This one small rule built my physique—read below

If you keep training hard but your body barely changes, this is probably why. • I don’t walk into the gym “to work out”; I walk in with 1–2 clear targets (e.g., +5 lb on incline press, +1 rep on RDL) and ignore everything that doesn’t serve those numbers. • For compounds, I stop 1–2 reps before absolute failure so my last rep is slow, controlled, and ugly—but never sloppy; if the bar speed dies completely, I rack it and count the set as done, not heroic. • I track every working set in F/AI: AI Gym & Fitness Trainer so I’m not guessing what to load—I can see exactly what my stronger self did last week and beat it by something, even a tiny bit. • On push days, I hard-cap my rest at 2–3 minutes: if my heart rate is normal and I can scroll my phone, I know I’m resting too long and my intensity for that session is gone. ⏱️ • I pick 1 “vanity metric” per cycle—like weighted pull-ups for lats or hack squats for legs—and I treat it like a video game boss: same setup, same stance, same tempo, every week until I break the plateau. • I use one sensory checkpoint for each lift: chest fully stretched on presses, hamstrings on RDLs, upper back tight on rows; if I don’t feel that muscle screaming by rep 6–8, I change the angle or weight on the next set. • I keep a hard rule for junk volume: if I can hold a full conversation during a set, I strip the weight, slow the tempo, and make every rep hurt instead of adding more random exercises. 💥 • After training, I do the same 5–10 minutes of low-effort habits every day—slow walk, 1 big bottle of water, protein within an hour—because my body changes more from boring consistency than from “PR days.” Tell me in the comments which exercise you want to actually progress on next week and what number you’re chasing.