Everything seems to have unexpected side effects. Pancreatitis in your specific case, but there’s also links between insulin resistance and breast cancer for instance. I think the research into all of this is still really early stage, as @theBeth says maybe there’s just not enough cash in it yet.
Thing that amazes me is if you ever stray into the Pharma forum, the threads alternate between “Hey! I plan to leap into the unknown” and “Hey! My dick hasn’t worked ever since I leapt into the unknown!”
@bulldog9899 most doctors we’ve dealt with have been pretty relaxed about it all, it’s more that it’s outside their area of knowledge than that there’s any stigma. They’re generally interested in how you banjaxed your hormones (lifestyle choices? family pre-disposition?) but more so they can figure out whatever it is you should stop doing than from any moral high ground.
Flame-free: don’t know why I’m being reasonable about doctors in general. As smug a bunch of self-satisfied egotistical fuckers as you’ll ever find outside a physique contest.
LOL. Dude. How many of those threads need to exist before someone thinks, “Maybe I oughtta look that up before I try it”?
Side note, most guys with doctor trouble and TRT are their the source of their trouble. I’m on TRT, and open with my GP and Endo. No issues. My dose puts me in range, and they are cool with writing the scrip I need whenever I’m physically in the US - cause it’s a felony without a scrip.
I confess that, now that “Cobra Kai” is on Netflix, I am suddenly looking forward to running on the treadmill again. I was no joke dreading today until that moment. It’s the little things really.
Also, I confess that dips and behind the neck pressing are the secret to an amazing upperbody pump and superior development: you’re welcome benchers.
For weighted dips, I go full extension, but on bodyweight I actually cut out the lockout and focus on coming out of the bottom of the dip to really blow up the chest.
I’ve also been starting out of the BOTTOM for dips instead of starting my first rep from the top. I wonder if that would solve a lot of pain issues people have, because it makes the movement make so much more sense to me.
I start at the top, but I also avoid the lockout on bodyweight dips.
I think a lot of folks who never were properly trained on dips do not lean their torso over far enough to get the pecs/shoulders involved. In that case its just a tricep isolation at full body weight. Actually, that makes me wonder how many injuries come from poor form on dips?
I have to work back up into weighted dips. My bodyweight is usually enough for an 8-12 rep set.
The lean is crucial. I see it going the other way too: dudes that have been benching for so long want to lean so far forward on the dip to turn it into a bench and then complain about sternum pain. It’s amazing how something that seems so simple can be so complicated for meatheads, haha.
I used to love dips till I had surgery on my shoulder. Now any sort of pressing movements downward (including decline bench) just hurt. I was gonna see a physio but I figured I got 99.9% of the function back in my arm after a fair amount of abuse. I might be pissing into the wind a bit.
I use to treat the dip and squat similar- as long as you get to parallel (humorous that is) to the floor you’re okay. I used to focus on full extensions with added weight lower reps. Body weight was just done for volume as a drop set. By the end I could just be the bottom part of the movement as i tried to get the pump.
I used to like learning forward a bit. Bench followed by forward leaning dip was my go to combo force while. But then I wanted it to target my chest.
I definitely do this on mega high rep sets: start out strong and, for those final few reps, just a few inch ROM pumping out of the bottom of the rep. I know it doesn’t get internet white lights, but full ROM all the time is something silly, haha.
I always aim for a for 10 full reps before needing a partial. To make sure its not an ego thing. But if I hit 10 reps and go partial reps after then that’s not cheating - that’s working hard…
No one ever saw a guy doing the bottom half of a squat 20 times with 2 plate either side and went - “jezza that guy needs to work harder”.
It spills into real life occasionally.
After hitting the gym in college and squatting 375 for reps, some tiny dude about 5 foot 1 and maybe 125 comes up to me and tells me I am squatting incorrectly. Really? My arms were bigger around than his thighs.
Confession: Actions like the one above used to bug me a lot. Now i think it is just jealousy coming to the forefront and some sort of weird form of “posturing up” to the big guy.
I go VERY carefully about assuming a guys competency level before asking. Here’s why.
About 18/20 months ago I was doing Judo. I was waiting for a session to start and I got talking to kid. I say kid, sub 20. He was bout 65/70kg in weight. So VERY small. We got onto the subject of strength training. He told me to try a few methods and to look up a certain programme. I was boarder line going to brush it off as some know all gym instructor with 6 months experience. Glad I did not. I asked him about his biggest press / dead lift. He told me he didn’t press much he did oly lifting. But he’d had 150 over head in the last week. I’m thinking - 150lb is “okay” for a smaller guy. its 75% of his body weight.
I asked “how much is that in kilos?”
“That is kilos.”
We had an awkward moment where I was genuinely thinking “this kids nuts. There is no way this kid is like twice as strong as me”.
Turns out - we was right.
This is a video of him. I saw him 2 years later and he’d gotten a load stronger.
Thanks for this reminder, I skipped out on dips because I noticed a correlation with elbow pain (baseball’s great…when you’re a teenager). Normally I’m pretty upright so I’ll try 'em again with a strong lean.
I’m no dipping expert, but I never did them pain free til I saw a cue, about keeping shoulders down and back, pushing chest up and out before starting decent. Might have been athleanx guy. Helped me.
So, by the end of May I passed the all the remaining exams I had to take for my first year of my CS undergrad.
As soon as June rolled around, I decided I wanted to study for an exam of the second year: I’d be taking it in the first week of September, before classes would start for my second year. For anyone wondering, the exam is “processors’ architecture.”
I downloaded all the recorded lessons and got through the videos by end of June. For the month of August, I did exercises and reviewed some of the videos, as well as studying from a book and online material. I put a lot of effort in it, and this is literally going the extra mile because I didn’t have to do this, but I wanted to get a head start on the new year of school.
The exam is on September the 7th, will be spoken only and online due to covid measures still being effective. The videos I studied from were from 2017 (the most recent I could find), and the classes were held by another teacher: I’ve never seen the one that will be examining me.
I just wanted to put this out here. I am trying not to keep my hopes too high, and should I fail (or not accept the grade I get), it wouldn’t be a big deal—it would effectively be no deal at all. I really hope that my efforts won’t be in vain.
