Pullup Pilgrim

Pushing back on the wear it less conclusion. Overnight is where nearly all the value is for most people, because resting heart rate trend and sleep consistency are the two things that actually tell you something over months. Daytime step counting is the part you could drop without noticing. If you are going to restrict when you wear it, restrict it to nights and take it off at your desk, which is the opposite of what you were proposing.

Noted, and slightly depressing given I've been quietly proud of the pistols. Adding hinging this week.

Ordering a fillable bag this week. I've been doing pistols and pretending that counts as leg training, which I think everyone here has correctly identified.

Walking down stairs being worse than up is the giveaway. That's the same muscle action that made you sore.

The classic do not is email. People will tell you it is possible and they are right, and they will not tell you about the afternoon you spend working out why a large provider has quietly started binning your mail, or the reputation of the IP block your host handed you. It is a genuinely interesting thing to learn and a genuinely bad thing to depend on. If you want the learning, run a receive only setup for a domain you do not care about and leave your real mail where it is.

Worth adding that the sustained gap has narrowed a lot on the better-cooled 14 inch chassis and on the Apple side. Still real, but a third lower is the bad case rather than the average case, and plenty of people would take that trade for something they can carry.

Ring for sleep, watch for training, both only if you enjoy data as a hobby. You lift and walk, so you are not training by heart rate. Get the ring.

Partly disagreeing with the surplus-only answer. Volume matters too and most bodyweight programmes are quietly low-volume for the arms specifically.

Count your weekly hard sets that hit the biceps and triceps directly. Mine was five. Five sets a week is a maintenance dose. Once I added ring curls and straight-bar dips as accessory work and got to twelve to fifteen sets, my sleeves changed within a few months at roughly the same bodyweight. Pull-ups alone are a back exercise that your arms attend.

In the meantime, load 42.5 with the 1.25s if your gym has them, and if it doesn't, use the smallest change plates from the fixed dumbbell rack. Slightly awkward on the sleeve, works fine.

I do not really disagree with this. The only reason I recommend a short machine block is the confidence problem, which is the actual thing keeping the poster on the treadmill, not a technique question.

Started on machines for about three months and then moved to barbells, and here is the honest accounting of what transferred.

Transferred well: the habit of turning up, knowing my way around the gym at 6pm, and enough general strength that the empty bar was not a novelty.
Did not transfer: any of the balance, bracing or coordination. My first proper squat session with just the bar was humbling in a way the leg press had entirely failed to prepare me for.

Would I do it again? Yes, but I would spend six weeks on machines rather than three months, and I would do goblet squats and dumbbell rows during those six weeks so the patterns were not brand new later.

Both together is the right answer if the budget ever allows. Ours is AWD on winters now and the hill is a non event.

Straps on your top sets, and stop feeling bad about it. The point of a deadlift is loading your hips, back and legs. If your grip caps the bar at 80 and your posterior chain is ready for 95, you're training your forearms and calling it a deadlift.

What I'd do specifically:

• Warm-up sets and your first work set double overhand, no straps, that's your grip training and it's free
• Straps for the last two work sets so the actual training stimulus lands where you want it
• Chalk regardless, it matters more than people think on a worn bar

Hook grip is the other option and it's genuinely strong, but it hurts for the first month or two and small hands make it harder. Try it on lighter sets before you commit.

That's the whole point. Keep the unstrapped first set forever and your grip will still creep up in the background.

You have already diagnosed it. The number that looks like your cadence is cadence lock, which is what optical sensors do when the blood flow signal gets noisy and the strongest remaining periodic signal in the data is your arm swinging.

Optical wrist sensing is genuinely decent at steady state and genuinely poor at sharp transitions, which is exactly what an interval session is made of. It lags going up and lags coming down, so your recoveries look shorter and your peaks look lower.

Keep both. Strap for anything with hard efforts in it, wrist for daily resting trends and sleep, where it is fine and the strap is unwearable.

The dry skin spike is real and it is why people conclude their strap is broken in November. Also worth washing the strap regularly, salt and detergent residue both mess with conductivity.

Same session is fine. Your order is backwards.

Skill work goes first, always: front lever, muscle-up progressions, handstand, anything where the limiting factor is control rather than fatigue. Ten to fifteen minutes of that while you're fresh, then the barbell work, then any high-rep bodyweight finisher. Strength grinding after skill work costs you almost nothing; skill work after squats is just practising the wrong pattern with a tired body.

Check what's on your feet as well. Going from a flat shoe to a heeled lifting shoe, or the other way, changes how much your hip has to flex to reach the same depth. If you changed shoes anywhere near when this started, that's a suspect.

Mine broke on day 19 because I was away with a family thing and had no mat, and I treated a missed day as the end of the whole project. Started again from day one twice, which is another way of never getting past three weeks.

What fixed it was a floor: five minutes counts. Standing forward fold and some breathing in a hotel room counts. Since I allowed that, I haven't had a gap longer than four days in two years, and I've never done a challenge again.

Practical time savings that have nothing to do with programming: set up your bar height and pin height before you change, keep the same rack every session, and write the workout down before you arrive so you're not deciding anything on the clock. That's easily five minutes, which is a whole extra exercise.