I thought it was gonna be easy to write, but there was just so much to cover.
We cover the basics of nutrition (especially nutrients and healthy eating), weight loss, weight gain, and getting into fitness. I have two workout routines I recommend and detail in this guide. I also make recommendations for my trans comrades who might be scared of getting too buff as chuds are too fragile to touch this topic and information is sorely lacking, so someone has to step up (done to the best of my knowledge as a cis person mind you).
And this shit is all free, what the fuck am I even doing. Anyway, enjoy it.
cracks fingers This comrade put a bunch of work into this cool guide. Gonna criticize the shit out of it.
Nice work, comrade! My inevitable leftist drive to leave notes will appear when I figure out how to contribute to ProleWiki.
You need to request an account: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Special:RequestAccount, and then we'll get around to approving it. After that you will have perms to edit pages (for essays, please only edit the talk page) and with enough contributions, we'll give you a role which allows you to create non-existing pages.
Otherwise I'm reachable on here, lemmygrad and discord if anyone has things to add or corrections to the guide.
This is great help! Could you add 'make civilized the mind, make savage the body' an epigram to the entry?
thanks mate, small detail: your micronutrient table is unreadable on dark theme, unless people click through multiple times and their browser generates a white background version.
Does following stoic instagram make me better at lifting heavy things?
Good job!
Hate to be a pedant but there's a correction you'll want to make in the Proteins section:
While it's true that there are 9 essential amino acids, there are more than 13 amino acids in total.
There are 22 'proteinogenic' amino acids encoded by the genomes of known organisms, over 140 amino acids found naturally in various proteins, and thousands more than can be created in a lab. Of these, humans use 20.
Good catch! I'll clarify the page. What happens with the 120 amino acids human do not use? Do we just pass them untouched?
You know how on the Nutrition Facts, it might say "Calories per gram: Fat 9 • Carbohydrate 4 • Protein 4" or something like that?
You know how proteins have one -NH2 end?
You know how kidneys convert ammonia to urea and then we pee it out?
I'm pretty sure that's what happens.
Great effortpost. Lotsa bullshit (as you say) out there about diets and fitness, so I'm glad to say, at skim, it all looks right to me.
I've been out of the Gym scene for well over a decade now, and mostly just do bodyweight and light cardio to stay in shape, but even with that, I do feel like getting torqued when I was younger helped me maintain some kinda baseline fitness (even if it is kinda hard to let go of knowing I'll never be that strong again).
If I'd known I'd enjoy working out, I'd have started when I was just a teen. The potential in those years as well as the good habits you develop set you up for the rest of your life. It's definitely true that a teen working out and then stopping will be healthier at 40 years old than someone the same age who started just a few months ago. It creates the necessary structure in your body for longevity.
The problem I have with all these guides is that they all assume the same thing: what you want is to get super ripped and muscly. Nobody says anything if you just want to get healthier. We humans were designed for physical activity, and we need it. The assumption makes sense, as the people who write them all are ripped already, and that's why they got into the gym lifestyle.
The best thing to get in shape and not get super muscly is probably swimming and walking. Maybe with some core training or honestly just do yoga for 5x a week 20min. Pick something that gets your heart and breathing rate up and isn’t too hard on your joints.
I walk for an hour most days and it doesn't really seem to do anything.
I mean, you’re way healthier than the version of you that doesn’t walk.
What is it that you’re hoping to gain by being healthier?
I don't know, I am the Dunning-Krueger effect. I'm so incompetent that I don't even know how to ask proper questions. That's the problem with gymbros, they will casually drop slang like "core training" or "some yoga" without bothering to realize that those terms are for insiders. It's like jargon like "we need our tank's DPS up so we can go back to pwning their noobs".
Go on YouTube type in yoga class or core training and see if you like the trainer. Come up with a schedule. Stick to schedule
Specifically add beginner. You can even start with 5 min classes to make sure you like them.
If you have access to a pool swimming really is one of the best exercises you can do. Works out your entire body building functional muscle without bulk while also strengthening cardio and lung capacity all with out placing any stress on your joints which almost every other form of exercise, including body weight, does. You don't even have to be good at it as poor form isn't going to cause any injuries.
Any is better than then none. The only way you can really over do it is pushing your self to exhaustion. Obviously depends on your general fitness level but an hour three times a week isn't a bad way to start. You'll almost definitely need to take breaks in between laps when starting but that's cool you're still making progress. I really enjoy swimming, it gives me a kinda zen, so when I have access to a pool I try to swim most days.
Does it matter which style of swimming you use? I don't know anything about the different strokes and when I try freestyle I always almost choke myself when trying to breathe.
I switch it up but front crawl (free style) is what I spend my most time with. I also do a fair amount of butterfly but I wouldn't recommend off the bat, you have to develop some upper body strength and a fair amount of breath control to not drink half the pool. Breast stroke is nice smooth motion that lets you bring your head entirely out of the water, I have to dolphin kick instead of frog kick when I do it cause I can't get my hip to turn the right way but it still works just fine. Backstroke of course keeps your face out of the water the whole time, I've really never like it though cause I hate not being able to see where I'm going and it also doesn't feel like as much of a workout unless I'm really going for speed. Another thing that might help is kick boards, (hard normally blue foam half surf board looking things) most pools that are set up for lap swim will have them, you can use them to just practice kicking keeping your head out of the water which is still a hell of a work out. There's probably some good videos out there on breathing techniques, I don't think trying to describe them in a written message would help that much.
Happy to help, I hope you find as much joy in swimming as I do.
In the guide, I actually define fitness as "any goal you have for your physical body" as it encompasses a whole range of states and compositions. While my sport of choice is bodybuilding, the guide is also general enough that it can help anyone no matter their fitness goal or current level (the nutrition part especially).
I also wanted to add some information on cardio and callisthenics (body weight exercises) in the guide, but their sections are comparatively empty because they are not exercises I train, and I don't want to advise people on something I haven't tried myself.
For people that want physical conditioning but not to the state of a bodybuilder, I would suggest joining a sports club and participating 3-4 times a week. It can be MMA, basketball... anything that has a social component and makes you train your entire body. Naturally over the years one will develop a healthy and toned physique.
Yeah, but where's the link to supplements? Where's the high protein energy drink? Where's the commodification? Idk if I can get behind this.
ProleImpact whey and BCAAs coming soon to an online store near you!
Muscle growth is actually a lot weirder than the conventional wisdom of rest every other day. For high load exercises certainly, but I've gotten plenty of great muscle growth in physical therapy dealing with shoulder pain through repeated low load exercises throughout the day. We started with 20 reps of a 3 lb dumbbell and now are at 30 of 7 lb dumbbell, and I'm instructed to do the exercises with a resistance band on the off days and have seen rapid improvement in the strength of those muscles.
Taking a rest was not needed and I've found it to not be nearly as helpful.
Yeah the amount of rest you need really depends on your volume, intensity and frequency. Here volume and frequency is high, but the intensity is relatively low (I'm assuming you're not going to complete muscular failure on those 20 to 30 rep shoulder workouts), which means you don't need as much rest. And that definitely works as an approach.
Yes, realistically rest days should be called muscle synthesis days. Muscle synthesis happens mostly during our sleep, not during the workout and the rest day we give ourselves is essentially time during which this synthesis happens.
With my intensity, I would actually overtrain if I went every day, it's hard enough making it through the evening on the normal days sometimes lol. Overtraining is not something that I cover in the guide as I'm not entirely sure how it works yet, but will be added in.
Thanks, I've been meaning to start working out.
I hit a plateau with just dieting and cardio, and all the holiday treats didn't help. :arm-R:
I actually just added a section on plateauing. In a weight loss setting, it's your body getting used to this new caloric intake and adapting your metabolism to this new reality if you've been on a diet for like 8-12 months. By all accounts, you can break through a plateau by stopping the diet for a few weeks (going back to your TDEE and maintaining your weight) and then starting the diet again.
This is actually very good and well written, and is pretty much all the advice I've had to self research to myself to bulk up by 10kg/22lbs so far. From my personal experience, I can confirm this advice works, at least on the bulking side.
Thank you for this :gold-communist:
Thanks! Yeah that's the thing, none of this has been compiled in an accessible file before (that I know of), you have to hunt this knowledge here and there and compile it yourself over literal years, which is what I finally did.
What's the deal with the nasa trampoline thing? We should start folding that theory into stuff right?
absolutely based writeup
don't have any immediate criticism, and this isn't really a request to add but more a general one for everyone - do you have any good resources or videos on form for lifting/exercises?
it's been years since I read Rippetoe (plus, isn't he a bit of an arsehole anyway) and years since I was actually fit, but my consistent battle against my brain (ADHD overanalysis and depression affecting body image) is that I consistently think i'm going to do things wrong and have poor form, which makes me worry that I'll fuck myself up in a session one day.I'll add Scott Hermann and Athlean X to the channel, they give really good bite-sized tutorials.
Problem with form is someone is gonna tell you to do it one way and someone else is gonna tell you to do it another way. Overall I am a big proponent in a) listening to your body if it starts hurting or chafing when it shouldn't and b) if it feels harder when you change your form a little, then you're doing something good.
yeah but how much do you bench?
jk ty. i just got back into a real routine/program after idk 4 years of just kinda spinning my wheels. nice to see what i've picked back up (m-w-f chest/back/squats) is basically still considered good for strength training
My bench is terrible, my estimated 1rm is only 77.5 lol. Just plateau'd on it very early on 😔
