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SereneProdigy
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
This is my current go-to lube: Ride Bodyworx (water-based version), by Sliquid:





It's essentially the exact same product from Sliquid previously proposed by both Liz and myself earlier in this thread, only repackaged by Sliquid into this man-oriented line called Ride. Both lines are available for roughly the same price, and no, I frankly haven't noticed any difference between that new product and my previous experiences with Sliquid H2O. Admittedly the link with the gay community is quite strong (if the label 'Ride' isn't an obvious giveaway just check their website, haha), but who gives a flying fuck, I'm simply happy to have a manly black bottle of lube at hand when I'm masturbating alone with my toys or for the periodic anal-fun with my girlfriend (instead of a pretty feminine bottle, which can deter from the intended mood in a lot of situations/scenarios).

I can't praise these lines by Sliquid highly enough, either the standard line or that new man-oriented one (which until proven otherwise, are exactly the same anyway). Pretty much the best water-based lube that I've ever bought (by a significant margin at that), both in terms of overall texture and lasting potential. Not to mention its extremely favorable bacteria-friendly reputation that I briefly presented in my previous post above. And obviously, they also offer silicone or hybrid versions if you somehow tend to prefer these options.

https://ridelube.com/
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante



Clothes of Sand - Nick Drake (1968)

Who has dressed you in strange clothes of sand?
Who has taken you far from my land?
Who has said that my sayings were wrong?
And who will say that I stayed much too long?

Clothes of sand have covered your face
Given you meaning but taken my place
So make your way on down to the sea
Something has taken you so far from me

Does it now seem worth all the colour of skies?
To see the Earth through painted eyes?
To look through panes of shaded glass
See the stains of winter's grass?

Can you now return to from where you came?
Try to burn your changing name?
Or with silver spoons and coloured light
Will you worship moons in winter's night?

Clothes of sand have covered your face
Given you meaning but taken my place
So make your way on down to the sea
Something has taken you so far from me
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
I pretty much see the BMI as a simple tool that doctors can use whenever a straightforward "sorry but you're visibly fat and unhealthy" would be too rude to throw at their delusional/complacent patients and they need to put them on a proper chart to finally make them realize that their disproportionate body is scientifically proven to be hazardous. I seriously heard stories of people 'shopping' for a doctor that wouldn't bring attention to their fat and be just as indulgent about it as they are themselves. Aside from that delirious bunch, it frankly doesn't take a genius to appraise your level of fitness/health in a good old mirror.

Other than the candid mirror, I ordered body-fat calipers on Bodybuilding.com a few years ago:





It's been working absolutely fine for me, the numbers that I obtain with it are perfectly in line with what you would visually expect by observing what different percentages of body-fat look like on various charts. I've been standing anywhere between 10-16% body-fat since I ordered those calipers, for the record (although I've actually dropped below that a few years prior during a rather drastic cut).

Mind you, I don't exactly care what my exact percentage of body-fat is (aside from how it looks in the mirror I mean). What I'm interested to know is the ratio of fat/muscle that I'm gaining/losing while bulking/cutting. For example during a bulk where I might gain 10lbs of overall weight, while monitoring both my weight and my body-fat I can figure out which proportion of that 10lbs exactly is fat/muscle (eg. 4lbs fat, 6lbs muscle). Frankly I've never had to rectify what I was doing all that much, it's mostly a great way to motivate myself when I'm bulking and inevitably losing some definition: "Hooray, there's definitely some decent muscle growing below that unavoidable layer of fat!".

If you're diligent about it and take your measurements once every 2 weeks in near-identical circumstances (eg. I always weight myself early in the morning after taking a dump), it's possible to come up with graphs similar to what's shown below, which again, is mostly a great tool for motivation:


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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
I normally don't attempt to perform planks for as long as possible; I instead attach a weighted belt to my torso and perform them between two benches for no more than around 45 seconds. I also include a slight movement where I let my body fall a little and then rectify the position by pushing upward with my abs:





I just attempted to perform unweighted planks for as long as possible and got bored after 3 minutes. Any exercise that you can perform for that long is just going to improve your muscular endurance while actually accomplishing very little regarding strength/hypertrophy. Just because an exercise is uncomfortable or makes you feel sore the next day really isn't a good indication that it's making you grow. You can bet your ass that Olympic marathoners are in constant pain during/after after a marathon, and I'd invite you to contemplate the size of their legs. Congestion and burning are in fact two factors that are down the list of what triggers hypertrophy. In order:

1- Amount of load on the eccentric phase
2- Amount of load on the concentric phase
3- Time under tension
4- Congestion
5- Burning

Planking for 3 minutes completely discards the first two factors (ie. the magnitude of the resistance) in favor of the last three, which really isn't the optimal trade-off for hypertrophy; a compromise between semi-heavy load and appreciable duration is, which typically translates to 8-12 reps performed under a minute. If you can plank for that long it just massively hints that the unweighted version is way too easy for you; an analogy to that would be to swing light 10lbs dumbbells for over 3 minutes hoping to develop huge arms. You don't see a whole lot of guys benefiting from that at the gym regarding their arms, why would that be any different for the abs?
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
I do work my legs just as frequently as the rest of my body, though not as intensely (or rather unintelligently) as I did back in my 20s. I typically perform a good old push/pull/legs 4 or 5 times a week, so I find myself working my legs once or twice per week.

I've always worked out at home, which to me is immensely more convenient and motivating than having to drive to a gym every goddamn time I need to exercise (especially here in Canada where hitting the gym during winter would often require to shovel my car for half an hour prior). I have a dedicated fitness room complete with various benches, weights and a bar to perform pull-ups, but the downside is that I still obviously lack some of the equipment that you can usually find in gyms. More precisely: I've never had access to a proper squat-rack and always had to be a bit creative to compensate.

What I routinely did in my 20s was using 2 absurdly loaded dumbbells while deep-squatting with my heels raised on a piece of 2x4 to further increase the demand on my quads (exactly like you can see Arnold performing below). My results by the age of 30: satisfactory amount of muscles in my legs but a Chondromalacia Patellae diagnosis which essentially makes the majority of further leg exercises painful/unadvised. I'd seriously recommend that you fully understand the risks before performing a similar exercise for so many years as I (foolishly) did myself.





Nowadays I perform hip thrusts for my glutes, straight-leg (or Romanian) deadlifts for my hamstrings, and isometric contractions for my quadriceps. All of which perfectly safe for my knees; or at the very least, I've been performing those for the past 5 years without any pain whatsoever (while just a single impetuous set of regular squatting can trigger a sharp pain that can last for a week).

I remember explaining isometric contractions in another thread: basically you simply keep a substantial resistance on your muscles without involving any movement whatsoever. A good indicator to know if a resistance is appropriate for hypertrophy is using one that you can't possibly maintain for more than 45-60 seconds; any resistance (of any type) that you can handle for longer than that is just going to work your muscular endurance while doing very little for strength/hypertrophy (hence why doing hundreds of sit-ups is completely absurd to acquire decent abs).

An isometric exercise that's challenging enough to make you quit after 45-60 seconds can be just as beneficial for hypertrophy than a regular exercise is. The huge disadvantage is that you'll mostly gain strength at the very specific angle that you'll be working. Not ideal for professional athletes who need a wide range of functional strength, but perfectly acceptable for maintaining a decent level of hypertrophy without completely ruining your knees if you're in a situation similar to mine.

I essentially perform various isometric sets of 45-60 seconds where I stand on only one leg while holding dumbbells. I try to find different angles that are challenging enough to at least avoid working my strength at the same goddamn angle every single time. The great irony is that striving to hold the position for 60 seconds often requires more of my willpower than full regular squats did: the discomfort is much more constant/present and somehow it's simply more tempting to quit before your muscles are really exhausted. Fortunately I seem to punish my legs well enough because I still experience the coveted acute muscular soreness the next day and I haven't lost one tiny bit of muscle in my legs since switching to isometric contractions 5 years ago.





As an aside to guys who consistently neglect their legs: absolutely nothing triggers an hormonal response that's as potent as those heavy lower-body exercises provide. Even if you're only interested in upper-body development, you're missing out a lot by not including those into your workout and benefiting from that huge testosterone boost. I actually even include a few reminder exercises for biceps/tricpes on legs-day myself, simply to take full advantage of all that and really force my arms to grow to their full potential.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
I practically never drink any alcohol while eating all alone by myself; whatever drink I might have in the evening (if any) is almost guaranteed to be past 9-10pm.

I enjoy pouring myself many different kinds of alcoholic beverages, but an extremely frequent one that I keep coming back to is simply Baileys on the rocks.

Yeah I know, sissy drink and all that... please fuck off and just let me have my routine Irish delight.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante



Which spirits/liqueurs do you keep on hand?


This question will likely engage the eclectic mixologists more than those entrenched into a very particular kind of drink: what are your spirits/liqueurs of choice to mix your favorite cocktails? First and foremost, which types of spirits/liqueurs are necessary to create your customary drinks? Then, which specific brands exactly do you favor and typically purchase?

Thanks for sharing!


Note: You can use the handy website Make Me a Cocktail to figure out which cocktails are possible to mix with whatever alcohols/mixers you currently have access to. Particularly interesting if you usually keep many different spirits/liqueurs on hand and would love to experiment a little. I'd highly recommend registering though, not to recreate your list of ingredients every goddamn time.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Quote by prettywild
Its the best sex toy I've ever bought


I myself actually bought a vibrating butt-plug for my girlfriend since I asked this question (which was more than 3 years ago).

The one I purchased is called the 10 Function Risque Vibrating Butt Plug. Sad thing is, it never functioned properly: somehow we constantly had to fiddle with the batteries just to make it work and only a slight movement would abruptly stop the vibrations. I wouldn't necessarily be so quick to call it a 'shitty' product because Cal Exotics normally makes pretty decent/reliable vibrators, but it seems like the one I received was defective even before it was shipped.

Can't say we're all that motivated to order a new one for now, especially since I personally tend to find butt-plugs rather bothersome during sex anyway. Is there anything seriously more annoying than a butt-plug whenever you impulsively desire to lick/finger/fuck the sweet little asshole of your girlfriend?


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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Quote by DamonX
Is that Kate Beckinsdale? I'm ok with whatever she chooses to wear.


I sincerely regret to disenchant you from your deepest fantasy... but this is actually Eminem.

I'm assuming that you're referring to the girl wearing the blue NY cap? This is in fact Lana Del Rey. I was randomly Googling pictures of women wearing caps until I realized that Lana was a pretty big disciple of baseball caps. I thought I'd offer her a spot on my banner to highlight her obvious cap-enthusiasm. And my last post also made me realize that the number of different hats that Ian Somerhalder wore is just absolutely insane.


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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Quote by roymunson101
That's pretty rich, even for you.

I'm a hypocritical asshole, but I still refrained from posting that whiny PM you sent me a while back when I posted stupid pictures and memes in response to your paragraphs of nothing.


Haha, of course you didn't post that PM you sad cretin: it was infinitely more compromising for you than it was for me. But here, I'm feeling quite masochistic and just can't help but to expose it down below simply to completely devastate my own reputation.

Dude, don't assume that people are as dumb as you are by pretending that this PM was in response to a few trivial pictures that you posted. You can't exactly show me how fanatically you hate me for a gazillion times (to the point where nearly 75% of your forum-apparitions concern me in one way or another), and then expect the Lush populace not to notice any of your silly little fixation toward me. As far as I'm concerned, every single word of my message was plenty justified and I don't regret expressing myself like I did for one tiny fucking bit. Nor does it expose a side of myself that I didn't already present numerous times on these forums on my own volition.

But hey, glad that you're so open to the idea of me sharing that PM and exposing to everybody here that you really can't work up the courage to confront me one-on-one in private despite my candid invitation to do so. You do realize that this is precisely what moderators advocate when facing that kind of predicament, right? And I should feel ashamed about that suggestion for what reason precisely? Seems like our respective paths to manliness were entirely different experiences altogether, but I'd personally feel a whole lot more embarrassed if I was some kind of cowardly little moron who can only challenge another man by throwing tiny nuggets of shit at him while he's already busy interacting with somebody else. Say, how about you at least engage me in some kind of basic debate that others can vaguely benefit from for a fucking change?

I must admit though, I'm not quite sure if I want us to fight in private anymore; spotting you desperately trying to insult me here in the forums is just invariably so goddamn hilarious. As in, anybody can clearly perceive that you constantly trying to even the score with me just hints to the fact that even yourself consider the current score to be in my favor, and yet you're simply way too dense to realize that behaving that way only serves to present yourself as a perpetual loser. Even more so when everybody pictures you scrutinizing every single one of my posts from behind the scenes and taking a month of preparation to spot an opportunity to finally strike at me, only to end up embarrassing yourself over and over and over again.

Where do you live dude? I totally want to verify if you're for real.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Quote by MadMartigan
Don’t even remember it. At all. Must have been shite advice. What I do remember is a passive aggressive whiny PM you sent once filled with narcissism.

Do I still have it though? Nah. I don’t keep PMs that are years old. Neither do I post them in forums like a child. Hence why you are a creepy little fucker.


I can happily refresh your memory. Here was my shite advice, complete with all the passive-aggressiveness and narcissism that's clearly so typical of me. I admittedly regret all the rudeness included within though, had I restrained my hostile tone I might have received two simple words coming from you minimally thanking me for it. And who knows, possibly a better treatment in the forums at a later point too.

And sure dude, I sent you some other unfounded message containing extremely crass behavior diametrically opposite in attitude to what I otherwise sent you, just for the sake of it. Question: why exactly did I dare to expose our other PMs if I potentially knew that you could confront me with that other enigmatic message? With your absurd amount of backpedaling, hypocrisy, convenient memory lapses and other assorted deceits, you might want to consider that not a whole lot of people are willing to grant you much plausibility at this point. Especially in the context where you actually fed me with a vaguely similar silly little attitude prior to the devotion shown below and that this long friendly message was already me kindly turning the other cheek.

Man, I would have stopped at my very first post if you showed a minimum of etiquette, but don't make it so fucking easy and tempting to expose you exactly for what you are.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
I've hardly sported any headwear from around 27-year-old and onward because I've been applying putty in my hair more and more regularly since, but I still went through 3 short phases in my 20s: black cap, black fedora, black beanie. And yes, I'm using The Edge as my model for the black cap because I'm an avid disciple of irony like that, haha.





I'm not usually that big of a fan of baseball caps and the majority of them tend to fit my head oddly (or rather I'm somewhat difficult to please), but I happened to stumble across a black one that suited me perfectly and couldn't help but to wear it extensively in my early 20s. Until it actually started to smell funny, I had to throw it away, and never found one that fitted me so nicely ever again.

The black fedora phase was mostly due to one of my girlfriends. She was shopping for clothes in a store and out of complete boredom I grabbed a fedora and put it on my head without even looking at myself in a mirror. I then returned to my girlfriend pretending like nothing was out of the ordinary (wearing my best poker-face and all that), and her spontaneous reaction when she turned around was: "My fucking god! That just suits you so wonderfully!". Mind you, that girl was an artsy type with an occasionally questionable fashion sense (although she was drop-dead gorgeous when she actually put the efforts), so I was quite a bit hesitant to buy the hat at first, but eventually capitulated just to please the missy. I received compliments from other people for it, but I mostly only wore it as a fun quirky accessory on an occasional basis (or when said artsy girlfriend was having lubrication issues, haha). I still have it to this day, but only use it as a decoration in my living room amid all of my guitars (for that bluesy flavor).

The black beanie was a fairly random discovery too, I simply found one that fitted me nicely and that wasn't too hot to wear during warm weather (I actually even wore it in the summertime). It had a snug fit to it (which I've always preferred), much similar to what's shown above. But hey, as a lot of things in life that was mostly a short phase and I started applying putty in my hair more and more frequently soon after that.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Quote by MadMartigan
You are one creepy little fucker aren’t you?


How so? That message was sitting right in my inbox while I only had to use the search function to retrieve it in less than 5 seconds.

Glad that your hypocrisy isn't colossal enough to refute any of it though.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Quote by Magical_felix
You should always dread your workout, get high off it midway through, then feel absolutely euphoric afterwards.

If you don't dread your workout, you're not hitting it hard enough.

Nothing worthwhile comes easy.


You're one of the few rare persons who managed to make some sense in this whole goddamn thread.

Eureka! Seems like I'm finally willing to grant your brevity a tiny bit of merit.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Quote by MadMartigan
Holy fuck you really know how to vomit words no one ever gives a shit about reading. If you’re gonna be such a bitch, self-edit more. You don’t need a novel when the final passive aggressive paragraph will suffice.

And coming to you for advice in anything isn’t a wise decision for anyone.


M'kay... you might want to practice what you preach though.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Quote by MadMartigan
Jesus Christ. Here comes Serene with another essay. You must have skipped the part where I said I use controlled movement patterns when I do utilize DB thrusters (use a different word. I know what hipthrusters are. Use them often. Best glut focused exercise out there.). 5 second eccentrics or concentrics. In other words. Controlled movement patterns.

And I doubt a physical therapist would suggest something to destroy joints which is the background of the guy who incorporated them into his program. They aren’t a primary shoulder exercise. Just a supplemental one. There’s a common misconception you need large weights to build muscle all the time. You don’t. Especially with shoulders. There’s a time for heavy weights with shoulders but they are also responsive to higher repetitions and TuT. Furthermore, the programs I follow aren’t designed solely around aesthetic “bodybuilding” muscle. My goal is building muscle that is functionally athletic. That means different movement patterns and ultimately different goals than strictly bodybuilding. I have no intention of being a “swole” meat head with zero flexibility. And the last I’d ever do is take advice from bro-science bodybuilders either.


And if you’re still thinking I don’t do primary compound exercises,
“Professor” stop. I have no need of your weirdly vague condescension that’s vomitted out in your typical style. I squat. I deadlift. I hipthrust. I know the “basics” quite well. Have for years. My form is fine. Thanks for your concern.

CrossFit? What the fuck are you on about? I never mentioned doing CrossFit programs. I don’t really follow its principles either. Kipping pull-ups are total nonsense for example but it has some good ideas and yes terrible ones as well. As does bodybuilding and the amount of bro-science behind it that helps no one.


Much sorry that my friendly advice was received as condescending vomit. Funny, I thought that you secretly asking me for guidance about awfully basic stuff behind the scenes was an indication of your acknowledgment that I'm much more knowledgeable about these things than you are and that you were sympathetic to my suggestions. On that note, have you properly received my comprehensive directives about nutrition a few years ago? I essentially invested 30 minutes of my precious time writing you fully personalized advices about rudimentary stuff that any novice normally sets off to learn all by himself within his first 2 weeks of serious lifting. You were pretty damn quick to seek my assistance but it appears that replying to it and minimally informing me that it was correctly received was much too demanding for your staggering lack of extremely basic social skills. And apparently I can't publicly present myself as an authority about any of those things while you willingly grant me this status yourself behind closed doors. Oh well, I guess you're simply a bewildering one Mr. Martigan.

Before you start taking things so goddamn personally and reacting in such a butthurt manner, please realize that three completely unrelated persons advised you against your thrusters in a span of less than 48 hours. In your response to DamonX you expressed that your thrusters are particularly great for overloading a dumbbell press and generating an explosive movement; now you're informing us that you're performing them with light weights in a perfectly controlled movement and a slow-tempo of 5 seconds. Dude, at the very least do try to be minimally coherent when you suddenly feel like backpedaling. And yes, it's a movement that directly emerged out of crossfit training (it was actually coined by the crossfit crowd) with explosive crossfit principles in mind, while it's very seldom encountered in any other training routine.

And sure, finding the sweet spot between appreciable resistance and time-under-tension is the name of the game concerning hypertrophy (which is exactly why the moderate 8-12 rep-range is considered optimal), but a thruster happens to be an explosive movement by its very core idea which lends itself extremely poorly for keeping a constant tension in your shoulders. If you suddenly feel like advocating the particular merits of time-under-tension tell us that you're performing simple lateral raises with low weights in the 12-16 rep-range while keeping a persistent resistance by never letting the dumbbells fully rest along your body; don't tell us that you're performing thrusters for an obscure amount of repetitions where half of the movement is spent in a squatting position with the dumbbells comfortably resting on your shoulders, with an extraneous leg movement that's only likely to distract you from the motion/sensation of your shoulders and that's completely futile for your lower body (especially now that you're informing us that you're actually working with dumbbells that are considered light even for your shoulders). And of course, you've been squatting and deadlifting with ultra-heavy weights for years but ardently promote that performing thrusters with two flimsy dumbbells is somehow a great move to utilize or strengthen your core. Sounds really legit.

Besides, I'm afraid that using low weights with 16+ repetitions is only vaguely valuable for 'aesthetic bodybuilding muscle' while being practically useless for any 'functionally athletic muscle', much more useless than working in the typical 8-12 rep-range actually is. You're essentially just building aesthetic sarcoplasmic muscle with that range of repetitions (even if minimally) with very little increase in myofibrillar fibers that lead to strength, power or explosiveness (ie. the determining factors for the overwhelming majority of sport/athletic applications). You do realize that athletes ranging from baseball, to hockey, to tennis players, to sprinters, to MMA fighters all mostly focus their weight-training around strength/explosiveness with heavier weights than bodybuilders with 3-8 repetitions per set, right? Endurance athletes themselves mostly rely on their own sport for improving their endurance and find little value in lifting weights with 16-20 repetitions. The only thing that lifting 16-20 repetitions makes you any athletically proficient at is tolerating the pain induced by lifting 16-20 repetitions without any rest, which is a situation that's hardly ever encountered in any sport or real-life circumstances. And before you feel like double-backpedaling by jumping from explosiveness to light weights to explosiveness again to support the effectiveness of thrusters for athletic goals, please realize that these elite athletes predominantly rely on extremely basic strength-training exercises while very few of them find any use for thrusters anyway.

Frankly at this point I'm not even sure what exactly you're performing and for which purpose. You're performing dumbbell [s]hip[/s] thrusters [s]explosively[/s] with a controlled movement while [s]overloading your dumbbell press[/s] using light weights, which are great for building [s]appreciable[/s] purely functional muscles and [s]intensely[/s] safely working your [s]core[/s] flexibility, but aren't a primary [s]legs[/s] shoulders exercise. Anything else you feel like amending?

At the end of the day I really don't care what you're performing (or pretending to) and it's exactly as I told you in my previous post: you're perfectly free to do whatever you want. Just please don't ask me to take you any seriously, and don't be surprised when the next time you'll realize that your ignorance leads you absolutely nowhere and come begging me for advices, my main reaction will be to kindly invite you to simply fuck off.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Quote by Magical_felix
Are you sure it wasn’t cock?


Just behave yourself and I'll possibly share where you can find her giving live shows.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Quote by MadMartigan
Not that weird a combo. Well. If he’s doing them in the same day all the damn time then it’s weird. Putting it together into one exercise isn’t weird though. Dumbbell hip thrusters are a great way to combine a squat pattern with a shoulder press. That sounds too advanced for this dude though.

Quote by MadMartigan
Eh. It’s more of an exercise designed around athleticism and explosion. It’s a great move because you have to utilize the core. It’s also good for overloading a DB Press because you can fall downward into the squat and explode out to generate more power. Program I follow has them built into concentric and eccentric training. It’s not a more meant to emphasize leg development. It’s in a similar vein to a clean and jerk but is far more manageable for someone like me with some injury history and lack of certain flexibility.


What you have in mind are simply called dumbbell thrusters; hip thrusts are a different exercise altogether (for the glutes).



And I'll certainly open a significant bodybuilding vs crossfit can of worms here, but that kind of crossfit-inspired compound movement where you're using a lot of momentum to move the weights is terrible for the joints while actually being extremely suboptimal for building muscles. It's mostly a general 'conditioning' exercise where you're kinda working your legs, kinda working your shoulders and kinda working your cardio, but there are plenty of exercises/routines out there that will accomplish each one of those much more efficiently while preventing you from completely destroying your body. Seriously, I don't even perform strict overhead presses myself anymore because I consider them too risky for my joints and my shoulders were starting to hurt pretty acutely while performing them after years of training; you're definitely not likely to see me catapulting heavy weights over my head in that kind of poorly controlled explosive movement any time soon.

Imagine a guy who needs a 200lbs barbell for squatting and 2 x 40lbs dumbbells for overhead presses to perform strict repetitions in the 8-12 rep-range (which is the gold-standard for hypertrophy). Which dumbbells should he use for thrusters exactly? Let's say 2 x 50bs? With that weight he's only using half the necessary load to stimulate his legs properly (ie. completely futile for hypertrophy) while propelling dumbbells that are 10lbs too heavy for his shoulders (ie. absolutely terrible for the joints). Not only that, but the more movement/momentum involved in your exercise, the more difficult it is to properly concentrate on each part of it and the more likely you are to deviate from a perfectly safe form. Hell, the majority of novices can't even perform simple bicep curls without cheating by constantly swinging their bodies back and forth. And concerning cardio, well it's almost guaranteed that he'll put the weights down at muscular discomfort before really exhausting himself like he would in a proper 60 min cardio session.

What I'd personally recommend: learn the basic exercises with perfect form (which is much tougher than most people assume) and perform strict controlled sets of each independently, with an additional cardio session during the week if really needed. The overall philosophy of bodybuilding is to rely on perfect controlled form (ie. no momentum and no cheating) so that handling minimal weights will provide maximal muscular gains; crossfit is the exact opposite of that and deliberately encourages cheating/dangerous form just to swing inflated poundage. You're perfectly free to pick your side, but I'd personally much rather maximize my gains for as long as possible than to end up with a completely ruined body before my 40s.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Quote by DamonX
Dammit... I swore I wasn't going to weigh in on these types of threads....


I wouldn't take the fitness crowd of Lush all that seriously if I were you. I mean, a while ago I had the extremely eccentric idea of introducing a proper bodybuilding thread right next to an assembly of people exerting themselves posting their favorite corny motivational quotes. They found my own idea of 'Health and Fitness' so goddamn bizarre that I mostly ended up explaining the virtues of stomach vacuums to a choir of crickets before the thread completely faded away into oblivion.

Seriously though, you can talk about that stuff for your own personal entertainment, but I wouldn't exactly expect anybody here to follow any of your recommendations. We're essentially supposed to assume that these people are going to diligently put all that guidance into practice in a highly strenuous 5+ hours weekly routine when the majority of them clearly demonstrate that they don't even have the sufficient willpower to go find an extremely basic Livestrong.com article that's a mere 3 clicks away. For the record, it took more than 2 years and over a dozen of posts before you chimed in and finally mentioned crunches when someone asked how to develop his stomach muscles. How fucking hilarious and preposterous is that?

Oh well, at least nobody is likely to strain their necks or hip flexors for real by awkwardly jerking those silly 200 morning sit-ups.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Emily Skye. I'm sure plenty of people have already seen the first picture a few times:





Gorgeous face and gorgeous body:





Here she's showing her pregnancy cellulite and proudly demonstrating that her maternal aspirations take precedence over her aesthetic ones.

How so fucking adorable:


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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
I watched this splendid Russian model...





Enthusiastically fucking her ass with an enormous dildo...


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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Quote by DamonX
I Haven't seen the 2014 version but I'm downloading it as I type this. (I just hope that I can get it with English subtitles.)


Hah, I'm feeling quite a bit of pressure now. Please don't crucify me if my recommendation only end up wasting 2 hours of your life.

Seriously though, it's exactly as I wrote it in my review: it's definitely not a movie that will utterly stupefy you (well I highly doubt it at least), but it's certainly worth watching simply to compare it to the American version. I must admit, reading all the praise that American critics wrote about the rather lackluster American film after watching it myself kinda pissed me off; Americans should stop eulogizing their own culture all the frigging time and realize that sometimes other cultures can produce twice the accomplishments with a quarter of the resources. Just keep in mind that it's mostly a 'contemplative' movie rather than something that will keep you on your toes or profoundly challenge you, the kind of movie where you simply enjoy relaxing in your sofa while a pleasant piece of cinema is unfolding on your screen. Pretty much like the American film was for that matter, just imagine a more sophisticated version of it.

And I actually appreciated Emma Watson in the American version myself; she might in fact be the only rare thing that I valued in the whole film. Her singing parts particularly impressed me, I totally had to make a Google search afterward to verify if it was truly her voice that we could hear singing. She definitely has that 'part little girl, part graceful lady' appearance to her, so I believe that she was a perfect choice for the overall childish tone that Disney was aiming for. But yeah, Léa Seydoux though (swoons).

I'm not really in the mood to be overly exhaustive about it (I guess it's your lucky day Damon), but I completely agree with your take about fairytales however. I highly do cherish those timeless 'tales' myself, as opposed to random stories they sharply illustrate universal aspects of human nature. Their childlike simplicity is often their whole beauty, in my opinion. Just think about how a tale like Robin Hood is such a huge part of our cultural consciousness: there's some form of truth/virtue in all those tales that's been treasured and that's going to keep being treasured for hundreds of years to come. And as you mentioned, comics are practically a modern version of all that. I'm extremely biased toward Batman myself because the parallels that I can personally establish with him are virtually endless, but to me he captures a parable that's just as substantial as the parable of Robin Hood, Beauty and the Beast, or The Ugly Duckling.

Now please let's move away from this discussion as contemplating mushy fairytales with a guy of my age on a sex-oriented website could start to feel awkward pretty fucking quick, haha. Okay, I'm admittedly still rather impatient to read what you'll have to say about the Franco-German version of the movie. Just one more post will be tolerated however...
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante
Doctorlove (sigh)... why exactly are you quoting everyone's pictures to post your own?

No worries, I'm already fully aware of the answer; I just wish to embarrass you even further than you have yourself so far.
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SereneProdigy
Cryptic Vigilante



The Fabulous World of Headwear

Of all articles of clothing, absolutely nothing has the evocative power of headwear. Nothing signals royalty as a crown does, nothing screams opulence as a top-hat does, and a cowboy without his hat obligatory has his status reduced to that of a mere rancher. Throughout history, hats and headwear have always been a predominant evidence of culture, religion, allegiance and social/military status. And although in our modern era they've mostly been relegated to the rank of purely cosmetic/optional accessories, they still retain the ability to speak volumes about one's personality.

Do you appreciate headwear yourself? What are your favorite items to wear on your head?

What can possibly make a specific headwear fall into the douchey territory? Are beanies appropriate during warm weather? Are baseball caps suitable in a restaurant? Is there any type of headwear that you would consider too ostentatious, or are you a lenient supporter of peacocking instead?

Thanks for sharing!
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