DrDenim

A month? Sounds kinda quick to worry too much I think. How old are you?

If bench is giving you issues, just swap it out with something else and move on for a while.

That's quite a bit of weight to lose in one month. If you're truly losing weight, you are not eating enough. How do you sleep? I wonder if bad sleep led to bad nutrition, or bad nutrition led to bad sleep?

No matter, I'd probably just do a complete shake up and take a week off and come back doing something completely different. You don't sound like you're well, so it may serve you well to take a break and start back slow, nail the basic foundational stuff down real solid and take your time building back up.

Man...somebody's bot got in here and vomited all over the place. :nana:

The first thing I started to type was kind of ugly, so I've taken a pause, and I'm trying again.

Don't you realize that 10 years old is about the age when many kids get a little heavier? The body gets a little ahead of itself with the girth, and the height has to catch up. By 11-12, a lot of chunky 9-10 year olds have evened out. I've seen this in photos of I don't know how many people. It happened to me, it's happened to lots of kids, most I would say. Don't come at him about his weight. He's 10, he'll smell that shite from a mile away and probably won't appreciate grandpa Jack Lalanne getting on his arse about it. He will recoil further back into the world of Minecraft and dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets. DON'T DO THIS!

In my opinion, doesn't matter if a person is 10 or 110, you aren't gonna lead them to resistance training if they aren't at least somewhat interested in it on their own. Does he have anyone in his life who is strong? I mean, really strong, not just strong to him. STRONG! As a childless fricker, I'm an expert on child rearin', he needs a model, a model of strength. All people need a model. He needs to see feats of strength performed for him. Get creative, when you shake his dad's hand, squeeze it so hard he goes to his knees and begs you to turn loose, or throw his Nintendo Switch across that retention pond in your subdivision, he's not gonna want to play video games anymore once you show him what real muscles can do. If you can't do this, just shoot me the address and I'll drop in and help the lad out.



I saw a documentary film when I was a wee lad, it was called Conan. It was about this kid who lived in a village and his dad was like the chief of the village, but these marauders came by and killed everyone, they killed his mom and dad right in front of him and took off Conan as a slave. They chained him to this big grinder wheel that he had to push around in a circle over and over with the other child slaves. Over the years, the other kids died because they were pussies I guess, but Conan just kept pushing the wheel until he became an adult and he was jacked! He looked just like a long haired Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's all it took for baby Denim, I was in, STRENGTH ABOVE STRENGTH! Put me on the wheel!




That was my model, but also in the real world I had a model, I wrestled at the Y as a youth, and our wrestling room was in the basement. Next to the wrestling room was the "real" weight room. The YMCA had a "gym" upstairs and it was for normal people. It had machines, cardio stuff, and it even had one of those machines where you just stand there and put a big strap around your abdomen and turn this giant mixer like machine on and it was supposed to tone your midsection???? I guess they thought you could jiggle the lard off? fricking ridiculous.



Anyway, in the basement was where the local Barbarians and Warlocks gathered to do real shite. Big leather belts, chalk, the smell of liniment and sweat, free weights, the sounds of metal(both from actual metal surfaces striking other metal surfaces and the Metallica kinds), etc. Do you know what that is like for an 8 year old to see? Do You? To see a grown man, (who is bigger than your dad, bigger than anyone's dad, and he has a tattoo!!!!), yelling at another grown man, "Come on! Come on! I'm not grabbing it! You got 2 more! I'm not saving your sorry arse, PUSHHHHHH!" That was influential to me. I wanted to be a Barbarian when I grew up. I wanted to wear string tank tops and yell at another man wearing a string tank top while he strained under a bar, and then we'd high five and then go to our duffel bags and pull out magic potions and have a toast with some kind of secret brew that child-sized Dr. Denim wasn't allowed to even know about yet. I wanted to have rough hands with chalk smeared into the lines of my palm so people knew I was a weightlifter. This was what victory looked like to me.

Also, If he wrinkles his nose up at meat, psshh! Forget about it, grandpa. You've got lots of seeds to plant if you want him to get into weightlifting, but it's not impossible. The questions you ask in your OP show me that you are getting a little out over the ends of your skis here. Start him at the beginning. Unless he lives with you and you are responsible for feeding him, you have almost no chance to influence his diet. That's up to his parents. 10 is not too young to properly strength train, he can get strong and put on muscle(within reason), but you have to bring him up right, which leads me to say.....

1. Technical proficiency in movement is numero uno, it never stops being numero uno...push ups, bench press, dips, jumping jacks, can't cheat on anything, it's sacrilege.
2. Knowing what shite is called and what it's used for is essential, there is a basic glossary that a person needs to have to understand equipment and exercises. People need to know gym and meathead lingo. Walking the walk is obviously important, but so is talking the talk, and that starts with understanding the language of strength training, nutrition, anatomy, endurance, etc.
3. Basic understanding of anatomy and physiology, again at a child's level to start, it grows with you. A person has to be able to grasp the importance of sleep, rest, stress, hydration, nutrition as you try to craft the best environment for training.
4. Training methods and programming - this stuff if the least important to me, but it gets talked about the most. Whatever you do, be intense, be consistent. That takes care of most of it. He'll have years and years to learn all about 10000000 different ways to do any number of things in the gym, but if he has shitty form, shitty diet, shitty sleep, no consistency, no passion, no intensity, it won't matter anyway because he'll get jack shite out of it and he'll quit.

Here's to your destruction.

If it all works out, your grandson will end up looking like one of these ladykillers.



*this was the entirety of what I was originally going to say, I'm glad I recanted and wrote you this extremely helpful and motivational guide.
"Leave him the frick alone."

That dude looks like a great softball player!

just mashin' dingers all day

I decided to start on the green one, it's identified as the Medium and the description says it takes 15lbs of force to bend it into a "U" shape. I never used it that way, I did these exercises where I twisted it. My problem was lateral epicondylitis (tennis elbow), and I figured if I started with a medium strength therabar and it wasn't the right resistance I'd know if I needed more or less resistance, but the medium strength bar would still be somewhat useful for warming up or for maintenance work. If I had started out with one that was either way too light or way too heavy to be useful then I'd feel like I wasted my money due to not being able to use it right away. This green one worked for me to get rid of the pain, and still seems useful even though I no longer have any issues. It's just used for maintenance now.

Well, well, well....the legend himself. We've been waiting for you. :bow:

I second the rec for provigil. It works great for me. Most of my career as an icu nurse has been at night, and I got tired with fighting the intense fatigue and sleepiness that I had on my days (what y'all call "night") when I didn't work. I have no problem staying awake on my work days(nights) because it's busy as frick, but on my days off I'd struggle to feel fully awake and I often had no drive to do much and it felt like life was just ticking away. I'd often only make it halfway through my "day" and just feel so damn tired I'd go back to bed, ("why not? it's 0123, what is there to do? just go to bed, frick it") and then that would throw off my sleep schedule.

I take modafinil, the generic, and I have enjoyed it's subtle impact. It's not stimulating, it doesn't impact my HR or BP, no jitters or "up" feeling like I hear about from stuff like adderall, vyvanse, ritalin etc, it just makes me feel fully awake and alert and in the mood to do shite. It's most wonderful benefit that I've discovered is that it is the most effective sleep aid I've taken so far in my life. By keeping me awake and active for a full day, it has helped my sleep hygiene quite a lot. I go to bed and get out of bed at more consistent times and get a longer sleep in while I'm down because there are no more naps. I'm not a guy that can handle naps, it throws everything off.

TLDR: I sleep better when I'm supposed to sleep because I'm more wakeful when I'm supposed to be awake. One supports the other. Sorry, I know your question was about a supplement and this is a prescription medication, but I never found any supplement that really dealt with fatigue/sleepiness. 20 years ago I would have said caffeine because it worked like a charm for years, until it didn't. I began to adapt to caffeine and had to chase higher and higher doses until it's too much and it's jacking up your HR/BP and messing with your sleep. It was a dead end. Modafinil fixed me right up.

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I've noticed less Hispanics at planet fitness in Raleigh NC. Big booty latinos still there though.

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Big booty latinos

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latinos?

La - teen - ooos?

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Seated Calf Raises - 3x(15-20) @ 65-75%

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65-75% of what? You know your calf raise max, dog?

good old magnesium (glycinate or bisglycinate are my preferred forms of mag), L-theanine, chamomile, some people like valerian root or valerian hops. You say "not weed" but CBD stuff relaxes the hell outta me, there is no high, just relaxation, good sleep. As much as I love to "take stuff" for sleep, anxiety, pain, etc, the best supplement for sleep, relaxation, anxiety, etc, anything really, is just getting your mind right. I know how corny that sounds, but it's true. Cultivate a relaxed state of mind and you can supplement after that, but if you're worked up over something, no supplement will bring you down. You gotta start the process internally I believe.

Never too young to start learning....if he can learn, meaning, if you can't get him to follow instruction then it is too early for him. 10 is old enough to have the intellectual and emotional maturity to be taught how to properly perform all of the main barbell lifts. SQUAT!? Yes, he's not lifting weights if he's not squatting. I'd get a rack or some squat stands, pull up bar, adjustable bench, whatever bar you need for his beginning strength levels, etc.... but the biggest piece of equipment you'll need is a plan. Without a solid plan none of that stuff will matter. It'll collect dust and eventually get sold. Train to failure? He's not ready for that yet.