#nrol — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

Doc Edward Morbius ⭕ @[email protected] · 2026-08-18 · 19:38 UTC

@d_rift Ok, so let's start at the beginning.

An excellent general resource is https://exrx.net.

The Reddit Fitness Forum FAQ (now offloaded to its own site) has historically been really good: https://thefitness.wiki/.

There are a bunch of good books (and many ridiculous ones of course). I've had pretty good luck with the New Rules of Lifting series. There are three books, lots of overlap. The "For Women" one is largely differentiated by a lot of pep-talk and a really excellent diet/recipe selection, which the original somewhat skips over. I just read some of your recent food/cooking posts.

What I Like About NRoL: It focuses on whole-body freeweight movements, with an emphasis on six particular categories: squat, deadlift, lunge (really a one-legged squat), push (presses: bench, overhead), pull (rows, chins), and twist (core/abs), plus some combo moves. It does a pretty good job of showing those movements and variants/alternatives. Information tends to be evidence-based and cited.

The workout programmes are quite solid. You can start with goals and mix and match through hypertrophy (mass gain), strength, and fat loss, with several programmes in each category.

I don't know where you are in your transition, but if you're taking T you should see quite a boost in gains and capacity (I've never done it myself, though when I was younger I was suspected of it by some people, rather to my annoyance).

There's also quite a bit concerning rest/recovery, workout timing, diet and nutrition, and injury prevention / prehab / rehab, some of which is covered in NRoL's book "For Life".

More on the series: https://www.louschulerwriting.com/lou-schuler-books'

A surprisingly good brief introductory article: "Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie" (2011). Title oversells it a bit, but there's much solid information and myth-busting.

https://www.mensjournal.com/fitness/everything-you-know-about-fitness-is-a-lie-20120504

Other than that, key concepts:

Specificity: muscle development follows training. Muscles worked, movements followed, and resistance used all affect response: hypertrophy, strength, endurance.
Progressive overload: start light and increase resistance over time.
Compound vs. isolation: compound movements, in which more than one joint moves work more muscle, faster, than isolation movements. Both have their place, but compound, whole-body, freeweight movements should be the core of your programme.
Consistency. Change takes time. Consistency beats intensity.
Rest/recovery: Your body builds muscle, and burns fat, mostly while you sleep. Rest is an essential part of training. There are all kinds of cycles, from rest within a set, within a workout, and on daily, weekly, and longer cycles.

#Fitness #StrengthTraining #NewRulesOfLifting #NRoL

Edit: Added the "Everything you know..." link.

#fitness #strengthtraining #newrulesoflifting #nrol