Most of us while scrolling through our social medea feeds have paused on a shredded torso and wondered why ours don’t look like that. The answer isn’t that you’re “broken”; it’s that you’re comparing everyday bodies to a curated slice of the leanest few. In the real world—gyms, pools, beaches—visible abs in men are uncommon.

You wake up with a stiff knee. Or maybe your shoulder feels cranky after a night on the sofa. The instinctive thought is, “Better skip the gym today — I don’t want to make it worse.”