If you did reveal, I don't recall it. Any chance you could give us a quick list of the "work" done?

I'm sure you won't take this the wrong way, so I'm gonna ask. Unless it's weird lighting, looks like a bit of gray on top. Why not dye it? Seems like a simple "looksmaxxing" thing one could do.

1. pm
2. I've been greying since 2015 or so but never any hairloss. I will prob get it dyed next time I go to Thailand over xmas. Chinese people generally have nfi how to deal with black/white mixed people's hair.

I posted about adding a 4th day. I'm going to avoid this. I think it's really important I keep at 3x/wk for more time. 1. My arms aren't really lagging that much anymore, just a little bit. 2. Most of the time when you have a lagging body part, it's an exercise selection/execution issue and not a training volume issue. Now that I seem to have fixed that shoulder/bicep issue, more bicep exercises have opened up that I couldn't do before. Let's see how I look next time I'm near stage lean and assess if arms are even an issue. If I'm looking fairly balanced, I could literally stay at 3x/wk indefinitely the rest of my career.

If anything, right now back/lats are lagging more than arms and since its a big muscle group I could train that 2x/wk and basically have a push/pull/legs/off/pull/off/off type rotation with a mostly horizontal pull and mostly vertical pull setup. My tris are already great and its mostly a bicep issue for arms anyway.

I'm going to see how I look when leaner and do everything I can to avoid a 4th day. I can always just go to the gym for posing/stretching/mobility on a 4th day but not training if I really emotionally wanna be there more often.

don't die your hair. I'm in favour of most enhancements on men but hair dying is almost never an improvement on what nature provides and often looks really ****ing weird

Like a lot of things, this may be one of those things were you only notice the bad jobs, and the great jobs look so natural that you don't even think about it. Also if it's someone you know, it takes some getting used to, so it seems weird to you. But someone who hasn't really seen them before wouldn't think it was weird at all.

I'm definitely no team no dye though. Can't see myself doing it. Fortunately, I'm running hot in the scalp hair department. Facial hair is a different story. Lots of gray there.

I agree with all of this, although I’m on team no facial hair.

I'm also on team no facial hair, but if I grew it out, it's probably about 20% gray at this point.

facial hair very negative EV everywhere in asia in all contexts except the miniscule amount of interactions you might have with western or eastern european women.

It’s a particularly North American thing. Women seem to actually like beards and goatees there. They don’t fly in the land of the kangaroo and it’s basically fat or ugly men with facial hair to distract from their core features

A large part of my personal decision is that Mme Melkerson dislikes it intensely. Not just on me, but on virtually all dudes. But I'm pretty sure she is in the minority on that one (at least over here).

Push

Incline db: 40kgx12, 9, 8 was really not expecting this
flat db: 30kgx14, 9
machine incline press: 2 sets, don't like it will scrap
cable flies: 8.75kgx15, 12

cable hip height side raises: 6.25x4 sets failure
db prone raises: 7.5kgx4 sets failure

triceps pushdown: 28.75x15 too heavy, 21.75x12, 8, 9
db skulls: 7.5kgx15, 12, 7, 10

Weight felt very heavy and awkward when I got into the gym. It's b/c the dbs are much thicker handles and I stupidly tried to do only 3 warmup sets at 15, 25, 35. Stupid, 15, 25, 30, 35 and just hit the 30s and 35s for 2-3 each

Looked at pics from 3-4 weeks ago. The scale weight staying the same isn't always bad (been around 96) but the progress on visuals have been quite disappointing. My fats/calories are too high. Too much flank steak. I'm having it like 3x/day minimum. Back to chicken breast after I finish off all the flank I've made recently. I'm thinking probably 3x 220-250g chicken breast+potato meals/day, then one oatmeal meal with whey per day. about 12g of butter added to each chicken meal and 17g almond butter with the oatmeal. Fruit at every meal. (apples and frozen blueberries)

I'm becoming an apple fancylad. A student's dad donated a bunch of super premium apples and I was hooked.. ordered 3 boxes of it and then another box of some other random expensive premium kind from Japan.

I learned grannysmiths lose all of their tartness as they ripen and start to taste kinda watery and lifeless.

Fat loss/visual improvements aren't great, but god damn are my workouts going extremely well

Leg extensions: 3 sets failure forgot weights tbh
Seated ham curls: 2 sets of 15 both failure
paused toes elevated SLDL: 110kgx15, 12
lying ham curls: 39x13, 7
Leg press: 3ppsx23, 15, 12 all paused

Felt very good and didn't feel super tired at the end like last week.

3 plates toes elevated paused SLDL for 15 in Q1 2024? I wonder what conventional deadlift I could put up if I got that strong... I think my best so far was 120kgx20 and 125kgx14

Pull
NG pulldowns: 80kgx20, 10, 8
underhand rows: 70kgx14, 7, 8
hammer rows: 2ppsx13, 10, 8
pullovers: 3xfail
New bicep exercise 1 set failure
cable facing away: 6.75kgx20, 2 more sets
straight bar curls; 20kgx12, 15kgx12,9,8

20 minutes posing

Minor pain in proximal bicep tendon about 2.5/10. I know that doing a full workout on monday is an easy way to give myself 3-6 weeks of impaired or off training. So monday I'll deload chest and just do 30kgx10x2 incline or something and then my normal delt+tri stuff.

I took video and I think I actually have been leaning out visually, just the spot where I take pics in my house makes me look like absolute dogshit.

Gotta work tomorrow until 1pm. One thing I love about this job is that we only work 3 saturdays per year and one of those is just a half day of no classes watching rich kids do rowing competition. At a normal Chinese school literally every holiday you end up doing makeup days on weekends and its typically normal teaching schedule, plus you come in for some saturday/sunday 1/2 days to interview prospective students. Posh British school doesn't do either of those; instead we show up to "work" by going to a scenic river to watch various rowing competitions for both students and for professional athletes.

Switching to upper/lower/upper next monday. Here was yesterday's deload workout. I am switching because I think this will help with the pec/bicep tie-in pains I have been getting. Working on internal rotation mobility has helped a lot, but I still needed to go light today and give it more time to recover and I'd like to be able to train uninterrupted in the future

Push:
Incline db: 15kgx12x3, 20kgx10, 25kgx10, 30kgx10x2
machine press: 3 sets effing around reverse grip
OHP machine: 3 sets failure but shorter rests this one actually feels great
Cable side delts: 4 sets
DB prone delt raises: 7.5kgx23, 3 more sets failure
Pushdowns: 28.75x23, 3 more sets failure with lighter weights from 17.5kg to 21kg
DB skullcrushers: 7.5kgx20, 3 more sets failure

numbers on tricep moves way inflated because of less fatigue from pressing


Here's a rough draft of new program

Upper 1
Low incline db: 2 sets failure
Machine fly: 2 sets
Pulldowns: 3 sets
Underhand bb rows: 2 sets
cable facing away dual handle curls: 3 sets
ez curls: 3 sets
Pushdowns: 3 sets
Skullcrushers: 3 sets

Lower+ delts
Cable side raises: 4 sets
prone delt raises: 4 sets
Leg extensions: 3 sets
Seated hamstring curls: 2 sets failure
Paused toes elevated SLDL: 2 sets
Lying hamstring curls: 2-3 sets
Leg press: 3 sets
(basically same as before)

Upper 2
Flat db: 2 sets
Machine press of choice: 2 sets
Single arm plate loaded pulldowns: 3 sets
Hammer machine rows: 3 sets
same biceps and triceps as upper 1 but maybe play around with different curl variations here and there


Very slight reduction in volume for back+chest, moderate increase in volume for arms. SAme volume for delts and legs.

I like 3 days a week. If I ever went to four, all I would do is split the lower into hams vs quads. Do leg extensions+ham curl+sldl on one day, then the other day do leg extensions+other ham curl+leg press. Right now lower body volume is manageable for one day.

JK lol literally a day later I've changed my mind. Sticking with 3x/wk ppl and gonna take out bis+tris and possibly delts and put them on a 4th day later. Too worried session length is gonna be too long if I do the upper/lower program above.

https://www.beautifulminds-newslette...m_medium=email

"It seems like most bestselling books on success and greatness focus on the idea that talent is overrated, that anyone who puts in a particular amount of practice and dedication can reach the same heights of greatness. These books downplay the role of genes and play up the importance of luck, opportunity, and the drive to reach high levels of expertise. These books make greatness accessible to everyone: If you just put in the work, you can be the best in the world."

Based and blackpilled. Figure out what you're genetically good at early in life. I certainly failed to do so. But it's aight because I figured it out late in life and the things I happen to be good at (foreign language acquisition, bbing, speaking in general) tend to be forgiving to older people and aren't things you need to do when you're young before its too late (oly, bball, massive cumshots)

I guess that's why parents intuitively know to give their kid a wide variety of experiences with sports/hobbies/academics because kids will probably naturally gravitate toward what they are genetically predisposed to be better than other people at. If you push something on your kids and they're acquiring it at a slower rate than their peers and not getting the dopamine hits and social status of being perceived as superior to peers, they are gonna quit really fast.

You need to do massive cumshots when you're young before it's too late? I'm hesitant to ask for details, yet I find myself unable not to. Also, giving or receiving?

what about when you're old? is it too late for me?

just sign a 'no handjob for a month' clause and make a commitment to an all dairy diet and you'll be hitting the ceiling in no time

idk where I was going with that tbh. Porn star or something I guess.

Legs
Leg extensions: 3 sets failure didn't really track reps/weight
Seated ham curl: 41.25x25, 16
Paused toes elevated SLDL: 115kgx15, 12 second set sorta hard
lying ham curl: 32x17, 12
Leg press: 3ppsx24, 12, 13

Everything paused except lying ham curl

Now that I'm fairly deep into cut the nocturia is getting bad again. 4-5x/night. Ordering some more mirabegron. Apparently its good for fat loss and acts on beta 3 fat cell receptors similar to clen without any stim effect. fat loss is going fine I just pee too much at night.

Hunger is still easy to manage. I'm taking a different approach with much lower protein and much more carbohydrates; still low fats though. Yesterday

Meal 1
200g chicken breast
270g white potato
70g guac

Meal 2
200g chicken breast
250g sweet potato
green beans
large apple

Meal 3
80g cream of rice
200ml skim milk
1 medium banana
2 scoops whey
14g almond butter

Post workout
500g green mango+chili salt

Meal 4
200g chicken breast
270g white potato
70g guac
1 large apple
~100g dates

12k steps

about 60g protein 4 meals. If I calculated this up it'd probably come out to around 240 protein 400 carb 50-60g fat.

Since I switched to all fibrous carbs I can't eat green beans too often without getting excess fiber symptoms. I think my micronutrition and minerals will be fine without any vegetables b/c I still got a lot of fruit in there and the potatoes have a lot better micronutrition than rice.

60mcg clen, 20mg yohimbine, 450-500ish caffeine. no thyroid stuff, probably never going to use it anymore.

His cutting calories are higher than your bulking calories.

My bicep/shoulder thing has been bugging me but seeing gradually daily improvement. I'm going to do horizontal pulling only on Friday: Hammer row machine, then barbell underhand row, then plate loaded low row, then selectorized machine row.

Next monday I have to work 7 to 7 so not gonna try and train that late. I'll just move push to Tuesday, which is perfect because it will let my shoulder/bicep thing heal 1 more day. I'll reduce volume of chest workout to maybe 3 sets incline, 2 sets flat, 2 sets machine fly from now and and pray that's enough to prevent and further issues with it. It hurts a lot less than the last time I overworked it. I think the seated supinated curls might have been the culprit, but cutting down on volume/frequency/overall work seems to keep yielding positive results anyway so cut chest from 9 sets to just 7 per week.

I was gonna post it in LC but obv that thread is crapped up with Melk vs Muny and the entirely unimportant question about the intelligence of Kamala vs Trump voters. The question of sweet vs white potatoes in a bodybuilding diet is literally more relevant than what they're arguing about.

I was half-joking when I suggested mass fertile aged female immigration + divorce reform being a solution to birth rates plummeting and gender conflict in the developed and even developing world. Here's somebody indirectly arguing for it much more seriously than I was and with some sort of academic rigor.

At 24-26 even without being able to articulate it, I could sort of intuitively sense that as an (at the time) average or below average attractiveness male the best way to have a good romantic life was to not even bother pursuing women from my own country. Wisdom vs intelligence. I feel like I'm high in the former and relatively average/below average in the latter.

The best part of that is that the research on "liberals" (which means libertarians in that field), on political affiliation, and voters are are substantially different, and also temporally relevant. Trump is vastly more socially liberal than Obongo for example since society is way more liberal. The idea that we should offer credit cards to blacks and women in the early 70s was an extremely liberal idea that seems pretty plain today. (Despite the overarching issues with underwriting.)

Basically you can be pretty clear on what specific groups believe at specific times, but given the extremely small samples, the temporal aspect of questions, the shifting affiliation of voters, etc etc. You end up essentially reading tea leaves to guess at small differences in the intelligence of a particular voting group, which again may not be representative of people who identify as party member, or someone who identifies as believing in classically liberal ideas. I mean Abe Lincoln didn't think that blacks and whites should intermingle and changed that view. So even his own personal views shifted dramatically despite the fact he had unfettered support for making slavery an indelible (prob illegal) part of the US constitution. But reading tea leaves is fun so here we are.

To your point, the US and UK are desolate wastelands for dating locals. People don't realize how much wealthier the US is than the rest of the world (esp to how poor Western Europe is). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispos..._capita_income So I'd say this would hold true for virtually anyone at any level of attractiveness. If you wanna bang tall hot blondes who like designer bags, you're gonna find yourself a lot wealthier in Norway than New York and there are a lot more tall hot blondes. Given my preference for white women who aren't fat, it doesn't really seem that shocking I would manage to do better in a foreign country with a lot more not fat white people per capita (larger dating pool) while simultaneously being relatively much wealthier.

I grew up in London and iirc the first 9 women I ****ed were all non English and I think 75%+ of the first 20. And I reckon actually prolly close to 75% of overall body count would be. I moved to Australia at age 28 and it was so so much easier for me being away from English women. And this despite the fact that whole areas of the north of England, it’s legitimately like shooting fish in a barrell. And I spent 5 months in the US working as a chef after college and that was about the most barren time of my entire life.

I think in general a lot of women and men are attracted to something different than they are used to - I know I certainly was/am. But also there is an entitlement and expectation in the wealthy circles in grew up around in the UK an that seems to be around all women in the US that definitely makes it more difficult and less appealing.

well glad to know I'm not the only one lol. It's such a paradox... men create the prosperity and then the prosperity makes them unwanted. more on this later

17k steps and ~35 minutes of posing practice yesterday. The rest days with higher steps and this much posing feel legitimately more exhausting than the actual training days hahaha. I only peed twice last night though without a leg workout. Bodyweight is still 'stuck' at 96kg but visual improvements still happening.

Next Monday 7-7 and then Tuesdays hence forth I have boarding duty, so I'll train push sunday. I may do a 2nd deload/medium workout rather than a full actually hard workout to make sure my shoulder/bicep is fully healed. It's already feeling very good.

Don't wanna derail this upcoming Guy rant. So will save my thoughts.