Skippable Personal History

I started lifting 10 years ago using the Starting Strength 5x5 iOS app¹. I would still recommend it for beginners.

Then when I switched programs to 6 day Push/Pull/Legs ², I switched to a paper notepad with just handwritten weights and reps like so:

Since my progression solely depended on the last time and the goal was to do “moar”, with a 6 day split it was easy, just flip 3 pages before and compare.

Eventually I started using multiple gyms, and didn’t have the notebook with me, so I switched to a long note in the Notes.app on iOS. There the comparison to previous time was more tedious, one had to scroll up and down.

Naturally I made an app. I started by making it an iOS app, but quickly abandoned that since I realized nobody will ever use it and I do not want to go through the review process.

Then I made it into a progressive web app.

You can find it here: https://apps.yozy.net/swolog/web

Note that I made this app for me. I am sharing it with the world since it is based on many open source contributions. I am licensing it under AGPLv3, but I provide no support, or would answer for any feature requests.

I bought this toothbrush almost exactly 4 years ago. It replaced my then 4 and a half years old Oral-B PRO 3000 toothbrush. Today, the Series 8s is dead, due to failed battery. This article is a little post-mortem, a review after the whole lifetime of the product.

Let us start with the good parts:

• The toothbrush cleans teeth well.
• The best feature is that the pressure sensor not only indicates when too much pressure is applied (all decent electric toothbrushes do this), but also indicates when you do not apply enough pressure.
• You can customize the color of the LED and it has RGB, which is always great.

However this is where the good parts end. The main problems with the device are:

• It is expensive, and so are the replacement brushes.
• Its smart features are pure gimmick: the position tracking does not work and nobody needs to track their brushing frequency.
• The travel pocket is way too small to actually fit the toothbrush properly.
• It gunks up easily.
• Too many brushing modes make the menu tedious to use.

The battery is so bad it merits its own paragraph. The toothbrush became unreliable after maybe two years of use. Randomly, in the morning it would drop charge from 100% to 0, suggesting faulty electronics. Even at its best it would not last through a 10 day trip.

Verdict

Do not buy this, and steer away from the iO line in general. Myself, I bought a newer model from the PRO series for two reasons:

• The battery in my old one still work and I use it when I go visit my parents.
• You can now get off-brand cheap (and ecological) brushes for the from The Humble Co.

The last couple of weeks have been a whirl.

Recap

1. Solomon Nelson¹ has published a video essay tearing down Mike Israetel’s PhD thesis².

2. Using Milo Wolf³ as a mouthpiece, Mike has made a response video . Mike claims that Solomon has reviewed an old draft of the document. This draft was allegedly—by no one’s mistake— uploaded by Mike to the University’s servers. Milo has read an alleged “much later version” where most of the mistakes were corrected.

3. Jeff Nippard⁴ commented on Solomon’s critique with a truly ignorant comment:

   Bro was out here adding semicolons to mikes rough draft from 13 years ago thinking he did something

   – Jeff Nippard

4. Greg Doucette⁵ has chimed in (because of course he did) suspecting that the “much later draft” was a forgery.

5. It turned out that the “much later version” was indeed a forgery and was even older than the version that Solomon has reviewed. Mike Israetel admitted this himself in an Instagram post.

Why does this matter

We could dismiss what is happening here as your Tuesday YouTube drama. However, I think that it has some larger impact.

Sports science peer review is bottom of the barrel tier. The field is already criticised for poor studies due to small sample sizes and bad methodology, while needing to deal with extreme inter and intra subject variance Adding abysmal review standards and the “science” label evaporates.

Jeff Nippard’s behavior also makes it clear that scientific method plays a second fiddle to the protection of the group.

What I’m saying that sports science is useless.

What I’m going to do

With more studies are being published⁶ disproving previously touted methods for optimizing training⁷, I am going back to the tried and tested methods of bros. Yes, bros have won.

The new, revised, training recommendations

1. Consistency – Showing up day after day, month after month, year after year is the only way to build reasonable amount of muscle.

2. Technique – Can’t lift if you hurt yourself.

3. Close to Failure – In order to grow muscle, the training has to be challenging.

4. Volume – The more you train, the better the results. No top end has been found, keep your technique in check so you don’t get hurt.

That’s it. Everything else (e.g.: progressive overload) is corollary of these four basic steps

If your email had the most important part at the beginning; I would not have to summarize it using AI.

We put so much value of convenience, that we send signal to the younger generation that learning basic skills is a waste of time.

Years ago there was this iPad app called “The Best Ceasar”, some bloke thought it was a good idea to make one whole app just about one recipe… he was right. The app is long gone but here is the gist of the recipe as far as I remember it.

Dressing

Ingredients

1. Anchovies
2. Garlic
3. Worcestershire Sauce
4. Red Wine Vinegar
5. Olive Oil
6. Parmesan Cheese
7. Salt
8. Pepper

Preparation

1. Smash the anchovies in a bowl into a fine paste.
2. Press in 3 cloves of garlic.
3. Add a dash of olive oil (depending on how oily your anchovies are).
4. Add a table spoon of Worcestershire sauce.
5. Add a table spoon of red wine vinegar.
6. Add salt and pepper to taste.
7. Mix it all together.
8. Add in parmesan to obtain a thick-ish dressing.

Croutons

Ingredients

1. Bread
2. Olive Oil
3. Garlic

Preparation

My current go-to recipe is to:

1. Press garlic into a bowl of olive oil.
2. Baste bread slices with the garlic oil.
3. Put the slices in an oven until crispy.
4. Cut the toasted bread into croutons.

Chicken

Ingredients

1. Chicken Breast
2. Salt
3. Pepper
4. Olive Oil

Preparation

If the chicken breast is thicker than about 15mm, cut it in half (to make it thinner).

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200ºC (or 180 with fan on).
2. Salt and pepper the chicken.
3. Put some olive oil in a pan and heat it at high temperature.
4. Sear the chicken on all sides until golden on the outside.
5. Put the chicken in the oven, cook until the inner temperature is a bit under 75ºC.
6. Dice the chicken.

Serving

Wash and dry (as much as you can) a couple of heads of romaine lettuce. Add the dressing and toss it properly. Mix in the chicken and croutons, toss it again, sprinkle with more grated parmesan.