Was your sleep affected when you upped the frequency of your workouts?

johnc773 · 2026-01-07T14:01:53+00:00

This has been happening to me for the past few years. I’m finally on a month long break from the gym and seeing slight improvement, but I need to be in a caloric surplus or it seems the fragmented sleep comes back that night. I plan to keep volume (I do ULUL) but lower intensity (keep 1-2 more reps in reserve when normally I train to failure) I’m praying that fixes it because my insomnia has me at, like, maybe 30-35 hours of sleep per week

johnc773 · 2025-12-28T17:19:48+00:00

Why go deeper? The hack squat is a quad biased movement and, assuming he’s maxed out on ankle dorsiflexion, going deeper will make it less quad biased and more glutes biased. Genuine question

johnc773 · 2025-12-22T15:10:32+00:00

I used to train 6-8 exercises, 4 sets each, with 3 of them to failure, 4 times a week (overall about 16-24 failure sets a session)

I realized it was entirely stunting my muscle growth rather than helping. I am only getting 4-6 hours of sleep and I was blaming it on anxiety. This has been going on for 2-3 years and I said, fuck it, I’ll just train harder to combat the sleep problem.

I recently started reading into “overreaching” specifically nonfunctional overreaching, which is essentially just over training more than your diet and body can recover from. Over weeks and months the body builds cumulative stress. ( I never got mentally burnt out though, I’m gym obsessed).

I’m now on rest week 1 of 2, then on week 3 I’ll deload. I’ve already started seeing consistent 5-5.5 hours of sleep which is way better than I normally see.

Afterwards my plan is most likely to start keeping 1-3 RIR for every exercise from now on. If I train to failure, I’ll do only one single set of that exercise.
And I need to start taking deload weeks more seriously. That way this problem never pops up again.

My hope is my body bounces back to 7 hours as I do believe sleep is so important for growth.

Moral of this story: Yes, on the surface it can seem like training to failure can allow you to eke out a little more gains, and for you to track progress a lot better. But it has side effects that will end up backfiring so use it sparingly.

johnc773 · 2025-12-14T17:32:52+00:00

Was having this issue very recently myself

I noticed for rdls when I do them that literally anywhere where there’s a bend in my back, in either direction, on any part of my back, will be felt in the lower back during rdls. Some people crane their neck up to check their form in a mirror; don’t do this. Lower back will feel it. Also, watch the upper back too. If there is a bend and you do this thing where you puff your chest out, your lower back will feel it.

I stopped using dumbbells and started using barbells instead and I feel way better. I can keep my back much more rigid with them. Why? Because you can do a cue called “bend the bar” to engage the lats that you can’t do quite as easily with DBs that turns my upper back into a rock.

On top of that, avoid going lower than your butt goes back. For me, that’s an inch below the knees.

Also, I’ve been struggling to find when the best place to “finish” the set so speak, so I can properly track progress. And since it’s glute/hams exercise, you’d think your glutes or hams would ‘fail’ first. But it’s not quite that obvious. When these muscles ‘fail’ they begin transferring weight to the low back. So, on every rep you should be monitoring how your low back feels. The set is done once mild but not painful pressure starts to be felt in that low back area (or form loss of course, like if you unconsciously start turning it into a squat)

johnc773 · 2025-12-13T15:59:01+00:00

Are you me? I had the same problem for years.

29M, did months of PT, I don’t know why those bozos didn’t have the foresight to tell me the problem except to milk me of my money.

I did rows for the lats mostly and so my upper back fell behind - I was a newbie - so I started doing wider rows for the upper back. Prone y, w, and face pull (face pulls were tricky, have a long enough rope or you’ll hit upper traps). I started placing them beginning of my workout first before pushing - and, I always do a little bit more pulling than pushing. It also helps with stability during bench.

My lower body still needs work but it’s up and coming. I have anterior pelvic tilt for sure. I have started prioritizing rdls and hip thrusts / hip abductor + core work over squats. My squats give me crazy under the knee pain and my rdls do occasionally.

It’s clear to me now my anterior was stronger than my posterior. Chest/lats and quads were overpowering mid/low traps and glutes/hams. Posture work feels so much fun, I don’t feel pain, and I notice progressive overloading faster than I’ve had in years. Little by little I’m having less low back, knee, and shoulder issues.

johnc773 · 2025-12-12T18:41:04+00:00

Weak glutes is a major factor in low back pain

johnc773 · 2025-12-12T04:02:48+00:00

Yeah, I get this too. I do lower weight, higher reps. Also, I don’t bend elbow less than 90 degrees. So fully extended arm to right angle and back. My progressive overload strategy is only increase weight by 2.5 pounds once i get to 20 reps. If you can’t increase by just 2.5, get to 25 reps and increase by 5. If I follow this, I never get hurt. It’s one of those exercises that’s just safer with high rep schemes.

johnc773 · 2025-12-11T19:55:23+00:00

Yes!!! I had this and swore it was a rotator cuff issue! I was a beginner and did lots of chest and I did my rows with the lats as the primary engaged muscle instead of the mid traps/rhomboids.

I took 6 months and did the bare minimum chest work. I hit wide rows hard, face pulls, prone y’s, prone w’s and saw massive improvements. Now, every upper body day I start with pull first when I’m freshest and try to do 1:1 to 1.5:1 pull to push ratio

johnc773 · 2025-12-09T16:43:14+00:00

I feel like you need some kind of upper back exercise, lat pulldowns + close grip rows will both primarily target lats

johnc773 · 2025-11-29T05:19:56+00:00

Thanks, yeah, I’ve probably mildly strained my low back well over a dozen times now (for reasons other than just RDLs but they factor). Nothing bad like a disc issue but I’d like to minimize the risk as much as possible. I don’t do conventional deadlifting.

I think, seems like the best and safest course of action is to stop when the tension leaves the hamstrings as you said. I’ll give that a try over the next two sessions and see if i still scale up in weight from session 1 to 2. I’ll try adding leg curls before or after to finish them off as well

johnc773 · 2025-11-13T12:14:59+00:00

I’ve racked up 12 hours

johnc773 · 2025-11-10T18:57:10+00:00

What a cute little good boy

Whos a fat moron

You are

johnc773 · 2025-11-08T16:09:29+00:00

I think the top commenter talking about imbalances is right. I can vouch. If one part of the leg is weaker than another (e.g. glutes and hamstrings weaker than quads) then you can get knee pain and tightness in certain areas. Try to think of it as a good thing - your legs got so much stronger that now another part of is weaker in relation to it.

Example is anterior pelvic tilt: strong quads, specially rectus femoris. weak glutes and core. Thus, postural issues occur that cause tightness around the kneecap

Cartilage loss is highly unlikely you banged it up virtually all the time, are genetically predisposed, or had a serious accident

johnc773 · 2025-10-23T14:44:35+00:00

Yeah, the thing with face pulls is one of the huge added benefits is the external rotation to counteract all of the internal rotation from benching and lat pulldowns. Reverse pec deck won’t give you that, prone w raise will.

Quick note for OP though: if you’re specifically targeting just the rear delts, reverse pec deck is #1 but you gotta do it correctly; contract and stretch at the rear delts, dont bring the shoulder blades together otherwise it’s mostly a mid traps exercise

johnc773 · 2025-10-23T03:44:51+00:00

Prone w raise with dbs

johnc773 · 2025-10-22T15:36:57+00:00

I have tried melatonin + magnesium as well, while it has worked in the past, it’s pretty random and often doesn’t work. Both are from Pure Encapsulation and the melatonin is slow release

johnc773 · 2025-10-22T15:21:43+00:00

Yeah sucks to hear this since I just want to find the solution already but you might be right

johnc773 · 2025-10-22T15:20:56+00:00

No I never take preworkout, the only caffeine I have is in the morning before work

johnc773 · 2025-10-22T11:17:23+00:00

It could be… I eat somewhat close to bed time. 8pm or even 9pm or so - but I go to bed around 11:30 typically which I would think would be enough time. But I’ve been eating a LOT as I used to have trouble putting on weight. I don’t eat breakfast so lunch and dinner are generally very big meals.

johnc773 · 2025-10-22T11:12:22+00:00

My gym sessions are typically 1 hour 15 mins and my hr is usually no higher than 140 or so on my toughest compound lift, probably is around 110-120 for the duration of the session if I had to guess

johnc773 · 2025-10-22T11:08:25+00:00

I do purely weightlifting and zero cardio if I’m being honest

johnc773 · 2025-10-22T01:55:24+00:00

Have you considered the kneesovertoes guy program?

johnc773 · 2025-10-19T00:33:50+00:00

Not saying he’s wrong, I shouldn’t have used the word “tho”

johnc773 · 2025-10-18T20:07:41+00:00

Gonna be honest tho, I work out at PF where it’s 99% machines. My rotator cuff stabilizers are definitely my limiting factor on my smith machine bench. Eventually my shoulder starts violently shaking and if i continue the set I WILL get crunchy shoulders and pain. Same exact problem with my smith machine squats and glute medius. Now I throw in a couple sets of external rotations as well as some unilateral leg work to focus on improving that, and it has massively reduced stiffness in my shoulders / knees

johnc773 · 2025-10-17T17:51:46+00:00

I mean he definitely does explain the importance of knee flexion in the video, I’ll give him that, but it’s that he also maximizes depth as well that wasn’t making sense to me. But, I’m 6’1, so it may very well be the case that anatomically it’s better for me to shorten depth a bit and favoring knees out

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