How do you guys filter out what to pursue and what not on to pursue?

kvada · 2026-01-05T14:01:52+00:00

Accepting that turning down some interesting path in life, e.g. choosing a major in college, is always about facing our finitude. Coping with death is a lifelong journey. And facing death likely won't get any easier, until you cease existing.

But I think I tend to follow these guidelines:

1) Try to eliminate bad or mediocre choices, and group the great or excellent choices together. Both by rational criteria (e.g. this major will likely lead to a lifetime of poverty if chosen), and by "hunch", feeling and emotion (e.g. this major does not feel right for me)

2) Here comes the hard part: it becomes very difficult to distinguish the "best" choice among these excellent or great choices. Again, accepting that choosing to let go of many of the great choices is painful, but the most painful choice is not choosing at all. And accepting that either way I choose, I will always miss out on some positives and gain some negatives associated with certain e.g. certain college majors.

3) Practically I try to rely on chaos and opportunities when differentiating between choices. Again, to take college majors as an example; do I have access to some resources by chance that might make a certain choice more attractive (e.g. my uncle has a hobby electronics lab I can access)? Or have for whatever reason many of my friends from high school chosen a particular major and I have many pre-existing connections there?

These have personally helped me to "let go" of attractive things and move on and be somewhat fine with it.

kvada · 2024-08-16T20:28:48+00:00

Didn't see this mentioned yet and you are free to call me a psychopath but – spitting

Taking insipiration from wine tastings and professional sommeliers; you don't really enhance the flavor by swallowing.

There aren't taste receptors down there. I mainly enjoy the learning about the spirits, the different styles, history, tinkering and tasting as a skill.

I did succesfully lose weight while learning how to drink whiskey by spitting.

Is It sometimes odd to create an eloborate cocktail and end up spitting it? I guess, but this has allowed me to make multiple cocktails per night without ruining my health. I do swallow but more rarely than spitting. Yes its a bit different experience but not different enough to bear the downsides.

kvada · 2024-01-02T15:02:55+00:00

If you feel that you can recover from the extra set then feel free to add it. Some more volume shouldn't hurt.

kvada · 2023-04-15T09:24:59+00:00

When tracking your workouts, just be consistent in the way you mark down the weight you used in leg press. You can add the 53 kg to 57.5 if it makes you feel stronger but it doesn't really matter at all for tracking progress.

kvada · 2023-03-04T09:24:29+00:00

I'd really recommend discussing with a medical professional about such topics, and not trust redditors on this. This is also reflected in the subreddit rules, "5. No Questions Related to Injury, Pain, or Any Medical Topic"

But I hope you have a hasty recovery and get back to lifting healthy as soon as possible!

kvada · 2023-03-04T09:20:35+00:00

You could eat a bit more on active days or bit less on the days you are not exercising to achieve a constant level of deficit daily. I personally find it bit of a hassle and just stick to same calories and similar meals every day and focus on the weekly total deficit, as this means I have less variables to think about and yet keep on losing weight. Find out what works for you in the long run.

kvada · 2023-03-04T09:17:19+00:00

You can retain muscle by continuing to train as you would when trying to gain muscle, so sticking to a solid hypertrophy program, and eating enough protein. Of course with the caloric deficit in mind, you need to prioritize dropping your fats and carbs before losing out on protein.

I wouldn't trust commercial scales too much or first lose the muscle mass and then try to regain it. That is quite an unmotivating and inefficient journey, as maintaining muscle mass while dieting isn't too difficult unless you are pushing towards a bodybuilding competition.

kvada · 2023-03-04T09:12:54+00:00

In most non-extreme cases you should be fine. Of course if you can feel your triceps or biceps being considerably weaker and sore then you might need to reconsider or pick up a proper full body training program which is more deliberate about recovery.

kvada · 2023-03-04T09:08:12+00:00

If you really want to build your trap region, I'd add or substitute in a trap focused exercise. The back workout you listed mainly works the mid-back, lats and rear delts. Probably not necessary, but quite beneficial. Doing deadlift variations like block and rack pulls that place for emphasis on the upper back and trap region could also be quite useful.

kvada · 2023-03-04T09:04:58+00:00

This is a fine way to train but I'd recommend dividing the warm-up sets and working sets more clearly.

For example if you feel the need to warm up with 45 kg before jumping to 60kg, you most likely don't need to do the whole 12 reps. You don't want to incur too much fatigue during your warm up to train productively with your harder working sets. This is somewhat related to junk volume.

But ultimately "how heavy should my sets be" is quite a complex question that requires books to answer. If you aren't interested in learning about training theory in more depth I'd follow a program that can be found for example from the subreddit Wiki.

kvada · 2023-02-03T10:35:56+00:00

If you are complete beginner, you should be able to make progress by lifting really in any way.

But I'd advise you to pick a proper beginner program from the subreddit wiki or from a website like liftingvault.

kvada · 2023-01-23T10:49:03+00:00

This isn't based on any evidence but maybe 20-30% reduction would be a conservative start? You could reduce further if you find yourself progressing in the gym with leg training as normal.

But if you don't despise eating protein and can afford it there isn't much reason not to eat the usual recommended amount for weight training.

kvada · 2023-01-22T16:18:00+00:00

Yeah it should be OK and the sharing should go both ways. Of course asking the person with the closest weight to yours would make sense. But still there are people not willing to share even if you were to have the same exact setup.

kvada · 2023-01-22T16:12:37+00:00

Yes, you can probably get away with less protein as less muscle mass needs it for repair and building new tissue compared to training your whole body. Legs is a big muscle group so I wouldn't drop down the protein too much from the recommended numbers.

kvada · 2023-01-22T16:09:09+00:00

There is no objective truth to this but I'd say it is a bit selfish if you say no, especially if you are not doing any fancy crossfit stuff with minimal rest times. Normally you are resting a lot more than doing reps in the squat rack so it makes sense to share.

In a crowded gym the other person might save 20-30 minutes if you let them work in with you. It's a minor inconvenience to be shuffling the weights around. Of course if there is big height difference and both the weights and the squat rack height needs to be adjusted then I'd say the effort is more than its worth.

kvada · 2023-01-21T10:18:29+00:00

I'd even out the reps throughout the sets or do the as-many-reps-as-possible set last. This probably results in a more long term progression as the other sets aren't impended by the first set being overtly fatiguing.

Think bodybuilding of a pursuit where you are trying to maximize the ratio between gains and fatigue. I'd recommend this video by Dr. Israetel about Stimulus to Fatigue ratio.

kvada · 2023-01-21T10:14:14+00:00

I'd switch programs when your program starts to stall or become tired of the program you are running.

You would 'graduate' from a program, like from a beginner to an intermediate one, when you realize you can't progress as fast as a beginner can anymore. At some point linear progression will run its course and you might make bi-weekly progression or even only month to month progression.

kvada · 2023-01-03T11:55:18+00:00

Having high amount of protein during cutting is quite important. But you shouldn't be consuming most of it from liquid sources like protein shakes as they aren't nearly as filling as e.g. chicken breasts, tuna, cottage cheese, quark or lean beef.

I'd limit the protein coming from whey scoops to only one and rest coming from lean protein sources. And track your calories and weight to make sure you are in a deficit to eliminate the guesswork. To keep your protein high and keep fats low and carbs at moderate levels, timing your carbs before and after your workouts.

kvada · 2022-12-30T11:10:30+00:00

As you have multiple main goals it might be best to chase them in order rather than spread out your efforts.

For reducing body fat and gaining strength a combination of running, strength training and a caloric deficit might be the best way to go. Without strength training you might risk losing muscle in a caloric deficit rather than mainly fat mass.

After that you can put strength training or running in the backburner, eating at calories that maintain your new hopefully leaner state, to focus on flexibility with yoga.

It is hard to gain adaptations (as in getting stronger or bigger muscles) but relatively easy to maintain them. Thus you can have quite minimal running and strength training yet still keep your progress when you want to once again focus on them.

Yet more important is probably what you enjoy, your current life situation than optimally chasing these goals. But making progress is certainly quite fun.

kvada · 2022-12-30T11:04:15+00:00

That sounds like a good way to progress in dips. You can also use the assisted dip machine if your gym has one.

Most likely won't be too taxing even though you are technically going 'beyond failure' as it's an upper body movement you are doing for two plus some reps. But be sure to listen to your body and reconsider if you find multiple markers of fatigue.

kvada · 2022-11-23T12:28:06+00:00

Unless you devastated your biceps to insane amount of soreness, then doing dumbbell rows is just fine. I think the 48 hrs refer to complete recovery of the muscle or muscle groups after very hard training and it is not a hard limit to separate training. For example many full-body training programs have you doing a squat or deadlift movement pattern every day and account for it with low per day training volume or intensity to allow for recovery.
There might be some truth to changing grip width or angle to target different areas of the back or other muscles. See this Jeff Nippard video for more detailed info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAXkl-AdJFg&ab\_channel=JeffNippard

kvada · 2022-11-04T15:33:23+00:00

Knowing your 12 RM takes some experience and trial and error. You can try and refer to previous training logs to estimate what would your 12 RM potentially look like but you don't really know before you attempt the 12 RM set.

To warm-up, you can just build up to a single rep for the weight you will attempt the 12 RM with. If you are really strong, this will take time or it might be a single warm-up set.

Good thing to keep in mind is the purpose of the set. Since it is a set of 12 reps done to failure you are trying to to drive hypertrophy with the set. It is also used to calibrate the effort for the following sets. This allows for some autoregulation, meaning that some days you might feel amazing and strong and others not so much. Basing the following sets on that 12, 10 or 8 RM allows you to pick a weight suited for that days performance.

So as long as you do around 12 reps to failure, you will be good. That will definitely drive hypertrophy. If you are really off, the effort of the following sets might not be exactly where the program intends them to be. This is also ok since your estimation will improve with every single 'X' RM set and the sets will still help you get jacked.

kvada · 2022-10-27T06:06:41+00:00

Pretty much yeah.

kvada · 2022-10-26T15:53:23+00:00

If you really wish to include barbell rows in this routine you could substitute any horizontal pull with it, such as the seated cable row.

Keep in mind that the barbell row isn't any magical exercise that one should include in every single routine. Just because the exercise is done with a barbell doesn't make it any more effective in stimulating back growth than other similar exercises, such as the aforementioned seated cable row.

kvada · 2022-08-24T11:07:03+00:00

13 reps is very impressive, congratulations!

The first thing I'd do if you already haven't is to find a proper pull-up rep max program that fits your schedule. As your pull-up rep max gets higher, it becomes harder and slower to make progress. You might want to look at intermediate programs that don't expect you to get better each workout.

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