TLDR: Assorted fitness hacks I have learned the hard way, covering training, recovery and injury. Recently I find TRP to very poor in quality, lots of closeted-pedestalizing and thirst-quenching. I´d like to contribute some basic training philosophy thats not the standard lifting advice. For the most concrete Hack, go to the last point and do that.

1. Chronic pain? Look towards the opposite

This is not so straightforward, because biomechanically, the body is not simple enough to just go Left-Right, Top-Down, etc. But with a little anatomic knowledge, you will figure it out. Check out ExRx directories to figure out the specifics of your case. For example, the opposite of your Glutes is usually your Abs, but because of how complex the pelvis is, it usually involves your Quads too.

Common example: Pain around the shoulder blades = Open your chest. Keep working out the affected area, Face-Pulls, standing or lying Angels, YWL´s and do some trigger point stuff. But the underlying cause most likely sits at the opposite, which in this case is the chest. Pay attention to your chest workout to ensure quality of movement, and double down on stretching.

2. Chronic tightness? Keep stretching, but look to quality of movement.
Fix your movement quality.

Example: We see many horrible squats. I remember it took me like 2 years of regular squatting before I really understood this complex movement. Instead of doing a barbell squat and feeling like shit/not getting results, try Goblet Squats for a period of time. If your squat form is off, even light weight Goblets will kick your ass. The difference is that over time, the Goblet Squat will allow for self-correction, so you will actually improve that squat of yours. In Barbell movements, that rarely happens because of Loads & Levers involved with the bar, as well as the fact that rather than correction happening, you will just fail the movement forward or backward.

Most people will have problems with stiff Hammies and backs. Its more often than not a lack of recovery, not flexibility. The culprit is poor movement, so you actually overload certain muscles without knowing. I experienced this and see it most often in people doing Isolation-type training, because of how unnatural it is for the body to repeat movements that dont engage as many muscles as possible. This can be present in both exercise and non-exercise, because guess what, your body does not know the difference between "working out" and other things, it is constantly adapting. This leads into...

3. Practice doesnt make perfect, it makes permament
If you sit a lot, you get better at sitting. When we were kids, our parents had to force us to sit down for longer periods, because its unnatural to sit down for long. Same with standing up, doing it for long can put a lot of stress on your body. The key here is monotony, dont put your body in the same position for prolonged periods, and when you have to, make sure to take a break and engage in an opposing pattern. Glute bridges counter sitting for example, a quad stretch does too. As I said, the body does not know what training is, it is constantly getting better at what you do with it. This also affects your lifting obviously, Deadlifting huge numbers with a rounded back doesnt make your Deadlift better, in fact you didnt practice a Deadlift but rather tested the integrity of the soft and hard tissues in your spine.

4. Respect the 2-fold recovery process
Basically there is regular compensation and super-compensation. When you run a 100m race, your body depletes certain stuff and replenishes them almost fully within a few moments. Your good to go again in a short period of time. But for a much greater period of time, the 100m´s you ran have an additional effect on the body. Please respect high level athletes for their ability to endure extreme ammounts of the second kind of compensation, that differentiate them from You and me. Michael Phelps reportedly consumes 8000kcals during training phases, to expand this on a daily basis would be lethal for not just the average guy, but fit individuals too. It takes years of training to allow for great training doses. Trust the professionals that designed your training program and dont do more just because you feel like you can. The problem is, the body does not communicate this very well to us, and again, a pro-athlete will be better at knowing their body. If you disrespect super-compensation for a period of time, sudden injury will strike.

5. Leave a little bit of something
Dont be an Instagram-meme like "GIVE 2000000% PERCENT" "NO PAIN NO GAIN" bla bla. To be able to train well for your entire life, not only would it be stupid to only train at the highest possible intensity level because you would neglect many facets of human performance, it will also limit your long term progress. For example, Strength and Endurance training are very easy to take to a retarded level of intensity. Just keep running untill you pass out, lift the heaviest load you have every attempted. We immediately get a feedback that tells us how strenuous that shit was. But try doing the same when training for Power. Its extremely difficult to get that exhausted, spent feeling doing proper Plyometric work or Olympic lifting. And again, if you get sore or feel weak during a workout of that kind, you are strength training, not training for Power. It takes high levels of athleticism to even be able to train for the things you think you are training for. Please consider what training is: Putting in an effort, to receive an output. Why would you want to distort the Input/Output relation?

6. Stalling when you feel like you shouldnt? Stop being Generic
We are all on some kind of training program. We all have our particular diets. Habits. Likes/Dislikes. Favourite exercise. The thing is, everybody is quite different. I have a pretty bad case of IBS that usually flares up once a month and totally destroys me for 1-2 days, and when I was younger it was worse and impacted my muscle growth. When I got on the proper meds, I put on a ridiculous ammount of muscle in very short time, looking back I am really amazed that I was able to be as good an athlete as I was. I have also allways hated pushups and pullups, because I was never strong in relation to my own bodyweight when I was younger. But lunges? Deadlifts? Sleds? Fucking destroyed that shit. Even on Bench, I could compensate a weak ass chest with the craziest leg drive you have ever seen.

Now, no surprise I started to stall at weights that shouldnt be a sticking point. I also developed some shoulder issues from just having a weak upper body. Do you have an issue thats annoying you by prohibiting progress? Stop being generic. Look at yourself honestly and get to your weak points. I see a lot of fitness article writers, some of the most famous ones, saying "If you dont have a 2000 lbs total in a sanctioned PL-federation, your entire body is a weak point". Ok big guy, calm the roid-rage. Especially for natural lifters, some of which might not have done athletics in their youth, had issues or whatever, this is TERRIBLE advice and a defeatist attitude. We are trying to better than ourselves over whatever time period, not comparing ourselves to gear-using World Record holders. What they do is impressive, I´m not condescending like some of these writers out there. But again, you might be someone who has great quads and weak hamstrings. Root that stuff out without worrying about your absolute numbers for a while.

Work on your weaknesses when you find something is missing. This could be aesthetic like for example you workout your body evenly, but it seems certain parts wont grow. Change it up, work on technique or add volume eventhough it might go against the generic program. It could be something performance wise. Are you trying to run long distance and the seconds wont come off the clock anymore? Try to look at your short distance running, how is that doing?

And finally, Dont buy into all the fitness hypes
Before bodybuilding became the norm, Aerobics was king. Thats why so many globo gyms have shit equipment. It takes time for business to adapt to shifting tastes. In 10 years time, when the newest fitness fad, "Functional Training", will be king, youll see people complaining about roof height for throwing balls around.
One of the consequences of the whole hype around mobility, function, bla bla is that a lot of people are wasting their time doing too much trigger therapy, foam rolling etc. If there is 1 thing, only 1 thing I´d like You to take away from this post and into your training, it is the Toe Touch Progression. Please, do it right now, and post your results, it takes 2 minutes tops.

Put your feet together, slight bend at the knees. Now touch your toes. Cant do it? Well for this one we will allow cheating, but try to do it with as little cheating as possible. Do this for 10 reps. Now get a thick book and put your toes on the book so your heels are lower than your toes. Same thing, 10 reps up and down in slow controlled fashion, cheat as little as possible while still touching your toes. Finally, get your heel on the book, toes on the floor so that they are below your heels. Again 10 reps. Now immediately, do the regular toe touch without the book. Amazing right? Now, imagine there is a toe touch progression for every part of your body. We just increased our mobility by leaps and bounds in 2 minutes, no fuckin 100€ sex-toy-looking-ass-gimmick from Rogue Fitness required and endless hours of pain. Here is a video of it