u/Far_Line8468

The Eldritch knight in my party has been using Gentle Repose on nearly every boss since he learned it for laughs. It’s flavored in my campaign as a sort of cryogenic freeze, turning the corpse crystalline.

What are some things I can do with this?

I thought about there being some “Collector” baddie thats aligned with the BBEG that releases them all from their freeze and turns the endgame into a boss rush, but Im more trying to think of ways to reward him for this behavior.

I don't know if there was any new research to support an algorithm change, but when I first started using MF during my first cut, 1% bf per week seemed to be its recommended range (as well as the general recommendation coming from people like Jeff, SBS, etc).

That + a year long bulk later, I'm starting my next cut today. When I started the goal on MF, it not only recommended just 0.5 pounds per week, but also put 1% bf per week in its "caution" range. My partner, who is also cutting, got similarly conservative recommendations.

I set it to 1% anyway, since that's what I did before, but I'm wondering if new research has dropped in the past year or so to drive this?

For reference, most of my understanding of lifting was built during the "Powerbuilding" era of the online fitness space. Basically, before short form video, when people still took Rippetoe and Stronglifts seriously.

Regardless of that, the "basics" seemed simple enough

Eat at a surplus to gain muscle, eat at a deficit to lose fat while doing a moderate amount of volume, and you'll be set. Works well enough for me

Only recently did I look at "fitness instagram" for the first time and nearly every top influencer says that

a: Bulking is vaulted. All you gained was fat because hypotrophy is not energy dependent. Just eat a maintenance, or a small surplus to give you extra carbs to fuel workouts (which of course, would be non-falsifiably similar to if a surplus actually fuel muscle growth itself)

b: Everything passed the second set is junk volume.

c: Volume doesn't actually matter. All studies that demonstrate volume = more gains are actually just swelling, and compensation for poor intensity in the study subjects (which again is mostly non-falsifiable)

And to be clear, this mentality appears to be universal, and said with total confidence.

Now, it doesn't matter for me. I know what works on my body, and stick with it, but I could not imagine being a beginner in this environment where depending on the roll of the algorithmic dice you are given such fundamentally contradictory advice to what another person might get, with both sides saying you won't have any success if you follow the other.

Has the "content" economy just made the entry into this hobby a mental DDoS (with the end result just being peptides)?