Raja Venna

about me resume thoughts

January 2026

Song of the Month: The Question by Mac Miller

Book of the Month: Microserfs by Douglas Coupland

28 Things I've Thought About At The Gym

In honor of filling out a journal with six months worth of workout logs.

  1. It’s just like any other hobby.
  2. The gym can be a reasonable analogy you can apply to other aspects of your life for how change and growth can occur over time. It can also be a fun stress reliever that you put no thought into outside of “this makes me feel good and I like doing it”. Those are two end points of a line of thought. Determining where you fall on the line depends entirely on what you hope to get out of working out. There is no right answer.
  3. I don’t like cardio.
  4. I hate cardio.
  5. I HATE cardio!
  6. Cardio's actually not that bad; it goes by quickly now.
  7. DON’T try to adjust your back mid pull up. You WILL strain your teres and have to stop all pulling exercises for four months. Gotta be honest here, I wasn't too familiar with what my teres major was until I strained it.
  8. Now that I can do pull ups again, I forgot how cool they feel.
  9. Most of the people at my gym are older than me. I can’t wait to be jacked in 5-20 years from now.
  10. I need to listen to music less loudly.
  11. Numbers are neat. On calf raises, I use 450 pounds, five 45 pound plates per side. I used to do 360 pounds. That’s eight 45 lb plates, 4 on each side. That’s (45x4)+(45x4). That’s the same as nine groups of 40 (not that 40 lb plates exist). That’s the same as (8x40)+(8x5). Crazy stuff (not really). There’s infinite ways to get to the same outcome. It’s nice appreciating the various avenues.
  12. Social media sucks sometimes. So much content is just people trying so hard to be funny at the expense of other people. Instead of being funny, we’re just mean to each other. We don’t listen to each other and try to understand. We just have our “funny” one-liners that we were waiting to say the second someone starts talking. Why does everyone want to be above everyone?
  13. Compound movements are better than machine movements for building strength. They can be more strenuous on joints though.
  14. Drink your water.
  15. Steroids are everywhere. I will only use them (potentially— like a 3.5% chance) if I don’t look like Bahubali at 25 or I get dumped two more times. Whichever comes first.
  16. We will never know the extent of beauty that exists in the world because all we see is outward beauty. It’s impossible to know everything that went into making that beauty. I feel like part of loving someone is trying your best to understand someone's inner beauty knowing it's an impossible task.
  17. I LOVE ANTS IN MY SKIN!
  18. I need to lay off the preworkout.
  19. The automotive repair shop I walk by to the gym has two guard dogs that will bark like crazy, but they will never leave their yard to chase you. Still, keep an eye out every time because what if.
  20. Regarding those dogs, some days are fight days and some days are flight days. Some days, I tell myself “if they try to attack me, I’m fighting”. Other days, I tell myself “if they try to attack me, I’m sprinting to the gym”. Realistically, I would run no matter what.
  21. Creatine is a supplement. Supplement. Supplemental. If you’re not getting your water in, eating right consistently, etc. then it’s not going to be that effective. Like most supplemental things, creatine adds to a good system and can be a stressor for poorly maintained systems. It’s like adding Apple CarPlay to a car with ongoing transmission issues, that’s your priority?
  22. There’s no such thing as “being you”. Every day you are a different version of yourself. If you created a normal distribution based on a standardized score of how much you were yourself on a daily basis, then the mean of the graph is the average version of “you”. However, there’s no way you can be the mean “you” every day. Just like how the average annual return of the SP500 can be 10% over the course of 10 years. That doesn’t mean every year had a 10% return. You are a probability of being you. Additionally, mean isn’t always the best factor when analyzing a dataset. The average of zero, zero, eight, and ten is 4.5 after all. I should really complete my micromasters courses before I try to act too smart.
  23. We often measure our life by highlights. This makes life seem like it’s defined by big moments and big decisions. But those big decisions do not make or break life. The little choices you made that led to those big decisions are equally as responsible. The little things matter. But also don’t think too much about them, otherwise you’ll get anxious for no reason. To not think about them but consistently make the little right choices, creating a good personal system/routine is key.
  24. I no longer like wearing clothes that don’t fit my chest and shoulders well. Genuinely, I’m not sure if I put on more muscle or just started wearing tighter clothes (nah I'm playing, I definitely put on some muscle). Either way I’m happy so who cares that much.
  25. 16 and 22 are not my original thoughts. I read them in the book Microserfs by Douglas Copeland, really liked them, and thought more about them at the gym. Copeland words these ideas more beautifully though. Would recommend that book to anyone.
  26. J Cole’s dropping his last album on February 6th. I started listening to him back in 6th or 7th (shut up) grade. The first song of his that I listened to was Lights Please. I don’t like the song as much now, but he’s still one of my favorite artists.
  27. Nowadays, most people aim for 10,000 steps and see it as a benchmark for being ‘active’ or ideal for a caloric deficit, myself included. At the end of the day, it’s a nice, round arbitrary number of steps that seems possible to obtain with some effort. I think the psychology behind it is interesting. Reminds me of the baseline goal some people have of drinking 100 oz of water a day. The amount of water you need depends on many factors but 100 oz is a nice, round number that’s probably a healthy amount for the vast majority of people.
  28. A doubleshot of espresso, 3-5g of beetroot powder, and a pinch of salt is a solid preworkout. If only my apartment's coffee machine (that has an espresso setting) wasn't empty every weekend.

Most of these are thoughts I had after finishing a set. I typically train as close to failure as I can. Sometimes my vision is spotty after a set. Can you tell there was very little oxygen in my head when I was thinking? Unrelated, but I'm looking forward to improving my website over time as well. HTML isn't hard to learn and god knows this site looks very mediocre at best.