The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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Most women who go to the gym are afraid of "getting big", they want to look "toned", not "muscular", even though practically none of them will ever get past "toned" without steroids. Compound exercises with free weights are associated with bodybuilders and powerlifters, so most trainers simply don't offer them to women at all, maybe some hip thrusts in a Smith machine or some squats with a body bar on a Bosu ball. My trainer has also complained about women who avoid all leg exercises except those that isolate the glutes, even though there are compound exercises that really hit the buttocks.
Squats and deadlifts and bench presses and barbell rows and pullups are all you need if you don't have much time per session but have enough time to do many sessions. Machines are great when you are limited by a specific muscle or want to train the muscle at peak contraction or extension. For example, if your bench press (pecs + front delts + triceps) is limited by your pecs, you can follow it up with overhead cable triceps extension with a heavier weight that will fry your arms and lighter sets on the pec deck or even lighter, embarrassingly lighter, sets on the cable crossover machine that will test your pecs at peak extension.
I knew one woman that this happened to - she was stocky and spent a summer lifting weights and wound up with stretch marks and broad shoulders. It ran in the family; her brother and father were extremely strong. She's the exception that proves the rule.
Is she single?
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