Related Recs

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Muscle guns

Two years ago I strained my feet jumping around my living room doing the HIIT exercises recommended by a YouTube channel. When I asked my husband, Jon, to massage my strained feet, he pulled on the toes, a signature move he claims is essential for releasing stagnation. But my right foot was so weakened by the jumping that when Jon pulled he induced a “Jones stress fracture” (also known as a “Jon’s stress fracture”) and landed me in a walking boot. I recovered, but my feet have never been the same and I now require a mode of massage that is safe. Which is how I came to know and love muscle guns. I’d seen such devices before, at Crunch Fitness on the Upper West Side specifically, where personal trainers use them on unwitting first-time clientele who lay on tables in the center of the weight room to be pounded and publicly humiliated into orgasmic muscular release post-workout. But because the personal trainers at Crunch are universally to be avoided, I never thought to try the guns they love. Then one day I saw a half price “Theragun” in the checkout line at Marshalls. I impulsively snatched it and threw it in my basket. At home I fired it up and gently began caressing my feet. The sensation is less pleasurable than a real massage but the next day, as if by magic, my feet were healed.

@allie

Nov 16, 2022

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Weight Lifting

I got into weight lifting for the same reason I get into most things, which is pure unbridled vanity. I read or heard somewhere in my many biohacker information channels that weight lifting is the most anti-aging form of exercise, especially for women, and so I was like on my way! I wasn’t about to pay some community college bro $100 an hour at my LA Fitness to train me though so I just googled “weight lifting classes near me” and because I live a charmed and bless life I found the fucking coolest independent gym like a mile from my house and have been going there for almost a year. Vanity aside, it just makes you feel so good all the time. I love watching myself get stronger and I love the feeling after you lift something really heavy you thought you could never have lifted and I love all the neighborhood friends I’ve made there, including former PI subject and possibly coolest girl alive Petra Cortright. (Honestly a large part of my social life takes place there?) Anyway everyone over 30 should lift weights, preserve your waning muscle mass and build up your self-esteem babe.

@yasi

Oct 20, 2023

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Exercise mace

I’ve had a ton of fun swinging around my exercise mace as a way to workout. Good strength training and I channel my inner barbarian.

@mauricereeves

Feb 5, 2024

Top Recs from @sami

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Long walks

I like the neuroplastic/wholesome/health recs in these letters, and I remember this specific advice from an earlier one and am going to echo it. Walking is really it. People love lifting and breaking sweats but frankly walking 8,000 steps a day (10 tbh) is more important for long-term health. By a hair… I won’t make any crazy claims like walking can cure depression. But…. if you eat right, breathe through your nose, get some sleep and sun and have something you want to do every day, and have a couple of bucks to your name and some friends, it might. More realistically, even when things could improve at least you get to go on a nice long walk.

@sami

Nov 23, 2022

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Mixed pool at Hampstead Heath (London)

Among the best two or three places in the world, I wound up here by mistake this summer going to Lord’s Cricket Ground (took the long way), but without trunks, so I came back. It’s a pretty cold freshwater pond with trees all around it near the lookout point, and is open spring to fall. There are men’s and ladies’ ponds too, nearby. George Smiley swam laps in one with his head above water at the start of the Tinker Tailor movie; when I went other retirees were doing the same. It’s unreal to step into, much less swim in; you feel like a million bucks or pounds getting out of the water. It’s hard to believe this place exists. It looks like the nice half of that Bosch painting.

@sami

Nov 23, 2022

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Immolation

Been listening to a lot of Immolation lately… the nice thing about death metal is even the average bands are really satisfying because they don’t need to hammer the point if they hint at it. Immolation, though, hammer it, and have like nine great full lengths. They’re all very fluid and easy, but not showy. Who can explain great art? Not me. But if I remember right they’re based in New York, and the drummer lives in Cleveland and commutes to practice. Which feels like the key to it all.

@sami

Nov 23, 2022