What it takes to grow is challenge, and challenge usually comes with pain. It can be small and incremental, or way out of comfort zone, but hypertrophy happens only when challenged. Just like if you're completing all your reps without that last one hurting, you're not going to get bigger: ![[RPE.png]] Pain’s a good indication - it’s the error that backprops in your neural nets, it’s the cost function that returns something high, it’s when your model gets adjusted. [[Darwin's Golden Rule]] is a way to force yourself to do really harsh squats. #halfbaked #published 2025-01-22