FW: FW: Fitness advice

• 29 November 2025

I saw a guy (who I don't know) on Substack comment "I consume a LOOOTTTT of science-based lifting content and this is by far the most concise, complete, and correct summary I have read." He linked to this post (also by a guy who I don't know).

And I'm here to tell you that it is also the most concise, complete, and correct summary that I have read! This is one of many topics where I care about it, and I have ingested a lot of information about it, and yet it'd still be wasting your time to try to write an explainer because it's been covered so extensively and skillfully already. Go read that post if it interests you!

Instead, I can share a couple of my personal experiences. (or feel free to skip ahead to "Takeaways"!)

My experience #

I first started lifting weights when I was 13.

• I didn't have access to a gym or weights, so I tried to follow a bodyweight fitness guide I found on Reddit. I also didn't have the equipment for that, so I did the best I could, sometimes using chairs to do dips.
• I was a very skinny teen and did not work out very consistently, or eat a caloric surplus to gain any weight.
• One time I was doing dips and my ribcage made a popping noise and for years I thought I permanently damaged it, but a decade and a half later a grizzled detective finally filed it away under cold cases.

I started lifting weights again freshman year of college.

• I worked out sometimes alone, but often with a friend of mine.
• I was eating at the dorm dining hall and had a slightly better understanding of the need to eat.
• I remember once going to the gym when it was -40º out, and I feel proud about that discipline looking back.
• I didn't weigh myself during this time, but I think I made pretty decent beginner progress. At some point my girlfriend at the time said I looked like "my butt got stung by a bumble-bee"?

I started lifting weights again the summer after Junior year, using the gym at my internship.

• I remember some workouts were hard because I was heartbroken after the end of a relationship. I feel like the classic story is that the anguish fuels your dedication to push extremely hard at the gym, but I found it just weakened my morale—and lifting, for me, is mostly a psychological/morale battle.

I started lifting weights again in January 2018.

• I think that I went home for the holidays, saw my jacked older brothers, and resolved to get jacked.
• This is where I start to have an active record of my weight over time! Which is how I know that I was actually losing weight the entire year, despite aiming to build muscle. I was not eating enough.
• My other embarrassing mistake is that I was rigidly stuck to my workout routine, and my gym had few pieces of equipment. The result was I would get stuck waiting for a machine (rather than just substitute another exercise!) and my workouts would take a really long time despite not doing that many lifts. In addition to being time-inefficient, this made the workouts pretty unenjoyable.

(In this gap is Covid, which would have been an amazing time to pick up lifting again, but I did not do so.)

I started lifting weights again in April of 2022.

• I made decent progress but stopped after a few months.

I started lifting weights again in November of 2023.

• I made decent progress but stopped after a few months.

I started lifting weights again in March of 2025.

• This time something was different: following the lesson I share in Never Run Alone, I started seeing a personal trainer. I was pretty well educated on lifting, but thought that the trainer would make workouts more enjoyable, and the enjoyment would lead to not falling off the program like had historically been the case.
• For whatever reason, I also did a better job eating a sufficient surplus, and gained weight rapidly.
• I also re-learned the latest recommendations for lifting, which had changed somewhat since I originally learned them in the prior decade. Whether it was from the newer best practices, or just me maturing over time, I finally started to internalize that it doesn't really matter whether what you do and whether it's 80%, 90%, or 99% optimal. If you just do the pretty good thing, even pretty suboptimally, you'll gain muscle over time as long as you do it consistently for a long enough period of time. Previously I was overly fixated on doing the most optimal and recommended workout program. But it's much better to figure out what you enjoy doing and optimize for the most enjoyable workout that is still effective enough.

This takes us to day, where I'm in the most consistent period of lifting weights in my life, and also in the best muscular shape of my life. And it feels sustainable. I'm not miserable like I was during some periods of lifting in the past. My workouts are relatively enjoyable (which I never thought would be the case), and the progress I've noticed in my body is a good positive feedback loop.

Takeaways #

1. I stopped and started SO many times! Don't be discouraged if you stop and start too.
2. The two periods I saw the best progress were both when I was working out with another person, rather than alone. I think this makes working out a lot more fun and makes it easier to turn it into a sustainable habit.
3. Eating enough matters a lot.
4. I'll restate verbatim the most important lesson I've learned: it really doesn't matter whether what you do and whether it's 80%, 90%, or 99% optimal. If you just do the pretty good thing, even pretty suboptimally, you'll gain muscle over time as long as you do it consistently for a long enough period of time. So optimize for the most enjoyable workout first, then focus on micro-optimizations if you feel like it (or just don't, and benefit from the simple fact that as long as you lift regularly, and increase the weight over time, you'll improve).

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