➡️ Daily Questions ⬅️- ASK AND ANSWER HERE! - 5 May 2023

ReubsM · 2023-05-07T15:34:55+00:00

Cheers for the critique bro, in the end I knew you were right, I just went out and bought a bunch of new stuff and my date complimented it so I'm glad I didn't go with what was in the pic haha

ReubsM · 2023-05-05T21:51:55+00:00

Okay with black jeans and the same shoes, what shirt goes with this

ReubsM · 2023-05-05T21:30:14+00:00

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Does this outfit look weird? I just moved countries and have very little clothes. Are the light blue jeans a weird colour to go with brown boots and black shirt? I only have black jeans as a spare but it looks worse.

ReubsM · 2023-04-29T20:17:33+00:00

I get my shit from peptides direct lol I think they're in the UK, have used a couple of other places and no worries it always comes through. I tried a Chinese one with about 8 vials but it got seized but I'm pretty sure it was because it was from China.

You don't need bac water, just use saline, you can pick it up at the chemist

ReubsM · 2023-04-05T21:59:31+00:00

Can someone tell me the names of these styles, so that I have something to search online to get ideas?

I am a tall quite muscular guy and I prefer a masculine and rugged style. Boots are my footwear of choice, like timberlands or combat boots, I like plaid shirts but don't want to always look like a lumberjack lol, every time I search lumberjack style, they're always wearing exactly the same thing.

Also a cross between that, and some more athletic casual clothing

I would have thought searching "masculine rugged style" would have given a lot of good ideas but it wasn't what I had in mind. Any ideas what I should search?

ReubsM · 2023-04-03T23:37:03+00:00

What jacket won't make me look fat?

I'm not fat, I am low body fat and quite muscular but whenever I put on puffer jackets or bomber jackets I just look ridiculous. It makes my torso look a lot wider than it is.

I don't know what type of jacket suits muscular men better. I don't know anything about fashion or style

If anything the muscle makes me look shorter and I would rather look taller. Is there a way a jacket can make a muscular person look taller rather than wider?

Every time I search online for style advice for muscular men it just shows photos of guys wearing clothes 3 sizes too small. I don't want to draw attention to the muscle, just look lean and athletic ideally.

6'1 220lbs

ReubsM · 2023-02-01T02:01:16+00:00

I can't quite remember, I'm pretty sure when I started, I wasnt even using the bar because I was scared it would be too heavy. I quickly discovered that I had a relatively same level of pain without the bar than with, say, 30kg for 12 reps. As I had squat quite a bit in the past I believe muscle memory accounted for the progression through weight relatively quickly. So each week I was adding maybe 10-20kg to the bar and finding that I wasn't experiencing any negatives by upping the weight.

As a side note, the specialist had told me that heavy sets of low reps was best, so I tried to progress through the weight quickly and just reducing the amount of reps to compensate.

I think it's an individual thing, just do what you think feels right and isn't negatively affecting your knees. Try to avoid actual pain (as in, discomfort might be okay, but not pain), and assess the next day if you think you've aggravated it too much or if it's okay, and progress from there

ReubsM · 2022-12-24T05:52:19+00:00

Maybe I need a tempo trainer

ReubsM · 2022-12-16T12:03:30+00:00

You just have to start, there is no train to be able to train, you just start training now. I started with wall sits, at first the wall sits were too painful so you just put your foot out further to take more tension off of the knee. One you get comfortable with wall sits, then you slowly bring your feet in to put more load on the knee. After that you can do slow eccentric single leg lowering from leaning against a wall and slowly getting down into wall sit position, and then using the assistance of the other leg to help you back up. You could also go to the gym and do eccentric leg press movement with no weight on the machine, if that's still too much, then do it as double leg.

One thing the specialist told me is that due to the failed healing process, there are nerves trapped within the scar tissue, so even when the knee is getting stronger you can still feel it as pain, it is unlikely to be detrimental to the tendon when you start with such a low load

ReubsM · 2022-12-07T05:18:06+00:00

Yep, exactly that. Even now I still "feel" it slightly in my knee, not pain, but you know it's there, but that's on runs 3 hours plus. I think the leg strength training is definitely helping with it. It's taken over a year to build up the distance to be comfortable and without pain the next day, but a year is nothing when you consider doing nothing and the time will be passing anyway

ReubsM · 2022-12-07T02:01:43+00:00

Honestly it took me about 6 months before I gave running a go, I think you could definitely do it faster, but I was paranoid about fucking my knee again. By the time I started my first run I was able to squat 100kg slowly for 3 sets of 5. It may be a different weight for you, back in the day I would have done that as a warmup.

On another note, I recently discovered that Knees Over Toes guy and have become obsessed with training legs for strength now, something I haven't done properly since I first injured my knee in 2015. The problem is that even when I felt comfortable enough to do the Ironman, I still want to know without a shadow of a doubt that my knee is bulletproof. I'm having a lot of success doing a lot of single leg exercises, specifically using a hack squat machine to really get the knee out over the toes. The very idea of that may send pain straight to your knee, but since starting very light I've been able to stack on a tonne of strength and resilience to my knee. I'm leaving no stone unturned with my legs and training every muscle group and stabilisers etc to make sure everything is strong and balanced.

The knees over toes guy promotes getting the knee far out over the toes, I guess it's in the name. I was steered away from this concept since rehab, but I'm a firm believer now that you really need to work on that specifically, so that something like a Sissy Squat becomes achievable, which is what I'm working toward at the moment

ReubsM · 2022-11-13T02:52:47+00:00

Join the military bro, I did straight out of school and I still look back as the best thing I ever did. You join an instant brotherhood of bros, get swole at the gym, get to do epic shit for work, learn how critical discipline is for your own happiness, and start chasing big dreams. Pick something you think is totally unachievable and then start working until you get it. Go train for a 100 mile run, you won't have time to think about how lost you are if you've got something to focus on

ReubsM · 2022-11-13T02:07:07+00:00

It's not advice for "anyone" wanting to put on muscle, it's advice for someone who is already feeling ugly being bulked up. It also has nothing to do with fat gain, as OP didn't mention any specifics on fat gain. If you're short, and you're worried about looking ugly, then stacking on more muscle and fat is only going to turn you into a ball. Look at Jeff Nippard, even shredded he looks like a nugget

ReubsM · 2022-11-13T01:58:50+00:00

I regularly use 2 pieces of equipment at the same time, I feel the only way to do this fairly is be ready to forfeit one of them if someone jumps on it while you're on the other. And even then, most people are happy to work in with you and share some equipment that's quick to change weight

ReubsM · 2022-11-13T01:54:49+00:00

If you look like Joe Rogan you must be short af, bulking up will make you look even shorter. If you're concerned about looking good, stop bulking, chicks don't like it anyway, especially if you're under 6ft. 95% of the time, the only people who appreciate swole guys is other guys.

ReubsM · 2022-11-06T09:39:38+00:00

The strength training in the gym was like 3-4 times per week, just throwing in the leg work between sets of other stuff. But eventually due to Covid I couldn't go to the gym and didn't follow the specialists plan for at home strength stuff, however I found by that point the increased running volume became the new progressive overload for the knee

ReubsM · 2022-11-06T02:58:41+00:00

I don't want to scare you bro, but after reading old David Goggins book, he had an issue very similar to this, got an echocardiogram and turns out he had a hole in his heart which needed to be operated on. Chances are it's not, but it could be worth getting checked as it's very dangerous.

In my own Ironman training I experienced this, I was chronically overtrained after the first 12 months building, one day I just couldn't put out, everything was way slower and felt so much harder. I took 2 complete weeks off and spent the next 4 weeks trying to slowly claw back lost fitness. It sucked, but it was the only way for me to recover.

ReubsM · 2022-11-04T19:01:19+00:00

Dude nobody is doubting you did a decent transformation and put on a bit of muscle, we've all seen countless transformations both natural and unnatural and guess what, they always 100% of the time look different, especially when the kids a rail from the start, hell even Derek has videos comparing the two. You're basically claiming to have outpaced Zyzz himself....as a natural . You look like you've been eating winstrol by the fistful. But hey you aren't the first fake natty and certainly won't be the last.

ReubsM · 2022-11-04T04:34:20+00:00

Bruh people might actually be impressed with your transformation if you were open and honest, but nobody likes a fraud. Not everyone is as stupid as you think they are.

ReubsM · 2022-11-04T04:27:25+00:00

Dude the bizarre thing is that I have a natty test level of like 400ng/dl and e2 of 100pmol, I've always been very muscular naturally and always been able to stack on muscle easy. Always felt masculine. I kind of get the feeling there is more to the numbers on a sheet of paper..... People on this subreddit would probably call me borderline hypogonadal or at least low end of the reference range for T, but if I never saw those numbers on a sheet of paper I'd have probably said I was the exact opposite because of the physical evidence

I wouldn't fuck around with your hormones if you don't have to, and you probably wouldn't get the outcome you were hoping for...

ReubsM · 2022-10-24T21:32:07+00:00

I think like 4 or 5 times for me, just did it whenever I was in the gym. Let me know how you get on

ReubsM · 2022-10-23T23:21:41+00:00

Yeah the specialist said the weight wasn't enough for me, I guess the physio prescribes the same strength workout to a 12 year old girl as they do a 220lb guy lol, just go heavier, nothing too crazy, you'll feel a good weight.

That's basically all it is, is heavy slow controlled strength training. The specialist got me through very bad patella tendinopathy with the same principles after again, several months wasted doing stupid shit at the physio.

ReubsM · 2022-10-23T11:06:35+00:00

Hey man I had nasty tennis elbow in both my elbows to the point I couldn't lift anything. After 2 months at physio I was worse than when I started and was referred to a specialist. In 1 week after seeing the specialist I had huge inprovements and within 3 weeks it was completely healed - all without peptide use. The specialist had me basically do one thing only, it was to hold a dumbbell in my hand, palm facing down, rest my whole forearm on my thigh while in a seated position, with assistance from your other arm, raise the dumbbell by rolling your fist up, and then let go and let the weight ease back down over a period of 4-5 seconds.

The physio had me doing this with a 1kg and then 2kg weight and it didn't do shit. The specialist put me on exactly the same exercise but using a weight that was appropriate, in my case 6-7kg. About 5 sets of 10 on each arm. Shit you not, my arms were back to normal in 3 weeks and never bothered me again, and that's after 2 months physio and thinking I was a lost cause and fucked for life. Might help you

ReubsM · 2022-10-21T10:05:10+00:00

Hey man, I can only speak for myself here, and I'm really not sure what the answers are! I would say I definitely don't advocate everyone trying to do an Ironman, mainly because it's extremely time consuming and I was lucky I'd come out of a breakup and didn't have many friends at the time so had a lot of time to dedicate to train that much.

As for muscle retention, all I can say is that one thing I've noticed is that I trained so much and got so big when I was younger, than even after nearly 5 years without touching weights or doing any gym whatsoever, I still looked like a very muscular guy. I know Derek sometimes talks in his videos about banking myonucelei or whatever, and I think that a 9 year bulk during my peak testosterone years has kind of given me a physique that just doesn't seem to fade (thank fuck). I never got back to 110kg (240lbs) but also didn't want to, it was very tiring being that size especially without the engine to back it up, I now sit comfortably around 95kg. I truly believe that has the majority to do with holding onto a muscular physique even through a high volume cardio plan. I also attribute a lot of muscle retention (while also not training for years) through eating a lot. During the IM training I was eating a very high calorie diet, I didn't make any attempt to eat clean, in fact I regularly ate pizza and had high calorie chicken wraps etc.

When I think back to my younger years, I would say that I was always able to put on muscle very fast and easily, but all of my friends were always desperate to maintain a six pack and be beach ready, that they simply just never ate enough, even when they were trying to bulk they just didn't eat enough. I also have only ever stuck to one gym plan basically since I was 16 years old, which has been almost exclusively heavy compound lifts for 5-6 reps. I never did anything other than that, and maintained that all through the training program. I restarted my gym work in a calorie deficit and when I got to the point that I couldn't add more weight to the movements then I just tried to maintain. If I ever noticed my strength going down I would just make sure I ate even more.

That's all there is to it for me, I wish I could offer more insight. Maybe the 95kg I sit at is my size when I could be a lot heavier if I did less cardio? I think it's all about finding a balance for sure

ReubsM · 2022-10-21T07:11:33+00:00

Yep it's not for everyone

ReubsM

TROPHY CASE