There's no need to do them heavy for health purposes. The problem with most back pain is people do nothing. Capping them at around 100kg is probably more than enough and will also prevent other injuries.
The nice thing is that it's _very_ easy to get to a lifting weight that's considered super heavy in normie reckoning, but a warmup weight for folks that lift regularly. In other words, you can get to squatting 50kg/100lb (one 15kg plate on a side) in a couple of months where you won't even think twice about that much weight, but it's still a huge weight to be squatting. Stopping there, and not chasing the gains is a perfectly good way to work your body out on a regular basis.
The absolutely liberating feeling that comes with the noob gains is incredible. Knowing you can lift those weights, safely, without injury, was an incredible experience for me. I topped off at a hair below 100kg squats before life got in the way.
Yes, I'd say anything you can get with noob gains is fair game. By noob gains I mean everything you can get from just increasing the weight a bit every time you hit the gym.
Once you need more complicated programming to make progress, your noob phase is probably over.
For what it's worth, I got up to 170kg backsquats at about 72kg body weight back in the day. The most complicated programming I did was a weekly cycle. ('Texas method'.)
But that was only down to thighs parallel to the ground. Years later I worked more on my flexibility to be able to squat all the way down (but with less weight).
When I turned 50 I started capping my max weights because I was more worried about long-term joint and ligament health than ultimate strength. I no longer lift above two plates (225lbs) for anything, even though that is well below my deadlift, squat, etc.
It's been a couple years, now, and honestly I wish I'd made the change sooner. I haven't lost any functional strength, and my recovery is a lot smoother. Haven't had any injury since, either.
I’m almost 30 and made this change about a year ago.
I now rotate between high rep (sets of 20 rep max) and medium weight weeks (sets of 8-12 reps). My joints haven’t ached in a while and I’ve become much less prone to random muscle tweaks. Mike Isreatel has an excellent intro to high rep training [0]. It produces pumps and mind-muscle connection like nothing else!
I actually went too far into the high rep/volume training direction for several months, but realized I needed to reincorporate medium weight lifts when I started losing a bit of grip strength. I am now super content with my current rotation cycle!
I'm over 50, and I am back chasing the 1,2,3,4 plate standards at a lower bodyweight than when I first achieved it.
The only change I've made is two train only twice a week, rather than three or four times. Thinking of doing the split in Radically Simple Muscle, though, where it is 2 heavy compound lift days per week and a 3rd bodybuilding/machine day.
Similar, though I would also add shrugs or reverse flies to get those traps. If I let my traps get weak I get a lot of pain in that region, especially after long periods of sitting
For me it was the combination of deadlifts and couch stretch, because I found my hip flexors were fighting to tilt my hips forward. That combination essentially 'cured' any back pain I had. It's not a real cure because if I'm inactive it comes back but so long as I'm moderately active I have no pain
Goblet? Or is this something new? Deep goblets are great for opening the ankles and hips/SI area in ways that have helped my back. Some combination of improving mobility in other reasons prevents my back from overcompensating I guess
You can always register the domain for 10 years, and then just keep renewing it every year so you always maintain 9 to 10 years of future paid registration.
> What is the use case for music generation models?
New types of electronic instruments.
We’ve been able to use analog circuits, digital logic, and then computers to generate sounds for decades… aka synthesizers.
I would love to see synthesizers which use music generation models under the hood to create new sounds. And / or new interfaces to create different types of instruments.
There’s a lot to explore here, in the same way there was (is) lots of exploration of electronic music starting I suppose with the Theremin in the 1930s.
Surprised nobody has mentioned the PARA method. After years of ad-hoc organizing setups I started using it for both home and work (separately).
Best thing is it’s simple and gets out of the way, so I focus on what I’m trying to do and not on the metawork of maintaining some complex hierarchy. I looked at more complicated schemes like Johnny Decimal and they were not for me.
I organize my filesystem, notes app, and todo app in the same way. It works really well for me and has stopped the nagging desire to periodically optimize the system. It just gets out of the way so I can focus more.
I’m actually pretty neutral on Tiago Forte overall, not a big fan for various reasons. But his PARA system has been super useful for me. https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/
Excellent to be concerned about heavy metal exposure. Cacao typically contains lead and cadmium; the reference dose (usually defined as: The amount of a chemical a person, including sensitive groups, can be exposed to on a daily basis over an extended period of time (usually a lifetime) without suffering deleterious effects.) of lead according to EPA is 3.5 ug/kg/day and cadmium is 1 ug/kg/day. The cadmium content of cacao nibs/paste is usually 0.5-1 mg/kg and 0.025 mg/kg lead. So cadmium is the one to be concerned about here; for a 100 kg person, the RfD would be 100 ug or 0.1 mg of cadmium per day. The FDA defines the toxicological reference value for cadmium as 0.2-0.3 ug/kg, or 20-30% of the EPA's RfD. 100 grams of cacao at the high side, 1mg/kg would contain 0.1 mg of cadmium. So a daily dose of 1-2 gram of cacao per kg of body weight should be within the RfD, and 0.2-0.6 grams cacao per kg body weight would be within the TRV. It should be noted that root vegetables such as potatoes and beets also tend to contain cadmium at a rate of about 1/10 per weight compared to cacao, but I would find myself just as likely to eat 500 grams of potato or beet vs 50 grams of cacao, which would net the same amount of dietary cadmium.
So definitely don't overdo it on the cacao and eat hundreds of grams per day, but IMO no reason to avoid it completely, relative to other vegetables that can accumulate cadmium. This is not medical or dietary advice.
> I just can not fathom the level of greed I saw hiding behind people’s eyes at Google as they try to build empires.
That’s very well written. Poetic even.
> I’m in Silicon Valley to learn about and work with computers.
The industry used to be more like that. Never entirely, of course - Microsoft made a bunch of people millionaires in the 80s and 90s, turned some heads. A few others did too.
Even in the early 2000s almost none of the MBA types were going to the Bay Area after graduating.
But things changed. It basically had to. There were too many companies making too much money - and making their employees too wealthy - for people to ignore it. Zero interest rates added fuel to the fire and everyone who could jumped on it. Late stage capitalism, everyone gotta get theirs. And here we are.
The most frustrating part of working in the tech industry for me is that when it was smaller, it was a given that you would work with people who loved the tech. Now the industry is filled with people who are "in tech" but have no real interest in the technology itself, and in many cases aren't even slightly technical. They're just doing it for the money and because everyone told them it was a good field to go into.
There's so many of these people that it's really hard to avoid working with some of them. I consider myself extremely lucky because I started a business and when these people show up, I can choose not to promote them, or straight up fire them, or find some other way to show them the door. But the broader ecosystem we're in is something I have no control over, and it has clearly changed, so that it's not just filled with people who don't know or care about the tech, it's run by them (and in the long term it shows as the tech degrades).
You might be missing the dot com boom in your analysis. MBA types flocked to the tech sector looking for those IPOs, a trend that I suspect has only grown stronger since.
> I have realized I spend a lot of time trying to keep managing projects rather than doing the project itself.
> Do you use JIRA for life, or Linear, or Obsidian, or pen and paper? Yearly goals, monthly+weekly breakdowns?
The tool doesn’t matter. Just pick a simple one and be done with it. The reminders app built into your phone works great. You sure as hell don’t need JIRA to manage your life.
You are procrastinating doing the work. Sit down, make a list of everything you have to do. Then pick one thing and do it. Then, choose the next thing to do and do that. Rinse and repeat.
Eliminated my back pain and led to a bunch of other non obvious life improvements.