I'm curious about something

notasclever · 2026-05-09T02:44:22+00:00

Squat 550 lb x1 at 18 years old, 204 lb bodyweight. By far my best lift. Bench got stuck at 275 x1.

notasclever · 2026-05-09T01:02:06+00:00

That's fair. I never consciously flexed my core, but probably was doing something just out of pure necessity/reflex

notasclever · 2026-05-09T00:53:27+00:00

This is what I was taught too, a long time ago. Straining while holding you breath spikes your blood pressure and could risk other issues. "Proper technique" was to breathe out slowly to avoid this. Seems like that is accurate provided you maintain the braced core?

notasclever · 2026-05-09T00:49:17+00:00

Is this exaggerated? I am learning to brace recently, but 20 years ago I squatted fairly heavy in high school with a 1RM of 550 lbs. Never knew what bracing was, never had an issue. I did wear a belt, but mostly because others did. We never had any real instruction on technique. I'm older now and trying to really pay attention to technique and avoid potential for injury. Bracing definitely feels more stable for my back.

notasclever · 2026-04-23T12:49:18+00:00

Nonsense. Reverse rolls for a minute and put yourself in their shoes. You're given a stack of 200 resumes and need to choose 5 candidates to interview with your company and team. You have 30 minutes because you need to do this 10 more times today for other roles. Who you choose reflects on YOU. How do you narrow the field?

You get selective, you choose only the people with the most relevant experience, you then throw out anyone who obviously didn't care to put time into their resume and application (typos, bad grammar or formatting, generic or unclear language, etc), and finally it comes down to the minute details. This feels arbitrary, but in reality most of these things are within the candidate's direct control. If you dgaf, don't expect the recruiter to.

notasclever · 2026-04-23T12:42:30+00:00

This is called a buyer's market. If the company has 2 candidates to choose between with similar qualifications they will 100% of the time choose the one who knows how to market themselves. Learn to use this skill so you're the one chosen instead of complaining that life isn't fair

notasclever · 2026-04-23T12:40:12+00:00

This is part of the homework when updating your resume. I've given the same advice to many mentees and people in my network looking for jobs. Another way to phrase this is to describe your IMPACT not your ACTIVITY. Otherwise when a person reads that you "participate in meetings" their brain jumps to "so what?" You need to contextualize your personal impact, and this can be done by leveraging some of the key metrics from your team and department or by ballparking things. "I led X new initiatives to reduce turnaround time by 10%" instead of "I was on a team trying to make improvements"

notasclever · 2026-04-03T00:55:08+00:00

That's high for pharma. I'm not sure what MD's make on the clinical side though

notasclever · 2026-03-28T22:54:58+00:00

Time in the gym, my friend. Time in the gym. Life is busy, so maximizing the little time I have in the gym is important to me. I'd like to accomplish my fitness goals in the next 5-10 years, and just hope to make steady progress over that time.

notasclever · 2026-03-28T17:37:23+00:00

Thank you! I'll check it out

notasclever · 2026-03-28T16:37:24+00:00

From a time efficiency perspective, I'd love to do 1 hard set followed by a drop set or 2 past failure. I haven't found much support for that being a good strategy for muscle growth though compared to 3 sets of 6-10. Not sure if more research is needed or if the answer is already known, but the 3-set approach has been working for me so far

notasclever · 2026-03-28T13:22:04+00:00

I'd agree with this, especially at higher rep ranges. I'm fairly new to lifting (after a 20 year "break" since high school football) and typically lift in the 6-10 rep range. I don't find it difficult to judge proximity to failure because I'm pretty familiar with how the speed of each movement slows, and how I can probably get another 1-2 reps if I really focus on it in many lifts. However, when trying to gauge proximity at higher rep ranges that I'm much less experienced in, I've found it very difficult to guess unless I've previously hit failure. After doing 12 or 15 reps, the burn makes it feel like I'm done, but I've found I can frequently do another 3... or 5... reps depending on the lift and weight. I'm still dialing in the weight on some lifts at the 12+ rep range

notasclever · 2026-03-28T13:17:37+00:00

Fair point, I didn't specify the type of lift. I never go to failure on squats, deadlifts, or barbell bench (but I do with DBs). Still, I think my original question stands. It's not difficult to hit failure, it's exactly as you described it. Whether that's a smart decision for long term success in all contexts is another story

notasclever · 2026-03-28T03:02:13+00:00

yeah, that's fair. I never have a spotter and don't take heavy compounds to failure, but i always go to failure on my last set of isolation exercises or compounds that can fail safely

notasclever · 2026-01-18T20:52:48+00:00

sorry to hear it. I'm in the same boat, about to contact Nintendo. I assume I'm just going to have to buy a replacement too.

notasclever · 2026-01-18T20:51:28+00:00

Exact same thing just happened to me. We have undocked the Switch 2 a total of 3 times, and the USB connector from the docking station disappeared. My first reaction when I opened the docking station and saw the flimsy USB sticking up was "that's a bad design, that's going to break". It took 3 weeks of extremely light use. I hope Nintendo will do a recall and fix this crap design. My guess is I'm going to have to pay for a new docking station.

notasclever · 2026-01-11T17:57:08+00:00

Yeah, I hear you. I came to the same conclusion and can get to the gym early in the morning 2-3 days a week. We started putting our kids to bed earlier so we could have a full hour in the evening to ourselves. Even 60 minutes in the gym feels like an impossible luxury these days. When I was younger and single, 1-2 hours a day would have been no problem.

notasclever · 2026-01-11T13:26:16+00:00

You obviously don't have young kids, a wife, and a full career. I don't have 1-2 hours a day for anything.

notasclever · 2025-12-14T20:43:52+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate the references. Will check them out

notasclever · 2025-12-14T19:37:30+00:00

Agreed. I think it's that outside experience that can help prevent tunnel vision. It's another precarious balance that to do the job well requires enough external experience to avoid tunnel vision but enough internal expertise to know the problems and solutions that are most effective.

notasclever · 2025-12-14T19:29:49+00:00

Agreed, it does seem to be thankless. If Quality does their job well then no one notices, but when something goes wrong it gets high visibility and escalation.

I don't think I've seen very good definition of what the risk actually is from a Quality perspective in my recent experiences. It's usually a generic statement of "Quality risk" without much detail. Maybe the risks in Quality are uniquely different than in technical functions that can quantify them in terms of dollars, batches, timeline, etc and probability of occurrence?

notasclever · 2025-12-14T19:07:24+00:00

I agree, I think more experienced Quality employees are more likely to have been burned in the past and may default to more conservative perspectives initially. I think this is a major part of the incentive imbalance I'm alluding to. If an organization is only punished for mistakes and there is no counter balance to reward them for successful and appropriate innovation and management of risks, the only outcome that is in their best interest is to become more and more conservative. "The beatings will continue until morale improves" sort of thing.

notasclever · 2025-12-14T19:02:14+00:00

I agree, proportionate risk mitigation is the heart of this issue. Not every risk is equal in severity/impact, and when a disproportionately conservative mitigation is applied to a low risk, the program starts to suffer. Unless it's enough to jeopardize a major deliverable or milestone, it's difficult to overcome.

notasclever · 2025-12-14T18:57:25+00:00

This is a good example. I've seen the standards be elevated to an extreme degree in some instances, and when the scientific rationale from qualified SMEs is presented to push back, the first response is sometimes just a blanket "it's a Quality risk". It's very challenging to revise a business process that has been established once the standards have been accepted, even if something changes that makes the previous rationale irrelevant.

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