OS 21: Dim AI workout programs; the Obscure Exercise Library; roids pod; truly odd protein hack
Plus group workout info
Friday, Shabbat on the way, week is over, a full 25 hours away of rest, and then Mother’s Day—dinner eaten at lunchtime. Weather isn’t bad either; I’ve had the AC in for 2 weeks and only turned it on once, last Wednesday, and then only on fan mode. I’ve said in the chat I’ve been doing POTATO DIET (you only eat potatoes; as much as you want; weight drops off—details in this post:
since Tuesday and am wrapping it up probably Sunday. Not bad so far. Normal white russets. It’s been over a year since I’ve done it. I re-watched Beau Travail the other night and it’s probably the best exemplification of skinnies (the pants) in film or in style history. Also short hair, fade haircuts. Workout wise I took a day or two off to test my maxes but otherwise doing isolated wrist/forearm stuff to bulletproof my elbows and playing with this rice bucket/bag I got. Open Secrets. The ONLY health aggregation email that surfs between the lines of full health psychosis and being completely normal.
What we cover here, for those new to the program: peptides, CASEIN powder, animal protein (powders, yeast? bones), running, SPRINTING, gelatin/sugar, linoleic-acid removal, the two-kiwi-a-day diet, eye of round (marinated), maybe citrus peel and water, skincare as diet (Vit. E/lycopene/sat. fat/X-factors), nicotine patches (not for me), nicotine tabs and the people that love them, nerve flossing AKA reverse Tai Chi aka high-level band work aka TOE WORK; thoracic spine activation, lower back mobility (super strength), Roman chair work, post-DHT/blood=flow theories of hair growth, saturated fat theories of skin excellence, post-calories in/out models of fat loss, severe macros mastery, sunlight titration, severe exposure (Six Finger Satellite; sun), dead hangs, understanding written coverage of obscure and basic fitness and dark wellness concepts in the news, EMOM workouts (look it up), pleasant-looking zero-drop shoes (not a lot), natural fibers, vibratory therapy (movement), cotton head to toe, strength, curly hair, German hangs, eye color lightening and more. Where the obscure meets the basic and melds into something unnameable. Nobody who understands these topics writes about this. Snake Super Health Open Secrets.
Today’s newsletter features: the first dispatch from the Snake Super Health library of obscure, rehabilitative exercises; a new development/level of appeasement in the peptide discussion; Alexander McQueen Nike shoe identification please? a way to halve the calories in ground beef (keeping the protein), the millionaire-ification of spa culture; a war-related shortage of the only healthy drink on the planet; a new journalism venture into steroids and legacy media finally starts admitting they’re addicted to cigs; the lowest moment (saying something) for one of the most “cringe” estoteric health doxxed anon social accounts; the imperfect nature of AI workout programming (better than you’d think; worse than you’d think) and a Substack mainstay shores up their health vertical. Plus: the only macros-friendly meal at McDonald’s.
Onto it.
Not sure what the A story is this week? Maybe this:
unusual_whales@unusual_whalesBREAKING: Reportedly, the war in Iran is causing a shortage of Diet Coke, per NYP6:48 PM · May 7, 2026 · 19 Views3 Replies · 2 Reposts · 7 LikesImportant development. On the demon health scale DC is somewhere here:
Since it’s the most artificial food out there—no naturally occurring analog of what it tastes like in the universe. This is a moral accomplishment in a food environment that’s mostly synthetic. But it also makes DC the first demon you slay getting out of gen pop eating, en route to post veg. oil/robo food as well as a prize you get when you maybe hum at a higher frequency. Lots of Peat people have galaxy-brained their way into DC drinking. The best/most immediate example of this is below the paywall.
Other A story: Maybe this recent NY Mag feature calling for smoking cigarettes again? Or, more concretely, yearning for the pause that ripping a dart gives you. Probably. It is tactile and static. Loyal subscribers will note I stumped this idea at Major Fix three months ago. The argument I made there:
was as follows. Some elite athletes smoke and disgraced “doctor” Peter Attia wrote in his book that bad VO2 max is worse for your “longevity markers” than cigarette smoking. And so the argument was:
Having an incredible VO2 max (heart strength) means you can probably smoke cigarettes provided (very) low pack years and (ideally) charcoal cigs/maybe Spirits. I mean, not really. But kind of. Such thinking is why this newsletter’s application has veered kind of into resilence/cardio health/muscle over “healing modalities”—have a healthy/big enough engine and you can burn off any garbage that’s out there. This said, the formal challenges of tacitly recommending cigarettes are impossible. Disclosure: I’ve never smoked a cig in my life. Quit now.
I liked the essay even though it didn’t discuss VO2 max. The other news item is England is banning cig sales outright for anyone born after 2009. As in when they’re 30 they won’t be able to buy them. Black market forthcoming.
Friend of the newsletter Chris Gayomali (HEAVIES) launched this week his narrative pod about the Enhanced Games (‘roid Olympics), and a long GQ feature as well. First ep is out on platforms. Pretty propulsive and raises many questions. Peptides are banned? An Olympic swimmer didn’t figure out CNS failure?
laura reilly and Magasin are launching their health vertical, High Touch, soon; she’s looking for fact-checkers who know PubMed.
This weekend’s Snake Super Health group workout info:
Sunday, May 10, noon PM, Columbus Park Chinatown NYC.
All levels welcome, beginners to bodyweight beasts: get your first pull-up or dial in what you’re doing.
Weekly peptide in society update
Another week, another canary in the coal mine moment: Jeremy Renner goes in depth on a podcast (Chris Williamson) about his stack: he takes thymosin, BPC-157 (“Wolverine”), MOTS-c (energy/metabolism), TB-500 (inflammation), NAD (energy) and various hormones. Marked difference to six months ago when this stuff was whipered or denied.
Truly fascinating. I’m not for censorship. But as the discussion gets more specialized in these online spaces, mainstream coverage remains vague and moralistic. The result is a vacuum: severe, unchecked promotion/discussion of very advanced, very nuanced, decidedly sketchy protocols. Some scholarship around peptides, but there’s a gulf, I think, between study and professional understanding of these drugs in a medical context and effectively incorporating peptides long-term so you improve. It is very, very complicated. It’s just mad tricky. Especially to get from 90% to 95. That shit’s hard man. The result is people will have to go to side streets to find out what’s good. This doctor who is otherwise esoteric/not strictly allopathic is a good skeptical voice on peptides. (Snake Super Health disclosure: take em, I don’t care. They’re just tricky.)
Cool shit this weekend: Home Run (mentioned them here) adding in plyometrics to their weekly Saturday runs. The runs are cool—rain or shine, coffee, chilling. The plyometric add—jumps, hops, work to build up your tendons—is before the run on Shabbat. Really cool they’re doing this; very often such advanced/esoteric/athletic workouts can only be experimented on alone, or done with specialized coaches. In this case they got a guy leading it. Makes it accessible. Respect!
New to Snake Super Health? Here’s what you may have missed:
Skim the Open Secrets news update archive; last week’s update covered the Japanese cure for anility; GLPs and the modeling industry, seed oil-free NYC slice map, the Mike Tyson of peptides for muscle building, and a half-food/half-supp skinmaxxing diet.
A long look at/evisceration of long morning routines.
Essays on beating seasonal sickness, artificial probiotics (and the women who love them), raw milk and getting your macros without protein powders.
The latest podcast covers fiber-maxxing and vegetable-first diets. Listen here; archive.
More Guts:
Creem magazine photoshoot of Suicide’s Martin Rev has him in big fat Hokas—this model, in fact. Taken at some bar in Brooklyn. Looks to me exactly recreation of Alan Vega in Foams from a while ago:
Which is lead among among IG posts that transcend the medium. (Related: Nike re-released their Foamposite Pro with neon swoosh today. Already sold out in my size.)
Times story from recently about athletes/fit ppl switching over to “Coach GPT,” or, in other words, using GPT/Claude/AI agents to program their workouts. In the story, Chris Cohen (my old editor! healthy guy) uses Claude for a half marathon training plan. In the piece, experienced athletes use AI to “refine their own ideas for training” for both running and strength training. One chick who was rebuilding her deadlift checked in with it daily. Money quote
“I want to hate on it 100 percent,” he said, “but I can’t.”
Great, great subject, ties in with what I’ve been seeing. Very thorough piece. AI is… kinda not bad for programming? If you know how to spank it when it gets out of line. Here’s my AI disclosure:
I really don’t lean on AI or use it for anything outside of a very narrow of experiments for strength/health and so on. I do this mostly because I’ve seen the industry headed this way, and I want to cover this development—trainers, researchers, nutrition people using AI—as well as this industry, capably for readers.
Moving on. It’s also incredibly… just like not intelligent. Can be very incompetent. A couple thoughts below.
GPT can have legit advantages over a static program taken off the internet or from a book because it can be made malleable—adjusted, as discussed in the story. (I’m not sure about the being friends with it here, but I’ve used it to play around with volume requirements on a daily training program.) I think you have to be literate in programming to see improvement. Note in Chris’ story that the numbers it spit out was wrong. My experience with Chat is it will use the… most general and most basic and bandied about… received wisdom/immediate online result to a data point, rather than the correct one. It will straight up will get things wrong. (Think of this as when Google indexed the wrong onion cooking time in its search summary a decade ago.) You really have to understand how lifting programs work…
To make sure it doesn’t fuck things up for you. (Same with running.)
A couple of examples where it does work: a buddy I know got into good shape over the winter by uploading a “goals” photo into GPT—some guy—and a current pic of himself, and asking for a workout program to fill in the blanks. Didn’t work, then he adjusted the ask. I had my own program I had it tweak—daily lifting—and it ruined it outright, then I narrowed, severely, my ask. The explanation here is that, whether written by a robot or person, a program must have a couple of core requirements to work well. (I.e. get results, not lead to injury.) I think you shouldn’t use AI as a best friend here because the answers won’t be sticky. You won’t remember them. You need to write down what you eat in a notebook. You can’t have a robot do the work done for you. It’s better to figure it out yourself. But you can ask a dim machine for an opinoon. And if you know the range your answer needs to be, and your program’s requirements, and how diet and exercise roughly work, then you can use it as a way to check if your work is OK. And it’s not insanely hard to program if you’re a normal person just wanting progress. It’s best then to ask
