30 October 2010

Imitation is the Greatest Form of Flattery

If it's not conducted by the mentally retarded.  Read my blog, and then this hunk of shit posted on www.elitefts.com a week later.

The next time you go into the gym, I want you to walk in with a swagger. Walk in as King. Why? Because some day you will be.
Everyone had to start somewhere. Donnie Thompson, Derek Poundstone, Ronnie Coleman — these men were not born as the best of the best. They started small just like the rest of us. They worked to become the best as countless people fell by the wayside. How many training partners do you think they went through and probably still lose as the days go by? It doesn’t matter. Even if they were alone, they would still have the passion to achieve the unthinkable.
You will push harder day after day, workout after workout, rep after rep, and you’ll build the most rock-solid foundation anyone has ever seen. You will have your ups and of course, you will have your downs. A wise man sees failure as progress. You fail, you get back up, and you smash that weight the next time. So many of your peers will give up after just a few tries, but not you. You will set a goal, destroy it, and then move on to a place you are only dreaming of right now.
Let yourself be inspired. There’s no shame in it. Be in awe of people you admire. A big factor for me is the clothing I choose to wear for the gym. So many times I’ve seen pictures of athletes and I’ve actually gone out and bought the same type of outfit. It makes me feel strong. It makes me feel powerful. It makes me INVINCIBLE.
Prior to Paxton Strongman 5 in December 2009, I saw this picture of Dave Tate:
Just look at it. The dude is jacked and ready to tear the house down. I went out, got the shirt, hat, and shorts, and I had PRs every single time I wore the outfit. I felt powerful. Psychologically speaking, emulating this man helped me break down barriers. It can work for you too.
Then, “World Painted Blood” by Slayer came out. The song kicked my ass, and I found another outfit that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck – the same way I felt when I heard the song. I went on to tie for third in Paxton 5 due in part because of the outfit, but also because I walked in there like I owned the place. I had one of the best contests ever. I imitated what made me feel POWERFUL. I took every advantage I could get.
Check it out:
Stand on the shoulders of giants. Feel like they feel. Wear what they wear. Do what they do. NEVER feel like you can’t lift something or achieve something. You damn sure can, because you will push until you do. I don’t care if you fail 1,000 times on the way. You will get there with enough perseverance.
Think of it this way: Vince McMahon from the WWE is in his sixties. There are guys that look better than him, are richer than him, and plenty of men who are far surpass his physical abilities. However, he is so successful due in part because he enters the building with the mindset that he owns the place:

Who gives a damn if people look at you like you have two heads? They will look at you like you have THREE heads when you lift double what they can, when you run faster than them, grow bigger than them, and achieve more than they could even imagine. People will mock you because they want to drag you down to their weak, uninspired level. Strive to be that guy — the one that everyone stops to look at as he loads 45 after 45 onto an already bending bar and just plays with it. Strive to be the baddest man on the block and know — don’t think, KNOW — that soon you will be.
The ability to do whatever you want is inside of you. Own it. Harness the desire and take every advantage possible to get it. Blast the most motivating music, emulate the look of people you admire, and swagger into the gym and DOMINATE  the weights. SMASH through barriers. Lift until you think you cannot go on, and then push further. Sweat, bleed, and swagger. Be the King. Dream of living, and then live your dreams. Nothing can stop you!

Holy shit.  That's what happens when someone lets the mentally retarded near a computer.

35 comments:

  1. posted it to the elitefts comments section

    let's see if it gets moderated or not LOL

    actually whoever is in charge will definitely see this

    ...so now what

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  2. Hahahaha! That's almost sad...

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  3. they also put a PR shirt out a couple weeks after yours was posted.

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  4. It's too bad EliteFTS falls into the same pitfalls TMuscle did. They constantly have to establish their BADASS CRED by throwing around lunkhead lingo like in the quoted article. Or tnation's marketing on steroids with the Anaconda shit. Or making up EXTREME NAMES for exercises they put in articles. It's annoying, stupid, and eventually I just tune it out. Look at some Tnation articles from five years ago, and then look at some from five weeks ago, and you'll see exactly what I mean.

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  5. I would make a joke but I pulled a PR one time listening to God of War soundtrack and thinking I'm fuckin Kratos. Even got laid right after but couldn't find any cyclop eyes to rip out. So, whatever gets 'em going. As for EliteFTS falling into the same pit as Tmuscle...nah, they aren't close to that pit at all. Some of their articles are hit and miss just like any other site and people aren't gonna like em all but for the most part, they aren't constantly shoving merc down your throat and you get essentially free advice outta the Q&A, which a lot of jackasses would charge people for. Shit, if I had to answer 50 questions a day that boil down to "I'm a fat ass! How does I fix it and get hyooge and jacked at same time!?", I would go insane and be one rude fuck after a while

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  6. You've got Matt Perryman thinking too...
    http://www.ampedtraining.com/2010/knowledge/should-we-keep-it-real

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  7. Jamie, I fucking love the shit you post. The C&P is good shit, even used 2 or 3 times a week, as I do sub grappling/Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as my main physical outlet. Please, keep up the good work.

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  8. Last anonymous, is the submissions grappling and BJJ including much conditioning work?

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  9. OMG...

    "The next time you go into the gym, I want you to walk in with a swagger. Walk in as King. Why? Because some day you will be."


    "Just look at it. The dude is jacked and ready to tear the house down. I went out, got the shirt, hat, and shorts, and I had PRs every single time I wore the outfit. I felt powerful. Psychologically speaking, emulating this man helped me break down barriers. It can work for you too."

    Lmao.

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  10. I do BJJ too. Most conditioning comes from actual rolling (fighting.) If you've never had to wrestle someone for an extended period of time, you don't know what endurance is.

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  11. first anonymous here

    my elitefts comment got modded out!!!!

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  12. Jamie,
    you should write deadpan posts about how your diet consists of little more than Bagel Bites (yes, the shitty pizzas on shitty bagels) and you do mostly breakdancing for hypertrophy (or something equally weird.)
    Give it a week or two and Elitefts, Tnation and the Diesel crew will be raving about Bagel Bites and breakdancing.

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  13. Wow... first that douche Nate Green, now EliteFTS...

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  14. So you somehow knew of the elite post a week in advance and quickly posted an improved version before their post came out?

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  15. Is copying other authors' material the new thing?

    I know Cosgrove was doing it big time, is everyone imitating him now?

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  16. Ugh, and he invoked the name of Vincent Kennedy McMahon, nonetheless. What a sacrilege. Betcha this kid's dressing up as John Cena for Halloween...

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  17. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  18. What is he talking about anyway? Fashion advice? That's for fags.

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  19. When a guy refers to his clothing as an "outfit", I'm pretty much heading for the hills, anyway..

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  20. To Dray: sub grappling/bjj three times a week, two hours a session is plenty of conditioning for me. If I'm gassing on the mat, it's because I'm rolling with a superior grappler. I also do complexes (lighter weights) once or twice a week. Actually, looking through my logs it looks like I only hit the weights C&P style once or twice a week. Still love the content of the site, though.

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  21. That article was enlightening and inspirational.
    I will now go buy some new "outfits" to look the part of a gym douche.
    Cosplay is hot.

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  22. WWE? Clothing? Wtf. I use CAPS to make a POINT lol. INVINCIBLE, POWERFUL, THREE, KNOW, NEVER, DOMINATE! RAWR tear shit up I'm godlike! Watch me jump in front the elite fts bus! RAWR go GGP! hilarious and of course there's no citation to his shit.

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  23. THAT OUTFIT
    LOOK AT THIS MAN
    I WANNA BE THIS MAN
    I WANNA
    I WANNA
    I WANNA THIS MAN
    I
    I
    I
    WANNA
    THIS
    MAN

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  24. You're getting props everywhere man:

    http://www.ampedtraining.com/2010/knowledge/should-we-keep-it-real

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  25. Who's blog is that? He did a "Bulgarian experiment" a few months ago? What the fuck is that? How long did his little experiment last? I'll never understand why kids on the Internet need to constantly experiment.

    Well last month I did a Bulgarian experiment and this month I'm doing a chaos and pain experiment and next month I'm going to do my westside for skinny bastards/531/doggcrapp hybrid experiment and the month after that I'm going to use nothing but bodyweight exercises. It's going to be my bodyweight for hypertrophy experiment. I'll spend the next five to 10 years doing goofy little experiments so that I can eventually come back to the one that got me my most favourite results and then stick with it forever. Unless I find an interesting program online that looks or sounds like it might yield even better results, in which case I'll experiment with it for a month to find out for sure.

    Fuck off with that.

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  26. lol @ Glen.

    He's a good guy. I remember him posting on some forums I frequented in the past.

    Not to sound all corny and gay and shit, but the biggest lesson I've taken away from this blog is that the body can handle a lot more than most people think, and that most of us act like a bunch of whiny bitches when it comes to lifting.

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  27. Anyone wanna buy my wine bottle? You know, THAT one...

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  28. Who the fuck keeps making comments in my name?

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  29. To anonymous:
    Yeah, 2+ hours of rolling will generally do anyone in. Still, I find that to get more volume in, it's perfectly fine to do strength training before or after grappling, although I'm not sure if you would get very anabolic. (Most submission grapplers/etc. couldn't care anyways as keeping a lower bodyweight is best for their grappling game.)

    The only thing that stunted recovery or cut down volume was actual conditioning work. Everything else was GPP.

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  30. Any article on the mental side of lifting shit isn't a rip off of your piece. Your piece takes an entirely different angle than that piece on elite (e.g., science vs. fashion LOL).

    I see maybe SOME similarities at a general level but you aren't being ripped off, unless your piece on mental preparation should also be seen as a ripoff on every other piece on 'mental preparation' that's been written over the years.

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  31. Articles submitted to Elite take several weeks to get posted. It just doesn't happen in a week.

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  32. You two realize the one the article's author is imitating isn't Jamie, right? It's Dave Tate. He's imitating Dave Tate.

    There might be the insinuation that he's ripped off Jamie due to the closeness of the two posts, but the point of this post is that the guy is mentally fucking retarded.

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  33. Interesting the tone of this post when one of EFS's copyrighted images was used in the orginal post without photo credit. I'm wondering if permission was asked or granted? It's easy to see both posts are different but I guess stealing others work is ok.

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