27 February 2010

Rebuttals are Fun, and Not Just Because They Include Asses

Hate mail fucking rules. The following is not intended to dissuade anyone from sending me hate mail, as it is generally amusing as hell to read. Instead, the following is intended to address specific recurring themes, or shit that's been posted in the comments, that I felt was worth of a reply.

In re Justin James:
This is a hilarious hotbutton issue for you guys. Much of the hate email I get is actually directed at him, rather than myself. As such, I'll start there.

The emails I've been getting about Justin range in intensity from brutal to catastrophic, but they're pretty much summed up in this excerpt:
"What is your boy J.James' major malfunction?  If I were to post something on transcendental meditation whilst fisting oneself, that dude would probably know something about it and would post a plethora of responses.  He knows everything.  Fountain of Youth, Meaning of Life...if someone has a question about any of life's mysteries, this fucker is posting his viewpoints on it.  The keyboarding diarrhea has got to stop, man.
CnP is your philosophy.  I understand the guy is the web guru or whatever, but my Christ, he doesn't know SHIT outside of anything you've said.  I appreciate your philosophies, but I refuse to be mindless, chubb-huffing drone.  If you told him to deepthroat a five-pound dumbbell in hopes that it would yield a jump in his shrugs, he'd do it." 
Fucking brutal.  While this loyal CnP adherent does have some points, he's missing a major one- Justin's donating a shitload of time and effort to create and administer www.chaosandpain.com.  As such, he's earned the right to post shit on the site.  While his opinions occasionally vary wildly from my own, he's got a pretty fucking interesting take on my training philosophy.  That said, his musings are not strictly CnP- they're my training and diet methodology seen from a risk-averse, parental, easy-listening perspective.  Certainly, that's not particularly palatable to a large percentage of hooligans, but it is a testament to the fact that my methodology can be adapted to even the most antithetical perspectives to my own.  As such, you fuckers will just have to deal with it.  Yeah, he writes like some sort of ultra-money grubbing version of Charles Dickens, and has no conception of brevity or conciseness in his writing, but he's passionate and works for free.  If you hate him, he can handle it, and he'll probably write unbelievably lengthy responses to your posts, just to fuck with you.  At the end of the day, if you want the unadulterated extreme shit, come to me.  if you want the minivan version, go to him.  Either way, suck it the fuck up.

In re my "PMS":
There's a hilarious segment of my blog's readers who apparently revile me for my opinions, and want me to stick to the topic.  Guess what?  It's my blog, and the topic's whatever the fuck I say it is.  That segment of the population decries my rants and attitudes, which is fucking awesome, because they've evidently failed to read the single greatest fucking book a man could read- "The Alphabet of Manliness."  As such, I'll post a selection for these humorless, sensitive motherfuckers.

"I is for Irate.
Irate: Man's default- and only- emotion.  Men are always Irate:  sometimes for good reason, and sometimes for no reason at all.  not to be confused with being moody, which is what women become at least once per month, any time you want to take a leak off a bridge, or any time you want to have sex, which happens to be 100 percent of the time.  So, in other words, being moody is a woman's natural response to men being irate, because God forbid a woman do anything unless it's in response to, or in obstruction of, something a man is doing."

Given that I'm perpetually pissed off, my "condition" could hardly "be described as male PMS".  Furthermore, given the stupidity, lack of general education, and humorlessness that pervades modern American society, I've got a fucking lot about which to be pissed, so go fuck yourself- if you dislike my opinions, I guarantee I know a chick with a clit bigger than your fucking cock.  
Stick that in your back pocket.

In re veganism:
Given that I've already dealt with veganism in my "Skinny Bitch" blog, I'd think that vegans would stay the fuck out of my blog, but evidently, that's not the case.  Disliking meat is unamerican, inhuman, and downright fucking stupid.  For the record, my issue is not with vegans due to their choice of diets, which while stupid, could simply be the result of a misunderstanding of the human being's place in the food chain, and an odd, quasi-sexual love for other animals.  My issue lies with their insistance upon proseletizing their idiotic eating regimen, and the perpetuation of outright lies in regards to human biology, the biology of other great apes, physiology, the entire process of digestion, and human evolution.  As such, allow me to clarify a few points.

Veganism is the outgrowth of the incredibly delusional, anti-sex, anti-fun, evanglical Christian movements of the 19th century.  Seventh Day adventists promoted vegetarian and proto-vegan diets as a method of "purifying" themselves and making themselves asexual.  This, on it's face, is fucking stupid.  They've since dropped their religous zealotry and applied that wild-eyed fervor to promoting their dogmatism, in the face of science and reality in general.
 
If you call using gear and washing down dozens of eggs a day with gallons of milk a vegetarian, you're an idiot.

Some common vegan/vegetarian lies:
"Andreas Cahling, Bill Pearl, Steve Reeves, and Tony Gonzalez was/are vegetarians."   A simple google search will show that for all intents and purposes, Pearl and Reeves consumed diets that consisted mostly of milk and cheese.  Pearl ate a couple of dozen eggs a day.  Reeves ate meat regularly.  Tony Gonzalez quit veganism within one season of attempting it,finding it left him too weak to perform.

"Meat putrefies in your intestines."  Really?  If you don't see that this is patently untrue on its face, you might be mentally retarded.  "The total time it takes for a meal to take the entire journey depends on what was eaten. The time it takes to fully digest a meal is anywhere from 2 hours to over 24 hours." (http://www.online-health-source.info/Digestive-System/Intro-To-The-Human-Digestive-System/)  We've known for an extended period of time that meat does not putrefy in one day- in fact, meat takes nearly a month to rot.

"Humans are evolved to be herbivores."  This one is classic, and by classic, I mean insanely fucking retarded.  "Like the hard-core carnivores, we have fairly simple digestive systems well suited to the consumption of animal protein, which breaks down quickly. Contrary to what your magazine article says, the human small intestine, at 23 feet, is a little under eight times body length (assuming a mouth-to-anus "body length" of three feet). This is about midway between cats (three times body length), dogs (3-1/2 times), and other well-known meat eaters on the one hand and plant eaters such as cattle (20 to 1) and horses (12 to 1) on the other. This tends to support the idea that we are omnivores.
Herbivores also have a variety of specialized digestive organs capable of breaking down cellulose, the main component of plant tissue. Humans find cellulose totally indigestible, and even plant eaters have to take their time with it. If you were a ruminant (cud eater), for instance, you might have a stomach with four compartments, enabling you to cough up last night's alfalfa and chew on it all over again.
Or you might have an enlarged cecum, a sac attached to the intestines, where rabbits and such store food until their intestinal bacteria have time to do their stuff. Digestion in such cases takes place by a process of fermentation--bacteria actually "eat" the cellulose and the host animal consumes what results, namely bacteria dung." (Straight Dope)  You know why dogs are man's best friend?  Because their digestive tract is more like our own than any other animal on Earth.  As such, humans and dogs naturally found themselves competing for the same food, and developed a symbiosis to do so.  By the way, evolutionary scientists draw a direct link between meat eating and expansion of homo sapiens' brain size- " was this new meat diet, full of densely-packed nutrients, that provided the catalyst for human evolution, particularly the growth of the brain, said Katharine Milton, an authority on primate diet.
Without meat, said Milton, it's unlikely that proto humans could have secured enough energy and nutrition from the plants available in their African environment at that time to evolve into the active, sociable, intelligent creatures they became. Receding forests would have deprived them of the more nutritious leaves and fruits that forest-dwelling primates survive on, said Milton.
Her thesis complements the discovery last month by UC Berkeley professor Tim White and others that early human species were butchering and eating animal meat as long ago as 2.5 million years. Milton's article integrates dietary strategy with the evolution of human physiology to argue that meat eating was routine. It is published this month in the journal "Evolutionary Anthropology" (Vol.8, #1)."  (University of California, Berkeley)

Just because you can do something does not necessarily mean you should.  Some fucking retard posted a pic of a single jacked guy who's been a vegetarian for a few years.  Yippee.  He managed, against all odds, to build muscle on a vegan diet.  That's not to say that it's a good idea, or a good diet.  Peter the Great once drank a shot of vodka every 15 minutes for 8 days straight and somehow lived through it.  Shall we attempt that one as well?  Frankly, I'd rather do just fucking that.

In re "common sense":  
The common sense assumptions of the average American mean less to me than does the existence of Cheetos, which is to say, less than none.  A 2009 poll showed that "The poll also finds that only 62 percent of respondents believe that President Obama was born in America. Of the 38 percent who either don't believe or are unsure, some think he was born in Indonesia, Kenya, the Philippines, or France. Six percent of the total poll respondents also don't think Hawaii is a U.S. state."  A 2006 poll showed that "early one-third of young Americans recently polled couldn’t locate Louisiana on a map and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi."  "The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just 1 in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms."  Additionally, "15% of Americans don’t know that the Earth revolves around the sun. Half of the people in the United States (an allegedly “Christian Nation”)  can’t name Genesis as the first book in the Bible."  As such, I could not fucking care less when some fucking asshole from the internet impugns my common sense.  If anything in the US is common, I want no fucking part of it. 

In re my choices of Baddest Motherfuckers:

Despite the fact that the Weather Channel's predicted sunny skies, it's been really fucking whiny outside after my Bronson and Defendis posts.  Apparently, they're bad role models, due to their occasionally poor life decisions.  guess what?  I don't fucking care.  Bronson has to be handcuffed with four pairs of handcuffs at a time, because he's so strong, he'll snap double pairs of them.  Plus, he fucking held a man hostage for a sandwich, which means he's got a sense of humor.  if you don't think that's awesome, you fucking suck.  Recently, some whiny pussy bitched about Steve Michalik, who was not even the focus of my Defendis blog.  Michalik's recanted his gear use, and is now a "shadow of his former self."  Guess what?  I don't fucking care.  The man was a fucking loon who lived in dirty, shredded sweats and did nothing but train for the bulk of his life.  He was clearly deranged.  His ideas, though, led to the development of Defendis's methodology, which is awesome.  Every single human being who has ever lived has positives and negatives in their persona.  if you cannot discern that, you're a fucking moron, and incapable of logical thought.  Read a fucking book about anything at all, and then have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up.
... and for the record- whoever's clicking hackneyed, you're a fucking joke.  there's not a single fucking thing on this blog that's hackneyed, except for the following:

Your mom.

I only hate when I'm awake... but I'm glad you motherfuckers are hating while I'm sleeping. Loving the hate!

22 February 2010

Strong Enough For a Man, But PH Balanced for a Giant Load of Horseshit



Vegans are douches.

Certain naturopathic and left-leaning, tree-hugging, meat-eschewing groups around the world find themselves continually preoccupied with an odd facet of their body's state of being- their internal pH. PH, for those of you who are blissfully unaware, or who slept through several years of science classes and who have never owned a pool, is a measure of how acidic or basic a substance is. Measurement of pH ranges from 0-14, where 0-6 is acidic, 7 is neutral, and 8-14 is alkaline. Still confused? Battery acid is a 1, vinegar is a 3, blood's a 7.5, ammonia's an 11.5, and household lye is a 14. According to naturopaths, a body's pH measurement in the 7-7.5 range represents good health. This measurement is taken by pissing on a bit of litmus paper first thing in the morning. If you're 6-6.5, you're slightly acidic, and above 7.5 means you are either in good health or you suffer from low protein. Amusingly, it can also mean that your internal environment is acidic, but that you have a difficulty digesting acids.(1)
His diet was terribly acidic.

Of note, before I continue, is that it is rare that your blood pH will match your urine's pH. This will become important later, when we're examining the various deleterious effects ascribed to one's acidity. This issue is compounded by the fact that an ammonia-like smell is ascribed to acidification, which actually has nothing at all to do with your pH- it has to do with your hydration. When you piss, you're excreting nitrates (nitrogen and oxygen). Ammonia is comprised of nitrogen and hydrogen, so what you're smelling is high amounts of bonded hydrogen, which occurs when you're dehydrated, or when your liver stops functioning. Amusingly, ammonia's pH is 11.5, so it would seem to any rational person that if your piss smells like ammonia, your body is trying to acidify your system by shedding a substance with a super alkaline pH (Alkaline urine, usually containing bicarbonate-carbonic acid buffer, is normally excreted when there is an excess of base or alkali in the body.).(2) According to QuackWatch, "Acid-base status is commonly measured at hospital admission for many diseases, but it is extremely unusual to find acidosis or alkalosis of the blood or extracellular fluid in the early stages of any major disease except kidney disease. Moreover, no food is acidic or alkaline enough in a mixed diet to produce long-lasting changes in the body's acid-base balance."(3)

Sounds fucking stupid already, right?

It gets better. The following is a comprehensive list of bad shit that can happen to you if you're overly acidic, by system.(4)

Intestinal:
Diarrhea
Rectal bleeding (HOLY FUCK!)
Cramps
Colitis

Respiratory
Runny Nose
Extreme Sensitivity to Cold (That's poor circulation, which means you're deficient in B vitamins. Which means your diet is deficient in meat.)
Chills
Frequent Colds (prevented, according to Linus Pauling, by Vitamin C. Which is acidic. Hmmm.)
Laryngitis
Allergies

Hair/Nails
Thin Nails (Nails are made of protein. Thus, if your nails are thin, guess what's lacking in your diet?)
White Spots on Nails
Dull Hair with split ends (Try washing your fucking hair and taking EFAs)

Kidney/Bladder
Acidic Urine (if it burns when you pee, you have VD. The end.)
Irritation of Urethra (an itchy urethra? If a man has an itchy urethra, nothing should fucking stop him from getting to the hospital, stat, because it's highly likely that his cock's about to fall the fuck off)
Excessive urination (uh... that's normally attributed to excessive hydration)
Kidney and bladder stones

What? It's a long fucking list, and this pic makes about as much sense as this nutritional philosophy.


Skin
Acidic sweat (this means you're an alien, and the only things that can kill you are Sigourney Weaver and Predators. Fucking spot on.)
Dry skin (EFAs. Or maybe it's just WINTERTIME!)
Irritated in Sweat Regions (what the fuck?)
Skin splits at fingernails (ie, it's dry)
Itches (dry skin)
Pimples (could be attributed to anything)
Eczema (aka hereditary DRY SKIN)

Muscles
Leg cramps/spasms (maybe you just squatted?)
Stiff Neck (caused by sitting at a desk)
Generalized aching

Skeletal
Rheumatism
Arthritis
Sciatica
Herniated disk
Tendinitis
Mineral and Calcium depletion
Osteoporosis (caused by menopause, generally)
Rickets (caused by a vitamin D deficiency)
Brittle bones
Gout

Circulatory
Poor circulation (sloth, heredity, and niacin deficiency)
Tendency to Feel Cold (same, or you're a woman)
Anemia (Iron deficiency)
Chilblain (caused by cold weather and heredity)
Rapid heartbeat


Exactly.
Endocrine
Exhaustion

Genitals
Inflammation of genital tract (VD)
Vaginal discharge (VD, or she's a squirter!)

Nervous
Sensitivity to pain (aka, you're a pussy)
Migrant nerve pain
Insomnia
Tennis Elbow (caused, fucking obviously, by overuse of the forearm in a particular and repetitive way)

Additionally, acidification can cause: (5)
loss of drive/enthusiasm
depression
irritability
nervousness/stress
a pale face
headaches
inflammation of eyes
acidic saliva (again, you're an alien, which is awesome)
loose teeth (brush them, idiot)
mouth ulcers
cracks at corners of lips
cavities (caused by carbohydrate digestion, not acid)
acid reflux
gastritis
ulcers

That's a hell of a long, comprehensive, and oddly repetitive list. Nearly every one of those issues has a clearly identifiable source that has nothing to do with your blood acid load. I will say, for the record, that gout in particular has been linked to acidic foods, so I'll give them that, osteoporosis(6), arthritis, acid reflux, and mouth ulcers. There's a little truth to every good lie, right? The rest, however, is clearly fucking horseshit. The do a fine job of listing every fucking thing on the planet that could plague a person, so as to sell you on the fact that, at its core, meat is the root of all evil.

Why do I make that brutal claim? Certainly, them's fighting words when someone suggests that another is anti-meat. Here's a comparison of acid and alkaline foods, as offered by Vasey (7):

By the way, I forgot to add carbonated drinks (carbonic acid), coffee, tea, cocoa, wine, and all condiments. Vasey contends that proteins form uric and phosphoric acid, fats convert to fatty acids and acetyl acetic acid, and carbohydrates convert to pyruvic and succinic acid (the bad ones are the protein and fat ones- Vasey states that the strong ones come from animal proteins and the weak acids come from veggie sources). (8)

None of these motherfuckers can get their shit together, however, and are constantly at odds over the details of their pseudoscience. From author to author, these recommendations change, which is a boatload of fun. Loren Cordain jumped in though, and offered the following:




Loren makes an amusing point thereafter- the acid and base loads of various foods, on which "nutritionists" base their pH diets, is derived from analyzing food ash. Raise your hand if your body reduces food to ash!
Anyone?
I thought not. Thus, these numbers are all but useless. From the three books on acid-base diets that I've read, here's what I've determined:
  • anyone who touts a pH diet hates meat.
  • anyone who touts a pH diet knows nothing about nutrition.
  • anyone who touts a pH diet lacks the ability to think critically
I tried, briefly, to come up with some simple credits and debits accounting-style method by which a person could have a neutral pH load, and thereafter realized the whole fucking thing is pointless and idiotic.

Eat green things every day. Avoid any person who touts these diets like the fucking plague. It's that simple.
Fucking right.

1) Vasey, Christopher. The Acid Alkaline Diet for Optimum Health. Rochester: Healing Arts Press, 2006.
2) "Urine pH." http://www.rnceus.com/ua/uaph.html
3) Barrett, Stephen MD. "Urine/saliva pH Testing: Another Gimmick to Sell You Something." http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Tests/reams.html
4) Vasey, pp. 36-39. Kliment, Felicia Drury. The Acid-Alkaline Balance Diet. NY: McGraw-Hill, 2002. Pp. 16-17.
5) Vasey, pp. 34-35. Kliment, pp. 16-17.
6) Sebastian A, Harris ST, Ottaway JH, Todd KM, and Morris RC, 1994. "Improved Mineral Balance and Skeletal Metabolism in Post-Menopausal Women Treated with Potassium Bicabonate." New Engl J Med 330, 1776-1781. Frasetto L, Morris RC, Sebastian A, 1997. "Potassium Bicarbonate Reduces Urinary Nitrogen Excretion in Postmenopausal Women. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 82, 254-259.
7) Vasey, pp. 57, 52-3.
8) Vasey, p. 39, 10.
9) Cordain, Loren. "Implications of Plio-Pleistocene Hominin Diets for Modern Humans." Ungar, S., ed. Evolution of the Human Diet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. p. 375

21 February 2010

The Stupidity of a Pec-Centric Program


Monday is a unique day in every gym in America. As the esteemed first day of the work week, it is the day that you'll see the tourists in the gym- slobs who decide every week that THIS is the week that they'll get their fatass in shape. You'll never see them in the gym between Wednesday and Sunday, and chances are pretty fucking good that you'll never see them again 90 days from their first visit.

The other phenomenon, and certainly the more sickening of the two, is that you will see the majority of the regulars battling over two areas of the gym on any given Monday. the first area of contention will be any horizontal, padded apparatus on which someone might exercise their pectorals, and the other is the area typically reserved for power and Olympic lifting. That area is typically empty, so every sad sack of shit in the gym seems to think that this is the place to conduct innumerable sets of biceps, bullshit involving a Swiss ball, and myriad other exercises no useful human being would do as anything other than a goof. This, my friends, is the environment into which we must lower ourselves in gyms around America every Monday. This is our proving ground, both physically and mentally, where we forge our bodies and hone and deepen our hatred for our fellow man.

But why, you might ask, is this phenomenon so pervasive? To truly understand the problem at hand, one must first understand its history. The following is a brief history of the exercise at issue.


The bench press is one of only a couple of free weight exercises invented in the 20th century. The bench press has its roots, however, in the pullover and press, which was conducted by laying on the ground with the barbell just overhead. The lifter then conducted a pullover to get the bar to his chest, and then pressed the barbell to arms length, making it, in essence, a combination of a heavy pullover and the push press. An alternate version of this exercise was conducted by using a violent arching of the lower back to belly press the weight aloft. This method, popular in England, rapidly fell out of favor as Bob Hoffman and other Americans moved to standardize the lift. The final straw occurred when a lifter named Bill Lilly hit the scene- a guy so insanely flexible that he was able to arch the weight to full extension, without actually pressing it at all. At that point, the AAU took a shit on the deal and stopped allowing any arch of the body at all, so lifters started benching atop boxes and benches to practice the prone lift. Thus, the bench press was born. Bodybuilders then adopted it as their premier upper body lift, as it gave them a different look than the guys of previous generations, who had far more shoulder and correspondingly less pectoral development.


Bill Lilly liked doing weird shit.

This does not explain, however, why the exercise remains so popular. We know, for a fact, that it's not because having a large chest makes a guy look jacked. As we explored in a previous blog, guys are considered "jacked' in today's society when they have heavily developed traps and shoulders, and are fairly lean. This is the look that actors achieve in order to appear "buff" in films, and that's because these are the areas that need to be developed in order to relay an air of power in the upper body. Jason Statham is a prime example of this phenomenon, as he possesses wildnly overdeveloped traps and shoulders, and is aggressively lean, in spite of the fact that he's 5'9" and around 170 lbs.
The only actor who had heavily overdeveloped pecs, though, is perhaps the very man we have to blame for the modern ludicrous preoccupation with pectoral development- Arnold Schwarzenegger. Overdeveloped to the point where his pecs hung like tits, Arnold's pecs have captivated men and women alike for decades, leading guys to think that hanging tits are the best way to go if one wants to look like a brick shithouse. This, over course, is fucking idiotic.  Guys considered to be both jacked and iconic, like Steve Reeves, Reg Park (Arnold's mentor), and John Grimek, lacked the ridiculous hanging pecs of Arnold, yet they were admired and emulated by legions of men thereafter.


Thus, we can conclude that the preoccupation with pectoral development, while partially the fault of Arnold Schwarzennegger, actually can be blamed on one other factor- sloth. Modern Americans are without question the laziest group of people, en masse, in the history of mankind. We're rapidly turning into the recliner-bound gelatinous blobs depicted in the 2009 animated eco-friendly shit show, Wall-E. What better exercise, then, for the slightly less lazy motherfuckers to conduct upon entering a fitness club than one that requires that he or she lie the fuck down on a comfy pad like they were preparing to go to sleep, and then engage in repetitions that, no matter how intense, fail to engage enough large muscle groups to cause the lifter to break a fucking sweat? Thus, building a program around the bench press is a program built upon sloth. It's a manifestation of laziness on a scale that's hard to conceive, and should never, ever be considered.

Learn from Coach McGuirk's mistake. Don't be a lazy fucking pussy. Don't build your program around the bench press.

19 February 2010

Baddest Motherfuckers Ever #11 -John "Intensity or Insanity" Defendis


When people think old-school training, this is the guy they're thinking about.  John Defendis came up in the 1970s, when training was all about crushing weights for endless sets, running around screaming like and asshole and bitch-slapping anyone dumb enough to get in their fucking way.  Contrary to the speculation of endless droves of weak-willed internet pussies, this was not a mindset created by drugs, and a workout only survived through the consumption of copious amounts of anabolics- this was the way everyone trained, because they didn't suck at life.  Moreover, the few tabs of dbol they were taking in those days were no more gear than anyone who's doubled the dose on a Superdrol knockoff has taken, so before any of you even get started down that path, I'll posit that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about and should perhaps keep your inane comments confined within your head.

Defendis began his epic bodybuilding career as a disciple of one of the meanest motherfuckers ever to enter a gym, Steve Michalik.  If you've never heard of Michalik, think "pedophillic mustache and ripped abs" and conjure up any image you can from 1980s bodybuilding reading material.  Still nothing?  You suck.  Michalik was a Mr. America and Mr. universe winner, and the progenitor of the Intensity or insanity regime that later made Defendis so popular, and the bearer of a mustache so awful that the motherfucker had to bring the pain inside the gym, or risk constant accusations of diddling small boys and abducting little girls in his Big Red Van.
 
Too many questions, and not enough answers.

In any event, it was in Michalik's gym that he and Defendis put the finishing touches on what has since been regarded as the benchmark for weight room lunacy.  This gym, I might add, boasted a sign at the front emblazoned with the phrase "Up Your Dose!", and the sign-in pen was a ballpoint filler inside of a syringe.  these guys were not fucking around.  Tefore you fuckers begin to swoon and cry "foul play" due to the obvious and blatant use of anabolics, I'll remind you that this was the late 70s- GH didn't exist, and a heavy steroid regimen was probably more akin to a jacked high schooler's supplementation program than a modern bodybuilder's.
That stated, here's a rough outline of what they did, because they had no set program:
  • split the routine into two parts- legs and back the first day and chest, shoulders, and arms on the next day. Calves and abs are worked at every training session. 
  • Train two days in a row and then rest the third day. 
  • Repeat pattern of two on and one off indefinitely.
Sounds simple enough, right?  No biggie, right?  Fucking wrong.  Michalik and Defendis became famous for ultra-heavy giant set training that involved 40, 50, and even 75 set-per-bodypart workouts.  They would rope off their area in the gym, scream at anyone who came near, and wreak fucking havoc therein.  They'd do shit like this:
"Michalik struts across the gym floor with a set of 60 pounders for incline flyes. I know the routine. Three benches, three exercises, all sets to failure. Nonstop ass-kicking supersets. Steve begins with almost 300 pounds on the incline Smith machine. He then proceeds to the second bench to complete a set of incline flyes, and finally, pullovers across the last bench with a 100 pound dumbbell."
and this:
"50 sets of heavy barbell curls? Been there. 30 sets of squats. 500 pound inclines. 100 pound dumbbell curls. 90 pound dumbbell laterals. 60 set back workouts."  
and:
"Squatting 450 for 40 reps to the floor, warming up with 315 on the Incline press for 30 reps, doing 50 sets of barbell curls for biceps and 60 sets of heavy back work!"
and the fucking capper: 
"We never did less than 40 sets for each body part and sometimes as much as 100 sets for a single area." 


Between them, Michalik and Defendis sent more people to the hospital than AIDS and cancer combined.  Defendis himself spent a weekend in the hospital after his first week of training with Michalik, and they felt that it was a measure of a true man to cowboy up and return to Michalik's den of pain for a second go at greatness after a quick trip to the ER with rhabdo.  Shitting blood didn't stop these motherfuckers- they were hardcore to a level of extremity usually reserved for special operators and Crossfitters (sarcasm should be obvious).  The best part about it?  They fucking laughed at the guys in the hospital and went around telling other gym members that the motherfucker they just hospitalized was mentally weak, and might as well take up badminton or croquet.


His bio:
Born: 1958
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 225 lbs. (though he apparently weighs a lean 260 these days)




Titles Won:
• 1977 AAU Mr. New York City
• 1978 AAU Mr. Atlantic USA (Teen)
• 1983 NPC Western America Championships
• 1988 NPC USA Championships

Since retiring, Defendis has trained everyone from pro baseball star Mike Piazza to politicians like Newt Gingrich, pro boxer Andrew "I will punch you dead in the nuts repeatedly" Golata. and clothing designer Calvin Klein.

The fact that Michalik and Defendis lived through these projectile-vomit inducing workouts, much less thrived and grew on them is a testament to the human spirit and the ability of the human physical form to adapt to any and all stress and THRIVE.  After reading about these workouts, I'm fucking embarassed at the way I half-ass it through the gym, because I can do more.  Defendis has shown us the way.
Fucking get some. 
1) "How Steve Michalik Trained in 1972. http://bodybuilding.ericsgym.com/trainingarticles/stevemichalik/index.htm
2)  Intensity or Insanity Articles.  http://www.defendis.com/flash/index.html



15 February 2010

Just Because You Have a Vagina…

Doesn’t mean you have to train like a pussy. I know this revelatory statement doesn’t exactly fall in line with my previous posts directed at women, but it is true. Though women have for millennia been typically dissuaded from becoming athletes, or from engaging in much in the way of physical activity at all, certain women, and groups of women, have excelled as athletes and participants in physical culture. Unfortunately, modern women have in their minds only Eastern European swimmers and farm women in their minds as toilers at lifting heavy weights, and they thus have an altogether mistaken impression of what the results of heavy weight training are.
The most badass female athletes of the ancient world seem to have all come areas around the Near East –the Mediterranean, Southern Russia, and Central Asia. The earliest accounts I could find of women who were renown for both being hot as shit and brutal fucking athletes were the Spartans. Spartan women enjoyed far more freedom than did other Grecian women, and were pretty much like a cross between hardened military wives and WWE female wrestlers- they dressed like total sluts, trained in the nude, and screamed statements like “Come back with your shield, or on it” and “Where have you come now in your cowardly flight, vile varlets? Do you intend to slink in here whence you came forth?”, whereafter the loudmouthed badass pulled up her miniskirt and flashed her vag at her own cowardly sons. (1) Sparta’s women were known for being total bitches, obviously, in addition to being the hottest broads in the entire ancient world, in spite of the fact that they were forbidden from wearing any kind of makeup or wear jewelry of any kind. Gladly, they were well-educated, witty, and ascerbic, and spurned the vapid, shiftless layabouts they saw populating Athenian parties.


Basically, it would be like having one town consisted of nothing but a cross between Jennie McCarthy and a champion fitness competitor publicly mocking the Kardashians, all the while dressed like whores and planning to stab a motherfucker if he didn’t bring the goods later that evening.
The Romans also had their fair share of women athletes, including female gladiators, who were considered something of a violent sexual sideshow. Domitian regularly held brawls between chicks and midgets, for instance, and an inscription at Ostia (had I known this when I was there, I would have tried to find a topless chick to pit against a midget) proclaims that women fought in gladiatorial matches there beginning around 300BC and kept doing so for at least a couple of hundred years. So many Roman women attempted to fight in the arena, apparently, that laws had to be enacted to prevent them from doing so, but that didn’t prevent women from training their asses off, getting jacked, and shedding some fucking blood for the entertainment of the greasy, unwashed, Roman hordes.


See her neck bent down under the weight of her helmet.
Look at the rolls of bandage and tape, so her legs look like tree-trunks,
Then have a laugh for yourself, after the practice is over,
Armour and weapons put down, and she squats as she used the vessel.
Ah, degenerate girls from the line of our praetors and consuls,
Tell us, whom have you seen got up in any such fashion,
Panting and sweating like this? No gladiator’s wench,
No tough strip-tease broad would ever so much as attempt it. (2)
Everyone knows the story of the Amazons, a semi-mythical race of hard-as nails broads from either the Ukraine or Crete, who ruined lives and broke hearts to the point where we’re still making movies about them. Amazonian women were so fucking hard that their customs declared that "No girl shall wed till she has killed a man in battle", they are credited with inventing the battle axe (the labrys, a doubleheaded axe common in Minoan, Thracian, and Greek culture and range in size from 1-6lbs), and they spawned an entire genre of art (amazonomachy), which features buff, big-tittied, angry broads slaughtering Greeks by the boatload.


Another chick from that general neck of the woods who generally got after it was a 13th C Tatar princess named Aiyaruk. According to David Willoughby, this broad wouldn’t marry anyone she could beat in wrestling, and successfully defeated over 100 suitors over the course of her life. Each many was required to put up 100 horses for the opportunity to wrestle her, and she allegedly amassed over 10000 horses but throat stomping each sorry motherfucker into the ground. Now, this chick was alleged to be a giant, but given that the average height of a Mongol woman is 5’1”, I highly doubt she was over 6’, but she was said to have been stronger than any man in Turkestan. Sick.(3)
Skip forward to modern times. Some chicks appear to be getting the message that lifting weights will not magically turn you into a Slavic farm woman, fat, overly muscular, and generally fucking haggard. Instead, it’ll make you lean, generally improve your outlook on life, and possibly earn you free drinks at the bar when you smoke a couple of dudes in armwrestling. Crossfit has shown, if nothing else, that doing compound lifts will transform chick’s physiques into a level of badassedness that most chicks don’t even believe to be physically possible. Most chicks will continue eating their same shitty diets and fucking around with cardio all days long, and continue to look like a wad of warm cookie dough for their shitty, misapplied, half-assed, laughable efforts. If they properly apply themselves, however, they can look like the following broads:
Vulcana: English pro strongwoman who could do a 2 Hands Anyhow of 201 (bent press 145 lbs, 56 lbs kettlebell in the other hand) at a bodyweight of 125.


Kara Bohigian: Champion powerlifter who dabbles in Oly shit as well- built this body lifting fucking heavy.
Hannah Johnson: IPA National Champ at 132 lbs, and winner of the Harley Davidson Bikini Contest.
Crossfit chicks: They’re hot. The end.

Thus, a few suggestions for any chick who is reading this(as if there is a woman on Earth who reads this), or suggestions you could give chicks who could stand to apply CnP principles:
· Nothing will make chicks huge, outside of heavy anabolic use. The size of their physique will be dictated, by and large, by their diet. Keep it paleo and you’ll keep it tight.
· Lift fucking heavy. We all know what lifting light get you- a shitbox physique to go with your shitbox regime. Form follows function, as the Bulgarians are fond of saying.
· Just because you’re a women does not mean that you need to train less, lighter, or less intensely. The Chinese dominate women’s weightlifting, and their coach has been quoted saying that women have a greater work capacity than men. Bizarre, but true.
· Focus on lower body work- chicks have better leverages for it due to their hip structure, it burns the most calories, and it works the typical female “problem areas” the hardest.
If you know a chick who’s gonna lift, give her those suggestions. If you’ve got a wife/girlfriend/friend who doesn’t want to lift, let her know that she needs to make with some form of grilled meat and stay the fuck out of your way while you're lifting. And by the way, as a bit of motivation for those of you who could care less about broads lifting, Liu Chunhong is a Chinese chick who holds the world record at 152lbs (69 kg), and she clean and jerks 347.6 lbs, snatches 281.6, front squats 440, back squats 506, and JERKS 385 OFF THE FUCKING RACK. (4)


Embarrassed? I sure as fuck am. I’ve never wanted to look like a chick before today. This sucks.
Go pick up something heavy and think about what you’ve not yet done.
1. Plutarch. Moralia. “Sayings of Spartan Women.” http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Sayings_of_Spartan_Women*.html
2. Juvenal, Satires, c. 2nd C AD. http://ejmas.com/jcs/jcsart_murray_0703.htm
3. Willoughby, David. The Super Athletes. P.580.
4. Wikipedia. “Liu Chunhong.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Chunhong

13 February 2010

*If You Still Think High-Volume Training Will Make You Small, Fat, and Weak...

Well, fuck you.  You're an idiot.


Guess who won the most gold medals in weightlifting in the last Olympics.


Give up?  The Chinese.  They won 13 out of 16 possible gold medals, and 2 were because the Chinese had no one at that weight class.


Guess what the Chinese program is like. 


Give up?  High fucking intensity, brutal, day long workouts, 6 days a week.  Year-round.  There's no time for bullshitting about with extended rest periods and abbreviated workouts with the Chinese... they're too busy winning every medal on Earth to bother with Mentzer, Rippetoe, and Stuart McRobert's fear of the ephemeral overtraining boogeyman.


The Chinese Olympic weightlifters have two daily training bloc sessions, one in the morning, and one in the evening, 6 days a week.  Their morning workout is called morning exercises, and seems to consist of light jogging (fucking jogging?), GPP and auxiliary work, while the afternoon workout is a lengthy, heavy, affair consisting of a shitload of low rep sets.  These little yellow weight-destroying, testosterone-dripping, giant-brass ball rocking motherfuckers also look how you'd expect them to- bad fucking ass.


One of their lifters, Zhang Xiangxiang, is a fucking fireplug at 5'2", 137, ripped to the fucking bone.  His Olympic entry total is more than half the motherfuckers on bodyspace can pull off in a full powerlifting meet- 704lbs.  That's right- seven hundred and four pounds went over that little bastard's head in two lifts.  When was the last time YOU put 300-400 lbs overhead at a bodyweight of 137?  For that matter, when was the last time you chumped double your bodyweight overhead, with a shitload of change to spare?  This little Nuprin-colored motherfucker does it every day of the week, just because, and then he goes and shits plate steel and ejaculates lightning, because he's bored with all of the other retardedly impressive shit he does as a matter of course every day.  In one random BBC video I saw of him on Youtube, the fucker doubled 396 for a front squat, with no problem, AFTER BEING PARALYZED AND IN A COMA FOR 5 DAYS WHEN THE CHINESE FUCKED UP AND ZAPPED HIS SPINAL COLUMN WITH PAINKILLERS TRYING TO TREAT A LOW BACK INJURY.


Still unconvinced?


Ivan Abadjiev created the Bulgarian Olympic Weightlifting Program over the course of 20 years rotting behind the iron curtain, eating goulasch and probably hating the whole fucking world to death because the Soviets' boots were on his neck every morning when he awoke.  he put all that hatred to good use, though, and formed the powerhouse program that dominated the sport of weightlifting until the last Olympics.

Never satisfied with the brutal manner in which his lifters destroyed their opposition, Abadjiev continually adapted his program, discarding exercises until 1986 when his lifters performed just 5 (Snatch, Power Snatch, Clean and Jerk, Power Clean and Front Squat) and exclusively for single repetitions.

Abadjiev stated that "Consistent training with high intensity loadings can increase the density of nerve impulse that can be generated by the central nervous system. Over time this allows the athlete to recruit a greater percentage of their higher threshold muscle fibres and hence significantly improve power output. Additionally, there is evidence that Type IIa muscle fibres can actually be converted to the more powerful Type IIb fibre type. Abadjiev states that these adaptations are best achieved when loadings are near maximal."(1) 



Translation- lifting a ton of singles at near-max weights will make you bigger and stronger. 


He also said that "Employing single lifts at maximum improves both intra and inter muscular coordination. The former involves improved synchronisation of fibres within a muscle, and the latter, improved efficiency between muscles. This is especially important in the Olympic lifts which are highly technical whole body movements. Due to fatigue these adaptations cannot be optimally developed when employing multiple repetition sets. Additionally, as technique degrades rapidly under fatigue, there is a risk that lifters may be rehearsing a sub optimal movement pattern."(1)


Translation- not only will lifting ultra-heavy singles make you bigger and stronger, but you'll lift with better form than you would with multiple reps.

"Finally, there are many lifters who have flawless technique at submaximal loads but whose technique deteriorates under maximal loading. The Bulgarian system obviously requires the lifter to attempt maximums on a regular basis. This translates into greater confidence with heavy weights, a more consistent competition performance, plus the advantages gained from heavier opening attempts."(1)


Translation- you fucking suck for even thinking about doing reps.  Your parents are embarrassed of you and probably hate you.  In fact, no one likes you, because you are weak of body, mind, and spirit. 


Go do singles.  Lots of them.


Ah, but that only applies to Olympic Weightlifters, right?


Fucking wrong.  I've already posted Mariusz's insanely volume-heavy program.  How about up and comer Kevin Nee, who earned his claim to fame mostly by being on MTV's True Life eating a shitload of hoagies and flipping tires? Kevin Nee's program is a 7 day a week smorgasbord of pain and brutality.(2)



DAY   WORKOUT                                          SETS   REPS**


MON   Bench Press Barbell/Dumbell*                     3-6    6-8
MON   Incline Press Barbell/Dumbell*                   3-6    6-8
MON   Dumbell Pec Flys                                 3-6    6-8
MON   Dumbell Press w/ Hands in Long Position          3-6    6-8


TUE   Deadlift / Back Squats*                          3-6    6-8
TUE   Cable Lat Pulldowns                              3-6    6-8
TUE   Dumbell Rows                                     3-6    6-8
TUE   Close Grip Rows                                  3-6    6-8


WED   Log Press                                        -      -
WED   Tire Flip Medleys                                -      -
WED   Drag                                             -      -


THU   Front Squats                                     3-6    6-8
THU   Lunges                                           3-6    6-8
THU   Hack Squats                                      3-6    6-8
THU   Leg Curls                                        3-6    6-8
THU   Leg Extensions                                   3-6    6-8
THU   Straight Leg Deadlifts                           3-6    6-8


FRI   Push Press Behind/Front*                         3-6    6-8
FRI   Seated Press Dumbell/Barbell*                    3-6    6-8
FRI   Seated Dumbell Press w/ Hands in Long Position   3-6    6-8
FRI   Lateral/Front Raises                             3-6    6-8
FRI   Skull Crushers                                   3-6    6-8
FRI   Tricep Kickbacks                                 3-6    6-8
FRI   Lockouts in Rack                                 3-6    6-8


SAT   Power Cleans                                     3-6    6-8
SAT   Snatches                                         3-6    6-8
SAT   Rack Pulls                                       3-6    6-8
SAT   Abs                                              3-6    6-8


SUN   Farmers Walk                                     -      -
SUN   Yoke Walk                                        -      -
SUN   Heavy Tire Flip                                  -      -
SUN   Stones                                           -      -


You like apples?  How about them fucking apples?


As for powerlifters, both the Shieko and Smolov powerlifting routines involve such a massive amount of work that the vast majority of pussies you'll see posting on the internet will whine incessantly about how a person can ONLY do these routines if they're on gear.  Bear in mind that these workouts were created in 1976, when a few 50mg of dbol a day were a heavy dose, and the fact that the Russians and Bulgarians have drastically and steadily increased their workloads in strength sports since the 1960s (according to Zatsiorsky).  Thus, high volume is good for powerlifting, too.


Now, anyone who remains unconvinced, consider this-  the Chinese kid below is  snatching 40kg.  That's considerably more than his bodyweight, looking at him.  He's in the Chinese Olympic weightlifting system, enjoying th ultra-high volume goodness that is their programs, and it appears to have worked.

If you possess a scintilla of masculinity, honor, or pride, you should now be a full convert. to the wonderful world of high volume training  Thus, from now on, when you hear some asshat yammering about overtraining, find a tampon (preferably used), and put it in his mouth, because he's a fucking pussy.


Sources


1)  Ivan Abadjiev + the Bulgarian Weightlifting System. http://weightliftingexchange.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=438&Itemid=60


2)  Kevin Nee's Workout.  http://strongestman.org/?p=294


3) Zatsiorsky, Vldimir.  Science and Practice of Strength Training.