Guy’s Fitness Guide

Instead of mocking NPR for briefly pausing its “Ozempic is a miracle” coverage to publish a confused story about boys exercising too much, citing studies the very effeminate author clearly didn’t read, and using a Swedish illustrator with US taxpayer dollars, I chose a better use of time: laying out practical fitness advice for those who want it.

It’s about 10 pages long. Each section begins with a tl;dr, a rant, then ~related tips.

0. A Strangely Touchy Subject

Health advice is emotionally loaded. Context matters more than applause or trends.

Someone dear to me once complained that I didn’t react to them going to the gym with applause. They posted a cute story benching, showed it to me proudly, and expected sheer validation. Instead, I suggested they learn to do one pushup. Then five. Then eventually twenty. Only then should they worry about benching again.

That reaction did not go over well.

A few days earlier, I was training when I noticed two strangers doing lateral raises with their arms flared out like eagles mid-flight. The form wasn’t great. I wanted to say something. But people are vulnerable at the gym, esp beginners. It takes years of sweat, embarrassment, and preworkout to stop caring about strangers’ judgment. Instead of giving advice, I stood nearby and demonstrated better form myself, the so-called “chicken dance” version, hoping they might glance over and notice.

I didn’t want someone getting hurt by advice. Especially not by my advice.

People love giving advice. They just don’t like receiving it. I learned this on dates with dietitians. Each insisted their approach was “the way.” I nodded politely and asked each one the most important question in nutrition: eggs.

Half insisted every morning should start with eggs, the perfect protein that would keep you full all day.
Half insisted veganism was essential and eggs were basically poison.
Half insisted eggs were fine but only in moderation and especially not if you have high LDL.

They could not all be right. A few even contradicted themselves.

Context matters. Genetics, calorie expenditure, stress, sleep, seasonality, hormones, and psychology all matter.

Health advice is a strangely touchy subject, and that touchiness actively worsens public health.

Tips:

1. Every body and brain is different.

2. Half the battle is scheduling (when and what to train, when and what to eat, when to recover).

3. Demonstrate before you correct.

4. Find your balance of muscle confusion and routine. You need both.

5. Consider where aches build one or two days after training. Find additional time in the week to train that extra-fatigued area. In the short term it will add pain, but in the long term it will prevent injury.

6. Weightlifters: Before bench pressing, do close grip lateral pulldowns. During bench pressing warm up relaxed, with a flat back. As you progress up in weights, your arch may need to increase, and your feet may go further back. Also, consider doing

7. Weightlifters: For bicep curls, use dumbbells. If your back shakes at all, do curls seated. For all other exercises where you would use 50 pounds or less, use cables or bands. That includes cable reverse flies, pulldowns, shoulder and weighted ab exercises. I’ll take cable reverse flies over dumbbell pullbacks any day.

1. Gym Etiquette

Gyms are emotionally charged spaces. Respect others, let people get their feelings out, and focus on your self.

The gym puts some in a weird mental state. There is always someone bigger and sexier than you. There is always better form. Beginners feel like they’re being watched, and, since I’m honest, they are sort of right, sort of wrong.

Everyone judges. But everyone is also focused on themselves. So aside from those who are over-the-top weird, people are noticed, but then quickly ignored and forgotten.

People feel exposed. This is why unsolicited advice often backfires. Even correct advice can feel like judgment.

What’s important is focusing on yourself. Only look at others to see if you can help them out.

Personally, I love hearing the screams of agony and ecstacy over my slam metal and gabber music.

I find that training grounds (gyms, tracks, climbing walls etc.) are among the few places adults can physically express childlike emotion in a socially acceptable way. Lifting, running, stretching, pacing, and even dancing are outlets to connect with youth. Sterilizing that environment makes gyms worse.

One might say it’s all paradoxical: you should be respectful of others, while also not caring what they think of you. But I don’t think that’s contradictary. It just points to the Golden Rule and not caring about other’s icks.

At gyms, people should be friendly, but only with a wave or a few words. Keep conversation high energy, positive, a bit giddy, and, most important, short. Leave the long talks to the sauna, post-training or for when it’s invited.

Tips:

1. Put your weights back where they belong. This is non-negotiable.

2. Gyms should be friendly, and you can give advice, but expect that it may not be welcomed.

3. Emotional release is part of training, not a distraction from it.

4. If you’re focused on yourself, you won’t notice anyone judging you.

5. Give people physical and visual space whenever possible. If you have to stare, don’t get caught.

6. Who cares if grunting, singing and dancing is someone else’s ick?! If it helps you train harder and you’re not interfering with others, do it. I love seeing someone shake their booty between sets.

7. Breathing matters. I use different breathing patterns constantly, including shallow breaths during volume work and deep, deliberate breaths right before maxing weight.

Also, this is a personal preference: Don’t flirt at the gym. It comes off as desperate. Also, it makes it weird for the rest of us who just want to be friendly, without giving the wrong impression. My only gym ick is unwanted flirtation.

2. Supplements

Most supplements are optional. Try them, track your results, and stop buying it if they don’t give real results.

People spending money on tripods at the gym may insist I’m not qualified to give advice. It’s true that fitness doesn’t dominate my thoughts or personality. It doesn’t have to dominate yours either to get strong and healthy.

I bench roughly twice my body weight, my squat is getting back there, I can do muscle-ups and flagpole stands, and I constantly receive both insults and compliments about my cannon-sized arms. Shirt shopping is annoying. Despite having a physical disability (KT Syndrome), I’m strong. I think my practical advice matters more than credentials.

Anywhoodles, nobody cares about experts anymore [/j]. So here’s anecdotal supplement take:

Amino acids did nothing for me. I tried them twice. I stopped. I will never spend money on that snake oil again. You get better amino acids in your diet or protein powder,.

Omega-3s made me pudgier. Shocker: fats made me fatty. I understand the argument that a fish-y oil aids recovery, but I don’t like love handles. So if you’re skinny and never eat fish, go for it. It’s just not for me.

Creatine: I’ve bought it twice in 15 years. At 18, daily dosing caused water weight, short-term strength spikes, and Michelin Tire Baby aesthetics. At 32, I tried again, this time dosing once weekly, three hours before training. That worked better. Because I’m scared of damaging my filtration organs, it will be years until a 3rd go.

I’ve never used gear, testesterone or viagra. I’m not competitive, afraid of needles, and enjoy having hair. If you assume everyone big is on steroids, you’re not trying hard enough. Just work harder and do what’s best for you.

I don’t like protein bars. They’re overpriced candy.

I’m not buying mushroom coffee, seaweed gummies, small doses of lithium, collagen, turmeric, or other trendy miracles. That said, sometimes buying dumb stuff makes you happy. So while I wish I could say “save your money, kids,” my real attitude is more like: “Yay Capitalism! Gimme gimme gimme! Protein Cream? Kombucha? I want it!”

Many people also swear by massage guns, cupping therapy, sauna sessions, ice baths, and other recovery tools. Plenty of jacked people use them. There are benefits. None are essential, except, in my opinion, foamrollers. Most people, myself included, can’t afford regular massages to get knots out. We use foamrollers to unlump our lumps.

I find straps, wraps, gloves and other items to comfort lifting are for people who don’t do enough calisthenics. I’ve also never used a lifting belt, but understand they’re essential for the type of people who risk getting a hernia.

What do I buy? I buy psyllium husk. It improves shake texture and, more importantly, later poo texture. I’m addicted to caffeinated preworkout, which has the B3 (niacin), B12 and other junk I’d otherwise take in drops and pills. I take TMG in the day and magnesium before bed. Magnesium helps with sleep quality, and that matters more than sleep quantity.

Practical tips

1. Only rebuy supplements with noticeable effects. The industry is setup to tell you every amino acid powder is going to make you feel and look better. As someone who ghost wrote articles on snail creams, I can not begin to tell you how easy it is for the ‘health and wellness’ industry to sell snake oil.

2. Respect cycles. I require preworkout more than I should, but I try to workout raw every once in a while. The longer you go without a pause in taking preworkout, creatine, viagra, gear, the more damaging.

3. Buy protein powder flavors that mix well. I love marshmallow or cake batter, which taste great with frozen fruits or some powdered peanut butter. Chocolate flavored supplements always disappoint.

4. Buy a foam roller. Every single jacked person I know uses one. I use it in between heavy lifts.

3. Cals In, Cals Out

Weight loss obeys math. Diets differ because people do.

There is no one-size-fits-all diet because bodies differ. Experimentation is unavoidable.

The only hard rule of weight loss is calories in, calories out. Drugs, hormones, metabolism, muscle mass, genetics all matter, but they don’t override the f-ing law of physics.

The Twinkie Diet (Mark Haub, 2010) showed that calorie restriction alone can cause weight loss even with junk food. It was miserable and not healthy. Haub himself said he’d never repeat it. But, yes, you can lose weight eating junk, so long as you stick to, let’s say, 1800 calories a day. Sounds like hell to me.

Sugar and sweetener debates are mostly noise. I’m not super convinced that there are “good sugars” and “bad sugars.” More likely, sugars and sweeteners are all bad. As far as I’ve read, monkfruit is the only non-cancerous sweetener. But after a few days of using it, monkfruit starts to taste like cancer. If you want to be supermodel skinny, going from Cola to Diet Cola is not going to cut it. Also, you can eat a banana (“sugar stick”) and not die.

Carbs are sugars. Avoiding sugar means avoiding carbs. Do that responsibly if it works for you. Virtually every other diet is just a creative way of restricting carbs.

Natural vs processed food is mostly ego. Frozen food preserves nutrients. Non-organic is fine. Chefs use it. So can you.

Intermittent fasting works for me. Keto hospitalized someone I know, while helping a roommate lose 50+ pounds while eating an ungodly amount of pork. I’m not vegan, but animals are adorable so I personally factor their lives into diet and eat more chicken (uggos) than beef (cuties) and lamb (so adorable).

Tips

1. If one diet were perfect, it would be the only one. Your best diet is unique to you.

2. Listen to your body, not trends.

3. Eat carbs responsibly. You will get hospitalized if you lack nutrients. You need carbs for long distance training. But some people have enough fat reserves that they can avoid sugar and carbs indefinitely.

4. Focus on psychological and body feedback like hunger, energy, mood, and, believe it or not, acne.

   1. I get acne breakouts if I overdo sugar, but don’t if I sugar responsibly.

5. Someone looking skinny or fat is not a great determinate of how healthy they are. Stamina is.

6. Blood tests may identify problems you didn’t know you have, like high sodium levels, and save your life.

4. Have a Plan

Goals dictate training. Enjoyment dictates consistency.

Knowing whether you want functional strength, aesthetics, or performance matters. Plans exist so you’re not guessing every session.

Progressive overload is the backbone of training. That means gradually increasing difficulty over time: slightly more weight, more reps, better control, better range of motion, or less rest. You don’t jump from 40 to 80. You add small increments and let weeks do the work. You wait til you can do 5, 8, 12, 16 or whatever number of reps before going up.

Rest is part of the plan. Muscles grow during recovery. Training hard without resting is dangerous. There’s countless books about how speed records, especially amongst runners, were only broken when athletes learned to rest more.

In addition to rest, there’s a concept called “deloading” where you deliberately under-train. You just can’t go 110% every week. You need to go 90% every few months so joints, tendons, and your nervous system catch up.

Trainers are for motivation and accountability. Licensed physical therapists beat jacked influencers every time.

Drop sets and switching routines helps you understand fitness psychology. Eventually you should understand the difference between failure, fatigue and “fuuuuh that hurts!” And that brings me to a bunch of car analogies.

Practical tips

1. Consistency is key.

2. Write your goal down. I don’t mean on a daily basis, though many do that. Just have some goals.

3. Use progressive overload.

4. Schedule rest days or a rest week. Deload when fatigue accumulates.

5. When you’re starting off, you’re going to get big gains. Then they will stop. This is normal.

6. When you hit a wall, focus on dropsets.

5. The Car Analogies

Treat your body like a good car owner treats their car.

Bodies are like cars. Food is their fuel. Supplements are their NOS. Training is driving style.

You don’t fill up for a short drive. If you’re going from your home to somewhere nearby, you don’t need to eat a ton.

You fill up before a long drive. And you plan it. Unlike cars, humans need time to digest.

Preworkout too early is like boosting too soon. Delay caffeine if possible. Warm up first. When you really need that boost is when you hit the caffeine.

Maintenance matters. Blood tests are like diagnostics.

Tips:

1. Time supplements deliberately. Many people take them too early or too late.

2. Warm up before boosting. This means starting with an easy excercise or two before challenging yourself.

3. Get checkups as needed.

6. Micro and Macro Adjustments

Progress comes from refinement, not perfection.

Form develops over time. Micro adjustments include grip, stance, tempo, and range.

When I bench, my bench grip changes every set. So does my angle, which may be perpendicular to body or a few degrees off from perpendicular. When I squat, I need to alternate between closer and wider stances too.

Grip strength is often a hidden limiter. If your grip fails first, you’re not training the target muscle. After a few months or years of training, the importance of isolating grip strength will grow.

Macro adjustments are bigger shifts: assisted pullups, shallow squats, progression over time.

If you were to learn pullups from scratch, and you’re not athletic already, you can’t start with doing one, proper form pullup. You start with just hanging on the bar. Then you learn false grip. Eventually you can hang for a minute and, maybe, move your scapula up and down. You adjust. You use resistance bands. You fail a lot, then you get it.

When things become routine, try supersets, meaning two or more different exercises back-to-back. Supersets are about efficiency, so they may involve linked muscles (ex: military press (deltoids) and dumbbell rows (lats, traps, biceps)) or unlinked muscles (ex: burpees and pullups (different full-body workouts)).

Tips:

1. Plateaus signal adjustment. When you hit a wall, change something in your diet, exercise or rest.

2. Imperfection is OK. You can count that not-so-perfect rep, so long as it’s on the way to perfection. Perfect form is an ideal you aren’t supposed to reach every time you exercise.

3. Ego lifting is dangerous. Exploration isn’t.

4. Use micro adjustments to manage fatigue.

5. Improve grip with dead hangs, farmer carries, or holding the last rep.

6. Change one variable at a time.

7. Don’t Overthink It

Do something. Consistency beats optimization.

Fitness is simple. The industry profits on confusion.

Autoregulation is just listening to your body. Some days you push. Some days you pull back. You don’t need a spreadsheet to feel wrecked.

Twenty minutes beats excuses. Short bursts work.

Hire trainers for motivation if you want. Just know why.

Do what works for you.