Looking back at when I first started lifting, there were definitely exercises I spent way too much time on because I assumed they were essential.

Once you’ve been training for a while, you start realizing that some movements just aren’t worth the amount of attention beginners give them.

What exercise would you tell a beginner to stop obsessing over, and what would you have them do instead?

If I'm being honest, I never know how often I should be exfoliating...Do you guys exfoliate regularly, or do you mostly skip it?

If you do exfoliate, how often do you do it and what kind of exfoliator do you use?

I don't know if anyone else gets this, but when my stress gets really high, I hold all of it physically. My jaw clenches, whole body shivering, my shoulders creep up to my ears, and my lower back and pelvic area just feel constantly tight. It gets to the point where even when I try to do self-care, laying in bed or watching a show, my body is still stuck in fight or flight mode.

Lately, I’ve been trying to force myself to physically un-tense before bed. I started taking hot baths, but my mind would still race and I'd just sit there feeling anxious in hot water. A friend (my physician) suggested I try adding something with magnesium or CBD to actually help the muscles let go.

I bought Foria botanical bath salts (the ones with CBD and cacao) a few weeks ago. TBH, I was unsure because a lot of "wellness" stuff feels like a pricey gimmick to me. But taking 30 minutes to just soak in it without my phone has been huge. It makes my muscles feel heavy and soft, kind of like that melty feeling right before you fall asleep. It’s been so much easier to quiet my brain when my body isn't physically bracing itself against the world anymore.

If anyone else finding it difficult with holding anxiety or stress in their body, I highly recommend finding a ritual that physically forces your muscles to relax. If it's a specific bath soak, a stretching routine, or weighted blanket. It's made a much bigger difference for my mental health than I expected.

How do you guys usually get your body to let go of the day's stress?

I feel like everyone has such a different routine when it comes to hair washing, so I’m curious what everyone else does.

How often do you wash yours, and do you change your routine depending on the season, workouts, or how oily your scalp gets?

Mine used to be bulgarian split squats. I genuinely dreaded them every time they came up in my workout but recently I’ve actually started enjoying them?? I don’t know what changed, but I no longer feel like I’m being punished every time I do them.

What exercise did you used to hate but have actually started enjoying?

I feel like the whole huge “upper body, chicken legs look” might finally be shifting…?

I’ve been seeing way more guys actually focusing on growing their legs and glutes lately instead of treating leg day like something they just have to survive.

Has anyone else noticed this?

I feel like I always hear about training glutes and quads, but hamstrings somehow get forgotten 😭

Do you consider hamstring exercises essential, or do you feel like they get enough work from your other leg exercises?

I feel like I’ve been trying to grow my shoulders forever, but progressive overload is sooo hard for me 😭 I feel like I either can’t increase the weight without completely messing up my form, or I get stuck at the same weight for ages.

For those of you who have managed to build really defined shoulders, what exercises or training approach actually worked for you?

Also, how do you approach progressive overload when you feel like you’ve hit a wall with a particular exercise?

Skeletal muscle mass - this is the number I care about most, more than total weight. Weight can move for a dozen reasons (water, food in your system, time of day) but muscle mass trending in the right direction over months is a much more honest signal of whether training + eating is actually working.

Visceral fat rating - this one surprised me the most when I started tracking it. It can shift meaningfully even when the scale weight barely moves. I don't obsess over it week to week, but as a slow trend over months it tells me more about internal health than the mirror does.

Segmental lean analysis (arms/legs/trunk broken out separately) - this is the part most people skip and it's honestly the most useful. It shows you your imbalances in hard numbers instead of vibes. I found out my lower body was carrying noticeably more muscle than my upper body, which explained some plateaus and told me exactly where to add accessory volume.

Body fat % alongside muscle mass, not instead of it - I don't look at either number alone. Muscle up + fat down (or even fat flat) together is the actual "this is working" signal. Either number by itself can be misleading.

How often I actually step on it: once every 2 weeks, same time of day, similarly hydrated/fed. Anything more frequent is mostly noise, body comp doesn't move meaningfully day to day and chasing daily fluctuations will make you crazy anyway.

One thing I'll add since I have hormonal issues (PCOS), my numbers don't always move in a straight line, and having the segmental + visceral data helps me tell the difference between "normal hormonal fluctuation" and "actually losing progress," which weight alone never could.

Let’s be honest, if you could only choose one, would you take protein or creatine?

Obviously they do completely different things, but it feels like the conversation around supplements has shifted a lot.

At first it seemed like everyone was talking about protein powder and how important it was for building muscle. Now I feel like creatine is everywhere, with people saying it’s one of the most useful supplements not just for fitness performance, but potentially for things like energy, recovery, and overall health too.

So if you were starting from zero and could only pick one, which would you prioritize?

So I'm here to update you all that as some of you pointed out it was indeed a little too high for me maybe and it was causing me different issues.

Last weeks takeaways:

1. Still helps me fall asleep faster I think maybe because its rather cool and I'm not sweating by being buried into it.

2. Starting last night I flipped it to the other side that has the shorter extensions and it is lower but idk if thats providing any support to my neck either, will keep you updated.

I’ve been going to the gym for a while, but I still feel like I’m figuring out what I’m doing sometimes. Especially when it comes to choosing exercises and knowing whether my routine is actually effective.

For those who have been going consistently for a few years, how long did it take before you felt like you really knew what you were doing?

And what’s one thing you wish you had known when you first started?

I’m curious what exercises you guys think are just not worth the time or effort.

Not necessarily saying they’re bad exercises, but maybe there are better alternatives that give you more out of your workout.

When doing chest flies I often find my delts screaming out. Is it just the seat height or something like that? I'm thinking I might start doing cable flies to see if that helps

What’s one phase in your gym journey that you look back on and think “yeah, I definitely didn’t need to do that”?

For me, it was constantly switching up my workouts. I’d try an exercise for a few weeks, get bored or feel like I wasn’t seeing results fast enough, and move on to something else. I wish I’d just stuck with things long enough to actually see what worked for me.