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Wellness Wednesday for August 23, 2023

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:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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).

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I guess it must vary by gym? I would guess there are at least as many people in the average gym using the dumbbell rack vs the barbell benches.

I mentioned above that I think bench press is a sub-optimal exercise, I probably should have specified barbell bench press. I do think there is a place for both bilateral and unilateral exercises though. A lot of real world horizontal pressing involves using both arms. I also think the average gym has 100's as the heaviest dumbbells which is not really that much above the level of all the people you see barbell benching 225. You do see 120's in some gyms, but in most gyms big enough to have them you see people benching at least 315 on the barbell.

For overhead press I am actually pretty certain I see more people using dumbbell vs barbells.

Edit: Also, which muscle do actually get more engagement in dumbbell bench? If your lats are fully engaged aren't your scapula constrained by the bench anyway? Substantial loading of the rotator cuff during the bench press doesn't sound like a great idea.