Workouts

What I'm doing to stay in shape, and how it changes over time.

In high school, I did some manual labor like roofing, house flipping, etc. that helped build endurance, so I thought I had decent enough muscles. I was also 115–120 lb, so I was pretty light and could do plenty of pull-ups and push-ups. I played soccer, and in my latter high school life I started to like endurance running since I was pretty bad at it before.

Then college hit and I never did much exercise. I gained weight to 130 lb, and I noticed, 'wow, I had little muscle for my increasing weight.' It was a girl I had liked who told me, “Isn’t it kind of strange how little you care about growing muscles? I thought that’s what men were supposed to do to attract women.” Whoops lol.

These were my workout regiments inside my bedroom:

2022-01-10

Test day to see where I’m at

• Plank: 1 set of 2.5 minutes
• Archer: 2 sets of 2 minutes
• Push-ups:
  • 1 set of 20 regular
  • 10 elevated or burpees
  • 10 side by sides
  • 10 shoulder touches or explosive
• Mountain hike: 2 sets of 30
• Bicep curls: 2 sets of 20 each arm, 10 lbs
• Crawling: 100 reps
• Oxygen apnea: 1 minute

Incorporate:

• Side bicycle: 1 set of 20 each leg
• 100 push-ups goal

In 2022, after about 1.5 months of consistently training every day, I think I increased my planks to 10 minutes, I have no idea what archer is anymore, I could do 100 push-ups consecutively, I was doing 100 mountain hikes, I stopped doing bicep curls because I was using a makeshift remedy using a drawstring bag and books, crawling 100 reps consistently, and I could do this free dive oxygen apnea for 3 minutes.

Then I stopped and gained more weight. After working on startups and just life in general, I was still pretty skinny. I started dating someone, and her parents were like, this guy is gonna blow away in the wind. Flashback to the original quote, am I right?

Once I left my last job, I realized how affordable the beauty premium was. Or at least, as an Asian male who’d like to stand out — us Asian men are stereotyped as shy (for those who don’t know me, I think sober drunk is a good descriptor of my personality, plus I don’t drink) and scrawny. My sibling taught me that in our society (and personally I don’t think stereotypes will ever go away), you can impress people easily by beating back stereotypes. For Asian men, that means looking less nerdy, appearing more confident, and in this case, looking fit. The thing that clicked for me was that I never had a tailored suit, so I would wear a suit, and a girl would say, “You need this tailored,” because I didn’t fit in it; specifically, my arms being thin and my shoulders not being very broad. The other issue was my girlfriend starting sleeping over, and we started talking about marriage, and I realized I wasn't strong enough to -- I know it's cliche but -- carry her down the aisle. So in 2025, I started working out, but with intention: look good in a suit and carry my girlfriend.

2025-05-18

I’ve been working out at the gym for the last 2 months like this: 3 sets / 10 reps per set =

• 30 seated military bench press
• 30 bicep curls
• 30x benching dumbbells
• 30 weird bench lateral chest where your arms extend outwards and you bring it in above you
• 20 dumbbell pullovers
• 30 dumbbell front raises
• 30 reverse fly
• 30 push-ups
• 1 minute hard wave, though apparently your back is supposed to be on the ground but mine hasn’t

The weird bench lateral chest, pullovers, front raises, and reverse fly have been using 25 lb; the rest are 30 lbs. Without protein powder, I was struggling a lot at home.

I started March 2025 at a Planet Fitness, going 4-5 days a week, MTWFS. I was so weak I was lifting weights that my swimmer girlfriend could do initially. I started out at 15–17.5 lb dumbbells on each arm for almost all of them except the front raises, which were lower at around 10 lb. Around September, I stopped working out as consistently, going maybe twice every two weeks because I burnt out on work, and the demotivation was clear. I had peaked at 40 lb for each workout per arm; I think someone pointed out to me that it was strange I was doing hammer presses and dumbbell front raises at heavy weights with good form, and I think it had to do with the fact that Planet Fitness was so busy, I basically had to just use 1 set of dumbbells for the hour.

By September, when I looked at myself in the mirror, I don’t think I was necessarily a stick, but I’m still skinny. There’s some kind of psychology where they mention how one looks at themselves and rates their beauty more subjectively compared to what spectators would rate them. Maybe this is just my personality, but the mix of humbleness, possibly being blind, and the conflicting self-reflecting rating of myself (i.e., it’s possible I never thought of myself as a stick, so now I still think I look the same just with a slightly bigger arm) — I’ve been taking pictures and I barely notice any difference, but friends who hadn’t seen me in 2 years were saying, whoa, you’ve definitely been working out arm, shoulder width, and chest wise. So I guess something happened.

Here is my current workout regiment:

Day 1 – Push (Strength)

Chest • Shoulders • Triceps • Core

Purpose: Heavy pressing and chest strength.

Day 2 – Pull (Strength)

Back • Biceps • Core

Purpose: Pulling strength, posture, shoulder health.

Day 3 – Push (Volume)

Chest • Shoulders • Triceps • Core

Purpose: Upper chest, shoulder development, higher-volume pressing.

Day 4 – Pull (Volume)

Back • Biceps • Core

Purpose: Back thickness, posture, trunk stability.

I properly started up again around the beginning of April, and I tested between 3 or 4 days. 4 days seem to fit me much better since 3 days gave me the feeling of too much rejuvenation.

I will mention between September 2025 to March 2026, I basically somehow managed to stay relatively at the same weight class if I sometimes decided to stumble into the gym. It was kinda like maintenance. I recorded on 1/17/2026 a 35 lb dumbbell front raise and a 40 lb shoulder seated bench press. I’m no longer increasing the weight of doing push exercises 5 lb at a time per month because I’ve started doing pull exercises. When I first started, I just asked ChatGPT what exercises were good for chest and shoulder growth; I had decent shoulder traps already, so I just selected exercises that would help with target areas that I cared about. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have mattered that much; as a beginner, according to a bunch of blogs online, doing any exercise consistently to simply gain strength is what matters, and there’ll be a notable difference within a short time period.

I stopped doing front raises and started doing lateral raises again. The front raises were starting to hurt my back right below my neck. I think in my journey, I feel rewarded for developing a habit for once. I feel like growing towards a goal that wasn’t some big career goal was rewarding; I was not consistent in a lot of things growing up, which led to a personality of distractions. I loved bouncing between infotainment YouTube channels. I skipped medication. I sometimes skipped brushing my teeth. I stopped using my retainers (luckily only one tooth really moved, and it’s the same tooth as my dad’s, so it’s just genetic :/). It feels good to have done this habit of working out for a good amount of time, that I’ve started developing other small habits: actually waking up and cooking breakfast/lunch depending on when I sleep, sleeping on time, and developing a normal schedule/circadian rhythm around 11p–12a.

When I first moved to NYC, I would inconsistently go out for runs. In sprints of around a month at a time, then just losing the habit, I would be consistent running 5 days a week, slowly growing from running about 2 miles without needing to stop to around 6.2 miles (almost a 10k) at a 7:30/mi pace to a 7 min/mi pace. It’s been a year since I last tried running, and two years since I consistently have been.

Now that I've been working out for quite a bit, I realized my carrying capacity on my shoulders might actually be weaker potentially. Back then, I carried a 25-40lb backpack everywhere for around an hour a day. Just for extra-preparedness and because it felt unnatural without it. It was like wearing a watch; I couldn't not carry a backpack because I could require something in there. Funnily enough, I hate wearing watches; it feels weird.

Back then, my dad used to scold me for not sitting up straight. My computer neck continued worsening throughout high school into college. My current workout regiment (the pull days) have helped me sit up straight. I had ChatGPT design my workout regiment based on my apartment complex's gym equipment, and I can honestly say it's improved my back a lot.

Lately, I've been seeing a trend on Instagram on what women think is an ideal arm shape/muscle amount/tone definition on men (e.g. [What is the perfect arm definition](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DY6i7Ezte1x/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==)). I think I would go for 3 (out of 5). Rosa agrees about not being too big otherwise it's scary. I'm currently probably at 2 (maybe even less; ChatGPT says 2.25 because of triceps size, but my arms are still not large enough to be able to have definition) but with some fat on me oof. The funny thing is, my girlfriend doesn't care; she watched c-dramas and was looking for a shy, Chinese-Canadian software engineer because c-drama leads are notoriously very skinny; instead, she got a chaotic, Chinese-American startup founder. I started off skinny, and she liked that, so my whole workout goal is intended to help my beauty premium and general random physical requirements.

Now in my current workout, I think my weight increments are slowing down now that I’m doing both push and pull instead of 4 push days. I'm starting to cut after peaking at 160lb. Now that I have a long-running workout habit, I’m stacking even more on: I want to compete in a marathon one day. Since playing soccer, I’ve always played defender, so it was a lot of sprinting rather than anything endurance wise. One of my best childhood friends mentioned my endurance was shit, so I took it to heart, and from junior year running at an 8 min/mi pace for 1 mile (I stopped exercising during the school year outside of high school soccer; in freshman year, I could achieve a 6 minute/mi pace), I started running longer and longer (inconsistently; habits is just hard for me). I had an internal injury unfortunately by senior year as I was gunning for a marathon, so I had to stop. At that time, I was running 1 mile uphill at a 6:30/mi pace and going at least 4 miles per day. I think I can beat that consistency and mindset back into me. I think building habits has been vital in building confidence in myself to do a bunch of things. I'm just much heavier now.

If you read my goals blog, I mention I’ve always struggled with marketing. There is a public perception anxiety that runs in my family, particularly me and my mom. But with habits, I think I can overcome the anxiety and do better.

And now same goes for marathon training. Same goes for marketing. Unlike coding, which back then I had a love and passion for, these things aren’t necessarily a love or passion but more so just a thing I like and is good for me. At least I like it. But it wasn’t something that drew me, just more like “I should probably do this” without the “ugh” feeling in the beginning for many dreaders of exercising. I think I don’t really dread it since I’ve been cardio wise pretty fit and skinny my whole life. I’ll write a blog on what I think “interest” means in people, but it boils down to what are you good at. I’m not the best at anything — maybe I’m highly proficient at pattern matching, thus conversationally I make a lot of analogies — but this is probably why I’m constantly drawn to exercise.

That’s my current workout regiment, why I do it, how I feel, my goals, and how much longer I can continue. This is a living document, so I'll cut down on words, re-organize sections to be a more coherent story, and update this page with current weight numbers to have a record of progress and show people how long it takes to grow (with probably not enough protein).

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Updates

As a note, updates to numbers and workouts are tracked via git history.

2026-08-18 update on arms: this is embarrassing, but the average male arm size is 13 inches, and it isn't until a year of working out now that I have a non-flexed arm of almost (off by a tick) 13 inches circumference. I've recently been cutting from 162.5lb to now 155lb over the last two weeks. Suffice it to say, I self deprecatingly called myself a stick throughout my childhood. I seem to have a very good metabolism, particularly from carbs (Wuhan genes? Though my mom is actually mostly Sichuanese even though so many dishes I ate growing up were Wuhan stuff. I digress) Now I know, based on this latest measurement, that I was truly a twig. I thought all my free manual labor for my dad putting up drywalls, wooden planks, and painting and scrubbing would build muscle. Did jack. I bet carrying a baby for a year gets parents more muscle than lifting weights. Another thing that is slightly embarrassing is that I could do 30 underhand pull ups in middle school, but I was, again, a stick with lots of soccer and free labor behind my belt. Now I have visceral fat apparently. I've been trying to do overhand and neutral grip pull ups the last week, and I've barely gotten past 2 on the overhand (on a push day) and 10 on the neutral (if I skipped all other exercises). I don't think I have that much (hidden since I'm east asian) fat, but there's definitely something there. We looked back in my high school photos, and I had abs (still a stick!). What happened to those. Upon reflecting on my apparent achievement of being average now, do all men go to the gym? Or is that 13 inches also including folks with lots of fat in their arms, but to what degree would that skew the average? What manual labor did people do that I'm not aware of. Even from a sports perspective, there wasn't weight training. For me playing soccer growing up, it was intense cardio and skin cancer. But for 13.4 inches being the ages 20-29 average, are people going to the gym? The majority of people don't go to the gym. It's also possibly my arm measuring is imprecise. I could also just be losing fat. Man I wish I did like a dexa scan to see before and now. Would've been cool to scientifically see it or add my stat to someone's scientific studies. I also haven't done PRs before, and it's possible I may need to just do less reps and higher weights. Also, I've taken greater interest in the different forms and alternatives online. Reddit and the fitness community's history online is amazing. Tons of resources. Also, this website is pretty useful to gauge progress https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/bench-press/lb. I filled in my workouts, and the raw export is here: workout-2026-08-18.csv. Novice is 20 percentile, and intermediate is 50th percentile. I've cleared novice for most of them, and if I had started some workouts earlier or just pushed harder than I currently am, I would probably be able to do most at novice. (Or like push ups, if I started with it instead of putting it near the middle, it'd be 50 at least since that's what I trained for at Planet Fitness, which would technically put me at 65th percentile, but it's cheating in a way?). I think I've been doing most of these at decent form, though dumbbell curls possibly not since I don't start all the way from the bottom. Anyways, I'm mostly a novice, and on average halfway to intermediate.

2026-08-18 update: the last two weeks, I've been double checking my form diligently. Turns out, I've been doing partial bicep curls. I'm now starting from the very bottom, going down to 30lb. 5 more lb and I'm about intermediate which is still impressive compared to all the push workouts I have and how bad my form has been the entire time. I noticed my pull up machine is actually a Hammer Strength Chin/Dip/Leg Raise. For the neutral grip where the palms face each other, I can do a solid 10 without having done other workouts. But I'm still stuck at 2 for the pronated grip. It's a bit wide for me, but that is probably for the best. Cable crunches really burns though. I also want to mention a partial inspiration for actually starting to workout as well has been my cousin, who is slightly taller than me but leaner and worked out a lot. He like me also likes cooking. I think it's a stellar example of positive influence and demonstrates how parents influence children... and how similar my cousin and I somewhat are given we share similar DNA in that familial respect.