The Actus blog
Notes on getting stronger without spending your willpower on what to do next. From the team building Actus.
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Written by Pedro Rodrigues and Bruna Günther, the founders of Actus.
Does exercise protect your sense of smell as you age?
A 5-year trial in adults aged 70 to 77 found HIIT and steady cardio did not slow smell loss, but higher VO2peak went with better smell at 10 years.
Read the post →Does the flywheel squat work your quads more than the leg press?
A 2026 crossover trial in 18 trained men found no clear quad EMG difference between flywheel squat and leg press; rectus femoris gap was −9.90 points.
Read the post →Does plyometric training make female athletes faster and jump higher?
A 2026 meta-analysis of 31 studies and 609 female team-sport athletes found jump training improved jump height, sprint speed and agility.
Read the post →Does adding dairy to home strength training make older adults stronger?
A 12-week trial in 54 adults aged 65 and over found no extra strength gain from adding 10 to 15 g of dairy protein a day to home resistance training.
Read the post →Miss a workout. The plan should move, not reset.
Miss a day, miss a week, or something hurts: what a training app should do next, which apps adapt today, and how Actus rebuilds your week from logged sets.
Read the post →Your plan is not written by a chatbot. Here is what actually builds it.
Actus plans come from a rules engine grounded in ACSM and NSCA guidelines, not a chatbot. What it reads, what it changes each block, and what it never does.
Read the post →Can ChatGPT actually write you a good workout? (I tried it)
I pasted my lifts into ChatGPT and got a clean 4-day plan. Then week two happened. Here's where AI workout plans actually break, and the fix.
Read the post →By the time you get to the gym, you're too fried to plan. That's not a discipline problem.
By 6pm your brain is genuinely depleted. Why planning at the gym door is the hardest moment of your day. And the actual fix.
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