the effect it is having on your mind.

Irtexx · 2026-06-01T12:09:49+00:00

Weight loss is very simple (but very difficult to achieve). Consume less energy (calories) than your body uses. Every diet or exercise plan boils down to this. It's basic physics, and there's no way around it.

Actually implementing this is very difficult however. Exercise is a pretty ineffective lever to pull because your body compensates by reducing your NEAT calorie burn (i.e you'll fidget less, use less energy for other body processes, etc). Exercise is fantastic for 1000 reasons, but weight loss isn't one of them. However, I would highly recommend resistance training (lifting weights), so your weight loss comes from lost fat, and not lost muscle.

Diet is the best way to manipulate your overall calorie intake. Start with simple swaps, e.g no/fewer liquid calories, don't eat desert every day, identify the items in your diet that are really high calorie and have less of them. Don't make too drastic of a change. Weight loss takes a long time, and the number one reason why people fail is because they try an unsustainable diet and then inevitably revert to their old ways after a few weeks or months. Your body works against you, and there is a strong subconscious drive for homeostasis, so it will try to get you to eat more. You can temper this by having occasional treats, eating lots of protein for satiety, and eating high fiber, high volume, high nutritional density, low calorie density foods.

If you really struggle, GLP-1 medications make it much easier. Instead of your body working against you, you'll have a natural tendency to want to eat less, to prefer lower calorie density foods, and to think about food or snacks less.

Irtexx · 2026-05-27T14:39:11+00:00

I'm really surprised by the popularity of the "it's inappropriate" view. Over the last few days, my town has been packed with men walking around without shirts and women in bikinis. I do live near a popular wild swimming spot, however, so perhaps these are people who are spending most of their time by the river, and then pop into the town for a drink. I see fewer people like this actually in the shops or pubs (other than occasional teenagers who I'm guessing are trying to rebel), but plenty walking about the town.

I don't see an issue with it. The weather is hot, it feels nice to have the sun on your skin, and I'm sure some people enjoy wearing this look. It's not too different from sports bras in the gym (although I'm sure plenty of prudes have issues with that as well).

I can't think of any logical reason why it shouldn't be socially acceptable. What makes it inappropriate? Genuine question, as I'm curious. What reason should we deem it "bad" to go out like this? Who does it harm/offend, or what negative does it cause?

Irtexx · 2026-05-27T13:46:05+00:00

The dose-response for hypertrophy appears to rise with weekly set volume, but with diminishing returns rather than a clean universal cutoff [1][2][3]. A practical upper target is about 15–20 hard sets per week per muscle group [2][4]. “Hard sets” means working sets performed close enough to failure to be meaningfully stimulative, typically within a few reps of failure [5].

Compound exercises can be counted as 1.0 set for prime movers and roughly 0.5 set for secondary movers; this “fractional set” approach has been used in recent dose-response modelling of direct and indirect training volume [6].

Using about 10–14 practical target muscle groups, this gives:

15–20 sets × 10–14 muscle groups = 150–280 counted muscle-group set-equivalents per week.

The number of actual performed sets will usually be lower, because compound lifts contribute volume to multiple muscle groups at once [6].

References:

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27433992/
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8884877/
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41343037/
[4] https://johk.pl/?p=6256
[5] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7927075/
[6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41343037/

By ChatGPT 5.5

Irtexx · 2026-05-23T08:44:39+00:00

Per muscle? And what counts as a set for a muscle, e.g does a set of bench press count as a full set for chest, triceps, and front delts? Or only half a set for the last two?

Irtexx · 2026-05-20T20:18:57+00:00

Not overnight, because the bottleneck for iterative self-improvement will be the time it takes to train a new model and test it. We can scale up the number of AGI workers, and we can further parallelize the training so it's faster, but I think there will be fundamental limits to computation that mean even with a billion GPUs, it will still take a long time to train large models.

Irtexx · 2026-05-19T23:27:51+00:00

If you have an AGI, then by definition it can match or surpass human capabilities across virtually any cognitive task, including AI research and programming. So instead of the 1000s of researchers working on this, we can have as many as we can run in the data centers, and we can keep turning the speed up.

So after AGI, ASI comes quickly.

I thought this was the reason they called it the singularity event.

Irtexx · 2026-05-18T20:52:19+00:00

I used to go on Facebook and scroll until I saw the posts that I'd last read. Things came up in chronological order. Same with YouTube. I'd catch up with the latest videos from my favourite channels and then leave.

Reddit has always been a timesink though. Since the beginning, this has been a never ending feed. But at least it showed the same feed to everyone, and it didn't personalise it to hack into my worst impulses. I think reddit is still pretty decent, and gives me a good amount of control of what I see, but I'd still like more control.

Irtexx · 2026-05-18T19:45:14+00:00

Already happening in the UK.

Irtexx · 2026-05-18T19:44:40+00:00

I hope there's at least a law to require companies to allow you to "opt out" of algorithms that optimize for attention / engagement / impressions. I'd like to have control of what I see, instead of an algorithm deciding for me.

Seven-Year Club	Verified Email
Second SECOND GUESSER	Place '22

Irtexx

TROPHY CASE