Javi

Amateur webmaster. Built and sold @PromptHero after scaling it to 4M+ users/mo, now making more startups & open-source 💎 Ruby gems (330k+ downloads)

[Javi @rameerez]

Today is my 🏋️‍♂️ LIFTVERSARY

I started lifting exactly 6 years ago today

I was super skinny at the time, only 57kg (125lbs)

I signed up for a gym at the beginning of December 2019, but I was so scared I kept postponing my first workout

I was so intimidated that the first time I went for a workout I only ran on the treadmill

I chose the treadmill because it was the only thing in the gym I knew how to use. It was a safe place and I mostly used it so I could look at the rest of the gym from there, and try to figure out how things worked, how people were actually using the equipment

It took me a couple days until I went in and actually started lifting weights

I have everything logged: the first thing I ever did was bench press with 4kg dumbbells (8 lbs) and I remember my arms were shaking (!!!)

I was so weak and thin I couldn't even lift four kilos without my entire body shaking

Then I started eating A LOT, way more than my skinny body wanted

And I kept lifting heavier every session, so every workout I felt less and less weak until the shaking went away

The following year I went on to gain ~15kg (33 lbs)

Covid hit shortly after I started lifting, and all gyms closed down, so I had to improvise a gym at home with water jugs just to keep the habit and the early gains

Then I started nomading, traveled to Portugal, then Thailand, all while gyms were still closed down, so I had to train at home and in hotel rooms with TRX straps for months

I also had to endure through a nasty leg infection in Koh Samui Thailand that got me hospitalized for a week and limping for a while. Still I kept on deadlifting shortly after surgery

I had two or three year-long hiatuses here and there, generally correlated with injuries / traveling / moving countries (life is difficult!) but the overall trend is up and to the right!!!

I'm now the strongest and heaviest I've ever been, and still a long way to go too!

The first pic is me in my second week at the gym. The second pic is from yesterday

I've gained ~30kg (66 lbs) total since I started back in 2019, I'm now 84kg (185 lbs)

[Javi @rameerez]

@mahdif highly unlikely

[Javi @rameerez]

I’m in this café and there’s this guy sitting next to me typing code in a light mode IDE.

Typing code.

Character by character.

Like a sociopath.

[Javi @rameerez]

@Hussein__khidr blocked for AI reply

[Javi @rameerez]

@eloytoro thank you

[Javi @rameerez]

I was wrong about this

I started taking 🎾 tennis lessons and initially I hated it, but what I was experiencing was not the full story

I've stuck with tennis for 6+ months now and it's starting to pay off

I just got promoted to the more advanced class and everyone says I'm playing well and progressing

> feelsgoodman.jpg

Some important things I learned:

- When you're not immediately competent at something, it feels very bad

- When this happens, the first natural reaction is to call everything bullshit, to rationalize why you're above whatever the task at hand is and why you should throw in the towel

- It's very important to consciously shut down this internal monologue and override it with "just get through it"

- I suspect autists are especially prone to calling it quits too early before making it through "The Dip"

I did the exact same thing with Kamal/Docker 2 years ago, and I was wrong back then too. I claimed that Kamal/Docker was a bad idea for Rails and not even 2 months later I had already migrated all my sites to Kamal and I was recommending it to my friends

There's a behavioral pattern to this: difficult thing -> not immediately competent at it -> this is bullshit, I quit -> endure long enough -> hey this is actually good

Some tennis things I learned:

- Yes, group lessons are fast paced, but so is real play. I was too slow and I was blaming it on the lessons

- You get used to the shape of the drills fast and your brain cycles start to shift from "am I up next?" / "what does the coach want me to do?" to actually focusing on just hitting the next ball

- I still think I owe most of my progress to self-teaching and going absolutely full autist mode on it. This is the only way I know to get better at something. For tennis, I record myself in slow motion and then compare my biomechanics frame by frame with those of ATP players I like. Then I train obsessively day in day out. I haven't been going to the gym for the past few months and I'm using all those hours to practice solo on an empty court

- Coaches help! But you need to help the coach help you, and you need to get out of your own way. Because I pour so many hours into this, I sometimes feel entitled and have to consciously turn off that voice in my head too. I go to lessons, and whenever the coach says "you're not doing this right: do this, do that" my first instinct is to reply "bro, I spent the last 2 weeks going down YouTube rabbit holes on how to do this and that, I know what I'm doing" BUT I've learned to mute that voice completely and instead I say "you're right coach, thank you" and I implement the corrections immediately because deep down I know I'm just a retard

[Javi @rameerez]

I started taking 🎾 tennis lessons and I kinda hate it

I feel like I learn nothing

We’re a group of 4 players. We do the same 3-4 drills over and over, lesson after lesson

When I ask why they say it’s because “it’s the bread and butter”

That’s the same type of answer I used to get when I was a kid learning English in school and I asked why we kept repeating the exact same grammar exercises year after year

I learned no English at all doing those exercises. I only started learning when I forced myself to consume content in English + write down my own thoughts in English

In the same way, I feel I learn more tennis just by playing matches, or practicing by myself

The drills go way too fast for me to process anything. I haven’t finished hitting my current ball and the next one is already coming at me. I don’t even get to see where my balls land because I immediately need to take care of the next ball, so I get no visual feedback for any of my shots. And as soon as I complete all my shots, I need to quickly run out of the court, because the next person in line is already in position to hit his first ball

I spend more brain cycles being aware of the social mechanics of the drills than anything else

“Whose turn is it? Is it my turn? What was the next step in the circuit again? Where did the coach say I need to be relative to the cones again? Was that ball for me too?”

Now

I’m not completely new to tennis. I took tennis lessons as a kid. Didn’t play for most of my adult life and forgot everything. Then I picked it up again 3 years ago, and lately I have been playing a few times per month quite regularly.

I’d say I’m completely self-taught. And apparently that means I don’t do things by the book and I make coaches raise their eyebrows. My grip was odd. I was hitting too flat. I was not playing “modern” tennis. The lessons served me in correctly identifying all that and I guess that’s valuable.

But I’m now fixing all that in the same way I’ve learned everything in my life: individual, deliberate, unguided practice, all by myself. I book an empty court and it’s just me and my racket; and my phone to record myself. I don’t get much out of the lessons other than the feeling that I’m absolutely retarded.

I don’t look forward to the next lesson. I secretly wish it gets cancelled due to bad weather or something. And I’ve only been going for a month and a half. I’ve never felt this way towards tennis, definitely not towards playing matches. I’m always down for a match. I always have fun, especially if my opponent is way better than me and makes me feel like a noob

I guess tennis lessons are making me hate tennis?

Is this how tennis lessons are supposed to feel like? Do I just need to push through and give it time? Am I too autistic for group lessons? What am I doing wrong?

[Javi @rameerez]

@Nairebis yeah same

poor choice of words

u know what i mean

I immediately thought of a The Fifth Element kind of situation

[Javi @rameerez]

this was the most dystopian and futuristic product launch video I've ever watched in my entire life

[Austen Allred @Austen]

What on earth

[Javi @rameerez]

«Where we're going, we don't need tires»

[X Freeze @XFreeze]

Flying cars are real now 🔥

[Javi @rameerez]

Do we realize Elon has just given us FREAKING FLYING CARS

[Beff (e/acc) @beffjezos]

We wanted flying cars, and we got 140 characters...

along with flying cars(!!)

all from the same mad lad

I love the future.

[Javi @rameerez]

This is the growth chart of one of the projects I'm working on

It shows {key_metric} weekly over time (non-cumulative ofc)

It's growing exponentially at ~30-50% week over week

{key_metric} correlates directly with revenue

This is not as good as it looks. Why? Wrong answers only

[Javi @rameerez]

@chazwitt thank you man

[Javi @rameerez]

this video is becoming my entire personality now that it’s so undeniably over

[@levelsio @levelsio]

Software is dead

It's now the era of personal software and everyone just builds what they need whenever they need it I think

[Javi @rameerez]

@oldnorthpartisn @MyMoonEnt @levelsio @conner_omalley Yes

[Javi @rameerez]

@spearpoint_kate Thanks! No, I never got a personal trainer, I hate people telling me what to do and I found the only thing that works for me especially at the gym is me having full control and ownership of my goals and fitness journey

[Javi @rameerez]

Today is my 🏋️‍♂️ LIFTVERSARY

I started lifting exactly 6 years ago today

I was super skinny at the time, only 57kg (125lbs)

I signed up for a gym at the beginning of December 2019, but I was so scared I kept postponing my first workout

I was so intimidated that the first time I went for a workout I only ran on the treadmill

I chose the treadmill because it was the only thing in the gym I knew how to use. It was a safe place and I mostly used it so I could look at the rest of the gym from there, and try to figure out how things worked, how people were actually using the equipment

It took me a couple days until I went in and actually started lifting weights

I have everything logged: the first thing I ever did was bench press with 4kg dumbbells (8 lbs) and I remember my arms were shaking (!!!)

I was so weak and thin I couldn't even lift four kilos without my entire body shaking

Then I started eating A LOT, way more than my skinny body wanted

And I kept lifting heavier every session, so every workout I felt less and less weak until the shaking went away

The following year I went on to gain ~15kg (33 lbs)

Covid hit shortly after I started lifting, and all gyms closed down, so I had to improvise a gym at home with water jugs just to keep the habit and the early gains

Then I started nomading, traveled to Portugal, then Thailand, all while gyms were still closed down, so I had to train at home and in hotel rooms with TRX straps for months

I also had to endure through a nasty leg infection in Koh Samui Thailand that got me hospitalized for a week and limping for a while. Still I kept on deadlifting shortly after surgery

I had two or three year-long hiatuses here and there, generally correlated with injuries / traveling / moving countries (life is difficult!) but the overall trend is up and to the right!!!

I'm now the strongest and heaviest I've ever been, and still a long way to go too!

The first pic is me in my second week at the gym. The second pic is from yesterday

I've gained ~30kg (66 lbs) total since I started back in 2019, I'm now 84kg (185 lbs)

[Javi @rameerez]

@WagieCapital @levelsio I’ve already renamed myself to Corey multiple times. I’m several Coreys right now

[Javi @rameerez]

@MyMoonEnt @levelsio It’s a clip from this YouTube video by @conner_omalley https://t.co/0yC06A2Tu7

[Javi @rameerez]

@dseijo Creo que es porque parece fearmongering. Tu tuit despierta una emoción en el lector, el otro es aséptico

[Javi @rameerez]

@hpfsaraiva great egg bro

[Javi @rameerez]

@martiano Maximum success!!!!