ChAoS & PAIN

The Predator Diet, In Glorious Detail Part 1

2012-02-10T16:44:00.000-08:00

In the event that you're not one of the readers hanging on my every word or who is new to the blog, this spinoff originally started with the Evolution Of My Diet series, which starts here. In it, I outlined the diet I'm currently following, which I've called the Predator Diet due to the fact that it consists of little more than that which an apex predator would eat, supplemented with protein shakes because I'm much more inclined to hedge my bets with a protein sparing modified fast than place my faith in the clinically unsupported yet theoretically sound Intermittent Fasting approach. The following blogs will expand upon what I've previously explained, give greater detail for why this diet kicks more ass than Gina Carano in Haywire.

Gina Carano knows ass.

An Overview of the Predator Diet
The Predator Diet is a at its core a cyclical ketogenic diet, not unlike those I've supported in the past. On this diet, you'll be keto dieting on 30 grams of carbohydrates or less per day for 5-6 days a week (or more, depending on your bodyfat levels). During the non-carb days, you'll be consuming 1-2 meals of fatty, preferably bone-in meat per day, supplemented by 5-7 low carbohydrate protein shakes. The other day or two are referred to as "Rampage" days, during which time you'll replenish your glycogen stores and satisfy your desire to wreck pizza and cookies.

The reasoning behind this methodology of dieting is that I found protein-sparing modified fasts like the Velocity Diet gave me just enough energy to put in a workout that would embarrass an undergraduate girl trying to drop her freshman 15 before going to the beach for cock over the summer- I was truncating my workouts horribly and thinking about nothing more than fucking killing myself out of shame. Thus, I did some research and discovered those diets are really only suited to the morbidly obese and people who suck at lifting weights, rather than people trying to be so fucking superhuman they make Superman seem like a shiftless, limp-dicked, weaksauce layabout by comparison. As such, I experimented with a variety of evening meals and finally settled upon beef ribs and bone in steaks, which are eminently satisfying, calorically dense, and restorative in ways you cannot possibly imagine.

This shit works.

This diet, though similar to many you've likely seen, is vastly superior (if you're training hard 4+ times a week) to existing frameworks for a couple of reasons.

My macronutrient percentages are different. Conventional wisdom on CKDs is that 65-75% of your calories should come from fat. Fuck all that. According to my biggest fan on Earth, Lyle McDonald, "when subjects are told to limit carbohydrate intake but to consume "unlimited" quantities of protein and fat, they automatically limit caloric intake and consume between 1400 and 2100 calories."(Ketogenic Diet 101). I don't give a fuck who you are, that shit is not going to support heavy training. Not only is that a caloric intake suitable only to the Olson twins and 19th Century hunger artists, but at the macros suggested by the gurus, you're not getting nearly enough protein, either. 2100-1470=630/4=157.5 grams of protein. My protein shakes have more calories in them than that, for fuck's sake, and I mix them in water. The Predator Diet is much higher calorie (3000+), most days, with 50-60% of your calories coming from protein and the remainder from fat.
I cycle calories. For those of you who are not already incredibly lean, calorie cycling kicks in to keep your metabolism humming. I've not seen another CKD or TKD diet that tinkers with calories in this way to accelerate fatloss.
It's fucking easy. One of the things I see people constantly blabbering on about with the IF diet is how easy it is to not eat for half the day. I guarantee you it takes no more time to make a shake than it does to make a cup of coffee, and those fuckers must be chugging coffee if they're not eating. As such, their argument's as fucking stupid as the Predator Diet is anabolic.
It's anabolic. Though you're operating in a caloric deficit for the majority of the day, you're getting a constant influx of protein to stave off muscle catabolism, and the high fat meats at the end of the day provide saturated fat and cholesterol, both of which boost testosterone levels, which in turn increase aggression, which in turn makes you tear shit up in the gym, making your system even more anabolic. Basically, you become a perpetual-motion machine of badassery.
You're not insane with hunger at all times. When hungry, "people tend to conserve energy rather than expend it."(Russell 148) That's definitively not a good thing if you're training hard, especially if you're dieting for a competition and/or training twice a day. I used this diet to cut for two meets and ended up on the underside of 7% bodyfat, making my water cut easier, increasing my strength to weight ratio, and allowing me to look fucking amazing while lifting big weights.
You have planned, insane, gluttonous cheat meals. These serve a variety of purposes, and they match the occasional gorge of a predator nicely.

Because I realize experimentation is scary, and I've already done plenty of experimenting, I've got four basic permutations of this diet- Fat Fuck; Not Too Fucking Fat, But Not Too Fucking Lean; Lean As Shit; and Whiny Bitch. The first three are fairly self- explanatory, and will be broken out by bodyfat percentage (see the chart below). The last is because I get a lot of emails from people whining about pre-and post-workout carbs. They're of the opinion that they're indispensable, though I would dispute that opinion. For those ladies out there who absolutely must have your carbs or you will turn into a raging ball of hormone-fueled fury, laying waste to everything in your path as you make for the counter at Auntie Annie's in the mall, this should suit your purposes nicely as well.

Components of the Predator Diet
Before we get into the finer points of the diet, let's cover a couple of basics- food and supplement choices. The reason why I've christened this diet the Predator Diet is due to the awesome food choices you'll be making. Nowhere will you find bland, tasteless, rubbery bullshit like chicken breasts and steamed broccoli. Fuck it- on this diet, you won't even need utensils, most of the time, because your food should come with a built-in handle- bone. Bone is an integral part of meat, and ripping an animal's flesh off its bones with your teeth is a primal, visceral, ethereal act that stands in stark defiance to modern life and harkens to a time when men were men and women appreciate real men, in addition to being tougher than most of the "men" you see waddling around the mall these days. As such, it would stand to reason that if we want to regain that former glory, strength, and aggressive awesomeness we had in times past, we should eat like our forebears.

For those of you who are staring, incredulous, at that statement, consider the following:
"The connection between flesh and bone is primordial and fundamental. Yet today, bones have fallen out of favor. We are all familiar with the expression, 'The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat,' but we demand everything precut and prepackaged, and that is, increasingly, all we can buy. Our world is full of recipes for boneless, skinless (and often tastless pieces of meat, chicken, and fish, and we can scarcely recognize whole fish or birds. We have become so obsessed with ease of preparation and speed that we have lost touch with the visceral appeal of cooking with- and eating- bones." (20 McLagan)

They understood this, because they were stronger, smarter, and tougher than the lot of us.

"There is a universal understanding that bones and meat are inseparable. Yiddish: Bones without meat are possible, meat without bones is not possible. Hebrew: There is no such thing as boneless meat. Greek: Meat is sold with bones. Norwegian: He who buys the meat has to take the bone with it. English: Bones bring meat to town. He who eats the meat let him eat the bones. You buy the land you buy the stones: you buy the meat you buy the bones."(119 Bones)

Eating boneless meat is thus not only effete, ridiculous, artificial, and offensive to the soul of the slaughtered animal, but it's fucking stupid. Bone in meat tastes better and is healthier, as cooking it in that fashion "enables the bone nutrients to infuse into the meat, imparting wonderful flavors"(Shanahan) in addition to added nutrients. After you've cooked it that way, you eat it with your hands, as your primal ancestors did, using the bones as the handles for bearing meat to your mouth as they were fucking intended. Eating becomes more satisfying because you're restoring the tactile sense in your hands to the process of eating. As such, it becomes a richer, more natural, more intimate experience and produces greater satiety as a result. As one probably hot hippie put it, "eating with your hands gives you a deeper sense of your food, because you are bringing more sense receptors to the table. Temperature and texture become more profound when you can feel them on your fingers first, and the experience of consumption is extended even longer for a more pleasurable process."(Urban)

Worries about a mess on your hands? Buy some fucking Wet Wipes and be glad you have fewer dishes to do.

Additionally, you're going to be consuming a shitload of low-carb, blended source protein shakes, multivitamins, EFAs, and fatburners, and will try to mix in some offal if at all possible. I'll get into all of that good shit in the next installment, however, leaving you with the fact that offal tastes fucking awful, so I generally just take a shitload of multis.

Exactly.

Sources:
McDonald, Lyle. Ketogenic Diet.
McLagan, Jennifer. Bones: Recipes, History, and Lore. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.
Russell, Sharmen Apt. Hunger: An Unnatural History. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

Shanahan, Cate. http://drcate.com/deep-nutrition-the-ancient-science-of-human-engineering/the-four-pillars-of-world-cuisine/
Urban, Shiloh. "Eat With Your Hands." http://www.organicauthority.com/eco-chic-table/eat-with-your-hands.html

Holy Balls! The New Shirt Is Finally For Sale

2012-02-07T14:45:00.000-08:00

Shit's fucking rugged.

I decided to go with a different printer, a heavier-weight shirt, and a whole new design. These motherfuckers are nice- in face, I'm wearing one as I type this. They're Hanes 9.1 oz Heavyweight Tagless 100% cotton shirts, so they'll grip the bar when you're back squatting and won't be too easy to rip while kicking people in the face at a Murder Death Kill show or fucking. Get them now at by clicking the Paypal button on the side. I know there will be several of you clamoring for Google Checkout, but Google's a pain in my ass and I'm going to avoid it unless I'm overwhelmed with a tide of whining (which I fully anticipate). Email me at chaos_and_pain@yahoo.com to bitch.

As an FYI, these run kind of small- the Medium fits me like it's make out of spandex and is best for people 165 lbs or under. The Large is comfortable, but not tight, on me, if a bit long.

That's how a medium fits on a 194 lb guy.

You asked for 'em, and you got them. I've got a couple of hoodies as well, but haven't decided if I'm going to sell them or what. Anyway, grab the shirt by clicking the button on the left.

RAW UNITY 5- Post-Weighin, Meet Day, and the Week After Diet

2012-02-02T17:08:00.000-08:00

Apparently, my incredibly detailed run-down of my meet prep and meet were insufficient. As such, I'll expand upon them further. To be covered: my meet day diet, post-meet diet, the reasoning behind my use of reverse grip bench press, and why I eschew the use of a belt.

Sodium, carb, and glycerine loading leaves me looking like I haven't slept in 6 weeks, apparently, but big as shit- I weighed in at ~180 and weighed 198 in this pic.

Diet
I began planning my post-weighin meal at about 1PM the day before my meet. I arrived at the weigh-in with 3 one-liter Powerade Zeros and a G2, all of which had about 3 oz of glycerine in them. Within minutes of weighing in, I'd drunk 2 of those, then sat down to eat a 6oz burger and drink a Diet Coke. In the next 3 hours, I alternately napped and watched the girls and lightweights compete, and in process consumed half a box of Cinnamon Life and 4 packages of Trio-Plex cookies. Somewhere in there I drank the G2 and another liter of water. I then went to Sonic and got a large popcorn chicken and tater tots with a humongous Diet Coke, and shortly thereafter to Landry's for another burger, since I despise seafood. Interesting to note is the fact that I'd drunk well over a gallon of water by the time I got to dinner, but didn't actually piss until my fourth or fifth Diet Coke at dinner. Before going to bed, I ate half a large thin crust pizza topped with pepperoni and sausage and drank the last Powerade Zero.

Unfortunately, I had a fat, congenial, mustachioed Mexican Dominos delivery person rather than this broad.

Upon waking, I ate the other half of the pizza, had a Monster Milk shake, and went downstairs. During the meet I ate a few Titan protein cookies and a roast beef sandwich and fries. I was attempting to get as much in the way of calories, carbs, and sodium into my system, all while keeping my protein higher than a fratboy at a Dave Matthews concert prior to his obligatory festival of date rape and douchebaggery.

Even made some bulgogi maki for a marathon of Call of Duty (since I don't take pics of my food I just stole that from Flickr).

Following the week of the meet, I took a sort of "regain my sanity week". I only lifted three times, ate whatever I wanted each day, and relaxed a lot. The only thing I ensured during the week, diet-wise, was that my protein stayed extremely high to ensure full recovery. Before you ask, that means above 300g a day, and within shouting distance of 400g. I've been dieting hard and training between 5 and 12 times per week nonstop since last May, so I felt it was time for a bit of a vacation. This week, I'm probably as lean as I was, having awesome dreams at night and sleeping like I got snuck with a sack of wet pennies. Additionally, my strength is good and I'm acting like a fucking animal in the gym again instead of doing the clock-watching I had been for the last couple of weeks prior to the meet.

The Reverse Grip
Initially, I started doing reverse grip bench presses because my left shoulder was bothering me. As it turned out, there was no real injury there- I simply had the most incredible knotting radiating from my armpit to my wrist that anyone's seen since the Incans tried to calculate the circumference of the Earth (google quipu if you aren't nerdy enough to get the reference). In any event, I found I progressed rapidly in the reverse grip and actually doubled 375 once a couple of weeks out from the meet, which I'd never come close to doing with regular grip. Additionally, I'm a bigger proponent of making a spectacle of myself than Caligula, so going reverse just kicks that up another couple of notches. Fuck, if fatassed Anthony Clark could succeed with it, I sure as fuck can.

The Belt Issue
A couple of years ago I had my belt stolen out of Mark Bartley's gym, SC Barbell. I rarely used the fucking thing for anything other than heavy partials, and quickly came to realize I didn't need a belt for them, either- I've gone over 1200 lbs for back squat lockouts without a belt, so I'm relatively confident that the only thing that could injure my lower back or abs is a low-yield tactical nuke. Given that one rarely encounters those in powerlifting meets, I felt that the use of one would be superfluous. Additionally, I found in a meet at SC Barbell (the first time I deadlifted over 600 in a competition or without straps) that I actually deadlifted less with a belt than without one. As such, fuck belts.

This guy.

One dude, Jason Manenkoff, with whom I chatted during the meet actually made a fairly witty comment with which I didn't totally agree, but thought was hilarious- he compared having my belt stolen to getting his track cleats stolen. To him, just saying "fuck it, I don't need it" was akin to him saying "fuck it, I'll just fucking run barefoot" at the NCAAs. In that scenario, though, I'm pretty much akin to a Kalenjin runner competing barefoot in the Olympics- they don't fucking need shoes.

There you have it. Simple enough, right? Eat a shitload, and fuck everybody.

RAW UNITY 5- The Whole Shitteree

2012-01-30T16:58:00.000-08:00

So, after a brief hiatus, RAW Unity 5. Though I'd like to say the interlude was simply due to my waiting for the publishing of the photos and vids of the meet, it was due in very large part to me being a bit burned out and pissed off after the meet. Right after the meet ended, I had a startling revelation that I solemnly vow to never do again- I didn't listen to my own fucking advice. Let's roll it back to last year, when I wrote:

In a previous blog, I posted a quote from the seminal grindhouse film Planet Terror, in which a retardedly hot, pole-dancing, ass-kicking, peg-legged Rose McGowan stated that "goals become the thing you talk about, rather than the thing you do." That's a fairly accurate summation of my opinion of goals with regard to weightlifting (an life in general), and I thus view the myriad posted goals on Bodyspace and similar sites just as I do a wheezing, sweaty, pre-diabetic, allegedly human mass of fat cells with eyeballs purchasing a supersize meal at McDonalds with a Diet Coke- they're laughable and pathetic.
Were you to lack the experience I've had, you might be tempted to set those kinds of goals... especially when you're surrounded by monuments to mediocrity erected by people entirely bereft of pride all over the internet. If you allow these idiots, who've posted their unbelievably embarrassing numbers online in a multitude of places, to program your subconscious into believing that those number are what you're likely to reach, you're fucked. Their Facebox updates and forum signatures are the internet's equivalent of the Persian assault on the Greeks at Thermopylae. They're repetitive, toothless, and generally fucking sad, but the sheer weight of numbers can leave you well and truly fucked if you're unprepared to deal with them. Just as those hapless turbaned were driven onto the spear points of the Spartans by the swords of their officers and covered the Grecian landscape like locusts, so do the ambassadors of suck online. Thus, it's important that you look to more inspirational sources and leave those idiots to their discussion of which brand of sock/briefs/shoes/supplements might pus them to a 400 lb shitfest of a back squat. This is especially important at night, when the defenses your conscious mind erects to outside influence on your subconscience are at their weakest. (Van Fleet 54-55)"

What'd I fucking do? I told half the free world that I was going to break two world records. Not that I was going to attempt to do so, but that I was going to do it. As the meet drew closer, I started freaking the fuck out, since I realized that anything I did that didn't involve breaking those records would be viewed, at least by me, as an abject fucking failure. Three days out from the meet, I hit 585 for two to depth and decided that there was no way I was not going to do it. All I had to do was show up, make weight, and collect my money.

I was wrong.

I had my aims all muddled the fuck up- I started thinking about the destination, rather than the journey, and in doing so fucked up my motivations irrevocably. When doing something for material gain, you activate the nucleus accumbens in your brain. That's essentially the pleasure center in the brain, but it requires ever-increasing amounts of stimulation and is generally harder to activate than other parts. Doing something for fun, however, activates the posterior superior temporal sulcus, which is the part of the brain responsible for social interactions (also known as the altruism center), in addition to biological movement. They can't function at the same time, so you basically have to pick a goal and stick with it, and I picked incorrectly.(Brafman 140)

It also sucked that I went the way I did with my motivation and goals because after I'd set I was totally disgusted with setting three PRs (squat, bench, and total), rather than pleased with a not-too-fucking-embarrassing performance. Not only that, but it left me pissed for an entire week afterward, during which time I considered the entire effort wasted and briefly considered quitting competition entirely... which is fucking retarded.

The Meet Prep
My meet prep didn't really vary in any way from the previous meet, aside from the fact that I dropped incline reverse grips in favor of flat bench reverse grips. It worked like a charm, but I fucked the dog on the bench due to the same demon that plagued me throughout the meet- overfuckingconfidence. This, of course, shouldn't surprise anyone, given my philosophy of being a giant dick, going huge and strutting around like Little Lord Fontelroy. Confidence is good. Overconfidence is the fucking devil.

I continue to believe that the path to greatness on squats is beginning each squatting workout (minus zerchers) with jump squats. It's helped my explosiveness out of the bottom, improved my flexibility, and is fun as hell. Additionally, bottom-position squats really help your explosiveness out of the hole, although I apparently needed to pile a couple more mats under the bar. I thought I was working from parallel, but I was evidently about an inch high.

Insanely easy 629, but was a little high.

The Diet
If you've read the unfinished Predator Diet series, you know how I've been eating- meat on the bone, every day, and a shitload of protein shakes. The only thing that changed in the final few weeks was that I added a second daily meal of dry wings with salt and pepper about a month prior to the meet. Additionally, as I was losing my fucking mind about three weeks out from constant dieting, I had a second carb day on Saturdays. I started that day with biscuits and turkey sausage- 4 or 5 biscuits made with low-fat Bisquik and Jimmy Dean or Bob Evans (I prefer Bob Evans' but they're only available in the North) Turkey Sausage patties, with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Spray and dusted heavily with powdered red pepper. Thereafter, I'd eat Baked Ruffles, bowls from Chipotle consisting of naught but rice and double chicken. The rest of the time, it went like this:

8:30 AM: AM Workout
9AM: Shake 1- Muscle Infusion in water
11AM: Shake 2- Monster Milk in water
1 PM: Dry Wings- Liberally coat in salt and pepper
4 PM: Shake 3- Muscle Infusion in water
7 PM: Shake 4- Muscle Infusion in water
9:30-10:30PM: 2-3 lbs beef ribs with dry rub
11:30: Half a shake- Muscle Infusion in water
Overnight: Half a shake- Muscle Infusion in water

I was slightly lean at this meet.

Since I invariably get questions about it, here's how I prepare the ribs:

Dust one side with the following

Butt Rub- This stuff is a bit more savory, salty, and spicy than most other rubs.

Rib-It Rib Rub- I bought this stuff and like it, but it's a bit too mild. Mixed with the Butt Rub, it's awesome

Cumin

Chipotle Pepper

Garlic

Bake on 400 for 20 mins, turning once and dusting the upwards-facing side with the same blend.

Clearly, this diet is working- I'm hovering around 6% bodyfat and my lifts continue to rise. A note about that- I now believe that training without doing some sort of semi-strict dieting lends itself to diminished results, due to the fact that you're not as mindful about your lifestyle and are thus less focused in the gym. This might have to do with priming, as the stronger and better you look, the more primed you should be to perform up to your appearance. The opposite could also be true- if you look like a doughy pile of shit, you might be priming yourself to lift like one every time you look in the mirror. You'll act the way you're stereotype... it's science. Studies have shown that being positively stereotyped increases your performance, and being negatively stereotyped can result in poor health, loss of physical strength, cognition, eyesight, coordination, and can even shorten your life.(Langer 106-7, 166-168) Thus, you should look the way you want to fucking perform- awesome.

The Weighin
Making weight was considerably easier at this meet. I'd been walking around at around 196-7 at night, so when I started cutting salt and adding water, the weight fell right off. Additionally, because I'm so much leaner than I was, there's nothing but muscle glycogen and creatine holding onto my water. When I cut water, the weight dropped off precipitously. I used the same cutting protocol as in the last meet, although I used WAY more Kranker 2 and stopped eating 24 hours prior to weighin (I had 4 shakes before I stopped consuming anything). The label for Kranker 2 states you should use 1-2 3x a day- this time, I used 4 maybe 6 times on Friday, for a Saturday weighin. Thus, when I awoke on Saturday, I was only 4.5 lbs over. I grabbed my sauna suit and headed to Gold's Gym to sit in their sauna. Though Ferriss and others recommend steam, a 180 degree sauna will do just fine, especially if you're wearing a sauna suit. I would sit in the sauna for ten minutes and then walk laps around the indoor pool, since it was hot as balls in there as well. 2 hours later, I was at 180.62, exhausted, overheated, and fucking starving.

Gandhi 2... he's back, and he's pissed.

Speaking of starving, I've been reading an interesting book called Hunger: An Unnatural History, which basically details the history of fasting and starvation. In it, the author lists Gandhi's rules for fasting. In case you're unaware, Gandhi was a diminutive Indian man who hated black people and was ironically the inspiration for the tactics used in the US civil rights movements. He was also instrumental in the formation of the current nations of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. He was a celibate vegetarian, so his opinions should of course be questioned heavily, but he did engage in hundreds of fasts, many of which were limited to a single day, and used them as a political tool to blackmail British politicians. He often threatened to starve himself to death and nearly did so on a number of occasions, so I thought it might be interesting to examine his thoughts on the subject.In any event, here are his 9 Rules For Fasting,(Russell 87) along with my comments:

"Conserve your energy, both physically and mentally, from the beginning." This isn't a bad idea. Fasting fucking blows. If you're cutting weight, walking's about as intense as you should make your efforts, so you don't overwork yourself in a state to which you're unaccustomed and fuck yourself up.
"Cease to think of food while fasting." Impossible. ALL you think about while fasting is what your first meal is going to be. I had my meal planned within minutes of starting my fast. If you're used to eating 8 times a day, there's not fucking chance in hell you'll be able to resist thinking about food.
"Drink as much cold water as you can." Not an option when trying to make weight.
"Have a warm sponge bath daily." You know what sucks more than being hungry as shit? Being hot and hungry. Fuck all that.
"Take an enemy regularly." I tried using a saline enema to make weight last time and found it did nothing more than make me hideously uncomfortable. Unless you're really into enemas, I wouldn't advise it. In case you're curious, Gandhi was REALLY into enemas, and would prolapse his own ass to wash his intestines in a bowl of water. He was an old school Goatse, I guess.
"Sleep as much as possible in the open air." I assume he means "in a cool place". Cranking the AC feels good while sleeping.
"Bathe in the morning air." ... and get arrested.
"Think of anything else but the fast." Good luck with all of that. I buried myself in research and still found my mind wandering to the pit in my stomach. I found that driving took my mind off of fasting, so if you can, take a drive once you're on or close to your weight.
"No matter from what motive you are fasting, during this precious time think of your Maker and of your reliance on him and his other creations and you will make discoveries you never dreamed of." Frankly, I thought all about how awesome I was and was busy being impressed with my ability to endure discomfort. Different strokes, I guess. No one makes me awesome but me. If you think there's a magical force making you awesome, channel that shit. Whatever it takes to make weight.

The Clusterfuck That Was The Meet
I pretty much fucked the dog from the giddy-up. I went too light on my squat opener, PR'd on my second, and missed the third because of depth, though it was my best-looking lift. Frankly, I should have just gone heavier and sunk into it more, but I was being a bitch after grinding my 617.2. Thus, I went 574, 617.2, ~~629~~. On bench, my opener was a joke, so I laid down on the bench like I was going to take a fucking nap for my second and missed it, only to get it easily on my third. At this point, I'd already left at least 35 lbs on the platform, and was fucking PISSED. On bench I went 325, ~~369.2~~, 369.2. For deads, I opened light, hit a light 2nd, and got retardedly pumped for my third, which was 15 lbs lighter than I'd planned. I took a shit stance (due to overexcitement), and missed the pull just above my knees, which I didn't even think could happen. Thus, I ended with a disgraceful 585, 628.3, ~~661~~. Thus, I totalled 1614.7, which was a full 100 lbs lighter than I'd planned. Never has a showing been so disappointing to its participant since the first person managed to pit Little Mac against Iron Mike Mike Tyson's Punchout- it was a goddamned disaster.

Yeah, I reverse gripped. And yeah, it was awesome.

What I Learned

Focus on the journey, not the destination. If you get your balls all full for a climax that doesn't happen, you live in pain until the swelling subsides, and that fucking sucks.
If the judges are being strict on squat depth, PAY FUCKING ATTENTION TO THAT and go deeper than you think you need to. I completely ignored the fact that I'd seen hours of red-lighted squats after seeing Saam Byrd's second get three whites, and figured I just had to go out and represent. Well, I'm not Sam Byrd, apparently, and I can go fuck myself. Go deeper than you need to.
Cutting water weight gets easier when you're super lean. Thus, you should shoot for 4 weeks out from a bodybuilding competition-type condition if you want to have a relatively easy water cut.
Don't buy into your own bullshit. Confidence is good. Ridiculous overconfidence is stupid, no matter how beastly you've been in the gym. Treat every attempt like it's going to be the hardest of your life.
Rehbands don't have the "bounce" of TK's. I switched because my TK's ripped, but I'll be getting another pair for my next meet. I vastly prefer them.
Fuck it- get 'em next time. There's really no fucking point in crying over spilled milk, though that didn't fucking stop me last week. Hate makes you strong, so I'm just going to turn that shit into something else and hate my way to victory in the next meet.

The deeds we do shall be the stuff of legends.

Much like this pic.

Sources:
Brafman, Ori and Rom Brafman. Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior. Doubletree: New York 2008.
Langer, Ellen. Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility. New York: Ballantine, 2009.
Russell, Sharmen Apt. Hunger: An Unnatural History. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

Just Sitting Around on Your Ass This Sunday?

2012-01-22T07:39:00.000-08:00

...and not about to do something involving these girls?

Then go to www.powerliftingwatch.com and watch Jamie live at his meet at Raw Unity. It starts at 10 am CST. (About 20 minutes after this post was put up.) That is, if you're not going to do anything useful today, at least watch someone who is.

A Complete Aside To Discuss How Much America Currently Sucks

2012-01-18T16:57:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are American, I'm sure you know we appear on the precipice of some dark days. If you've not attempted to access Wikipedia today, you might take a moment to do so- it's not working. Instead, there is a message up regarding Wikipedia's protest of the legislation before Congress known as SOPA and PIPA.

This about sums up my feelings on everything.

"The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Presented to the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement." (Wiki)

This is a big bag of bullshit, since it'd mean the death of great sites like mediafire, megaupload, and every music blog on Earth. Additionally, large corporations could sue the bejeesus out of any small site they wanted to silence them for their views if there was something that could be construed as copyright infringement on that site... including me.

"The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 or PIPA), also known as Senate Bill 968 or S. 968, is a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the U.S. The bill was introduced on May 12, 2011, by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and 11 bipartisan co-sponsors. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that implementation of the bill would cost the federal government $47 million through 2016, to cover enforcement costs and the hiring and training of 22 new special agents and 26 support staff." (Wiki)

This means we get to pay for policing the internet in other nations, which is even more awesome, since the US is broke as fuck. Thus, politicians want to blow more of your money on overseas adventures that net the taxpayer nothing but failed downloads and more cops.

If you're lazy as fuck, feel free to copy my email, which I've got below. You can find out to whom you should send it by going to Wikipedia and entering your zip code. For those fuzzy foreigners among you, I guess you can sit around with your thumbs up your asses like you do in any global conflict. Russians, continue torturing cats or whatever it is you do in your free time.

My email (which I sent to all of my local Congressmen):
I am typically loathe to address my elected representatives due to the fact that I am quite sure that they do not represent me. In spite of this fact, sir, I am reaching out to you to voice my displeasure with the looming legislation regarding the extension of the United States' burgeoning police state to the internet. I refer, of course, to the bills before Congress known colloquially as SOPA and PIPA. While I am sure you and your colleagues stand to gain a great deal monetarily from your support of such legislation, I would appeal to whatever humanity you have left and ask that you refrain from making the lives of your constituents any more awful than you have already done with the last ten years of violent mismanagement of our nation's economy.

In an America where virtually all hope for a better future is lost, I would ask that you leave us our present. Congress and the White House have certainly done enough to destroy what's left of our former beacon of freedom, and the limitation of the free flow of information would certainly seal freedom's coffin.

Additionally, I will appeal to your inhuman side ans state, for a fact, that I do not know of a single person who would allow a politician into their home at this point- your profession is viewed with the same distaste people generally reserve for grave robbers and child pornographers. Perhaps if you would find it in your blackened heart to refrain from making our already bleak lives more unpleasant, you could see your approval ratings rise from "I would vigorously defend my property with deadly force against this man's incursion if he happened to chase a stray baseball into my yard" to "I would not spit on that person on the street if given the opportunity". That, of course, was not a threat, but rather a tongue-in-cheek reference to Congress's historically (and comically) low approval ratings.

A good day to you,

Jameson Lewis

For those of you who don't give a shit about any of this, you're fucking retarded. In any event, I should have a new Baddest Motherfucker up tomorrow about Stan Efferding, and will give you an update from RAW Unity over the weekend (including a heads up about how Johnny Jackson does). Until then, tits.

Go Fucking Feral #2- A Shutthefuckup Salad With A Side of Extra Rants

2012-01-10T17:32:00.000-08:00

I mean, you gotta behave like a grown fucking man. You gotta shut the fuck up. Don't be sorry, don't look fucking back, because, believe me, no one gives a fuck.

In the last installment of this series, we covered the fact that I've recently received a spate of emails from alleged men who apparently lack both testicular fortitude and any semblance of comprehension of my metholodogy or mentality. This has, of course, angered me greatly. I provided a couple of examples of feral children and their awesomeness as a bit of evidence for the fact that you're far more physically capable than you would have otherwise thought, and could likely do some amazing things if you could only stop convincing yourself, and allowing others to convince you, that you suck at everything you try, are weak, and are doomed to wallow in a sea of suck for all eternity.

The time for genocide is now.

A short aside: One of the most virulent and offensive exhibitions of this "I suck and can't help it" mentality is the practice of setting a New Year's resolution. In setting a NYR, you're doing a couple of things, all of which are about as cool as those grown men who brag about watching My Little Pony and write fan fiction for the show. First, you're announcing to the world that you've identified a fault within yourself and refused to resolve it. Second, you've decided to procrastinate on even pretending to resolve the issue until an arbitrary date. Third, you're making a hell of a lot of noise about nothing, since only about 12% of people who make New Years Resolutions enjoy anything resembling success.(Quirkology) It's a fucking embarrassment of fat, drunken David Hasselhoff with a hamburger proportions. If you think you suck, fucking stop sucking immediately. Women, I'm pointing at you and your motherfucking diets- there's no goddamned time like the present. Stop putting shit off until tomorrow like you're a modern day J. Wellington Wimpy, who is perhaps the cartoon character most deserving of a curb stomp in history.

Every fuckin’ beatin’ I’m grateful for. Every fuckin’ one of them. Get all the trust beat outta you. And you know what the fuckin’ world is.

Back to my original rant:
I realize that the internet provides a lot of you with a cloak and mask from which you can hide from the world and publish your dumbest thoughts and desires with impunity, and a great many of you make full use of that anonymity for naught but evil.(Fingeroth 48) I don't even mean "evil" in a badass Dr. Doom sense, and no, your brainless trolling of some random forum is neither amusing nor clever nor terribly evil- it's pathetic, wasteful, and should be the catalyst for your suicide rather than the suicide of others. Instead, I mean evil in the "little e" sense- like the evil perpetrated by a particularly dull and ineffectually annoying toddler too fat and lazy to get into any real trouble. The world would likely be better off if most of us stopped fucking breathing anyway- a recent poll revealed that Americans considered this pack of assholes to be the most admirable men in the country:

1) Barack Obama- a president who went from "suck" to "shit" in record time and managed not to do a single thing promised on the campaign trail, a feat only previously accomplished by James A Garfield and William Henry Harrison. For those of you who are either foreign or a moron, both of them died within a year of taking office and spent the entirety of their term on their deathbeds. If only Obama had had the good graces to do that.
2) George W. Bush- The single worst US president in the last 100 years. Jimmy Carter was a boon to the economic and international politics compared to this useless cocksucker, may he rot in hell. If any of you participated in this poll, let ANYONE who's aware of it know so they can strangle you to death with some rusty barbwire.
3) Bill Clinton- Irrelevant unless you want advice on banging fat broads and getting caught thereafter. Then, bang more fat broads to forget your married to the angriest lesbian this side of Gloria Steinem.
4) Rev. Billy Graham- Religious lunatic who makes senior Al Qaeda members seem like reasonable and rational men by comparison. Billy Graham is so insane for Jesus that he literally yells "I'm Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs" in the middle of the Lord's Prayer while shitting his pants and heaving handfuls of sparkles at an audience who could only be there because one of his stable of eunuchs is holding a knife inscribed with John 3:16 to the throats of their parents.
5) Warren Buffett- Pompous blowhard who's become rich by being a real life Scrooge McDuck. That motherfucker pinches pennies so hard he made half of his fortune by warping coins for children at Please Touch Museums. He sustained himself during this enterprise by living off the tears of the children who couldn't pry the coin out of his wretched claws after he squeezed it into an unrecognizable state.
6-tie) Newt Gingrich- Drug addict, pompous ass, and writer of unreadable yet enticing historical fiction. His books make you want to claw out your fucking eyes within 16 pages, but you keep going because the dust cover promised more awesome than a gangbang at a Disney Channel 15 year reunion.
6-tie) Donald Trump- The only interesting person on the list, if only because of the fact that one of the richest men in America apparently cannot afford a decent toupee or stylist.
8) Pope Benedict XVI- The emperor from Star Wars made it onto this list, which fascinates me.
9) Bill Gates- The genius behind Windows ME, Windows 7 (FUCK THE UAC IN IT'S HORRIBLE, STUPID ASS. If you don't know what I'm referring to you must either be a Mac owner or computer illiterate. As I suppose those are the same thing, you're either computer illiterate or a computer illiterate hipster who should find an ironic bleach and drink it), and Clippy, that ever-so-helpful cocksucker of an obnoxious popup paperclip. Fuck this guy.
10) Thomas Monson- I've no idea how anyone even knows this guys name, or why they give a shit. Apparently, you can't swing a dead cat in a closet without hitting 43 Mormons. Sneaky motherfuckers.

Throw on top of that list the fact that the number of people in the US who think humans were created by god in their present form within the last 10,000 years is at or over 40% (Science and Nature), and you've got a fairly compelling reason to kill half of the population outright, without a single regret. That would be feral. The shit that I see on a daily basis is about as feral as a newborn lamb on a pile of pink cotton candy wearing Care Bears underoos with Michael Bolton playing softly in the background.

There is no reason for the inclusion of this picture other than the fact that it exists.

I realize that in the intervening week between posts, this seems like a hell of a lot of rant without reason, but I assure you, my reasons are legion. The docility and submissiveness in the verbiage of the emails I've received of late is appalling, and I thought it necessary to instill a bit of fear in you motherfuckers- that shit will not be tolerated. As such, here are a couple examples of the nonsense I've received, with my analysis thereof and response thereto.

"So here's my skinny. My pitch and my "hey". I will devote whatever of myself is required, to make me a huge dastardly mother fucker. And I want you to help me. I want to workout twice a day. I want to drag anchor chains and pull 1.5" line attached to a truck. I want to do sprints and tire flips. I want to sprint hurdles and do high jumps. I want to use chalk when I talk on the phone. I want to be a legendary strong man, and have every possible vein in my body pulse like a new song from Skrillex on ecstasy. Can you do this for me? Will you be my coach? Will you help me achieve greatness at an exceptional level? I want more out of life and for me, it comes from the grueling tediocity of power, strength, and weight lifting. Be my coach homie. Be my mentor and make me a fucking monster. Please.

I have more motivation than 50 of your bloggers put together...I just need to be "told" what to do."

I suppose it goes without saying that the final line of that email is one of the most patently disingenuous statements ever uttered within my proverbial earshot- if he was that motivated, he'd need no direction other than that which would show him where the nearest useful gym was located. The entire tone of this email drips with desire for acceptance, yet the author clearly fails to understand even the most basic tenets of my life philosophy and the mentality I promote.

There are essentially two types of people in the world, and they're very aptly depicted in the Matrix- those content to pretend to live in freedom, and those who will actually endure the pain of doing so. I'm the latter, whereas the author of this email is very clearly the former. He's the dickbag in the Matrix who sells out his buddies for the illusion of a delicious steak, knowing it's total bullshit but refusing to care.

"Whereas those who sleep within the Matrix have the illusion of individual freedom... while being slaves to the worst aspects of collective consciousness, those who are truly free ultimately fight alone. Which is preferable? Our instincts tell us to be alone and aware, with the perhaps distant hopeof building a community. Even if we fail at building it, or its goals are never revelaed, we still know we have tried. We'd rather be alone- orphans- on our own terms than to be taken care of it is as slaves to a government or machine, or even an idea."(Fingeroth 71)

If you want to "do Chaos and Pain", asking me to program your workouts is obviously not the way to go about it. The entire point of this methodology is to find what works best for you and do it, and to throw off the strictures and shackles heaped upon you by a weak-minded and -bodied society to find your own way. It's to try new shit, push yourself harder and farther than everyone else, and transcend the mediocrity of the masses to achieve excellence. It's not about doing what I fucking tell you, because I'm not in the business of telling people what to fucking do. The very idea someone would want to be told what to do fucking disgusts me. For the love of all that's fucking holy, don't bend your knee to me- I neither want acolytes nor need them. I wish for nothing more than other people to get off their knees, stop sucking the cocks of supposed gurus because it's popular to do so and far easier than thinking for your fucking self, and do something epic. I leave the demagoguery to people like Mark Rippetoe and Zach Evan-Esh, because I choose to lead by example. If you motherfuckers want to follow me where my path takes me, that's fine by me- I'm happy to beat down the fucking bushes and blaze a path for like-minded individuals. I will not, however, carry you motherfuckers in a loving embrace and gently part the palm fronds for you. Think for your fucking selves and DO for your fucking selves.

Those of you asking me for programs are this guy, exactly. If any of you had any balls, you'd do what we all wanted to do to this fucker when watching the Matrix, step outside yourself and hand yourself a beating that would make even the likes of Fred Ettish take pause at its utter severity.

What you should not be doing, however, is deluding yourself into thinking you're free when you want nothing more than to be in a gimp suit in my basement. That's not my style- it's way too much fucking work and responsibility. Additionally, I have no idea how I would go about influencing someone to be like my. I exist because I'm not swayed by the influence of others- I assimilate massive amounts of information and utilize it to make decisions after experimenting with the aforementioned information as the basis. I do this without consulting anyone else- not my mom, nor lifting coaches, nor my friends or random passers by. I rely on myself, my balls, and the knowledge that no matter what result I achieve, I did so at my own behest and as the result of my own thoughts and actions. That is what being free is all about.

For those of you who are still confused, the people who truly understand this blog will agree that we're not the fucking X-Men- that is to say, we're not a group of misfits persecuted by society and united by fear and ostracization that band together for mutual protection like a herd of cattle. Instead, we're like a Punisher/Wolverine/Hulk team up writ large- a pack of loosely coordinated, like-minded, pissed off individualists hell bent on bringing our fight to the world's doorstep. Stop looking for a fucking handout, grasp your cock or your cunt, and attack the world for being the soggy pile of dogshit that it is. That's what feral humans do, and that's what you could be if you stopped thinking about what you were going to do and simply fucking did it. The Wild Man of St. Louis, a feral adult who was captured for no apparent reason in the 19th Century, took no shit from anyone, least of all cats, and when cornered fought overwhelming odds and escaped the second he could. Instead of thinking about doing shit, plotting to do it, talking about it, and ultimately accomplishing fuckall, he went superhuman on society's ass and maintained his freedom from the litany of bullshit with which the rest of us have to deal on a daily basis.

"The wild man, of whom some accounts appeared in the papers, was caught lately and brought to St. Louis. He was surrounded in a sort of lair beneath a dense cluster of undergrowth, like the habitation of a wild beast, and filled with the bones and skin of cats, which seemed to have constituted his principal article of food. For this strange diet he had a peculiar penchant, and eschewed almost every other. He hunted cats with an avidity prompted by an extreme voracity, and it was in the pursuit and slaughter of these animals that he was first discovered. Frequent attempts were made to capture him, but his agility and speed was such that he appeared to run upon the tops of the bushes, and fences offered no impediment to his headlong course. At length a great number surrounded and secured him. He attempted battle, but was overcome. When brought to the Court House he presented the strangest appearance conceivable. His height was about five and a half feet, his hair was long, reddish brown and matted, his eyes large, gray, and restless, his finger nails as long as the claws of a tiger, his deportment crouching --half timid half threatening--and his garments consisted of a thousand tatters of cloths, barks, cat-skins, &c, bound together by catguts. He said he was from the State of New York, and had been in the woods thirty-six years. While he was being examined, and was permitted to stand unbound, he made a sudden spring over the heads of those who surrounded him, and darted away with the speed of the reindeer. The crowd pursued him, but in vain. Over the hills he fairly flew, before footmen and horsemen, until he was lost to them. Nothing has since been heard of him. He is certainly a strange being, and is literally a wild man. His age can hardly exceed forty, and yet he has lived so much away from the society of man that he has nearly forgotten his language and has the most vague recollection of things. He remembered New York, but did not know where he was, nor the form of government under which we lived. Dr. Knode was examining him when he escaped, and it is to be regretted that the doctor could not have had an opportunity of ascertaining the character of his mania."(Frank Leslie)

"There's no short cut, no easy way. No one can give us freedom or happiness- because anyone with the power to protect us has the power to kill or enslave us as well."(Stanton 163)

"I'll start this program on Monday (i'm OCD and have to start a program on a Monday. It's weird, I know) and increase and decrease the volume as needed depending on how I feel."

This is, without question, indicative of the worst feature of modern society- the desire to be disordered. No one takes responsibility for their actions any longer. They're helpless pawns of their genes, and everyone's genes are apparently rife with horrible mutations of one sort or another. For those of you who aren't following, this stupid motherfucker does not have OCD, and his use of the term indicates that he's either painfully stupid or so weak of character that his mommy has to coax him out of bed in the mornings to get him to start his day. After cutting the crusts off his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, she apparently allows him to use the computer, which he does at the risk of destroying what little dignity he has left.

For those of you out there who might be empathizing with this sad sack of shit, slap yourself in the face like you're a 1940's housewife who burned the meatloaf, because you're being a fucking cunt. You're not disordered. Your thyroid isn't the problem. Your metabolism isn't the problem. your ratio of Type I to Type II fibers is not the problem. You brain is the fucking problem. You've nothing preventing you from starting a workout program on a Wednesday, a new diet today, or a new exercise in your next workout other than fear and stupidity.

The Afghanis know how to do one thing right- identify and lock up their lunatics. Unless you're crazy enough to be in leg shackles, shut the fuck up about your "disorders", already.

Though they've fallen out of favor in deference to our society's overwhelming obsession with the contents of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, heroes in literature used to be fucking awesome. Influenced heavily be the amazing book I've mentioned before, Gladiator, a new type of hero became popular in the 1930s and 40s: "the self reliant individualist who stands aloof from many of the humdrum concerns of society, yet is able to operate according to his own code of honor, to take on the world on his own terms and win." (Reynolds 18) These guys were all aloof, cocky, loner badasses who fucked shit up with impunity while giving the world the finger in a way Kid Rock could only dream about. They didn't excuse their stupidity by blaming it on a disorder invented by psychiatrists so they could get kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies- they brought the fucking ruckus at every opportunity. They didn't pause to consider their myriad failings, nor did they stop to justify their fear of the unknown with a pathetic excuse- they acted.

If you're on the fence about what to do to get yourself out of a rut, that's not uncommon. Psychologist Rom Brafman has identified the root of the problem- there's a sway from which many people suffer, myself included, called "commitment", in which people get so stuck in their ways that they cannot rationally evaluate their alternatives. As such, you have to simply get fucking feral, stop thinking, and go. He who hesitates is lost. Don't be a dithering bitch- act. Try something new that you've thought was cool but were scared to try. Do squat lockouts with half a ton. Push your car down the street. Try some ultra-heavy hand and thigh lifts. Do a barbell one arm snatch. See how fucking far you can throw a keg full of sand. Or beer. Grab a chick's ass in a bar. DO SOMETHING.

If you saw this chick and didn't grab her ass, you'd have failed at life.

"So, are you really all-natural?/You're a roidhead and everything you say is bullshit/are you on steroids, if so where can I get some/etc."

Initially, I regarded these emails with a bit of sadness, because the authors were clearly mentally retarded. As such, I wondered how or why they stumbled across my blog, and then how they managed to compose their emails. My most recent exchange in regards to this subject truly pissed me off, as pussies who couldn't handle my workout weights have no fucking business demanding that I answer their stupid, irrelevant, and ultimately pointless questions. Additionally, I've stated many times that all of the "testosterone boosters" promoted in the US in the last decade have been steroids, most of which were based on the formulations of the now-defunct Balco Labs. I've used those supplements, repeatedly, and have promoted them on my blog. I don't consider myself natural, don't give a shit who is natural, think that self-promoters screaming about how natural they are likely have the lot of you snowed, and couldn't possibly care less about who's using what.

There's only one type of person who does: Pussies. Big, sloppy, wet, yawning cavities of vaginas, slavering for a big cock to fill them with goodness to remove the empty feeling inside them. If you're busy worrying about who's on what and when and how much and why, you're doing one thing- looking for the starting point for a litany of excuses. All you have to do is read their retorts to see how pathetic their mindset really is, because they'll all sing the same sad-sack refrain- it's cheating, they can't compete, there's no comparison between natural trainees and geared lifters, ignoring all the while that most of the truly impressive strength feats predate steroids. These stupid pieces of shit will explain away guys like Saxon and Sandow and Aston and Maxick as freaks of nature and irrelevant, because those examples completely destroy their bullshit argument. Even when people compete in tested competitions, these "natty" lifters will call bullshit- look at all of the accusations flying around about Konstantin Konstantinovs, for instance.

Danny Fingeroth actually had an interesting point about the fact that some people love to differentiate themselves from those who beat their asses at anything at all- they're Superman fans.

"Is it easier to read of a superior being from beyond the stars outclassing us that of a guy from down the block who was just luckier or stronger or smarter? Maybe that's the key. Maybe we feel uncomfortable with the idea that we're not living up to our potential, or that someone else has more potential than we do. Or that they're living up to their potential better than we are to ours? But if someone else isn't really playing on the same field or by the same rules we do... then maybe we don't have to feel so bad about ourselves. I suppose this would characterize the Superman fan more than, say, the Batman fan."(Fingeroth 32)

If you're lost, and those of you still shouting insipid retorts to my earlier comments doubtless are, allow me to elucidate this point. Non-powered superheros, or those with non-superfuckingfantastic powers, go toe to fucking toe with the Supermans and Green Lanterns and Wonder Mans of the comic book universe without a second thought. The Punisher, for instance, went toe to toe with the Hulk, and at no point bitched about the fact taht the Hulk had superpowers and he didn't. Likewise, Hawkeye fought the Beyonder in Secret Wars without taking his toys and going home because the Beyonder was "cheating", and Batman beat the everloving shit out of that punk-bitch Boy Scout Superman with nothing but hate on his side(and an exoskeleton, but fuck, he was a senior citizen at that point). "A winner is used to accepting full responsibility for his actions", "immediately takes charge even when he lacks the authority to do so", and that "a sour-faced, pessimistic attitude is for losers, not for winners", which is why those guys didn't take shit from the "cheaters" and just charged headlong into the fucking fray.(Van Fleet 64-66) Feral humans, similarly, don't make fucking excuses about their opponents and claim they cannot compete- they react, adapt, and overcome using nothing but their balls and a hell of a lot of aggression. To wit:

"The story of the Wild Girl of Champagne is detailed by a trustworthy French writer, M. de la Condamine. One evening, in September, 1731, the people of the village of Songi were alarmed by the entrance into the street of a girl, seemingly nine or ten years old, covered with rags and skins, and having face and hands black as those of a negro. She had a gourd leaf on her head, and was armed with a short baton. So strange was her aspect that those who observed her took to their heels and ran in-doors, exclaiming, "The devil! the devil!" Bolts were drawn in all quarters, and one man thought to insure safety by letting loose a large bull-dog. The little savage flinched not as the animal advanced in a fury, but throwing herself backwards on one limb, and grasping her club with both hands, she discharged a blow at the head of the dog, as it came nigh her, with such force and celerity as to kill it on the spot. Elated with her victory, she jumped several times on the carcass; after which she tried in vain to enter a house, and then ran back to the wood, where she mounted a tree and fell asleep."(Frank Leslie)

I didn't stop to think about why my traps weren't hideously large- I just kept adding weight to the bar and shrugging until my shirt collar touched my fucking ears.

Clearly, the Wild Girl of Champagne didn't stop to rationalize the unfairness of pitting a 10 year old girl against a full-grown bulldog, because she was feral and thus awesome. In stark contrast to feral humans, however, most "people adjusted their judgments of the desirability of a future event to make them congruent with its perceived likelihood, but only when the event triggered motivational involvement."(Kay) In other words, they adjust their goals to match the perceived likelihood that they'll be achieved- thus spiraling into a progressive downward spiral of expectations because they will tell themselves they cannot do something, suck as a result, and readjust their expectations downward again. They thus would have just thrown their hands in the air and been eaten by that bulldog were they placed in the Wild Girl's position, because they would have thought that it would have been pointless to fight and would have consigned themselves to death. That pathetic fucking behavior is the reason these dickbags on messageboards, and the retards who email me, constantly blather on about steroids- they're piss weak, embarrassed to be alive, and want a reason to rationalize their failure at life. If you're one of the pussies still squealing about the magic of steroids, consider this:

Steroids are not magical, they don't make people superhuman, and they're not the reason why guys or girls in the gym outlift you- your lack of intestinal fortitude, hard work, drive, determination, aggression, and hate are the reason you fucking suck.

Thus endeth my rant. You can, and should, be better than you are. Stop asking other people for validation and assistance and fucking do it yourself.

I guarantee you this broad's not asking anyone for validation.

Sources:
Fingeroth, Danny. Superman on the Couch: What Superheros Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society. New York: Continuum, 2004.
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. May 23, 1857, no. 76, p. 380, col A. http://www.erbzine.com/mag21/2157.html
Grossman, Cathy Lynn. "Obama, Clinton top most-admired lists for 2011." USA Today. 12/27/11. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-12-27/most-admired-people-2011/52243574/1
Kay AC, Jiminez MC, and Jost JT. Sour Grapes, Sweet Lemons, and the Anticipatory Rationalization of the Status Quo. Pers Soc Psychol Bull (2002) 28:9 1300-1312
Quirkology. New Years Resolution Experiment. http://www.quirkology.com/UK/Experiment_resolution.shtml
Reynolds, Richard. Super Heros: A Modern Mythology. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992
Science and Nature. Polling Report. http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm
Stanton, J. The Gnoll Credo. Zephyr Cove: 100 Watt Press, 2010.
Van Fleet, James K. Hidden Power: How to Unleash the Power of Your Subconscious Mind. Paramus: Prentice Hall, 1987.

Stop Being a Pussy- Go Fucking Feral

2012-01-04T12:52:00.000-08:00

You can't cut the throat of every cocksucker whose character it would improve.

A Preface:

Of late, I have received a tremendous volume of emails from people who wish to have me hold their hands like small children as they make their way through the gym, constantly looking to me for affirmation and recognition as they make exercise, set, and rep selections. Those are the "good" emails. The bad ones are the nebulous requests for assistance in designing a program to achieve equally nebulous goals issued only after a tremendous amount of dick sucking and bullshittery, in stark defiance of every single fucking word I've thus posted on this site. As such, it seems that my readership has devolved into a pack of mewling babies who wish to have me push their carriages through the gym and suck my cock rather than their mommy's tit as I do so.

This will not do.

You motherfuckers brought this on yourselves.

The entire purpose of this site is to encourage free thought, strength of will, and conscious action. I don't wish to mollycoddle a pack of pussies through their daily lives, and resent the implication that I do. Should you think I'm addressing you, emailers, I more than likely am. The shit is getting way out of fucking hand. I like helping people out, and many of my readers will attest to the fact that I've gone to great lengths to do so. When I receive an email, however, that essentially amounts to "I want to be exactly like you, Jamie, so please tell me everything I need to so so that I can be your doppelganger", I want to smash my fucking computer on the ground and set fire to everything I've ever written. I want to club baby seals and mail their shattered bodies stuffed with dogshit to these idiots as a reply, rather than turn off my computer in disgust and wonder why the fuck I even bother. Instead, I shall make yet another lofty intellectual appeal replete with anthropological reason for why humans shouldn't suck as a rejoinder to this spate of bullshit, in hopes that for once you motherfuckers will get the goddamned message. That message is simple:

You can and should be better, stronger, faster, leaner, and more learned than you are, and the only one who can make you so is you.

Don't send me an email how to start down the path, and don't ask me for recommendations on what fucking shorts you should wear to the gym. If you need that much hand-holding, have your parent or caretaker lead you to the nearest gun shop and buy yourself a bullet and a gun, and put yourself out of your family's misery.

The Motherfucking Truth:
I shall now point you to some of historical precedents the lot of you have likely never considered, yet serve as an awesome reminder that the human animal is far more capable than we allow it to be at everything that animal wishes to do. The only thing preventing people from achieving the amazing is their brain, which due to a variety of factors tells us that we're weaker, slower, dumber, and more pathetic than should have ever become acceptable. This is reinforced by a couple of individual issues, namely your brain's reliance on automaticity to conserve energy and the fact that groupthink is overwhelmingly negative and influences your thinking in a similarly negative way. When unencumbered by those things, however, humans are capable of incredible shit- in particular, people who've never been told they cannot do something physically challenging end up being nearly superhuman.

There's only one way to avoid the odious influence of your fellow man- to grow up in an environment isolated from humans. People who do so are typically referred to as "feral" and as you can imagine, are 10,000 different kinds of awesome. Though many of the most amazing stories have since been debunked as hoaxes (most notably the gazelle-boys who were reported to have outrun Jeeps and helicopters to evade their pursuers), there are still enough true stories about people who became incredibly strong and fast simply because they didn't know any better to evoke a response in even the toughest of critics.

One such story, and perhaps the most compelling, is that or the Wild Girl of Champagne. This broad was perhaps one of the few in history to have been tougher than Chris "Cyborg" Santos and lived two years in the wild on a diet so paleo that Robb Wolff cries himself to sleep at night thinking about it.

"When coaxed from a tree in Songi near Chalons in the French district of Champagne in 1731, she was aged about 10, barefoot, and dressed in rags and skins with a gourd leaf on her head. In a pouch she carried a cudgel and a knife inscribed with indecipherable characters. She shrieked and squeaked, and was so dirty (or possibly painted) that she was mistaken for a black child. Her diet consisted of birds, frogs and fish, leaves, branches and roots. Given a rabbit, she immediately skinned and devoured it.

“Her fingers and in particular her thumbs, were extraordinarily large,” according to a contemporary witness, the famous scientist Charles Marie de la Condamine. She is said to have used her thumbs to dig out roots and swing from tree to tree like a monkey. She was a very fast runner and had phenomenally sharp eyesight. When the Queen of Poland, the mother of the French queen, passed through Champagne in 1737 to take possession of the Duchy of Lorraine, she heard about the girl and took her hunting, where she outran and killed rabbits." (Wild Things)

She's only be tougher if she spent a couple of years in the forest bereft of human influence.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the practice of coursing, you're likely unclear on exactly how hard it is to outrun a rabbit. To put it plainly, if you can outrun a rabbit, you'd set records at the NFL Combine in the 3 cone drill and the 20 yard shuttle- you'd be able to change directions at speed faster than many greyhounds, and could haul fucking ass uphill. Thus, not only did this broad have elite-level speed at the age of ten, but she had the upper body strength of a gymnast- thus making her the uncrowned female champion of the Crossfit games simply because she was never told she couldn't be fucking amazing by the people around her.

There have been many other feral children reported over the ages, ranging from bear-children to wolf-children, and even children raised by goats, pigs and birds. Those that weren't evidently abandoned by their parents for various infirmities (the Russians in particular seem to be pretty fond of that, and most of the dog-children and wolf-children seem to come from Russia or former Russian Republics) are by all accounts superhuman, and are generally regarded as being insanely fast quadrupedal runners. Many of them, Indian wolf-boys in particular, were said to be faster on all fours than the fastest people in the area, which is fairly ridiculous given that humans are in no way suited to running on all fours.(Wild Things, Wikipedia)

"Fourteen wolf-children were found in India between 1841 and 1895, seven of which were described by General WH Sleeman, the nemesis of the Thugs. The first was captured in Hasunpur (near Sultanpur in what is now Uttar Pradesh), and showed most of the typical wolf child characteristics. His favourite food was raw meat, and he was unable to speak. 'There were evident signs, on his knees and elbows, of his having gone on all-fours,' wrote Sleeman; 'and when asked to run on all-fours, he used to do so, and went so fast that no-one could overtake him.'"(Wild Things)

Additionally, these children were all reported to be much less sensitive to pain and the elements than the average person, which is a trait shared by Buddhist monks who have trained themselves to ignore pain. (Wild Things, Wikipedia)

For those of you who are calling bullshit, which by the emails I receive is most or all of you motherfuckers, consider this- monks who practice the meditation technique known as g Tum-Mo can regulate their own body temperature to the point where they can sleep in the snow without any covering and suffer no apparent harm, and are said to be able to dry cold, wet cloths put over their shoulders in a cold room by regulating their own internal body temperature.(Cromie)

"Monks in Tibet-that mountainous country so blessed with oddities-can consciously raise the temperature in their hands and feet 6-7º C (10-12º F), in laboratory conditions (Benson, et al., 1982). There appear to be several methods of g Tum-mo meditation, as described by Alexandra David-Neel (1965), but all seem to involve the visualization of oneself filled with fire. Whether, for adepts, such visualization is necessary for control of body temperature is not clear to me, because Benson reports that one of his research participants began undergoing g-Tummo changes every time he sat down. Monks will even have little contests where they spend a night on a river bank, repeatedly draping themselves with wet sheets, and seeing who can dry the most. I get cold just thinking about it.
It presumably takes some time to develop this ability, but apparently not so much that it is rare in Tibet: David-Neel claims that most Tibetans have the knowledge of how to do it, and that they put it to practical use." (Savage Minds)

Pain or damage don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man... and give some back.

Thus, you have a bit of scientific support for the anecdotal evidence I've provided- the only thing standing in the way of your greatness is the giant, bloody vagina sitting atop your shoulders. Ellen Langer explained in her book Counterclockwise that the second step in the "psychology of possibility" is to try out new things without evaluating ourselves as we go along.(Langer 16) The lack of evaluation of essential for exceeding who you are, and who you think you could be. If you push yourself to try new shit, shit you never thought you'd be able to do, you could surprise yourself. The key, however, is to leave your judgement of yourself behind. You cannot walk into the gym wearing a powdered wig and swinging a gavel at every opportunity- should you do so, you remove both the possibility for experimentation and any probability of greatness, because you'll be too fucking busy talking shit to yourself, convincing yourself that you're incapable and weak and useless as everyone around you to attack the fucking weights and be a goddamned superman.

I will profane your fucking remains.

It's also essential that you ape the feral children I mentioned earlier at this point and isolate yourself from people from time to time (or as I do with my headphones), because society will tell you that you're incapable, that you're weak, that you're unable to handle the workload, or the weight, or the exercise. In interdependant communities, people will turn against you if you're perceived as different- 'people who departed from the norm could be dangerous to the whole community- whether they were rich or very poor. Either way, there was a tendency to seek the center and to resent people who were misfits."(Brafman 124) If you haven't looked around the gym recently, you might want to take fucking note of this, because gyms are thoroughly interdependant communities. Everyone's fucking everyone, everyone's watching everyone, and everyone is all up in everyone's shit. You probably know more crazy bullshit rumors about the motherfuckers in your gym than you do about your own family members, and you know more about the guys who lift on your "shift" than you do about the most prominent lifters in your sport. As such, anything you do that runs counter to the norm is being constantly evaluated, judged, and likely talked down when you're not around if you're doing anything out of the norm. Thus, if you wall yourself off from all of the nonsense and naysaying and bullshit with a massive wall of shrieking metal, you can create your own feral paradise in which anything is possible, so long as you believe it's so.

Not certain what's going on here, but I'm certain I want in on it. In any event, I'd rather try touching the moon than take on a whore's thinking.

In the next installment of this series, I'll give you more reasons to be awesome and to ignore society at large, hacks for your brain, Deadwood quotes, and some ideas for shit you can try in the gym to stop being such a motherfucking pussy, in addition to parsing some of my more hilarious emails and mocking the shit out of their authors

Sources:
Brafman, Ori and Rom Brafman. Sway: The Irresistable Pull of Irrational Behavior. Doubletree: New York, 2008.
Cromie, William J.
Feral Child. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child#cite_note-28
Langer, Ellen. Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and The Power of Possibility. New York: Ballantine, 2009.
Savage Minds: g Tum-mo Heat Meditation. International Cognition and Culture Institute. 10/08/2009. http://www.cognitionandculture.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=525:g-tum-mo-heat-meditation&catid=40&Itemid=34
Sieveking, Paul. Wild Things: Feral Children. http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/232/wild_things_feral_children.html

Ask The Asshole #11: I Got A Lotta Mo

2011-12-21T19:10:00.000-08:00

I've been besieged with emails recently, and I know I've promised to expand on my answers to a lot of people, but have lost their emails amidst the flurry of random questions I get asked that are usually simply answered by READING THE FUCKING BLOG. If you are one of the people I promised to include in the ATA, email me again to remind me and I'll do another. For the rest of you, here you fucking go.

Q: From Reddit: "I also don't know about the whole cold water thing, seems like a silly hack." "I don't know, it just seems like some major bro science, or an insignif hack."

A: The shit I post, for anyone who's keeping score, is as about as "broscience" as I am inclined to chase Type 2 diabetes by drinking Kool Aid and eating chitterlings while listening to Ja Rule. Prior to this accusation, I didn't even know what the fuck "bro science" was, since I avoid lifting message boards like the plague they fucking are. I did, however, cite more than one source on it when I mentioned it in a previous blog on cutting. For those of you in the dark, allow me to bring you up to speed- I once mentioned that Tim Ferriss pointed out that the application of cold packs to one's upper back increases their rate of fat metabolism. Ferriss initially experimented with ice baths, but found that he could get much of the benefit with far less of the unpleasantness with an ice pack applied to the upper back, which is the repository for one's brown fat stores. According to Ferris,

"Not all fat is equal. There are at least two distinct types: white adipose tissue (WAT) and brown adipose tissue (BAT). WAT is what we usually think of as fat, like the marbling on a steak. A WAT cell—an adipocyte —is composed of a single large fat droplet with a single nucleus.
BAT, in contrast, is sometimes referred to as “fat-burning fat” and appears to be derived from the same stem cells as muscle tissue. A BAT cell is composed of multiple droplets that are brown in color because of a much higher volume of iron-containing mitochondria. Normally associated with muscle tissue, mitochondria are best known for producing ATP and oxidizing fat in muscle tissue. BAT helps dissipate excess calories as heat. These excess calories would otherwise be stored in the aforementioned WAT and end up in your beer gut or muffin top. In a nutshell: cold stimulates BAT to burn fat and glucose as heat. Cold, as well as drugs called beta-adrenergic agonists,19 can also make BAT appear within WAT in mice and rats. In other words, cold might help you increase the amount of your “fat-burning” fat. This has tremendous implications." (4 Hour Body)

Hot-as-balls Ironman winner Hillary Biscay is a fan

As everyone's apparently fucking retarded and completely incapable of doing their own research, I did it for them. Again. Wonder why you're fat as shit and can't put your bodyweight overhead, Redditors? It is probably due to the fact that you're so goddamned indolent you can't type a sentence into a fucking Google search bar. Before you guys do the right thing and shuffle off that mortal coil for shaming your family, consider this: One source I found stated that "resting metabolic rate was positively correlated with brown-adipose-tissue activity both under thermoneutral conditions and during cold exposure, indicating that brown-adipose-tissue activity is involved in energy metabolism." (Lichtenbelt, et al) In other words, the more you activate brown fat activity to regulate your body temperature, the faster your metabolism goes. Another study supported this, stating that

"Prolonged cold exposure causes the adaptive recruitment of NST (non-shivering thermogenesis) capacity by hyperplasia of brown adipose tissue and by hypertrophy of mature brown adipocytes which results in a severalfold increase in the capacity for NST. Early studies demonstrated that in cold-acclimated animals brown adipose tissue may dissipate heat at a power of 300–400 W kg -1 tissue, and contributes more than ~60–70 % of total NST (Foster & Frydman, 1979; Heldmaier & Buchberger, 1985; Puchalski et al. 1987). This emphasized the outstanding importance of this thermogenic organ for NST, but also suggested the existence of other unknown mechanisms and sites of NST in the body." (Klingenspor)

Thus, Ferriss's assertions that the application of cold to one's BAT would seem to have merit, wouldn't they? If you're still unconvinced, perhaps Ferriss's cites might sway you.

I love giant asses.

Q: What's your fucking deal with Rippetoe, anyway? You guys agree on just about everything. Are you just trying to stir up controversy or [sic] somthing?

A: Actually, no. A lot of people have taken the comments I've made about Rippetoe to be personal, which they're not, and I highly doubt he'd give a shit even if they were. The guy appears, by all acounts, to be reasonably cool. Frankly, anyone who walks around the gym brandishing a machete has to be at least somewhat awesome. My problem with Rippetoe stems from his proclamations and admonitions surrounding overtraining. From my perspective, he spends just as much time attempting to instill fear of overtraining into his beginning trainees as he does encouraging them to do useful exercise. As such, the net result of his recommendations is nil.

"We believe that adaptation occurs on a sliding scale that varies with the level of existing work tolerance and the proximity to individual genetic potential. Someone far away from genetic potential (the novice) will adapt quickly, within about 72 hours, as a stressor large enough to disrupt such an individual's homeostasis is not really all that large and is recoverable from within that time frame. On the other end of the spectrum, the advanced trainee might require one to three months, and possibly longer, to adapt to a training stress that is sufficiently large and cumulative to exceed his highly developed work tolerance." (PP, 25-26)"Stage 3 - Exhaustion. If the stress on the body is too great,either in magnitude or frequency, the body will be unable to adequately adapt and exhaustion will occur. Selye posited that an overwhelming stress of one to three months in duration could cause death. This is an interesting observation if we consider maximal exercise to be an overwhelming stress. In practice, this is most applicable to intermediates and advanced trainees and means that a period of relentless maximal work of four weeks or longer should be avoided. The bottom line is that no one wants to be in Stage 3, which we typically call "overtraining.""(PP, 26)

All of this arises out of the astonishingly ancient theory by Hans Selye entitled "General Adaptation Syndrome" that dates to 1936. This is rather hilarious, given the fact that Rippetoe has stated repeatedly that he has no faith in sports science. As such, the man's theories about the body's recuperative abilities are based on an incomplete grasp of physiology and a strong belief that you fucking suck at life.

This man makes Rippetoe cry himself to sleep at night.

Contrast this with the opinions of people who've actually produced champions, like Abadjiev, who stated that "'In Bulgaria, many other sports disciplines were built on the methods developed by the Soviet experts. The main concept is distinct periodisation, preparation stage, interim stage and competition stage... I threw it away... Is it logical to achieve outstanding results by hard work and then stop and go back to a lower level?” Unlike Rippetoe's model, which is based upon classic Russian periodization that forces layoffs and deloads, Abadjiev suggests that lifters never stray too far from their peak performance weights. His results produced decades of champions- Rippetoe's produced a lot of pretentious dickheads who would lose a fight to a cardboard cutout of me sleeping, and who actually believe, contrary to everything we know about successful lifters ever, that "the stronger an athlete becomes, the more susceptible he becomes to overtraining." (SS 189) While he does allow that more advanced trainees can add more sessions over time, he still spends far more time focusing on the dangers of overtraining than he does the aggressiveness with which one must pursue their goals in order to achieve greatness.

To wit, he dusts off periodization, the unloved brainchild of the Eastern Bloc, and recommends a deload after every cycle, each of which is approximately one month in length. For those of you who doubt this, "during weeks five through eight, the trainee is actually "resting" from the previous high-training volume work."(PP 211) The high volume work? It's three days a week, with weights varying from 62%-82.5% of their 1RM and culminates with 25 reps with 85% of the lifter's one rep max. Yes, I think we can all agree you'd need a three week recovery period after that horrifyingly heavy month. Additionally, he recommends "a week or two of "active rest" or less frequent training with moderate weights is a good idea between cycles to assure that the trainee is rested and ready to undergo another period of stressful training."(PP 212) Is it any fucking wonder I think the guy is full of shit? I've trained heavier and harder in a cast from shoulder to arm the same week I had fucking surgery than his lifters train when healthy, in a "peaking" week. It's fucking embarrassment and a slap in the face to humanity, who he apparently thinks is weak and lazy.

Finally, I don't know of a single elite lifter who credits Ripp with his success, and Ripp wasn't a particularly good lifter. As such, I'm leery of taking his recommendations and find it odd that other people aren't. I suppose their hesitance to question the mighty Rippetoe stems from fear of ostracization and a fear of hard work, combined with low self-esteem, possible impotence, and probably fatness.

Q: Anyway, my reason for writing is that a couple of months ago I was hit by a car that didn't look for pedestrians as it ran a red light. I was very lucky in that the only injuries I sustained were a dislocated shoulder and bruising up and down my legs. I had shoulder stabilisation surgery at the start of September and I want to start to get back into training in the next few weeks. The problem that I have is that I'm struggling to find any decent articles, books or blogs on recovery and lifting after surgery that was written by someone that wasn't weak in the first place. Do you happen to know of any articles or books on the subject that was written by someone with a clue?
A: I had surgery to repair a torn tricep and broken elbow spur two years ago, and I was back in the gym within a couple of days. I blogged about it here and here. When I was recovering, I focused almost exclusively on legs, and they benefited greatly from the attention- we're talking 8-10 times a week, and blogged about that here. My squat went through the roof, and I kept myself in damn good condition considering. Additionally, I worked a lot on my uninjured side with unilateral stuff, as I've read somewhere (although I can't find where I've blogged about it or the study) that you get compensatory growth along the lines of 75% across your midline. Thus, train everything but that arm. The only citations I could find on the subject, and they are legion, concern compensatory hypertrophy in kidneys and testes. One thing to bear in mind, however, is that unless your your physical therapist is a strength athlete, they likely knows fuckall about PT for athletes.

This guy, however, knows fucking everything.

Q: This is out of nowhere, but do you have any thoughts on fermented foods like yogurt? (not the sugary shit from the grocery store obviously)

A: Fermented foods are, by all accounts, fucking awesome for you. Fermentation is actually the means by which ruminants begin their digestion, and is thus considered a more natural form of food preparation for vegetables than cooking. According to Charles Heizer Wharton, "A final major contribution of traditional diets is lacto-fermentation. Lactic acid is a natural preservative produced by bacteria, usually lactobacilli. The process enabled our forebears to preserve vegetables without freezers or canning. Lactic acid not only enhances the enzyme content of vegetables but also apparently increases vitamin levels and improves digestibility. Examples of lacto-fermented foods are sauerkraut, pickles, cucumbers, beets and turnips and include our relishes, chutneys and the famed Japanese umeboshi plum. Other valuable fermentation products are (apart from alcohol and the rising of bread dough) in buttermilk, yogurts, cheeses and various sour beverages made from grains, fruits and nuts. Kumiss, fermented mare's milk, is the principle food of wandering tribes in European Russia and the plains of south, western and southern Asia. The fermentation of milk allows lactose-intolerant people to drink it; and both the vitamin B and C content of milk appear to be increased by the process. Like koumiss, there are a number of less well-known fermentation products."(Wharton 100-101) "In the midst of dreadful cancer statistics [in Soviet Russia after WWII], two districts in the central western Ural mountains stood out 'like neon lights' having any cancer, even though they were heavily polluted by toxins. Investigators accidentally stumbled upon the fact that every home had crocks of Kvass or Kombucha."(Wharton 101) "It has been said that the methods of preparing plants by primitives, pounding, soaking, and fermenting imitates the time-consuming processes that take place in the digestive tracts of ruminant animals such as cows and sheep."(Wharton 102) There are plenty of studies showing the beneficial effects of fermentation if you feel like googling for them, and many books written on the subject. Insofar as I know, the best book on the subject is Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions, so you might want to give that a look if you're interested.

I guarantee he's never been in a gym, but he drinks his fucking weight in Kumiss every week.

Q: Just wondering if you could point me in the right direction. I've been having some trouble getting my clean up of late. Everything else is progressing nicely, but this bitch just won't budge! It's a fucking poor excuse as it's currently a dismal 140lb & I should be shot for how fucking bad this is. I've been working on it with heavy singles, doubles and triples and then the occasional lighter session, but I just cannot seem to get anymore weight up on it. I've done some research but have yet to find anything that would have a good carryover to it. I struggle with the last 1/3rd of the lift, from the top of my ribs up. I'm going to try some partials from this height but are there any exercises you have tried to help when yours has stalled?

Also, have you found any info or links on the diets of the Russian, Bulgarian or Chinese weightlifters. Dmitry Klokov & Li Hongli are absolute beasts!!! I want to emulate these guys & I've tried searching for things but have been unsuccessful so far.

A: If you have a 140lb clean, you should probably take up chess and leave lifting to other people. If you really want to pursue it, I'd find a coach, explain the situation, wait until his raucous laughter subsides, and take his advice. In the event you're just going to plow forward, the thing that helped me to a terribly ugly 315 clean was high pulls. Basically, I just started yanking the bejeesus out of the fucking bar and essentially hitting myself in the chin with it. I don't squat under cleans at all, so that's about the only thing that works for me. I, however, am the furthest thing from an Olympic lifter as you're likely to find who can execute a hilarious interpretation of a clean and press with 300+ pounds. I've no idea why you people ask me for Olympic lifting advice.

As to the diet question, the only thing I've seen about the Bulgarians' diet comes from the Wall Street Journal, and you're not going to like it: "Mr. Abadjiev's 'horrible diet'" consists of "candy and soda". This is predicated upon Abadjiev's theory "that injury and fatigue are less likely while adrenaline is coursing through the body, stimulating protein synthesis. Junk food is fair game." The best I could find on the Chinese diet was anecdotal and comes from a Milo article in which a Chinese lifter was persuaded to join the team with the offer of "meat three times a day"(Mcdonald), and that Chinese Olympic athletes " are fed special diets with special herbs and exotic Chinese medicines. Swimmers have been fed a concoction containing ginseng and deer horn while runners under the infamous coach Ma Junren were given an elixir made of fresh turtle blood."(Olympic Training In China) I believe that all three are of the opinion, contrary to bodybuilders the world around, that you can out-train a shitty diet. The catch, however, is that you have to make training your full-time job.

Someone just called Li Hongli "Nuprin" for the last fucking time- prepare to eat steel.

Q: What protein are you using? Is whey good? What kind of whey should I take? What other supplements should I be taking?

A: First, check out this blog, in addition to this and this, wherein I mentioned that supplements are neither magic, nor the cornerstone of a workout routine. They should not be the bedrock of your diet, and they frankly don't bear nearly as much consideration as most people seem to think. The perfect protein powder is not going to make up for the fact that you shit your pants at the thought of a heavy back squat and your estrogen levels are higher than a pregnant broad on set at the Oprah Winfrey Show during a puppy makeover. I feel like I constantly tell you guys what protein I'm using and for whatever reason you don't seem to take note. As such, once more, for the record, I like blended proteins- whey is a waste product, is in and out of your system too quickly, tastes like dogshit, and given the fact that it's the dairy industry's trash is far too expensive. The proteins I've been using of late are Monster Milk and Muscle Infusion, and I threw Carnivor in there for a bit as well since I got some free. The Carnivor was surprisingly good, and the Cherry Vanilla flavor looked like you were drinking a cup of blood, which is damn good marketing. Additionally, it did not leave my shaker bottle stinking like I'd filled it with hot trash and dogshit if I left it unwashed for a day, so I'd jump all over that shit if I could find some at a price.

Q: I've been experimenting in my own extremity recently, and though trying to implement chaos and pain into my own workouts, my volume isn't even close to yours. Today, I went for a personal best of 415 in the deadlift, after pulling 405 easily twice the past two weeks. I felt like I could perform the lift no problem, I got the bar about halfway off the floor before my back decided to say fuck you to my spine. Lift failed, pulled and what feels like a pulled muscle on the left side of my spine in my lower back. I don't think it was a form error, my butt stayed low and my upper back came up first, I wasn't even rounding much. Does shit like this randomly happen when implementing CnP? How do you deal with this in your work outs? What would you do to keep progressing?

A: Of course- you train around it. I've been meaning to blog about that, and I'll get one in there soon, but just do everything you can to get around it. Foam roll, do high pulls, shrug, do rack pulls, squat more, Pendlay Rows... just say fuck you to your lower back and find a way over or around that motherfucker. One thing you're going to have to remember is that injuries are part of the game. If you're never injured, if you never sprain or strain anything, if you're never aching, you're almost certainly not performing to your potential. Don't be a jackass and take that to mean that an injury is some sort of goal one should wish to achieve- it's just part and parcel of the activity. If you're in a gangbang and you get splashed with some nut, life fucking goes on- it's a hazard of the business. The same applies to the gym- you can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs. Suck it the fuck up and figure out how to keep progressing.

I recently finished a badass squat workout with some glute-ham raises supersetted with donkey calf raises. I wasn't even going all that hard, but I somehow managed to either incur a slight tear or a severe sprain in my right calf. Instead of taking 6 weeks off and vowing never again to do either lift, as most internet weight room jocks would insist I do, I simply stopped doing either exercise for a bit. I'd stretch my calf as much as possible prior to lifting, but I kept squatting and kept pulling. My calf's slowly returning to it's natural color, and I've got the benefit of knowing that I can fuck shit up in the gym even when I'm half a cripple. Is it the only way? No, but it's the way you don't end up a fat piece of shit who pontificates endlessly about the best usage of TRX straps while jerking off to a copy of Heavyhands using the filling from a jelly doughnut as lube. Don't be that guy (and as I have trouble walking some days with those sorry motherfuckers hanging off my jock while they talk shit, I shall prepare to be amused by their astonishingly poorly-formed responses justifying their hilarious weakness and disgusting fatbodies).

Some fat fuck on a messageboard is going to try to masturbate to this after binding himself with some TRX bands tonight.

Sources:
Ferriss, Tim. The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman. New York: Crown Archetype, 2010.
Lichtenbelt WD, Vanhommerig JW, Smulders NM, Drossaerts JM, Kemerink GJ, Bouvy ND, Schrauwen P, Teule GJ. Cold-Activated Brown Adipose Tissue in Healthy Men. N Engl J Med 2009; 360:1500-1508April 9, 2009. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0808718

Klingenspor, Martin. Cold-induced recruitment of brown adipose tissue thermogenesis. Experimental Physiology. Volume 88, Issue 1, pages 141–148, January 2003. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/eph8802508/pdf
McDonald, Lyle. "Why the US Sucks At Olympic Weightlifting, Part 8." http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/why-the-us-sucks-at-olympic-lifting-part-8.html
"Olympic Training In China." Facts and Details. http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=1008&catid=12
Rippetoe, Mark and Lon Kilgore with Glenn Pendlay. Practical Programming for Strength Training, 3rd ed.. Wichita Falls: Aasgaard Company, 2006.
Rippetoe, Mark and Lon Kilgore. Starting Strength, 3rd ed.. Wichita Falls: Aasgaard Company, 2011.

Hooliganism Spreads Like Herpes- The First Female Hooligan

2011-12-13T13:51:00.001-08:00

Prior to the ebook, I was under the impression that I had precisely three female readers, all of whom emailed or spoke to me on a semi-regular basis. After seeing the ebook sales, however, I came to realize that either there are a lot of porn-loving, ass-kicking guys with girlish-sounding names like Katie and Ellen out there, or there are enough broads who laugh at my misogyny and like tits and training enough throw $12 bucks at me. Either way, that demographic's fairly numerous. I think that to this point, however, the only thing I've produced for them were the "Just Because You Have a Vagina" series and my hate-filled diatribes delivered like a young, non-mustachioed Hitler against the Skinny Bitch books amidst a cloud of spittle, windmilling fists, smashed podiums, and heavily raped primary sources. As such, I owe the assembled possessors of vaginas and apology for my oversight- apparently, there are far more of you that suck far less than I would have otherwise been led to believe.

One such chick is Jess, who I've decided to deem (officially) the first female Hooligan. Before my overwhelmingly male readership gets all up in arms about this fact, consider this- she probably deadlifts more than you do, weighs less than you, and she's definitely fucking hot. That's right, motherfuckers, it's time to whip out some fucking razorblades and sleeping pills, because this broad's about to drop knowledge and crush your spirit. For those vagina'd people amongst you, I actually asked other chicks to contribute some questions to try to get your questions answered, since it's recently come to my attention that the testosterone-laden world of strength sports message boards is not terribly accommodating to chicks, even if they're chicks who chucked their iPhone down a well and set all of their Cabbage Patch Dolls alight in favor of learning shit, fucking, and picking things up and putting them down.

Before we kick this whole thing off, you might as well tell everyone a bit about yourself- background, how long you've been training, etc.

I’ve always been into exercise in some form or another. When I was a kid I played softball, then some volleyball and softball for my school teams, and one year in high school I decided to try cross country and track and field. I never really excelled at any sports, but enjoyed being active. I sucked at cross country, actually – the 3.1 miles kicked my butt back then.

I was never overweight, but I wasn’t super skinny and I wanted to be, so when I was in high school I joined a gym and did the elliptical every day, and “weights” a couple of times a week – mostly leg machines. I was too afraid to try out the free weights, because I had no idea what I was doing. Eventually I read some articles in women’s magazines and applied some ideas I’d picked up to my routine, so I was doing light curls, lateral raises, etc. – I had no idea what most of the moves I was doing were even called, but they were basic and simple enough to remember. I have vague, shame-filled memories of sitting down and curling 12s or 15s and feeling proud of myself for lifting such heavy weights. It’s sad how low the bar is set for females.

Anyway, after years of this basic cardio and machine business some friends got me into longer distance running. I was terrible at it, and finished a couple of half marathons in something like 2 hours and 45 minutes each. I eventually got slower and weaker, and with my awful, starch and soy based vegetarian diet I got fatter – I put on about15 pounds one winter a few years ago, and was not pleased. While in the midst of trying to figure out how to switch up my workout routine to lose the weight I was introduced to a rare individual – an intelligent and educated personal trainer who actually knew what he was talking about, and how to get results. He taught me basic compound lifts, and I loved it. I took to the deadlift immediately, as it was the lift I was able to use the most weight for. I had a harder time with squats – the first time I tried them my stabilizers freaked out and I couldn’t even squat the bar, so the trainer had me do goblet squats. Eventually I got into more advanced things like rack pulls – which became my favorite, as they were now my heaviest lift – and cleans and snatches, which I really enjoyed being able to do.

It has been about 2 and a half years since I met that trainer. I worked out with him for almost a year, then took what he taught me and ran with it. I noticed that I enjoyed lower rep sets, especially days where he’d have me doing super heavy triples, so I programmed my own workouts to almost never go above sets of 5 (except for the occasional upper body lift, for whatever reason). I started reading more about lifting, on sites like t-nation, and looking things up on google and youtube. This last year I got really serious about increasing my strength, as I was loving all of the confidence I was building as a result of constantly getting stronger. People started noticing, and I was constantly approached by guys at the gym who would ask me why I was lifting so heavy and if I competed. So I decided to look into competing.

... and apparently did so while asleep. Additionally, she apparently dressed like a blind retard picked out her ensemble on purpose. At least, that's what she says.

You just did your first meet, and you out-deadlifted half the guys who email me. What was your total, and what numbers did you put up?

I chose to do the single-lift events at this meet, as it was my first experience with a meet and I was nervous, and didn’t want to have to manage too much. Actually, I was going to only compete in the deadlift, but at the last minute my bench started increasing like crazy so I decided to compete in bench too. I won best female deadlift and best female bench press, with a 319.5 dead and 137.5 bench. I was hoping for a slightly better bench, but waiting for the cues really threw me mentally, and I missed my third attempt (148).

I’m going to do a full meet in February, and am hoping to total in the high 700s. I’m squatting in the mid 200s right now, so it seems possible.

With the obvious caveat of the fact that she has all of the structural rigidity of the Tacoma Bridge, those are some easy fucking reps.

So after two and a half years of lifting, you're pulling over double your bodyweight? That's fucking sick. From what I've seen on boards, people claiming to be men are bitching because they can't do that after far more time than that. Any secrets you care to share? I've a theory that sumo deadlifting suits women better than conventional because of the angle of their hips- is that the style you used?

I did not sumo deadlift. I have video proof, haha. It kind of bugs me that most girls choose to lift sumo, because it seems like an easier way to pull (shorter ROM) and therefore a weaker way to approach the lift. I always pull conventional, and have a really solid back as a result, so I’m probably better off sticking with that style anyway. Plus I’m tall. Apparently that helps.

Dear Ed- You're a pussy. Love, Jess.

Dear Eight Pound, Six Ounce Little Baby Jesus. You've taken my "fuck everyone- the lot of you are a pack of slack-jawed pussies" to a different level. Now sumo deadlifting is cheating? Someone might want to send Ed Coan one of their spare razors before they start opening veins. Putting aside your amusing, yet ultimately silly opinion, have you considered trying sumo? I will again invoke the name of the mighty Ed Coan as a preemptive counterargument to your deadlift form. A problem I recently discussed with an elite-level chick deadlifter is her reticence to shrug, due to the fact that she doesn't want to look like me. That's completely understandable, but her deads are breaking down near lockout, which I would chalk up to an upper-back issue. Now that I think of it, she's a great squatter and deadlifts sumo, so you guys have totally opposite strengths. Thus, a two part question- have you considered sumo deadlifting just to see if you can pull more that way, and how do you combat your fear of developing massive traps, or do you even give a shit?

I have not tried deadlifting sumo, though I have considered it. From what I understand, the sumo stance deadlift utilizes many of the same muscles as the squat, and since I squat regularly it seemed like a less useful exercise to practice for my overall strength goals, plus, again I was under the impression that it allowed lifters to pull a bit more weight, so it seemed like a weaker way to go about attacking the most hardcore of lifts. That is not to say that those who utilize the stance are weak, by any means. It's just comparable to squatting with a wider stance, as far as I understand it (and I typically squat with a pretty wide stance, so I'm not hating). It shortens the range of motion of the lift. Right? That said, I am tall, so perhaps I just have better leverages for regular pulling and won't fare as well with the sumo stance. I'll give it a shot sooner than later, and let you know how it goes, ok?

With regard to traps/shrugs - I do fear developing huge traps, as that wouldn't be pretty, but I don't actually anticipate that happening. I don't shrug that often; it's just something I do maybe once a week max as assistance work for my deadlift. Even before I started training shrugs my traps looked very very slightly defined as a result of regular cleans and deadlifts, but as I am a female with female hormones, I'm not too worried about getting huge in general. I've only put on about 8 lbs of muscle over the past couple of years, despite seeing huge jumps in my strength. Also, I've seen plenty of guys who shrug (some even heavy) and have no traps, and some who don't (or use pathetic amounts of weight) and have defined traps, so I think they're something you have to train more intensely and directly than one might think. I imagine that you put a lot of hard work and focused effort into building huge traps, and you find the implication that it's easy to accidentally build them somewhat insulting, no?

That's just a small part of the hilarity that occurs whenever most chicks start talking about lifting. I don't think they're so much worried about building my traps as they are with building any traps, but I've seen stream-of-consciousness writing out of women, and it's directly from the mouth of madness. As such, I'll just go ahead and give no opinion on what women think about anything, because I'm incapable of generating a thought that bears as much relation to logic and emotionlessness as Michael Jackson did to heterosexual masculinity. What's your current training routine like? How's it changed over time?

I’ve tried numerous times to construct some sort of regular weekly plan or progression plan for myself, but I never stick with it. I feel I’m at a point in my training where I can self-regulate. I plan my workout the day of, usually, or sometimes the day before, based on my schedule, my energy levels, what feels sore, what I haven’t worked in awhile, what my goals are, etc.

A lot of my current approach to training was inspired by this site, as well as the article that T-Nation did on John Broz this summer. Before I was introduced to the idea that you can lift as often as you want I was only lifting 3-4x/week. I tried 5/3/1 for a few weeks, but got bored. I tried 5x5 for awhile. I did, and sometimes still incorporate, reverse pyramid training. I tried push days and pull days. I just finished serving my time in college, so I’m using my newfound free time and energy by lifting 5-6 days/week, just do whatever I feel like doing that day. I always do a full body routine with some squat or deadlift variation as my first lift, and I always push myself. I keep things fun for myself by incorporating partials (squat lockouts, rack pulls), heavy assistance work (shrugs, good mornings), and other variations on the main lifts. Some days I don’t go super heavy (yesterday I did your 3 minute squat set idea, for example), or just work assistance lifts that aren’t as taxing (dumbbell rows, dumbbell bench, strict OH press, lighter front squats).

I actually brought my deadlift up a lot this year. After reading t-nation’s article on John Broz this past July, I incorporated his ideas into my routine and started snatching or cleaning at the start of each workout, and deadlifting about twice a week. My theory is that all of the oly lifting, especially all of the cleans, really transferred over, as I saw my deadlift shoot from 225 for reps in July to a 285 pull that August. For my deadlift workouts I usually do reverse pyramid style training, with one heavy set and two back off sets, though occasionally I’d do sets across or singles just for fun. Today I actually did an old T-Nation challenge of 60 deadlifts in 30 minutes. I used 225. It was really fun. Around rep 30 I started channeling some inner anger and that helped a lot. So, if you have anger issues, deadlift heavy. It helps.

I try to train my pulling muscles as often as seems possible, so I’ll do rack pulls or shrugs or barbell rows on a day where I feel I’ve deadlifted enough that week, or am too tired or sore or whatever to do full deads with sufficient weight.

Worked for Pisarenko, as did training in a near-thong

I've suggested something similar in the past- I found that high pulls with my particular brand of godawful form seemed to have lent itself to a higher deadlift, as does hate, which as we know does a body good. I suppose I ought to get off my ass and read more of Broz's stuff, since I've been accused of being him on more than one occasion, and everyone seems to think that we're methodological twins separated only by the sports in which we compete, geography, common sense, and the fact that I doubt either of us knows more about the other than passing anecdotes and the fact that we get asked a lot of questions about each other.

Back to you, however. As everyone knows, I definitely train like Clubber Lang- everyone stays the fuck away from me in the gym and I power weights aloft with little more than bad intentions and sociopathic tendencies. How about yourself- Clubber Lang, or Rocky?

I almost always lift alone, and I prefer it that way, as I get to do what I want on my own schedule with the weight that I want to use, etc. There is one guy who I’ve lifted with a few times, and he’s a good lifting partner because he’s strong and does basic compound lifts too, but he doesn’t like to do all of the random assistance work that I do (overhead squat lockouts, partials, etc.) so we don’t lift together often. It’s nice to have him around occasionally though, to spot me on bench or push me to get an extra rep out when I don’t think that I can.

Fuck an A, right. If there's one thing I think that the readers of this blog can show the world, it's that you don't need anything more than a singlet and some hate for your fellow man to fuck shit up at meets. This nonsense about teams, straphangers milling about with water bottles and baby powder and the like is all fucking nonsense.

So, what's the venue for your training? Dungeon basement gym? Clothing optional boutique gym? If it's the latter, do you have pics?

I lift at a 24 Hour Fitness, sadly. My excuse is that it’s less than $17/month, and I’m on a budget. Also in my defense, it’s a weird, small, kind of dirty 24 Hour that’s located in the basement of a random office building, so because there are no windows and it’s kind of dark and dingy not many people work out there so there’s always plenty of space to do what I want and the power rack is rarely in use by anyone else. And it’s definitely not your typical social scene that many other LA gyms are. There aren’t many serious lifters there though, unfortunately. Eventually I’d like to find a gym full of people who really know what they’re doing, as I imagine I’d make even more progress in a motivating and inspiring environment.

Lifting in that festival of douchbaggery has to be about as much fun as masturbation with a belt sander. How'd you get over initially being intimidated/watched by guys in the gym? How do you deal with guys in the gym? I typically avoid the shit out of broads in the gym, as I'm not into leching around a place where people are ostensibly trying to get serious shit done. That's not typically the case. Do you junk punch them all up in their man business, ignore them, or what? The serious chicks in the gyms where I lift typically leave their headphones on and don't make a lot of eye contact, for instance.

I’m no longer intimidated by guys in the gym, though when I was still getting comfortable lifting and learning what I was doing I would just wait until late at night to go to the gym, when I knew it’d be almost empty, so that I could practice new lifts in private and avoid any unnecessary attention or unhelpful “advice.” At this point guys recognize that I’m strong and that I know what I’m doing, so they no longer try to “help” or “advise” me (which, by the way guys, comes across as really insulting, condescending, and awkward).

There’s no avoiding people who are watching me lift, especially when I’m doing something loud or super heavy, so I just block people out and get into my music. Between sets I try to avoid eye contact, and keep an annoyed/busy look on my face. I’m usually one of, if not the only, girl on the weight floor, and I usually do heavy, random things that people aren’t accustomed to seeing girls do, so I’ve just gotten used to it coming with the territory.

I do try to be polite when people talk to me though, and only a small percentage of the guys who approach me now are creepers who are trying to hit on me, as most just seem to be interested in or have respect for what I’m doing, so I’ll have a short conversation with someone if they approach me and I’m in between exercises or on my way out. Last night I gave some guy advice on shrugs and deadlifts (though I doubt he took it), and once I taught some guy how to front squat. Why not?

Well, it's commendable that you haven't helped anyone divest themselves of their manhood, Sonny China-in-Street Fighter style. How much do you rely on advice from guys as opposed to advice from girls? Have you found that advice from guys needs modification to apply to girls? Are there any girls up to whom you look?

There are a few female lifters who are natural and extremely strong who I find really inspiring and motivating, but I have actually only recently learned about them, and can’t come up with their names off the top of my head. When I’m looking for inspiration I’ll check the powerliftingwatch.com rankings or the raw female lifter records in my federation to see what other people are up to, and what I should be working toward. Also, the woman who won best female lifter for the full meet that I attended was an inspiration. She weighs something like 112, and deadlifted 10kg more than I did, benched more than I did, and squatted something like 248. You could tell from looking at her that she was going to kill it, as she was small but really solidly built. It’s great encountering people like that, because they make me want to work harder to be better too.

I mostly end up following advice from guys, as I find that most females in the fitness industry aren’t as into strength training as I now am, and still incorporate certain exercises and ideas that don’t interest me into their philosophies. There is one female, actually Nia Shanks, whose blog I occasionally check, as she encourages females to lift heavy and train solely for strength.

Beyond that, my priorities seem to fall in line with those of mostly males who are into lifting, although males also train for size, and I do not (I obviously enjoy having some muscle, but would like to continue to appear feminine). So, taking that into consideration, I don’t do things that you suggest such as arm medleys or neck work, for example, the extras that are just for building show muscles, but I feel like that’s really common sense. I do shrugs occasionally, though solely to train pulling for my deadlift, and I keep it in the 1-3 rep range and try to incorporate my back too.

That, then begs the question- what are you favorite lifts?
The deadlift is obviously a favorite. Mostly because there’s no cheating it. You either can lift the weight, or you can’t. The dudes at the gym who (unintentionally) quarter squat 315 but can’t pull 225 are why I love deadlifts. It’s an ego crusher if you’re not actually strong. And it works so many muscles. And it’s the only lift for which it’s widely encouraged to practice singles as opposed to reps. I like that.

I was getting really into cleans for awhile, though I haven’t practiced them lately as my current gym has iron plates, and I hated having to drop heavy cleans over and over and attract attention to myself, among other things. I just invested in some light bumper plates though, so I’ll get back to those soon.

Beyond that, I’m loving the overhead squat lockouts. They’re really challenging, work a ton of muscles, and allow me to put way more weight overhead than I otherwise would. I’ve only practiced them twice now, but both workouts were so satisfying and left my whole torso pretty sore. I got 185 for a bunch of singles and doubles, and am shooting for 200+ soon. Hopefully some of that pressing strength will transfer to my bench…

As seen in that deadlift vid you've got, you've got a booty on you. Did you always have that, or did you get it from lifting? If it's the latter, what do you credit with the creation of that thing? --A chick I know who's seen your video desperately needs to know the answer to this question.

Thanks to genetics I lived most of my life with no booty. At one point in time I referred to it as my “lower lower back.” I actually have a photo on my phone’s camera (that I am not sending you, haha) [editor's note: Fuck that noise] that I took of myself from the side the first time I realized I actually had some booty, as I was so surprised and excited that I felt I must commemorate the moment, ha. It just took a few months of some serious, heavy squats and deadlifts. I did some weighted glute bridges and step ups (my least favorite exercise ever, step ups) and thrusters and things like that too, back in the day. Really any heavy, lower body exercise that incorporates the glutes should do it. I recently tried out that glute isolation machine at my gym, just to see what I could do, and I could easily move the entire stack with one leg for a ton of reps. Squats and deadlifts. They prepare you for any and everything.

Onto other girlish shit- We went through a number of different diets for you before you settled on one that worked for you, as I recall. Initially it was paleo, then Ferriss's slow carb diet, and then one of your own creation. Could you fill everyone in on how that evolved, why you ended up with the one you did, and thoughts for everyone just in general about dieting? I'm barely human in the approach towards food, so I think everyone would benefit from something a little less T-1000 and a bit more Sarah Connor.

Ugh. Diet. This was the toughest part of the process for me. When I decided to train for the meet back in August I had this delusion that I’d be able to cut down to the 132 weight class while bringing my deadlift up from a 285 PR to 319.5. As the federation I joined does weigh-ins day of, extreme last minute cutting wasn’t an option for me. After a few months of stressing, briefly toying with certain diets and other weight loss methods, and ultimately just being frustrated and briefly giving up I found that I had built some strength but lost no weight, and was sitting at around 155 with about 6 weeks to go until the meet. I managed to lose 7-8 lbs during that time, while again still gaining some strength, and am now down a few more pounds thanks to my current diet plan.

But first, the trial and error. It wasn’t actually paleo that you suggested, but keto. The way I typically eat is mostly paleo anyway, though I enjoy potatoes and rice for my starches, and don’t eat as much fruit or nuts as paleo people do. I try not to get too strict about anything, as I find that it really messes with my head when I intentionally avoid certain foods or food groups.

Anyway, keto. I went 8 days eating only meat, fish, and eggs. It was a good way to introduce discipline back into my diet, but as I didn’t do any carb refeeding in that time my lifts dropped significantly. When I found I couldn’t get at 265 lb deadlift off the floor at the gym one day, I knew I needed to do something different. I gave myself one day to reefed on carbs, and went crazy with tortilla chips and tacos and shitty frozen yogurt, and of course all of the water weight that I’d dropped over the first 8 days came right back and stayed back, so I moved on.

The slow carb diet was next. This one was the worst. My body did not appreciate eating beans that often. They made me bloated, among other things. During this time I also tried Ferriss’s PAGG stack, and his ice bath idea. I will concede that I didn’t give either practice a long enough try to really gauge whether or not I’d see results, but ultimately they weren’t working for me so I moved on. The ice baths though, again, were a good way to force myself to be disciplined about something, so I enjoyed them in a strange way. If you ease into it in the manner that he suggests it’s not the worst thing in the world, and at some point the body adjusts. I set my laptop up next to the bathtub and distracted myself for the 20 minute baths with random shows off of hulu (in case anyone wants to try the ice baths, I’d definitely suggest having a distraction of that sort). I did feel my heart rate increase after the baths, and I am curious as to how they’d work in the long run on a fat loss plan, but between the cost of 20 lbs of ice at a time and the increasingly low temperatures in my apartment I gave them up after a short run.

Finally, I decided to put together my own diet based on common sense and things I had read (including some T-Nation articles by Nate Miyaki, who has a lot of good advice about diet in my opinion). I set up a basic food plan of fish, meat, eggs, vegetables, and rice, charted out the calories and macros for all of the food that I planned on eating, figured out some approximate macronutrient goals for different days of the week (cycling in the rice, and therefore carbs/extra calories 3x/week) and built my menu each day from those food choices. They were mostly lean meats, so chicken and 94/6 beef, canned wild salmon or tuna, lots of eggs, and occasionally sardines. Sometimes I’d do a baked potato or a banana instead of rice, but that was about as exciting as it got during the last 4 weeks leading up to the meet. I tried to avoid alcohol, but when I did go out for a drink (or 3) I stuck to red wine, though I’m sure hard liquor with soda water or diet coke would have been an equally reasonable option (or white wine, which I just personally don’t like). This was the diet I had the most success on. I found that when I didn’t cycle my calories enough my weight loss stagnated. I need to have higher calorie days (1500-200 range) and lower calorie days (800-1200 range). When I was hitting around 12-1400/day for 2 weeks I lost no weight whatsoever.

Also, I should mention that I typically follow Martin Berkhan’s version of IF (sorry Jamie), though I will say that in and of itself fasting is definitely not a weight loss miracle. Ultimately total caloric intake does matter, as does whatever meal frequency and timing plan works best for one’s personality and work/life schedule. I just find that if I limit my eating window (and I’ve found that a 2 meal/day plan is ideal for me most days) I can eat big, satisfying meals when I do eat, and I enjoy that. You can pack a fair amount of chicken, eggs, vegetables, and even rice into two 600 calorie meals. This is something that I’ve adjusted to doing over the past year, so at this point I am comfortable going most of the day without eating. I try to get to the gym before my first meal of the day, and I typically have my first meal between 2 and 6 pm.

Oh, and protein is always the cornerstone of my diet, obviously. Vegetables are good for fiber and for feeling full off of less calories, but protein is always my #1 priority.

I hope that helped…just common sense, trial and error, and when in doubt, protein and vegetables would summarize it, haha. And don’t obsess. Just make it a habit, and stick with it. I prepare most of my own meals, and bring a meal with me to work if I plan on eating during my shift. That makes it a mindless habit, and eliminates the possibility of making poor last minute choices.

And that's how you fucking do it- experiment, experiment, bust your ass, take absolutely no pictures of yourself with insanely hard nipples after an ice bath, deadlift your fucking ass right off. Or on, as the case may be. For any of you who might've thought that 319.5 isn't shit in the grand scheme of things, consider the following- she's a girl who weighs less than some mini-fridges and she landed just slightly outside of the top 20 deadlifters in her class without wearing a fucking belt in her first meet. That, my friends, is fucking metal.

Someone had to make up for her oversight. And for the ladies- that manass earlier was all for you.

Sack the fuck up and go lift something, because somewhere there's a hot chick who's probably outlifting you.

Efficiency And Elite Strength Are Asymmetric Goals

2011-12-04T16:06:00.000-08:00

To begin, this will likely be the most contentious piece of writing I've done thus far. My personal belief in regards to "efficient training" is not a widely held precept, but that is due to the fact that every single person who disagrees with me on this subject is unequivocally wrong. I'm not talking "mark that fucker down ten points on their SAT" wrong, either- I'm talking "Michael Jackson fingerfucking a four year old while wearing a poop helmet and singing 'I'm a Little Teapot'" wrong. The reason for this is that efficiency is not a path to excellence, but rather the way to maximize production while minimizing cost. As such, efficiency in the minds of most is linear growth- slow and steady incremental progress. Becoming elite at anything, however, requires far more effort than that, and exponentially more effort than that which most modern Westerners will put into anything but consumerism, sloth, and obesity.

Legs like this don't come from 5x5 or once a week squatting. They come from years of doing 35-42 sets of legs twice a week.

Given that I attack lifting with the same ferocity that which a fat person employs in the pursuit of type two diabetes in a Krispy Kreme shop, incremental progression wouldn't be my style in any event. Though my opinion might be skewed because it suits my style of lifting, I believe that a more aggressive, volume intensive, and unmodulated approach results in progression that is volatile, but will resemble a cubic progression rather than a linear progression if averaged. The problem most people have with my approach, however, is threefold- one, they lack the necessary motivation to attack the weights with the necessary vigor; two, they are either unwilling or unable to continually alter their training to maintain forward progression, and three, they're too busy listening to the astonishing amount of negativity coming from the weak-willed and -bodied peanut gallery to take this path in the first place.

Ultimately, I think the problem lies in large part with one man- Frederick Winslow Taylor. Before you start googling him, know this- he's got fuckall to do with lifting. Instead, he is the evil mastermind behind one of the most insidious schemes in history, which sucked the soul out of the American working man and is currently grinding the lot of us to a bloody fucking nub: the plot to make the American workforce "efficient."

Shocked? She is too.

Even his mother would probably have told us, Frederick Taylor was a fucking asshole. He went everywhere with a stopwatch and notepad, timing everyone as they did everything and constantly nitpicking, henpecking, and berating them about their form, style, and execution because the wanted them to operate like robots in a factory. Fucking Frederick Taylor, had he been capable, was likely a blazingly fast and probably unfelt affair consisting of a rapid series of pumps calibrated by stopwatch and in time with a metronome, after which he critiqued the woman for everything he could possibly think. Though the man was utterly despised by the workers he oversaw, he was the darling of the management of corporations, and his worship of efficiency became the American religion within a century of it's adoption.

If you're wondering why I think this fucked up most lifters, consider this- the core of Taylor's work was standardization. He studied things, averaged the results, and used that to determine what would achieve acceptable results for everyone, rather than what would achieve optimal results for individuals. He promoted four essential principles:

Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
Provide "Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task".
Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.

This has since been applied to programming, which by my research (and that's been rather exhaustive), is a relatively new phenomenon- even in the early 20th Century each lifter essentially created their own program. Now, however, most people dogmatically and rabidly adhere to programs they neither understand nor question who have been designed by people in a distant foreign land for a very discrete group of people. That, or they do the same with a watered-down program designed to do exactly what Taylor sought to do- achieve acceptable goals for all, but not optimize anyone's output. Thus, no one trains themselves, they receive "detailed instruction and supervision" in the "performance of their task", and lifters leave the management principles to strangers while they unthinkingly perform the tasks set out for them. In short, Taylor created an environment where society not only creates robots, but it creates robots who want to be even more robotic. This is how we've ended up with an internet full of discussions of same three powerlifting or bodybuilding programs, people who think that being fat somehow confers great physical strength (I'm talking to you, GOMAD fuckers), and endless fucking form check videos. As such, most people are as useless as the annoying black chick from Saved By The Bell on the best of gym visits, and at worst are more likely to resemble that skinny, whiny bitch from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

I haven't seen this movie in ten years and would still stab this motherfucker on sight.

"Efficient" programming seeks to provide the masses with the best results from the least effort every time they enter the gym. People, being fucking morons, confuse "best results from the least effort" with "best results", and this is how they've started championing Mark Rippetoe as the god of all things lifting. Because they think that "best results" also means maintaining a strength level that would get you laughed out of a supermarket in Denmark when you threw your back out trying to lift one of their giant wheels of cheese, they think that anyone doing more work than them (and thereby easily surpassing their best lifts) in the gym is a mutant, obviously using steroids, and in danger of "burning themselves out" in short order. They'll heave excuses aloft like they're Russians blindly firing shit into space in an effort to beat the US at anything at all, and will achieve about the same amount of success as the Russians- there will be a lot of shit erased from their record books out of shame, and weeping will be about the only sound they hear each night as they go to bed. They will never push themselves to test their limits, force themselves to go beyond what they believe possible, or even attempt something slightly out of the ordinary, because they're content with leading dull, uninteresting lives bereft of excitement and devoid of conscious thought. They're fucking robots, basking in the pallid glow of their own mediocrity.

Cursory examination of memorable and elite lifters throughout the ages will leave you one very definitive impression thereafter- there is no one best way for everyone to train. The very idea of such a thing is patently ridiculous, as the adoption of that theory involves a tacit admission that you're no better than anyone else- you're neither smarter, nor stronger, nor in any way better than the toothless, meth-addicted broad checking you out at Wal-Mart, nor are you better equipped to attack the weights than the special needs kid with a thyroid disorder who's eating crayons in isle 3. If you're comfortable with that idea, then I encourage you to adopt a cookie-cutter routine on the recommendation of a faceless stranger with a total that barely exceeds his bodyweight. If you realize that there's a chance that you might be able to rise above the level of "barely human", perhaps you should examine the routine you've been doing to see how it could best benefit you, as an individual.

Another takeaway from that examination is the fact that if you want to be great at something, lifting included, you're going to have to do more than just the bare minimum in the gym. To wit:

Tom Platz's Leg Routine (which he did twice in 8 days):

Squats 8-12 5-20
Hack Squats 5 10-15
Leg Extensions 5-8 10-15
Lying Leg Curls 6-10 10-15
Standing Calf Raises 3-4 10-15
Seated Calf Raises 3-4 10-15
Hack Machine Calf Raises 3-4 10-15
Using this routine, Platz hit 500 for 23 reps and 635 for 8, at a bodyweight of around 220 and ripped to the fucking bone.

Bob Peoples' Full Body Routine (done 4-5 times per week)

Deadlift 1 x 15-20, 1 x 10, 1 x 8, 1 x 6, 6 x 1 (10 sets total)
Squat 5 x 5
Press 5 x 5

That's right- People maxed out on the deadlift 4-5 times a week. Because he broke his fucking ass and wasn't a bleeding vagina, People's pulled a world record 725 at 181 lbs. Also contrary to convention, people pulled with all of the air expelled from his lungs, with a round back, and with a double overhand girp, form he determined to be best for himself after experimenting with a wide variety of forms and then actually sitting down and studying what worked best for him. Can you imagine such a thing? The horror!

Konstantin Konstantinovs Full Body Routine (training every other day)

Workout 1.
1. Light squat for a warm up.
2. Deadlift. I do a different variant every time I train: rack pulls – 7, 11, 15, 20, 23 cm from the knees (higher than that I never pull). I do either a set of 3 reps or 8-10 depending on how I feel.
3. Bench press. I consider bench press as rest between heavy work. I bench either with touch and go with a medium grip, or with a close grip pausing at the bottom. I might do a single set of 10 reps with touch and go, or might max out pausing at the bottom. It all depends on how I feel and my mood.
4. 2nd deadlift. I pull either from a floor or from a deficit (about 9 cm). I do a single set of 2-3 reps pausing at the bottom. Then if I have enough energy, I might do another set of 6-8 reps.
5. Box squat. Heavy box squat as described above.

Workout 2 (in two days).
1. Medium heavy squat as described above.
2. Heavy bench press for a single set of 3 reps. Once in two weeks: negatives – 1-2 set for 1 rep. Then a single set of 8-10 reps with either close or medium grip depending on how I feel.
3. Cardio – 15-20 min.

Workout 3.
1. Light squat.
2. Medium heavy bench press: a single set of 6-8 reps.
3. Speed deadlift with bands: 8x1. Bands increase weight by 130 kg at the top.
4. Pull ups with weight or bands. ONLY explosively. Very important for my deadlift.
5. GHR, hyperextensions, very heavy abs work (6 sets with emphasis on strength).

Workout 4.
The same as workout 2.
In other words, the man who's the strength freak of our time and who hold the World Record in the Raw Deadlift at 242 and 275 and the total at 308 squats every fucking training session and deadlifts twice a week. Conventional wisdom can officially go fuck itself.

Bennie Podda, being insane per the usual.

There are myriad other examples, and all of the Baddest Motherfuckers I've chronicled threw a metaphorical fuck you to the world every single time they entered the gym. That's because they knew, instinctively, that there is no one best way for everyone to train- there's only the best way for you to train yourself. Just as the cookie cutter programs predominating in the strength world today should arouse the ire of the lifters using them, as they're forced from what works into what usually works for most people, Fred Taylor's methods made him a fucking wanted man in factories the world around. Artisans and factory workers despised him, because he took away their free will and individual expression and replaced it with robotic movements and communal behavior. Amusingly, the Soviets were some of his biggest proponents, in spite of the fact that Marx himself decried the dehumanization of the worker. Similarly, Christian existentialist Simone Weil proffered the following, which is a pretty excellent summary of modern society's mental state:

"However tied and bound a primitive man was to routine and blind gropings, he could at least try to think things out, to combine and innovate at his own risk, a liberty which is absolutely denied to a worker engaged in a production line.... Thus, in spite of progress, man has not emerged from the servile condition in which he found himself when he was handed over weak and naked to all the blind forces that make up the universe; it is merely that the power which keeps him on his knees has been as it were transferred from inert matter to the human society of which he is a member."

I find that particularly striking due to the fact that Christianity doesn't seem well suited to individual thought and expression, by and large. If they and the progenitor of one of the most disgusting and insidious political movements in the modern era could see the evil inherent in Taylorism, anyone on Earth should be able to do so.

But, you might be saying to yourself, those guys are fucking freaks, and while I'm not retarded and half-crippled and don't resemble a young Kuato from Total Recall, I'm hardly a strapping young KK. He's a genetic freak, and I'm not. Interestingly, science has addressed that theory, and they've told you to nut the fuck up. In a meta-analysis of thousands of elite performers across a variety of disciplines ranging from hockey to violin, researchers discovered that "Individual differences, even among elite performers, are closely related to assessed amounts of deliberate practice. Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years." (Ericsson et al. 363) I've mentioned my issues with Sir Francis Galton before, and he's the one who's got it in your mind that you simply lack the genetics to be elite (which is not surprising given that "Genelic influences are still incorreclly viewed as delerminislic factors that lead to unmodifiable consequences determining the structure of the h uman body and its nervous system"[Ericksson et al 364]). Well, once again, you and Galton are about as correct as the 29% percent of American who couldn't identify the vice president of the United States.(Daily Beast) Instead, what studies like that show "is that 10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world class expert" (Outliers 40) In studying these elite performers, they found that "the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder." (Outliers 39)

Working harder already

They don't just work harder, either- they react, adapt and overcome, just as elite Special Forces units do as a matter of course. In a study in the late 19th Century of Morse code operators, it was discovered that even a tremendous amount of practice and experience did not inure Morse code operators from the dreaded plateau we all know from training. What they found was interesting for another reason, though, because it applies directly to my point- people who unthinkingly performed their tasks found themselves mired in bullshit, while those who approached their task thoughtfully and busted their asses did not- "with mere repetition, improvement of performance was often arrested at less than maximal levels, and further improvement required effortful reorganization of the skill. Even very experienced Morse Code operators could be encouraged to dramatically increase their performance through deliberate efforts when further improvements were required for promotions and external rewards."(Ericksson 365) Put simply- you have react and adapt if you want to overcome obstacles in your path to greatness. You're not going to do that, however, if you're taking the easy way out, resting on your laurels, following some program designed by a person who's never met you and used (identically) by everyone you know, and never deviating from the path set out by that stranger. You've got to identify your strengths and weaknesses and motivate yourself to overcome them through the thoughtful application of sheer, unrelenting will and brute fucking force.

To sum up- if you do the same thing everyone else is doing, you'll suck just as much as they do. "Remember, you never want to be in a fair fight if an unfair fight is an option" (Griffin), and by doing what they're doing, you're making every competition a fair fight. You can always push harder, lift heavier, and fight harder for what you want, and you're going to have to fucking do it if you want to rise above those around you. Claiming that your sessions are more efficient is simply another way to say you're a fucking corner-cutting slacker, and I'm going to laugh at you when I outlift you and your lifting partner combined at a meet.

Don't be a fucking pussy. Go do something epic.

Addendum:
I left this bit out because this post ran so long and covered so many things that I forgot to mention it explicitly, though I thought it would be more or less apparent:
Optimal training for an individual will not be "efficient" due to the fact that you will have to put more and more effort into lifting in order to transcend your previous bests. This coincides with the "Law of Diminishing Returns", which states that "in all productive processes, adding more of one factor of production, while holding all others constant, will at some point yield lower per-unit returns." (Wiki) Those lower returns, however, are necessary if progress is to continue, and is the point I was attempting to make by citing the study of the Morse code operators.

Additionally, it appears, via the comments, that many people are confusing "optimal" and "efficient"- optimal training is training in which you're maximizing your maximizing your output. "Efficient" training, on the other hand, is achieving the best possible result form a minimum of effort. As such, it is rare that "efficient" training will yield optimal results, due to the fact that so much more effort will eventually be necessary to continue your progress, and because of the delicate balance of man's internal systems it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine what will achieve the greatest output as increased effort is required.

Sources:
Carson, Brian. Bob Peoples Deadlift Training. http://ezinearticles.com/?Bob-Peoples-Deadlift-Training&id=1522211
Kasatov, Konstantin Dmitri. Interview with Konstantin Konstantinovs. http://www.lift-run-bang.com/2010/04/interview-with-konstantin-konstantinovs.html
Ericksson KA, Krampe RT, Tesch-Roemer C. The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. 1993: 100(3) 363-406. http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf
Frederick Winslow Taylor. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor
How Dumb Are We? The Daily Beast. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/03/20/how-dumb-are-we.html
People, Bob. "The Training Methods of Bob Peoples". http://pressingtostrongman.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/bob-peoples-speaks/
Tom Platz Leg Workout – The Man Who Became Famous For His Remarkable Leg Development. SimplyShredded.com. http://www.simplyshredded.com/tom-platz-bodybuilding.html

What the Fuck Does AMA Stand For?

2011-12-02T10:11:00.001-08:00

I assume it stands for ask me anything. In any event, I'm doing one on Reddit next Tuesday at 8PM EST, so if you want to go there and troll the fuck out of it, feel free. Prior to that, I'll be posting a new Ask The Asshole and a training/programming blog, so there'll be plenty of content for you fuckers over the next few days.

For those of you who bought the book- I appreciate it more than certain Penn State football coaches appreciate little boys. It's been brought to my attention that in spite of my herculean efforts to edit the bejeezus out of it, I still missed some shit. Thus, I'll be re-editing it and resending it to you people as soon as I can.

Thanks again, come heckle the fuck out of me at the AMA (www.reddit.com/r/weightroom) on Tuesday, and keep an eye peeled for the upcoming blogs. They will be better than the following pic, if that's even possible.

Hail To The King #3- This Is My Boomstick!

2011-11-27T16:24:00.000-08:00

First, a couple of asides.
Aside One: For the record, I don't consider the Zercher Squat to be a substitute for the deadlift. This misconception has been repeated in a number of places, and it's wholly incorrect. Were someone to press me on how I got my deadlift to the level it is without a year of direct training, I would posit that the poundage I'm able to move results from the fact that I train for overall, full-body strength. My body is completely inured to moving heavy poundages, so the direction of the movement is really inconsequential. Additionally, I've been training non-stop for 17 years. As such, I know the movement and can do it in my sleep. I find it to be counter-productive in the course of my regular training for these reasons, and because I find that my style of training, when applied to the deadlift, impedes training on other lifts on subsequent days due to the stress it puts on my body. I've stated in a past blog that about ten years ago I embarked upon what amounts in retrospect to a program of suicidally insane deadlifting volumes, and since then have found that my upper and midback will protest for months like the hobos masquerading as Occupy protesters if I push it as hard as I would like. Thus, I eschew the deadlift and focus on other shit.

If I had to pick a single greatest contributing factor behind my deadlift, it would be hate. I quite literally hate the shit that the bar is defying my efforts to lift it. In preparation to do battle with my insouciant opponent, I shrug a lot, as I've found that just handing those huge poundages for a portion of the same movement allows me to generate enough spite and contempt for lighter weights that I can will them aloft. Additionally, I love shrugging, and because I enjoy it immensely, I shrug a lot. I go stupidly heavy, pull from just above the knees, and have a hell of a lot of fun moving the weights and bending the everloving fuck out of every bar I use for them. This enjoyment translates into massive efforts on what amount to a medley of high rack pulls, shrugs, and static holds, which in turn means my upper back, traps, and erectors find themselves inured to ultra-high volume and massive weights. That volume is compounded, then, by my inclusion of Zercher Lifts in all their myriad forms, making my upper back an unstoppable juggernaut of thick muscle and brutal, unyielding strength. Can I pull as much as Ed Coan? Hell no, but I'm built more like a T-Rex than a chimp, and am thus not terribly well suited, from a bio-mechanical standpoint, to pulling. Additionally, I've got hands so small they make carnies jealous, so it's a testament to the work I put in that I pull as much as I do.

For those of you who are skeptical about the efficacy of such an approach. allow me to explain the concept of training transfer. There are three types of training transfer: positive, negative, and neutral. It's actually fairly rare for the there to be anything other than positive transfer, and neutral or negative transfers are generally restricted to competitive walking and throwing events, respectively.(Bondarchuk 14-15) I side with the generalist theory of training transfer, which posits that “It is possible to lay down a full value foundation for future movements, ensure all-round harmonious development of the body, increase the general level of the body’s functional capabilities, create a rich fund of differently formed movement skills and abilities, and form beginning basic sports mastery.” I train constantly for full-body strength, attempt to hit every possible angle, and develop strength across sports and exercises, which makes it possible for me to compete at a high level in strength sports even when I don't train the lifts I have to use in the meets. Nearly anything you do in the gym, I think, can positively impact your other lifts provided the lift is properly applied.

An example of the prpoer application of just about everything there is on Earth.

With that out of the way, onto meet week. The meet occurred on a Saturday, with weigh-ins occurring on Friday from 9AM to noon. As such, I decided that I would likely benefit from sticking to my Predator Diet routine Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Thus, I ate low-to-medium carb on Friday during the day, consuming a pound of 93% lean ground beef seasoned for tacos on low carb tortillas and protein shakes until my evening cheat meal, which consisted of chicken fingers to start, followed by meat lover’s pizza and about half a bag of Sun Chips. Saturday I ate my typical Predator Diet meals- protein shakes with a late meal of beef ribs. Sunday consisted of Hooter’s wings for lunch, protein shakes, and more ribs.

During the two weeks up to the meet, I trained nonstop, compensating for my shoulder injury by focusing more on lower body movements and pulls. My shoulder, though treated with a cortisone shot the week prior, prescription anti-inflammatories, and a topical ointment containing ketamine, sundry anti-inflammatories, and lidocaine, still annoyed me more than the Occupy Wall Street squatters piss off New York City cops. It was just as persistent, remaining painful and obnoxious in spite of constant icing and TENS unit application, so I avoided benching with the exception of a light “test bench” the Friday of my last cheat meal. During that lift, I hit my opener with ease for a couple of doubles and quit when the pain became pronounced. Thereafter, I simply did a shitload of pushdowns and tried to fight off the urge to go back for another cortisone shot.

Saturday, Sunday, and Monday I trained as heavy as possible, focusing mainly on bottom position squats, bottom position Zerchers, and light military presses to keep my range of motion. My last day of lifting was Tuesday, on which I did a light morning workout of arms and a variety of not-terribly heavy movements in the evening. I realize that conventional wisdom dictates that one shouldn’t train the week leading up to the meet, but I think I’ve established that conventional wisdom can go fuck itself at this point. I wanted to remain loose, ready, and keep my groove “greased”. I’m of the opinion that due to the fact that I’m so conditioned to high volume, if I took an excessive amount of time off from lifting I would lose my edge. As such, I stayed in the gym as long as possible.

Amusingly, I blew shit at zerchers when I first tried them in 2005.

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I consumed as much water as I could per day, and cut out Diet Coke (an unspoken mainstay of my diet) to limit water retention. I also removed salt completely from my diet Monday and Tuesday, in addition to red meat, eating nothing but protein shakes and chicken or pork seasoned with Mrs. Dash. I did this due to the fact that sodium and the creatine in red meat cause you to retain 3 grams of water per gram consumed, and kept carbs out per the guidelines of my Predator Diet.(Ferriss, “How to Lose”) Wednesday, I consumed nothing but two liters of water and six protein shakes prior to 5 PM, and nothing whatsoever from that point until after I’d weighed in.

That night, I started rotating hot baths and saunas, and hit the hay after getting to 190. The following morning, I awoke at 630, donned a makeshift sauna suit made of outdoor trash bags and duct tape, and and followed the suggestions I made in this blog series exactly. It fucking worked- I weighed in at 181.6 (just barely made it), after cutting for 6 hours. Incidentally, I wore the makeshift sauna suit on the drive to the weighin, which saved my ass- I got stuck in traffic and sweated off the last ounce or so. For the remainder of the day I ate as much as I could without forcefeeding myself, rehydrated compulsively, and relaxed.

The day of the meet, I felt fucking amazing. Upon waking, I weighed 199, and after eating a turkey hoagie and a soft pretzel on the way to the gym I weighed 202. By the time the meet was over, I weighed 211.
Hyperhydrating works.

A word to the wise- if you hyperhydrate like that, you'll look fat. I had my bodyfat checked the day before I left for Philly and was at 7%. Clearly, holding 30 lbs of waterweight over your weigh-in weight's not going to have you looking ripped, but it'll have you strong.

In regards to the meet itself, the greatest challenge was staying interested. I warmed up sparingly, quickly, and violently, just as I lift regularly. I used triples for the first three warm-ups on squats (135, 225, 315) but switched to singles for 405 and 495. My total warmup time took perhaps 5 minutes, and I was annoyed as shit and bored out of my mind by the time the rest of the lifters finished their elaborate, lengthy, and wholly unnecessary warm-ups. Nevertheless, I kicked the fuck out of all my lifts and have since lamented not going heavier on my fourth attempt. The bench was a disaster, but I simply acted like FEMA during the whole thing and close gripped my attempts to baby my shoulder, as the squat and deadlift are my bread-and-butter anyway. For the deadlift, I did 4 reps in warm-ups- 225, 315, 405, and 495. They all felt easy, and I was again forced to battle boredom until I got to lift.

Looking back, I have no regrets save that I should have gone heavier on my fourth attempts in the squat (I should have gone 635) and the deadlift (665). Were I to offer any advice to anyone planning on entering a meet, it’d be cut weight hard and rehydrate harder, and for fuck’s sake bring a book to your meet.

Highly recommended, by the way. Tore through this fucker in a couple of hours, and it was one of the best assassin novels I've ever read.

Nothing about that performance was genetics, unless I'm just genetically predisposed to winning. This was about busting my fucking ass for years, doing my homework, and being a fucking competitor. Awesome is forged, not in-born. Unless, of course, your name is Jada Stevens.

This, by the way, is a shortened version of the installment I threw in the book. The one in the book fleshes out training transfer and gives a couple of extra tips on dropping water.

The Training Ebook Is Finally Complete

2011-11-24T22:15:00.001-08:00

The book is done, and it's fucking awesome, if I do say so myself. After a great deal of breaking my ass on this thing (it clocked in at 368 pages), I've got it done. Before I continue with the link to purchase, here's a heartfelt appeal:
For the love of all that's good in the world, don't immediately upload this thing onto mediafire. I'm not going to police the download sites, as I have better shit to do. Before you send the thing to everyone you know, realize that I'm not coming begging with my hand out for cash to get to this meet- I broke my ass finishing this thing, giving you guys some new content, and providing you with what I consider to be a pretty fucking impressive resource for training knowledge. Plus, I priced the thing so at least some of you would buy it instead of downloading it so that I'd have the cash to get you the shirts for which you've been clamoring. Help me help you, fuckers.

That said, enjoy the book and use it to kill some weights. For those of you who are for whatever reason terrified of Paypal, I'm getting a Google checkout option, but for whatever reason the code isn't generating for the checkout button and I'm too tired to keep fucking with it. As such, you'll have to wait until I get that figured out. As for the fuzzy foreigners who want to pay via bank transfer, email me to get that squared away. You are, however, a massive pain in the ass for not just using Paypal. If you have questions, problems, would like to explain your unreasonable stance on Paypal (I'm the one from whom they're taking money, not you)or want to bitch at me over something completely unrelated, hit me up here: chaos_and_pain@yahoo.com.

Go here to auto-download the book with Paypal:

An Update On The Ebook And A Teaser

2011-11-23T05:21:00.000-08:00

What I thought would be a relatively simple thing has turned out to be a goddamned Trial of Hercules. Not in a bad way, however- just fucking difficult. As it happens, I'm a more prolific in my writing than Dean Koontz, and that motherfucker churns out a shitty novel every 36 minutes. The ebook has now become a series, due to the fact that the first installment, which is perhaps a quarter to a third of the blog and covers training.

Assuming I stop getting distracted, or just up and move to Britain.

Lest you wonder what the point of getting them would be, I'm fairly certain that this is one of the most, if not the most heavily cited non-academic publication of all time, and it'd be a hell of a resource to fuel online arguments and training alike. Additionally, I'm rewriting half to a quarter of the blogs, and the rest are getting heavy edits, in addition to being reordered in a way that would make sense to anyone with a modicum of respect for the Dewey Decimal System or categorization in general. Expect it to go up for sale Thursday, and it's clocking in at about 350 pages, including 7 pages of citations. It'll be an awesome resource for training information, battling ignorance on the web, in the street, and in the gym, and it'll help me get to the meet. Plus, you can finally read the fucking things fully edited.

To give you a taste of what's in store, here's a teaser for the first book. Subsequent ebooks will be Nutrition, Mental and Hormonal, and Assholishness and Badassery.

Thanks for the suggestions on edits.

Thanksgiving will definitely be a day to give thanks, because this thing will finally be done.

I've now got two new blogs in it, it's completely reordered, most of the blogs have been at least partly rewritten, and instead of being chaotic, the whole fucking thing makes a lot of sense when viewed as a whole. You will appreciate the wait when you see it.

Chaos and Bang #1

2011-11-22T09:21:00.001-08:00

While you fuckers patiently await the release of the ebook and the conclusions to my Hail To The King and Predator Diet blogs (and your patience is appreciated), check out the first installment of a series of roundtable discussions I'm doing with Paul from Lift-Run-Bang. This one covers what, in our respective opinions, constitutes strong. While he initially agreed with Wendler on the subject, I used my immense powers of persuasion to bring him over to the dark side- that is, the lean guy opinion vs. the fat guy opinion. Check it out here.

Bang.

There Were No Convenience Stores In The Paleolithic

2011-11-15T09:24:00.001-08:00

There were no convenience stores in the Paleolithic, and for some reason people have taken that to mean that there's nothing on which to snack if you're eating paleo. I find that to be bizarre, but I lack a carbohydrate fetish and have always despised Cheetos and Doritos. That aside, there are nearly as many choices when it comes to snacking on a paleolithic diet as there are ways to mock that fat fuck from Superbad, Jonah Hill (although his Call of Duty trailer redeemed him very slightly).

The magic of CGI- Jonah Hill now has a jawline and far less in the way of jowels. His wattle also appears to have been eliminated, though it might just be hiding in that shadow.

Whether or not the snacks are convenient, however, is entirely another matter. Most paleo foods require a considerable amount of prep time, especially when they're high in protein. Obviously, fruit, veggies, nuts and seeds are simple to eat, but the macros are entirely wrong for the kind of dieting I want to do. Trying to replace food with that nonsense would be like going to a comedy show that was supposed to headline Andrew Dice Clay and finding Wayne Brady there instead. That shit just won't fly.

Frankly, I think eating some beef jerky is pretty much the pinnacle of snacking, and buy a tremendous amount of the stuff from the Amish at the Farmer's Market every time I go home. The Amish are pretty much dowdy wizards when it comes to cured and dried meats, and it's fun to flirt with the Amish broads enough to get a full-body blush in return. When I'm not at home, though, I am either left to make it myself, or to buy it from a store. Living in Alabama, otherwise known as Satan's Taint, it's far too hot and humid to run my oven with the door open for 10 hours. As such, I'm left with the option of buying jerky at the store, which means I get a lot of food coloring, nitrates, nitrites, and possibly a dusting of MSG thrown in the for good measure, as a final gesture of "fuck you" from the Lovecraftian fish people working in Jack Link's factories.

That is, I was left with that option until recently, when I was emailed by a reader who had an alternative to the aforementioned bullshit. No cooking, no nitrates, and the shit is actually for a good cause. Before you guys go thinking I've sold out, I offered to help this guy out because his entire company is a charity for kids in Camden. He offered to give me a kickback, but I declined the hell out of that because his charity's for kids in Camden, and I'm neither that money motivated nor that fucking evil to take money out of their hands. If you've never been to Camden, NJ, it's pretty much what Detroit looks like in the movie Robocop. People who live there are faced with the option of selling crack, buying crack, robbing someone else for their crack, or trading crack for a gun so you can rob someone for their crack. I'd say it's the worst place on Earth, except that I'm pretty certain sub-Saharan Africa is holding down that title pretty nicely. As such, it's the worst place you could go without knowing for a certainty you'd come back with AIDS at the very least. In any event, to fund a Crossfit club for future crack dealers, Steve invented Paleokits, which serve the dual purpose of providing paleo dieters with ready-to-eat snack options and getting future death row inmates in shape for the chair. Here's a list of the shit I've tried that he offers with an unbiased review of the Paleokit offerings I've tried:

Grass-Fed Paleo Stix- These are probably my favorite of the paleo offerings, as they're basically healthy Slim Jims. They could stand to be a bit spicier (couldn't everything?), but aside from that, they were awesome. Additionally, they've got a good nutritional profile- 160 calories, 6g fat, 28g protein per package, which makes for a decent snack. Frankly, two of these would make a better snack, but I highly doubt most paleo dieters share my feeling of not having eaten if I didn't get 50g of protein in a sitting.
Grass-Fed Just Jerky- Again, I was a bit disappointed with the lack of seasoning, but as paleo's not supposed to be salt-heavy, it's understandable. Damn good jerky though, low fat, and bereft of carbs, the way jerky should be.
Coconut Paleokit- To be frank, I assumed that the combination of beef jerky, coconut, and strawberries would go together like battery acid and donkeys, but it was quite honestly fucking amazing. I love the holy hell out of coconut and strawberries, which I'm sure helped, but you'd be surprised at how good this was. As you'd imagine, it's a bit high in carbs for someone eating keto, but if you're not a ketogenic paleodieter, this paleokit is truly badass.
Original Paleokit- This one was not up my alley. I thought the macros on it sucked (24g fat, 22g impact carbs, 35g protein) and I despise cranberries. As such, this one was my least favorite. I had two of them, however, so I handed the second off to a coworker, who ate mine and asked me how to get more- he loved the thing, and told me it was awesome to eat while playing Call of Duty. Amusingly, I had to explain to him what paleolithic dieting was to him, and he responded with "Doritos have double XP." Clearly, dieting's not at the forefront of his mind, but taste is, and he loved these.
Paleo Crunch Cereal- Hey hippies! Want paleo granola? Here it is, and it tastes fucking amazing. Not too sweet, good flavor, and better macros than could ever be expected out of granola. Granted, I don't recall the last time I ate granola, but chicks in particular would probably love this to get over the hump on ditching carbs. Surprisingly good. Until I googled it, I had no idea that this stuff was cereal- I ate it dry and loved it. It'd probably be amazing with Almond Milk, though. Clearly, I didn't try the Cranberry, but another of my coworkers has been bugging me to get him more of it- he was a huge fan.
Paleo Crunch Bars (Original and Seasonal)- These things are amazing, and a badass addition to a post-workout meal if you're angling for extra carbs. If I ate carbs on the regular, I'd be putting kids in Camden through college with my purchases of these.

Paleo = good.

Thus endeth my good deed for the decade. Buy this stuff, help out some kids whose lives truly suck, and get lean. It's win-win. Well, if you think helping people or eating paleo is winning. I think I'm getting soft in my old age. Buy the shit here: http://www.stevesoriginal.com/store and use the coupon code chaosandpain to get 10% off until November 22nd.

If you give a shit about charities (I usually only donate to no-kill dog shelters and libraries, but made an exception to my rule of "Fuck Everyone" to help out these guys), check out Steve's wacky plan to make the ghetto suck less with Crossfit here. Does it make sense? No, but you can't fault the guy for trying to do something cool for a bunch of people most of the world avoids at all costs.

Maybe he's trying to save the ghetto with booty? I fully support that plan.

I Made The "News"

2011-11-11T15:28:00.001-08:00

Thought I'd repost this from www.powerliftingwatch.com for you guys. Sadly, my information on rankings was inaccurate- when they posted my ranking today, they also posted Jamie McDougal's 1603 total from three weeks ago. As such, I am the aggregate king, but not the total king. Alas. In any event:

Jamie Lewis Hits 1600 Raw @ 181!

Submitted by Staff on November 11, 2011 - 3:05am.

At the recent APA Power Frenzy held November 5th 2011, Jamie did something that no other US lifter has done since raw become popularized in the mid 90's! In fact, no one has done it since 1973 (that was the only year that wraps were not allowed and suits hadn't been invented). Jamie went 1600 with out wraps! Heck he didn't even wear a belt, just a pair of TK neoprene knee sleeves! He started out his day with a 605 3rd attempt squat but took 615 on a 4th for new APA record. He then went 355 in the bench and pulled 640 in the dead to officially total 1600. He also took a 4th attempt in the pull by yanking 655! His total aggregate for the day was 1625 for an APA record. However, for ranking purposes 1600 is his official total. He is now ranked #2 in the current raw rankings and his 615 squat is #1. His 655 pull is ranked #5

Sadly, Joanna Angel was not in attendance.

Hail To The King #2- First You Wanna Kill Me, Now You Wanna Kiss Me. Blow.

2011-11-09T16:59:00.000-08:00

The Background
In the aftermath of last year's foray into powerlifting, I found myself more or less crippled. My IT band in my right leg was insanely painful, I was burned out, and I was sick of training and researching. As such, I started doing a bunch of useless bullshit in the gym, tried 5x5, and let my diet slip into what was for me complete shit. In late December, however, I switched to a new gym and found myself reinvigorated if for no other reason than the fact that I was embarrassed to wear a sleeveless shirt in the gym. I started doing the jump squats of which I've grown so fond to work on hip flexibility, started mixing it up more, and gradually ramped up my training frequency.

By April I was in full swing, but was still not taking my diet all that seriously. I tightened it down gradually, and started dieting in earnest by June. To give you some idea of what not taking my diet seriously was, I was eating 6 meals a day of no less than 40g of protein and medium carbs with medium fat. In spite of the loose diet, I was still having two cheat meals a week. I kept locking it down, switching first to a four day keto run, a medium carb Friday capped with a cheat meal, and a medium to high carb weekend, and then cutting out the carbs on the weekend. Once or twice I had two cheat meals in a week, and I kept tinkering with what would become the Predator Diet (which I'll finish detailing soon). At this point, I was doing little more than squatting and overhead pressing.

The Workout
Monday
AM
Fuck about in the gym for 15 minutes doing whatever struck my fancy. Often, I did some one arm deadlifts (strapless) with 155 for sets of 5.
PM
Zercher Squats 10-20 x 1-3 (working up to a couple of ME singles). For whatever reason I love starting the week with Zerchers. Did them both off the pins for a lockout and out of the rack for a "full" rep.
Military Press 5-8 x 5-1
Any auxiliary shit I felt like doing

Tuesday
AM
Same as Monday or not at all.
PM
Jump Squats 5-10 x 3-1 (working up to a couple of ME singles)
Partial squats from various heights ranging from bottom position to 1/4 squat lockouts. Did them until I got bored.
Whatever else I felt like doing, including Pendlay rows for triples. Usually 335x3 with straps, and a couple of times 365x1-2.
Light overhead pressing, often in the form of Viking presses, 3 plates on a side for sets of 5-8.

Wednesday
AM Only
Fucked about with arms for 20-30 mins. Usually did some one arm deadlifts with 155 for sets of 5 as well.

Thursday
More squatting of some kind. Occasionally Squat to press. More often front squat partials or more zerchers.
More OH pressing of some kind. Usually heavy on this day, BTNPPs or push press from the front.
Sometimes did Incline reverse grips on this day for triples, doubles, and singles.

Friday
AM only
Benching happened on this day or not at all. Usually triples, sometimes singles, occasionally did a death set or two.
Usually some light arm work consisting mostly or entirely of cables, and sometimes a shitload of Curl and Press.

Saturday
Longest workout of the week. Occasionally did two a days. Trained everything of which I could think for 2-3 hours, and usually shrugged for an hour on this day. I like rack pulling from my knees to shrug height, and usually worked up to 8-9 plates per side for 3-5 reps. My last shrug workout I did 5 sets of 3 with 9 plates per side.
Usually did Incline reverse grips on this day for triples, doubles, and singles.

Sunday
Off or something fairly light.

To all of this I added a lot of wrist curls, occasional cable crossovers, the occasional few 30 rep sets of pullups, some curl and presses, some machine squats, and the occasional high pull workout. I didn't deadlift once, nor did I do a single set of dips. The reason behind the deads is a combination of "I didn't feel like it" and the fact that I discussed it with Glenn Pendlay and we thought it'd be an amusing experiment. It was.

What I learned, training-wise...

take everything everyone says with a grain of salt. There's very little training advice I've gotten over the years that's worth a shit. Had I not abandoned the deadlift altogether, I might not have realized I've no fucking need of it at all in my training. I need to squat heavy and often and avoid getting caught up in what other people tell me I "should" do. Likewise for the shrug- on any forum anywhere, mediocre lifters will decry the shrug as a worthless vanity lift. They can all eat shit.
Squat lockouts are fucking amazing... if they're done in combination with full-range or extra-full range versions of the same lift. That was my problem last year, and I full rectified it by learning from my previous mistakes. That's an often overlooked and essential part of training- adapt and overcome. If you do the same shit day in and day out like a mindless drone, you'll suck like every other Jersey Shore watching dickbag with an OK magazine on his coffeetable.
Zercher squats are the shit. I credit those, in combination with Pendlay rows and shrugs for my deadlift.

Setbacks Encountered

The reason I mention these is because I get a shitload of emails about a variety of minor injuries. People are constantly asking me what to do when training with them, and my answer is always the same- train around them. That's what I do, and that's what any person with a scintilla of balls would do. Sitting home on your ass will just turn you into one of the sorry motherfuckers on that godawful show Mike and Molly, and for anyone who's seen the commercials, Wilford Brimley's on his way to their house with a pair of six-guns loaded with mayonnaise bullets while riding a horse name Diabetus.

The moral of this section is that you should TRAIN AROUND INJURIES, goddamnit. Quit yer bitchin' and man the fuck up. To wit, here's an incomplete list of the setbacks I had from July 1st onward.

Exploding car shenanigans. In early July I flipped my car while I was not wearing a setbelt. It caught fire, and I had to punch out my driver's side window to get out. In the process, I incurred a massive concussion, a shitload of cuts and scrapes, a ridiculously deep bruise on my left calf, and a huge high ankle sprain. That killed a week of training for me, as it's really hard to lift while concussed (though I was back in the gym Monday, and I flipped the car Saturday), and forced me to cut out jump squats for the better part of 6 weeks because I was physically unable to perform them. Also, this is the reason I didn't finish the blog on stone lifting, as Of Stones and Strength was in the car and was thus burned to a crisp. To combat the lack of jump squats, I used machine squats while concussed, and then switched to top half partials and worked my way down as my range of motion improved
Constant pec/shoulder issues. The reason behind my attempt at stretching was because I constantly had pec/shoulder knotting in my left pec. That region always felt like a tear was imminent, so I did a lot of stretching and massage on the area, and then started using the TENS unit I got on my birthday. The latter seemed to have the best effect, and I've been using it religiously all over my body for minor strains and sprains.
Minor tweak of my sartorius in my left leg. This only affected me in the last two weeks of training. It's slightly painful, but just kept me from getting super crazy in the two weeks leading up to the meet.
Strained lower abs. I'm not even certain how I did this, but once you strain an ab, it takes forever to fully heal. It still acts like a bitch from time to time.
Strained right bicep. After a horrible day at work and a variety of other personal bullshit, I went into the gym and decided to go bananas on Pendlay rows. I made them my punk bitch for the better part of 70 minutes, but once I threw on 405 for a singe my bicep loudly (audibly) told me to go fuck myself. I iced and babied it for a a couple of weeks and it manned the fuck up. By babied it, I mean I didn't do 120 lb hammer curls and 365 lb Pendlay rows for a while. Instead, I did a hell of a lot more zerchers and really, really light curls to stretch it and get blood into the region so it healed faster.
Horribly strained right trap. I honestly thought they were indestructible, but I managed to strain my right trap my doing shrug-and-holds with 9 plates on a side. By this, I mean I did a triple with the weight and then held it as long as I could. After three sets, my trap knotted up so badly I nearly passed out, and I couldn't turn my head for two days. To fix it, I used a TENS unit, the Theracane, an ART massage, and ice. I was shrugging again the following week, but I had a hell of a time doing anything trap related for about 8 days. What finally fixed it was squat lockouts with 10 plates on a side- I literally crushed the knots out, and it felt fucking awesome.

Breaks Taken
Though this might come as a shock to you, there were two weeks between July and November wherein I didn't train more than 4 times in a week. Of those, one of those weeks was a week wherein I did three days of light arm workouts and one day on which I did an hour of heavy front squatting followed by a BodyPump class. BodyPump, incidentally, nearly killed me. I'm no longer suited to high repetition anything. The second of those two consisted of two days of zerchers, one light and one heavy, one day of incline reverse grip bench press and one day of fucking about on a variety of machines. During those two weeks I relaxed my diet considerably, eating carbs every days and going out drinking a couple of times.

I found those two weeks to be a nice break, and while they weren't necessarily a deload, they were a nice slowdown. Afterwards, I found my resolve strengthened both on dieting and exercise, and I was a fucking maniac in the gym. Additionally. it allowed niggling injuries to heal a bit, which also helped get back at it harder.

In case you're curious, neither of these were planned as slowdowns, but happened as part of the natural course of life- I went on a couple of staycations and found that I wanted to do other things than lift the entire time, like sleep and fuck.

Had this been my staycation, it would have been more like "found that I wanted to do other things than lift the entire time, like fuck and fuck.

In the final installment of this series, I'll detail the week of the meet, including my weight cut, which fucking sucked, what I did in the gym that week, and the meet itself. If you guys want the final installment of the Predator Diet series first, let me know in the comments.

APA Power Frenzy Video

2011-11-08T17:12:00.000-08:00

Here's a vid of my 3rds and 4ths, made specially for the internet message board cocksuckers.

Hail To The King, Baby- There's A New King At 181

2011-11-05T20:18:00.000-07:00

... and his name at Jamie Lewis. I haven't posted this week as I'd been cutting and traveling for the APA Power Frenzy at Iron Sport. After a retardedly horrible cut to 181, I lifted raw (no belt, no wraps) and posted what will be the highest total of any 181 pounder who's currently lifting, and 2nd on the Powerliftingwatch.com all time list.

Miserable, exhausted, starving, and dehydrated at 186, three hours before weigh-in.

My attempts were:
Squat- 545, 585, 605, 615 (4th)
Bench- 335, 355, 375(missed)
Deadlift- 565, 605, 640, 655 (4th)
Total: 1600 on third attempts, and 1625 including the 4ths.

- Previously, WC Waldron was the #1 squatter with 606.
- Previously, Alex Tertisky was the #1 ranked Total with 1598.

The whole thing was streamed live online, so vids of my attempts will be forthcoming (set to "Suck My Dick" by DJ Valentino for the amusingly shittalking-prone internet powerlifting community). Until I can get those, here's a random pic of me Steve Pulcinella posted on Facebook.

As for my prep, when I'm not exhausted I'll follow up with a basic synopsis of my training and diet, which boils down to "squat and overhead press 6 days a week. Repeat." I will mention that I've not deadlifted once since last year. Instead, I squatted, shrugged, and overhead pressed. Hence the ridiculous legs and traps.

Can we all now agree Smolov and Sheiko aren't the end all be all? That'd just be awesome.

Until that day, motherfuckers. Go lift something heavy and stop staring at your computer.

Evolution Of My Diet #3- The Birth Of The Predator Diet

2011-10-31T17:24:00.000-07:00

In the last installment, I explained that the basis of my dietary regime is the paleolithic diet, but that I've added a considerable amount in the way of tweaks to it in order to optimize my performance in the gym. By tweaks, I mean tweaks in the same way a Japanese tuner enthusiast "tweaks" a pickup truck to make it appear as though it's a dragon- I took a giant, steaming shit in it's mouth, threw half of it overboard, and started wildly looking about for anything close at hand to make it appear exactly as it shouldn't.

My problem, you see, with the paleo approach was that I was eating way too fucking much food. I'd been able to get away with this in the past, but time fucks up just about everyone, and my desk-jockey job and middle age conspired to fuck me in the ass. Thus, I began tinkering with my macronutrients to see what, if any, interesting results I could derive. The only way I could do this, however, and remain true to my Robb Wolff-esque ketoish pale diet was to either start eating a shitload of beef jerky, which would have been as delicious as it was economically unfeasible, or start replacing more meals with shakes. That's exactly what I decided to do, influenced heavily by T-Nation's original Velocity Diet.

There are some damn good reasons to visit T-Nation.

For those of you who are unaware, the Velocity Diet is a T-Nation product used to sell their Metabolic Drive protein powder, a powder priced so insanely that one would think that it was created by a team of Russian alchemists using naught but powdered diamonds and dessicated unicorn cock. As I, unlike many T-Nation readers, was cognizant of the fact that Biotest's products differ from others on the market only in their method and ferocity of wallet-raping, I decided to go with products that weren't priced by Bernie Madoff's evil uncle-in-law- Monster Milk and Muscle Infusion. I chose the former for the fact that it tastes amazing, has an impressive blend of proteins that is heavy on the slow-released ones, and because it's got creatine included. The latter was chosen on a combination of price point and protein blend, in addition to the fact that it was low carb. Essentially, I wanted to maximize my protein intake while minimizing my caloric intake, in the spirit of the Velocity Diet. For those of you who are unaware, the V-Diet 1.0 consists of 5 protein shakes a day supplemented with EFAs, fiber, and a multivitamin. Once a week, you're allowed one real food, but non-cheat meal. It's hardly rocket science, though they would have you believe otherwise. Additionally, they claim that it's not a protein sparing modified fast (though without a shred of logic to support that claim) due to the fact that you'd not be in ketosis (though I think this is a recent addition, as their PWO product Surge didn't exist when I read that article years ago).

Dave Palumbo- keto advocate and bodybuilder who strangely resembles the bad guy in Cobra.

As some background, the Protein Sparing Modified Fast is a concept that arose in the 1970s as a way to get Precious-type fatties back to human weight in a hurry. They were characterized by being high in protein (at least in comparison with typical diets), and low in both carbohydrates and fats. As such, they were intended to preserve what little muscle that land beast had while stripping away the blubber to let their human side show. You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, however, and some of those non-humans perished in their quest to lose weight due to the fact that the researchers conducting the studies apparently knew very little about nutrition. The doctor in charge of the diet had his collection of farting, wheezing, pre-Klumps drinking a concoction of his own invention called Prolinn, which "was a liquid protein that provided fewer than 400 calories a day, consisted of ground-up and crushed animal horns, hooves, hides, tendons, bones and other slaughterhouse byproducts that were treated with artificial flavors, colours and enzymes to break them down."(Diets) From this, we learned that a lack of protein can cause cardiac heart loss and a lack of minerals can cause arrhythmias, which led later experimenters to choose a more suitable protein source and supplement with vitamins and minerals.(MacDonald) Thus, diets like the Dukan Diet were born, which promotes this as the Attack phase, in addition to the first two iterations of the Velocity Diet and Lyle Macdonald's Rapid Fat Loss Handbook diet.

Apparently this broad is not getting much cock, as the Protein-Sparing bit doesn't appear to have kicked in.

According to Macdonald, the PSMF was the outgrowth of the use of starvation diets to aid in fatloss. Though they did result in considerable fatloss, starvation diets had the unhappy side effect of rapid muscle loss, which is of course not the goal of any strength athlete. As such, it's necessary to abate that side effect with regular infusions of protein, which is what PSMF diets aim to achieve- it spares muscular bodyweight from conversion into glucose by providing the body with a source of protein from which it may do so, while at the same time maintaining ketosis. For this reason, it would seem to go nicely with the diet I'd already had in place, perhaps (as I envisioned it) in a caloric cycling scheme, as I couldn't imagine training the way I do on that sort of a diet. I did, for a period of a few days, attempt the Velocity Diet. It fucking sucked. I was so distracted during my workouts from hunger that I cut them short. No amount of ephedrine and caffeine would push me through a ninety minute workout of singles and doubles in behind the neck push press without gravely endangering my life. As such, I deemed the Velocity Diet unsuitable for my goals.

Four months of dieting ago.

But, you might be thinking, "what about losing all of your fat"? It's simple- I was never a giant fatass. Although I let my bodyfat creep up to uncomfortable (for me levels in the 12-15% range are about as fat as I'd ever get without being in a coma) levels, I didn't see any reason to sacrifice muscle for fatloss. Though the title of the diet is "protein sparing", that's not to say that such a diet would preserve mass on a 6-10 workout a week program, especially with the weights I handle. Additionally, I saw no reason to lose the weight quickly if I could take it off over time and get stronger. As such, I needed to find a way to keep my saturated fat intake high for optimal hormone levels while accelerating my metabolism with dietary trickery. In essence, I would have to become the Loki of diet and exercise.

How to become a mythical god of shenanigans? I explained that I found parts of the Warrior Diet to be intriguing, as it's an intermittent fast made popular by the rather convincing Ori Hofmekler. Hofmekler based his diet on that of the soldiers of the Roman Empire, who ate sparingly throughout the day and feasted at night. That seemed reasonable to me, and eminently doable, though I was concerned about catabolism during the day. This is where the Velocity Diet/PSMF came in- provided I kept my calories low throughout the day and simply utilized shakes to offset any catabolism I might encounter from two-a-day workouts, I might be able to combine the fat-burning effects of the undereating phase with the anabolic effects of the overeating phase to achieve both goals simultaneously. As such, this is similar to what Martin Berkhan espouses, however without the actual starvation and potential catabolism. Berkhan himself admits there's no clinical evidence to support the theory that catabolism is arrested in IF with heavy weight training, and as I've no interest in conducting that research with my hard-fought muscle and PRs, so I figure there's no harm in hedging like a motherfucker and chugging some protein shakes.

The godfather of IF.

Thus, we come back to paleolithic eating and to the meal itself. It was, almost to a day, the exact same thing- beef ribs. The reasoning behind the ribs was initially a revolt by my taste buds against chicken wings, of which I've grown sick after a couple of years of occasional reliance. I found that beef ribs had a similar macronutrient ratio to the wings, tasted amazing, were high calorie, and had one more thing in common with the meat I'd cast aside- beef ribs are meat on the bone. Though most people would posit that this is a ridiculous reason to choose a food, I have always found meat on a bone to be far more satisfying than other cuts. There's something visceral and animalistic about tearing the flesh of an animal from its bones, and although I possess no scholarly evidence to prove it, I'm convinced that this animalistic act has a significant effect on one's psyche and hormonal profile. In essence, if one wishes to be the apex predator of our forebears, one must eat like that predator, and rip the flesh of their victims from their bones with their teeth. It's for this reason I started referring to my diet as the Predator Diet, discovering later that another author had a very similar idea himself.

Up next, I'll wrap this motherfucker up with a bit more science, doubtlessly field eleventy million Martin Berkhan questions, and we can move on with our lives.

Sources:
CBS News. Diets: A Primer. CBS NEWS In-Depth. http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/food/diets.html
Hofmekler, Ori. The Warrior Diet.
McDonald, Lyle. The Ketogenic Diet.
McDonald, Lyle. The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook.
Berkhan, Martin. Intermittent Fasting During Weight Loss Preserves Muscle Mass? http://www.leangains.com/2011/03/intermittent-fasting-for-weight-loss.html

Beat Them Like A Rented Mule, Or How To Break In Spud Straps

2011-10-26T16:17:00.000-07:00

Before I begin what will be one of my shortest posts, I'd like to address what I consider to be a hilarious sentiment propagated around the likes of Bodyspace and other internet message boards- the idea that I promote products because I get paid to do so. Never in the history of the human word has a theory been so easily debunked, for two reasons:

I am shit poor. Had I sponsors, you'd have Chaos and Pain t-shirts for $10 bucks apiece on sale nonstop. I have no cash, and thus have been scrambling around trying to find a way to make the new shirts affordable. I've got bad news- right now they're looking like $35 shirts. I'm going to put them up on Zazzle, but I'm not happy about it. I could give a shit about the $3 I'll make off them and tried to drop it to something like a quarter, but no dice- they have a minimum revenues of 10% of their hideous prices.
No one on Earth is going to sponsor a guy who competes simply to fuck with the other lifters in a sport with which he doesn't even identify himself, nor will they sponsor someone who peppers every over-cited post with scat porn, gangbangs, tits, and more instances of "Fuck" than any 20 minute clip in Goodfellas. It's not good game, and it's damn sure not good business.

Clearly, I'm not in it for the money. Whatever dreams I had about making loot died with the economy in 2008, and I don't like being in anyone's pocket. I tell people about the things I like simply because I have a forum to do so. The only revenue stream this site generates is a very tiny one from Amazon, and that's from people checking out my recommendations (which I greatly appreciate).

In any event, in this ATA post I mentioned that I love Spud Inc. Straps. I discovered these while training at Marc "Spud" Bartley's gym in Columbia, SC, and fell directly in love with them. They're eminently durable, comfortable once broken in, and I believe confer grip strength due to the fact that they make every move done with their aid a fatbar lift. When I say durable, I mean that they're the only strap that's lasted me more than 4 months- with every other brand I've tried, they snap mid lift and I end up flat on my back with a bloodied lip right around the beginning of month three.

Spud hitting a 1024 squat.

The key to getting the most out of Spud Straps, however, is to break them in. This is my highly unofficial and unsanctioned opinion, by the way, so if you ask Spud or Dale at SC they might tell you otherwise. They answer the phone when you call and represent the pinnacle of avid conversationalists, so they'll doubtless regale you with tales of glory about squatting over 1000 lbs and keep you on the line for hours. That, or they'll reply to everything in a monotone and somewhat disinterested tone. Likely the latter, but they know their shit and are definitely good guys.

Initially, Spud Inc.Straps will appear as they do above. Slightly shiny, very slick, possessing notable and visible ridging, and with a melted end that will tear the skin off your hands like they're Russian mobsters looking for information from some less-than-talkative Yakuza member. You will bleed profusely from this melty bit. As such, that's the first thing that needs to go.

Take your straps outside to the parking lot. Rub the melted end vigorously on the roughest curb you can find until you've ground the hard edge completely off.
Then, begin systematically rubbing the surface of the straps along the curb as well, scuffing them until they're no longer shiny. This will give them more purchase when you wrap them around the bar.
(Optional) while they're looped, run your car over them a couple of times. This will make them far less stiff, much as it would make even the hardest cock.
Throw them in the washing machine with some dark clothes (what with the dirt that's now on them) or by themselves.
Chalk the everloving shit out of them. If you think they've got enough chalk on them, they don't. Run that shit into the fibers so that they become a non-Crossfit version of a chalk bag. The more chalk, the better your grip. I rechalk them every three or so uses just to make sure they're good and saturated.

What well-loved straps look like. The stain on the one on the right is blood.

As you can see, it'll take a bit of work, but it'll be a labor of love. I could not love a human baby as much as I love those straps. If you want some, you can get them from Spud's website.

Pimpin' Ain't Easy, But Overhead Pressing Is

2011-10-25T09:31:00.000-07:00

The B-I-G D-A-double D-Y K-A-N-E

One of my least favorite bodyparts to train, historically, has been my shoulders. Until the last couple of years they've fucking sucked, and I've almost always had training partners born with sick shoulders who rubbed that fact in my face every time we trained them. It started in college, where my lifting partner and fellow wrestler had ridiculous shoulders in spite of a workout routine that began with lateral raises and ended with upright rows. As my traps have dominated my shoulders as long as I can remember, that type of routine did exactly fuckall for me. Throw on top of that fact that I was weak as Michael Jackson's drug infused corpse at putting weight over my head, and I had a recipe for disaster anytime I tried to do something useful in that regard. Thus, in spite of the fact that I was benching into the 300s, I struggled to get anything over 200 overhead with a push press of any kind, and jerking was out of the question due to shit flexibility and a lack of confidence that makes that squirrelly kid from Superbad seem like the Dos Equis guy.

To those of you who've emailed me about adding me on Facebook:

I plan on having my FB profile live on or about the 7th of Never.

Clearly, I don't have this problem any more- if anything, my shoulders are one of my best bodyparts, and are headed in the direction of being some of my strongest as well. Thus, here is the story of how I got decent weights overhead and built semi-respectable shoulders in the process.

...if the girlies want my tip they gotta pay a fee.

As I stated, my shoulder workouts early on consisted of naught but lateral raises and upright rows. Why? Because I listened to Joe Weider, whose advice is really only suited to twinks who have aspirations to gay porn. Hindsight's a bitch. Over the years I added more and more pressing movements and reduced my lateral raise work considerably, but I didn't really see true improvement until I quit with the bullshit and began lifting weights over my head in earnest, and with a vengeance.

Take a stand and command to demand what's grand.
The inimitable Maxick was a huge fan of the standing military press, and hit a max of 230 lbs at a bodyweight of 145lbs. He believed that "an excellent performance in this lift would be one and a half times the lifter's body weight", a fact that has stuck with me since I first read it in 2005.(Maxick 41) Given that at the time I was hard pressed to even hit my bodyweight (then somewhere in the neighborhood of 175), I rarely even attempted the lift. As if I were a large, flightless bird native to Africa that closely resembles a dinosaur and is scary as all fucking hell up close, I stuck my head in the ground and ignored it. At the beginning of 2011, however, I was in the midst of my typical yearly burnout period, and decided that I might as well start working on the lift if, for no other reason, than it would be relatively easy on me. I soon discovered that I was as bad as I'd expected at it, and couldn't muster more than 5 reps with 155 at the outset. I kept at it, however, throwing it in at the end of workouts and doing them on my "off" days with fair regularity, and my weights slowly started creeping up. I focused myself during the lift on maintaining full body rigidity, which is exceptionally hard when you're used to heaving weights around like you're Lattimer in The Program and some broad's been leading you on.

According to Maxick, the military press is done thusly: " the rules provide that the heels must be kept closed, the legs straight, and the body quite erect throughout the lift."(41) U.S. Olympic Weightlifting coach Mark Berry added the following:

"At present, we recognize two styles of performance, the International and the American, which has been adopted from the British. The two principal points of difference are the position of the feet and the starting position of the bell. In the International style the feet may be kept forty centimeters (about 16 inches) apart; in the American style, the heels are kept together. The American style permits holding the bell at chin level before making the press, where the International calls for the bar to be rested on the chest. Otherwise the actual lift is the same. Keeping the body rigidly erect, the knees locked, and the eyes pointed forward, the bell is pressed slowly overhead to full length of arms."

Though he's actually describing what we'd now call the strict press and the military press, respectively, that's a hell of a lot different than what you'll usually read about in any physical culture publication when reading about the military press, which typically seems to involve a padded bench, spandex, bronzer, and a whole lotta dude sweat.

Though I've not yet hit Maxick's suggested "elite" bodyweight percentage, I'm headed in the direction. Quite frankly, even the strongest people I know couldn't hit that weight for a single. Nevertheless, it's always in the back of my mind as a goal worth achieving. Like the military press, the strict press is another lift at which I've worked over the last 10 months, and have had reasonable success. It's performed more or less exactly like the military press, although in later years it became a weird back-bend lift that seems to be more of trick lift version of the bench press than a proper shoulder exercise. According to Mark Berry,

"the complete lift consists of Cleaning the bell to the starting position, and after a pause of two seconds, pressing it overhead. By flexing the buttocks muscles and locking the hips and thighs, you may assist considerably in the successful completion of a heavy Military Press. Note that instead of encircling the bar with the thumbs as well as the fingers, rest the bar on the thumbs. This grip is especially valuable in the Two Arm Press, as by releasing the thumbs the biceps are kept from exerting a downward pull."

This thing's ancestors were foxes. This guy, however, lunged so hard at the cage when the interviewer walked past it that it broke a tooth. Why? For the same reason Russians do anything- in the furtherance of evil.

According to one source, the reason for the devolution of this lift was that the Russians are evil. No one, Russians included, will dispute this, I'm sure, as the Russians have even managed to turn foxes into what they describe as "Dragons" and what any rational person would describe as "KILL THAT MOTHERFUCKING THING RIGHT NOW BEFORE IT EATS US ALL."(Kukekova) J.V. Askem explained in one article that "The rules [in the 1940s] did not allow for any back bend when performing a press. However, the Soviet lifters were encouraged by their officials and coaches to ignore this rule, and soon a new form of Press was introduced that became to be known as the "Russian style" Olympic press. This double lay back or back bending style soon crept into international competitions, and with uninformed crowds, thinking such lifts were good, many referees got intimidated into passing bad lifts." Thus, the strict press came to look thusly:

Frankly, I've never tried that form, but it's done this way: "Lay back start with the knees locked. Thrust forward and upward. Then before the bar slows, lay back a second time as the bar passes through the sticking point. Push hard with the arms during the entire pressing movement. The double "lay back" is used to prevent the bar from slowing. A properly executed Olympic press is a fast lift. However, although not a strict military style press, the Olympic press is also NOT a jerk. It is a lift unique unto itself."(Askem)

Yo, I'm the illest. Plus I know more different strokes than Arnold and Willis.
So, you've got those two to tinker with, onto which you can throw the push press, behind the neck push press, the squat to press, Viking Press, and the overhead walk. I've covered these in the blogs I've linked, in case you need a refresher on them, but I utilized all of these in my efforts to bring up my overhead press. Insofar as programming goes, I attempted to utilize at least three of these a week on non-consecutive days, and cannot recall a week other than the occasional deload in which I did fewer than two shoulder workouts. Even on days wherein I felt weak or mildly injured, I typically did Viking Presses on the leg press machine for extra overhead work. The keys, I feel, to increasing your overhead press are as follows:

Consistency and Frequency. As with just about everything I suggest, consistency and frequency are key. The more you practice the overhead press, the better you'll get at it.
Lockouts. In the past, I spent far more time focusing on the initial drive, and virtually none with the lockout. After I began doing overhead lockouts in the rack, I discovered that I enjoyed full-body effects that transcended simple overhead pressing movements. My stability increased, my bench increased, and my tricep strength increased. As such, the carryover effect for locking any weight overhead seems to be very, very high.
Variability. Ever the chaotic motherfucker, I've found that mixing it up on these lifts really seemed to improve all of them. Thus, I never did two lifts in a row, and always tried to do at least one strict and one explosive movement a week. That ensured I'd avoid staleness, not overload my shoulder girdle, and avoid injuring myself with shit form due to exhaustion. If I had to guess, I'd say that my improved military press had the greatest carryover to the other movements. As such, I definitely recommend doing it heavily and often.

You may now commence the pressing.

Sources:
Askem, J.V. A Pressing Situation. http://jva.ontariostrongman.ca/PRESS.htm
Berry, Mark. Physical Training Simplified. 1930.
Kukekova AV, et al. Measurement of segregating behaviors in experimental silver fox pedigrees. Behav Genet. 2008 March; 38(2): 185–194. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2374754/
Maxick. Great Strength Through Muscle Control. 1913.

The Evolution Of My Diet #2- The Diet Cometh

2011-10-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

A complete lack of testosterone. Not pictured: Drum circle and hemp clothing.

One of the writers currently in vogue in the popular media is Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, and Food Rules. The first two books are actually fairly good reads, although I don't agree with all of Pollan's opinions, and the last is essentially a Cliff's Notes version of the first two. In essence, Pollan wants the Western world to abandon the processed foods diet that we've recently embraced and return to a more natural (paleo-esque) diet. That's definitely a concept with which I can get, but his execution and my own vary quite a bit. In stark contrast to my personal opinion about the true nature of the original human diet, Pollan takes the pacifistic/leftist/liberal/weaksauce point of view that humans are best served by following a near vegetarian diet. This is of course the opinion du jour of most of the fringe elements with whom I share a marked dislike of the Establishment, but we definitely have oppositional views to food. As I've posted previously, primitive humans were the ultimate predators, hunting a massive array of pants-shittingly vicious and humongous beasts to extinction with little more than brawny physiques and sharp sticks.

You weren't confronted with this motherfucker on your morning commute because one of your distant ancestors ate his entire family and picked their teeth with that cat's bones.

Though the old adage is that "Form Follows Function", I find that in life most things are circular, and in that very same way I think that dieting and exercise adhere to that circularity. Thus, you need to eat to look the way you want to perform, which in turn deepens the necessity for that food and training. As such, when I drastically alter my training or my diet in any way, I find that my appearance an performance suffer.

In spite of this fact, it's a colossal pain in the ass to train and eat the way I do when I'm being extra-serious about strength. Though many (generally fat and weak) people will contradict this statement, I find that I am typically weaker when I'm fatter, and grow stronger as I lean out. This is perhaps a result of the fact that I'm much more assiduous about my diet when training hard, and vice-versa, but that again returns to what I consider the circular nature of everything in life. Thus, it's occurred to me that though Michael Pollan might be right about ditching the modern diet of processed food, he's fucking up by eating like a goddamned bunny. I don't want to look and act like a like a bunny. I want to look and act like like the humans of yore- a musclebound predator that strikes fear into the hearts and minds of everyone and everything around me.

A pet hyena might help, but flip flops and a skirt definitely ruin the effect.

As such, I've found that I have need of a diet that will simultaneously lean me out while providing me with the necessary energy to train extremely heavily and frequently. This is by all accounts a tall order, and to most people is well-neigh impossible. Conventional wisdom can go fuck itself, however. Given that half of Americans thought the US "goes too far" in granting rights with the First Amendement, I'm inclined to do the opposite of what everyone thinks.(Paulson) That's what I decided to do with this diet, as I think it's total horseshit that one couldn't find a way to gain muscle and lose fat if they're re willing to break their ass, do a bit of research, and diet like a crazy person. Luckily, I'm crazy as a shithouse rat and have a hell of a lot of time on my hands. The following is the produce of my lack of a social life and insanity.

Insanity's not always a bad thing. This broad is crazier than a bag of wet cats.

Obviously, at the very root of my diet is Paleolithic nutrition. As I mentioned before, the people of the Paleolithic era definitely seemed to know what was up. They were considerably larger, had greater cranial capacities and more muscle than the modern human, and produced impressive architecture without the aid of modern machinery. (Wiki, Hirst, Addendum) As such, it would stand to reason that an effort to emulate those apex predators that our forebears were would be to eat like them. There appears to be a bit of confusion about what exactly constitutes paleo however, and varies widely according to which author you read.

On the one side there are the hard-liners like Ray Audette, who advocate eating nothing but lean meats, vegetables, northern fruits, and nuts, and eschewing all else. On the other side of the spectrum, you've got authors like S. Boyd Eaton, who basically advocated the Mediterranean Diet in 1988 with his Paleolithic Prescription. In the middle you'd got the keto-paleo guys like Robb Wolff, Mark Sisson, and Art DeVany, and headed in the direction of Eaton you've got probably the most recognized paleo author, and the one with (in my opinion) the most polished academic credentials, Loren Cordain.

Pauline Nordin- paleo dieter and all-around bad ass hot chick.(Addendum)

The reason behind all of the apparent confusion behind the nature of the paleolithic diet are two things: money and geography. Cordain's academic work explains the latter fairly simply:the proportions of plant and animal food in hunter gatherer diets range from a low of 26% protein and 74% plant among the Gwi of Africa to a high of 99% animal / 1% plant with the Nunamiut of Alaska. 8 out of the 13 cultures he outlined ate 68% of their calories as meat, while another 3 ate 41-48% meat and 2 ate less than 41% meat.(Ungar 368) Throw on top of that the fact that our knowledge about the foods ate in the paleolithic change rather frequently, and you get a geographic and temporal gradient and sundry disparities in the makeup of the "diet". As such, it's difficult to claim one universal "paleo" diet. That's where the second issue comes in- money. Because one can semi-rightly claim that any nonsense that happens to issue forth from their money-dirtied fingers is ostensibly paleo, all of the aforementioned authors probably (and in Cordain's case, definitely) made concessions to what they likely considered their target audiences. As such, Wolff went with paleo for the meatheads and Eaton went carb-crazy for the chubby housewives. For them, it was win win, but for anyone trying to make sense of their lunacy, it's a bitch.

Who could say no to this other than Ray Audette?

As you'll recall from previous blogs, I've long been a fan of ketogenic diets (you can now search past blogs with the search bar on the right, so I no longer have to link every motherfucking thing I've ever written). Though I've credited Bodyopus with giving me the kick in the ass I needed to start the diet, it was actually the fact that I was sick to fucking death of dieting on chicken breasts and turkey lunchmeat (in a sort of PSMF) and awoke craving the fuck out of breakfast sausage one winter day around 1997. That's actually what got me to start my experiment. I've had generally positive but mixed success with them over the years, and found that my previous extreme fatloss on a high calorie ketogenic diet was not easily replicated when sitting behind a desk at work. As such, I did a bit of research. I realized that while the calorie-festival style keto approach I had taken in the past worked while I was more active (as were people in the paleolithic era), it was not serving me well while I spent the vast majority of my waking hours chained to a desk, writing scripts in SQL and trying to explain financial accounting software to people who should already know what they're fucking doing, since that's their industry. From this, I discovered that impotent rage is neither anabolic nor metabolically stimulating, and came to the conclusion that I was going to have to rethink my return to awesome.

Looking like an ancient tank is a fairly compelling basis for a diet, frankly.

In my musings, I mulled the concept that people have not been historically capable of finding and eating protein in regularly-spaced intervals throughout the day. This brought me to the concept of fasting, which is currently popular in LeanGains and formerly popular in the Warrior Diet. It occurred to me that something like the Warrior Diet might be the ticket to fatloss, provided I combined it with a ketogenic evening splurge rather than Ori's grain-filled bonanza, given my natural predisposition towards keto dieting. In the WD, one is generally suppose to eat very little or nothing throughout the day, which ostensibly simulates the body's fight or flight response. While I found that to be a fairly interesting concept, I was unprepared to go all in with that sort of craziness without a bit of trial run. My trial run, I decided, would be the Velocity Diet, one of the major T-Nation products.

This trial lasted precisely three days, in which I came to but one conclusion: not eating SUCKS.

As this is running very long, I'll stop here and hit you guys this weekend with the remainder of my experimentation and the ultimate result.

Addendum:
1. Cities like Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük. The latter was a 10,000 year old city that was home to as many people as lived in London in the early middle ages, but with what appears to be a much higher standard of living, and in which there is no evidence of the consumption of grains until the end of its 2000 year existence. The former, along with Nevali Cori, is over 11,000 years old and is one of the oldest man-made structures on Earth. For those feminists out there, all of these cultures appeared to worship the Mother Goddess, and all show signs of having been egalitarian societies without gender or class differentiation.

2. Paline Nordine's diet is called the Fighter Diet and is more or less a mashup of the Dukan Diet and paleo dieting. Check out descriptions here and here if you're interested.

Sources:

CBC News. Diets: A Primer. CBC News Online, 5/17/2004.
Hirst, K. Kris. Why Don't We Call Them Cro-Magnon Anymore? http://archaeology.about.com/od/earlymansites/a/cro_magnon.htm
MacDonald, Lyle. Rapid Fat Loss Handbook. 2005.
Paulson, Ken. Too Free? American Journalism Review, 2002. http://ajr.org/article.asp?id=2621
Pollan, Michael. Food Rules. New York: Penguin, 2009.
Ungar, Peter S., ed. Evolution of the Human Diet: The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Wikipedia. Çatalhöyük. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk
Wikipedia. Cro-Magnon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cro-Magnon

The Evolution Of My Diet

2011-10-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

Some people think throwing a bunch of diets in a blender is a giant pile of horseshit. I, however, think that most people should keep their fucking teeth together most of the time because they have the analytical and general cognitive skills of a low-achieving turnip. A turnip jammed up the ass of a fat, hairy, drunken Moldovan with a penchant for buggary and an unwillingness to wash his genitals for the last several years. A turnip who chose that situation as ideal, because that turnip has particularly bad decision making abilities, even for a turnip. I've blogged at length in the past about the theories of biological individuality and metabolic typing, both of which have played major roles in my dietary formulations and experimentation. For those of you who'd like a primer on them, here's a bit of a rundown:

All up in his ass.

Biochemical Individuality is the theory that "Every individual organism that has a distinctive genetic background has distinctive nutritional needs which must be met for optimal well-being." (Williams, 190) Though the concept of human individuality is treated like the kiddie-touching Uncle at a family reunion in the modern era of egalitarianism, it's been noted by anyone with eyes throughout history that humans vary widely in size, shape, and color, both inside and out. For instance, English surgeon and possible scat-obsessed necrophiliac Frederich Traves noted that intestinal lengths in human corpses he studied varied between 15 and 31 feet, and that colons varied in similar ways. (Wharton, 184) In BI, Williams goes on to note that humans aren't simply limited to wide variations in intestinal length, but that there are differences in terms of orders of magnitude between the size, shape, and location of organs throughout the human body, and that these differences account for massive discrepancies between the function of each person's individual biological systems.

Ava Cowan. Who gives a shit what type she is? She's the right type.

Metabolic Typing (the modern version) is the brainchild of William Wolcott and derives its basis from the aforementioned biochemical individuality, in addition to a landslide of historical precedent. It states that there are three primary human genotypes in terms of dietary necessity- Protein, Mixed, and Carbo. Essentially, the theory is that once you determine which of the three types you are and eat accordingly, you'll achieve optimal health. More on that one to come in a subsequent blog, but for what I've posted already, go here, here, and here.

These two theories have played massive roles in my personal dietary development, and have thus guided my research into various dietary regimes. Given that I've a penchant for investigating a massive array of esoterica, I've managed to combine those theories with a bunch of others to come up with my own personal system. I've found, however, that even within an individual, you'll have significant variation in what will work over time, which I attribute to aging, differing work loads and types (both in the workplace and the gym), stress, hormonal fluctuations, and probably the position of stellar bodies. As such, I've found the need to constantly reinvent myself from a dietary perspective.

Earlier this year, I realized that my previous diet that consisted of naught but chicken wings was 1) failing me in terms of fat loss and 2) boring as all hell. Having utilized beef ribs in their stead quite a bit while dieting for my last meet, I decided to incorporate them into my newest dietary plan. In an effort to drop weight quickly, I decided to give the original Velocity Diet a shot. If nothing else, I figured that it would be far cheaper than my typical mealplan, and couldn't possibly fail to take some of my unwanted adipose tissue off of my midsection in particular. What I found, however, was that I was so hungry during my lifts that I was distracted, and literally found myself fantasizing about eating. Thus, I set about to find something that might work better for a guy who trains between 6 and 12 times a week, rather than the 5 weak-sauce workouts recommended by the T-Nation Staff. [ed- I've since discovered that there's a VD 3.0, which is not a protein sparing modified fast like the previous incarnations]

Bukkake's Japanese for "Protein Sparing Modified Fast"

Skipping over the science for the moment, as I'm running short on time and want to get this motherfucker published, is the following:

Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday:
5-6 protein shakes throughout the day (and one overnight, which I'd leave on the toilet and chug while peeing). I usually had Monster Milk in the morning, and followed that with Muscle Infusion throughout the day. If I did a morning workout, it was a short workout (20 mins) usually consisting of one arm deadlifts, and I usually did not have a pre-workout shake. On two of these four days I typically substitute one shake at lunch with wings or other no-carb meat.
2-4 lbs of beef ribs with a dry rub post workout.

Wednesday:
This was Deadliest Warrior night (and now that the season is tragically over, Call of Duty night), so I'd go to a buddy's house, grill either bone in Ribeye or T-bones, and eat .75 to 1 lbs of those instead of the ribs.

Friday:
This was cheat meal day, so I'd usually make 1 lb of 94% lean ground beef as taco meat, and eat it on low-carb tortillas for two meals. My post-workout meal was usually some kind of sugary protein bar like a Met-Rx Big 100, and I'd usually have either another protein bar or a shake as a 4th meal. My 5th meal was my cheat meal, which consisted of the usual culprits, and I generally avoided sugary foods.

Sunday:
This would be one of my typical keto days, wherein I'd have the beef ribs at night, and would usually have 10 Hooters' Spicy Garlic Wings for lunch. Dinners were either ribs or more wings, and I'd make up the balance with shakes.

For this one, I more or less avoided drinking the entire time, as once I saw the fat coming off and my lifts going way up, I didn't want to fuck with what was working.

Me, directly out of bed after eating my fucking face off all day on my birthday.

Where did this diet get me? I'm floating between 195 and 200 lbs, lean, and stronger than I've ever been. Up next, I'll hit you guys with the entire rationale and science behind why this diet works for me, and why it might work for you, followed by an Ask the Asshole, a training article, and the finale to my until-now abandoned Metabolic Typing series.

Sources:
Wharton, Charles Heizer. Metabolic Man. Orlando: WinMark Publishing, 2001.
Williams, Roger. Biochemical Individuality. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1956.

I Think This Is Officially Middle Aged- Random Shit I've Learned

2011-10-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

When I told someone recently that I was going to be 35 today, they nearly shit their pants, which was a pretty cool reaction. I suppose half of that is due to the fact that I'm fairly immature, owing to a near-complete lack of responsibility for anything other than myself, and the rest of it owing to my appearance. Nevertheless, it was pretty cool compliment.

My lifts and the way I look are entirely the product of doing a hell of a lot of research and experimentation over the years- I've never had a coach, only sporadically had lifting partners, and rarely consulted the internet beyond T-Nation scintilla of lifting information. Instead, I read actual physical publications, and though they ranged from relatively shitty things like Muscle & Fitness to Men's Health, I've compiled a fairly impressive library of actual strength training and nutrition resources, and have scoured every library and bookstore for more information. Despite all that research, I've found that a lot of my best discoveries come from just walking into the gym and trying random shit. The following is a non-comprehensive listing of that information, with one point that will shock the living shit out of those of you who've been reading this blog for a while.

There's no such thing as "pointless" strength training. I see a lot of bullshit on strength boards wherein people posit that strength training without a definable goal is "pointless". This is, of course, utter fucking nonsense. If you're engaging in anything that could be reasonably construed as strength training, you're building strength, and there's your point. Most people are never going to compete in the world championships of any strength event, and as such should concern themselves with doing something they enjoy to ensure they'll keep doing it over time. There's no sense forcing yourself through endless workouts of drudgery and incremental improvement if you don't enjoy them, especially when there's all sorts of random fun shit you could be doing in the gym instead. Thus, there's absolutely nothing to stop you from doing six weeks of squat lockouts every fucking day for two hours if that's what you enjoy. Frankly, you probably couldn't do much better than shit like that if that's what you enjoy- supports are one of the best ways to improve muscularity and strength on Earth, and provided you're not going to be competing in full-range events, doing them exclusively would be an interesting experiment.
While I'm on the subject, I've found in the last couple of years that one of the surefire ways I know of to lose muscle mass in spite of great training and diet is to eschew heavy supports. This might not apply to everyone on Earth, but I know for a fact if I skip squat lockouts and partial deads/shrugs, I will lose bodyweight- it's more of a sure bet than it is that it would be to get Hepatitis if you showed up on Courtney Love's doorstep with a hard cock and a big bag of heroin. If you want to gain weight, eating big and doing ultra heavy squat lockouts is a fucking lock. If you want to lose bodyweight, I'd skip the lockouts for a while.

On the subject of losing bodyweight, I intended to blog about this ages ago and don't think I ever did. The first time I got really honestly ripped was when I lived in Vienna, and did so by doing nothing more than following Chad Waterbury's routines and eating a mostly paleo diet. Should you want to see your lower abs in fairly short order, try the following- eat 1 kg of chicken breast a day in chicken broth with .5 kg mix of cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots every day, in addition to a couple of protein shakes. Post workout I always ate a big fucking turkey durum kebap with nothing on it but turkey and as much hot sauce as they'd put on the thing. Given that we're not awash in Turks in the US, my fellow Yankees likely have no fucking clue what a turkey durum kebap is, which is a motherfucking shame, as it's pretty much the greatest culinary feat man's yet achieved. It's essentially shaved turkey in a burrito with some salad, Tzatziki Yogurt Sauce, and hot sauce. I skipped all of the nonsense, however, and got right to the meat of things. Yes, I am a witty motherfucker. Once a week, I'd eat some pizza, and drank enough Jagermeister once or twice a week to drown a small village. With that, I got down to 165 lbs and leaner than I'd ever been, even while wrestling 134 in college. I've uploaded Waterbury's programs to Mediafire for you guys here and here in case you want to check them out. Before you ask me which ones I did to get lean, try fucking experimenting first.

You guys were expecting scat porn, weren't you? Sick fuckers.

Before you take a shit on Waterbury, remember that your mind can be your Yoda or your Emperor. Closing yourself off to shit just makes you look like a fucking dick, especially if you've not even given the shit a shot. Additionally, too much negativity can and will get the best of you. I've blogged about this phenomenon a bunch, but I've noticed even in the last few months that I'll find myself stuck for months on a given weight or a given number of reps on a weight for no reason other than the fact that my brain tells me to stop, even while my body tells me to keep going. That's one of the weirdest revelations I've had in the gym, but it's also one of the most poignant- I literally went from doing 5 reps on 275 on the bench to 12 in two sets, after realizing that there was nothing on Earth stopping me from doing more. I spent the rest of that morning workout doing death sets with 275, just to grind into my brain the fact that even half awake, I could make 275 my punk bitch for a shitload of reps anytime I fucking want. The following day I talked to another guy at my gym who is fucking gibungous, but whose squat had always been a fucking embarrassment. Simply from my chiding and encouragement, he stopped thinking 405 was the end-all be-all of squatting and jumped up to a double with 600 in a month. Not only that, but he did the reps to depth in spite of godawful bodybuilding form and the fact that he's a bodybuilder. His legs have been growing like crazy since, as he realized that the only thing holding him back was his brain.

Motherfuckers set off the lunk alarm on me on my second warmup set on bench at this very Planet Fitness. In the Smith Machine.

Your brain's ability to beat you isn't simply internal, lest you start thinking that you just suck and should have your parents take you out behind the shed and put you out of their misery- your gym is likely a huge part of the problem. With the movement towards "fitness" in gyms, the environment in which most of you hoist weight is likely only conducive to getting a beach body and fucking around on the treadmill. As such, you'll have to do what you can to combat that. Getting a little evil would probably not hurt.

Shit certainly worked for Charles Bronson.

Your brain can also produce some cool shit and shouldn't always be ignored. For instance, you can come up with some random and ridiculous ways to cut bodyfat if you'd spend a little time thinking about it. One of the things with which I credit my recent fatloss, aside from the four months of dieting, tons of two a days, and stimulant overuse is pretty stupid-sounding, but I swear it helped- I started standing up while playing Call of Duty. Though that sounds asinine, I've spent a lot of Friday nights playing eight hours of Call of Duty, and did it all standing up. I noticed fat started coming off much faster when I began doing that, so I started doing it all the time. Danny Bonaduce had some similar ideas, and credited dumbass games like Dance Dance Revolution with his ability to stay super lean as he got older. Other things I've noticed help with fat loss are taking walks, which I did a fuck of a lot of in Europe and of which I've done a lot in the last month while dogsitting, and fucking. I can say with the utmost certainty that when I'm fucking a couple of times a day on the regular, I'm lean without even trying. Really, really lean. Whether that's due to the combination of aerobic and anaerobic exercise or the raised testosterone or a combination of all three I've no idea, but if someone'd like to fund that study I will be the first asshole in line.

Though I doubt the last bit came as a revelation to anyone, this will come as a bit of a shock- I'm fairly certain that mixing cable or band crossovers into your workouts here and there raises your bench press considerably. I know it does mine. I actually started doing them when I was casted up from elbow/tricep surgery two years ago, as it was just about the only thing I could do while in a cast to hit my chest. I continued doing them after I got out, as I skipped PT altogether and rehabbed myself, and I thought that my constant aggressive rehab might fall into the category of "outright fucking retarded" if I started benching too soon. As such, I just stuck with doing band crossovers as much as humanly possible. I kept doing them while living in South Carolina, but after leaving there, I dropped them from my workouts... and my bench dropped with them. In attempting to get my bench back out of the fucking gutter this year, I came to the realization that I'd dropped crossovers and added them back in, and lo and behold, my bench has gone through the roof. My birthday tradition is to bench 10 times my age without a warmup, which I had to modify this year due to a niggling pain in my left pec when benching of late. As such, I did three warmup sets and then did a paused rep with 350 for this birthday, which was easy as all hell. While I don't credit crossovers for this in it's entirety, I will say that I think they've helped. As for how much and when, I generally do them as part of my light AM workout two or three times a week. I go pretty light, get a deep stretch, and do sets of twelve froma variety of angles. I'm also a big fan of doing them unilaterally, so I hold one hand in the contracted position, do a rep with the other, and switch. In case that's unclear, here's another description- start a rep on the crossover, and hold it in the contracted position. Then, return to the stretch position and then the contracted with your right arm, hold that in the contracted position, and do your left.

Also, Roland Cziurlok was a big fan of crossovers, as I recall, and that dude had one of the sickest chests ever.

Finally, if I've learned one thing in the last 18 years that I'd say is of the utmost importance to impart upon other people, it's that you should give no fucking thought whatsoever to what other people are doing, and even less thought to what they think of what you're doing. Without question, that sounds pompous and solipsistic, but it's fucking true. People, by and large, go out of their fucking way to suck, and try hard to make you suck with them. They'll fight you tooth and nail on the latter, as they resent the shit out of the fact that you excel, as it sets the bar that much higher and reminds them of their myriad inadequacies. Thus, insofar as lifting goes, ignore everyone around you and do what you want. It's a near certainty that if they object it's out of fear or jealousy or a combination thereof, and it's even more likely that they've got no fucking clue what they're doing anyway. In short- fuck everyone. Fight hard, fuck hard, study hard, play hard, lift hard, and generally be hard. Enjoy yourself, and be awesome. Everything else is bullshit.

Shit You've Probably Never Tried- The Trap Bar Carry

2011-10-02T17:37:00.000-07:00

In the past, I've looked at the trap bar mostly as an annoyance in the gym. Kids who use them are typically weak as shit, leave the bar wherever the fuck they want and rarely unload the two to four massive plates they load on it. Additionally, the vast majority of trap bars can't hold enough weight to make their use worthwhile, so they've simply been a speedbump to my workouts because they're in the fucking way. I have, however, fallen in love with precisely one exercise that can be done with a trap bar in a variety of ways, and it rules harder than than Vlad the Impaler in his forest of impaled bums- the Trap Bar Carry.

Jesus tittyfucking Christ.

Unlike the methodology espoused by Stuart McRobert, which encourages people to deadlift on the trap bar because they're great for people too weak to actually lift weights (like the super tactical toughguy pictured above), my thought process on the trap bar goes like this- if you're strong, you're likely too strong for most trap bars. In spite of this fact, there's got to be some way to make the giant hunk of metal darkening the corner of your gym and providing spiders with an ideal breeding ground useful. So, when bored and sick of doing the same basic shit day in and day out 8 to 12 times a week for the last few months, I loaded that fucker up and started walking around with it, and I discovered something- it was a hell of a lot of fun.

We're not talking orgy with midgets, porn stars, midget porn stars, and a circus freaks fun, but it was a damn sight more fun than doing whatever the hell it is most people do in the gym.

If only.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who's come to the conclusion that this is the only truly useful purpose for Stuart McRobert's masterbatory fantasy about a 400 lb deadlift. Author Craig Weller recommends these as well, though I think he'd take issue with my form- he recommends doing these considerably lighter than I do (doesn't everyone?), and with extremely strict form. It's just about the most primitive movement one could imagine, however, so primitive form works for me. Bob Peoples in all of his round-backed glory would agree with me, I believe, so fuck Craig Weller. Actually, Weller's article is pretty good- I stumbled across it while looking for Dan John's article on the same topic, and he's the only other person who seems to have written about the trap bar walk. Unlike Weller, I actually loaded the thing with weights, but he's got some great ideas for other loaded carries if you're inclined to use small weights and wear Vibrams, such as:

This saddens me.

The Underwater Rock Carry- "Take your rock, carry it as far as you can into the water from the beach, and then sprint with it under water while your partner swims on the surface. Once you’re out of oxygen, come up to the surface and switch out with your partner. Alternate in this fashion until you reach a set distance, like a depth of water you no longer feel like diving to, and then return."

How else would you carry a yak carcass up a mountain?

Sherpa Skull Carry-"While backpacking in Nepal, I spent quite a bit of time with the Himalayan Sherpas, and they have an interesting means of carrying double (and sometimes more) their bodyweight up the mountain. Their packs are so heavy that they couldn’t use standard shoulder straps because the weight would pull them over backward. Instead, they run a strap from the bottom of their pack up that loops around the head, and allows them to carry the brunt of the weight using the skull and neck. This helps them to keep the weight centered well enough forward to balance and maintain a steady pace up the mountain."

Brutal as those suggestions are, they're about as practical as wearing a cotton candy condom at an all-anal gangbang in Swaziland. Instead, I suggest doing one of the following, which are my favorite ways to do trap bar carries:

Beast Mode- Load the bar with an appreciable percentage of your one rep max on the deadlift. I ended up working up to 600 and doing a number of these. I'd venture to guess my 1rm on the trap bar deadlift is at or around 650-660, so 600 was about 90% of my 1RM. Walk as far as you can with it, which is probably not going to be all that far. Rest and repeat until you feel like you might shit out your guts- this was about 90 minutes for me, including all of my lighter, longer distance reps.

Rocky Mode- If you read my Rocky vs. Clubber Lang blog, you'll know I rarely train with a partner. This exercise, however, is an exception. Doing this exercise with a lighter weight than you would for beast mode and a partner lets you do a bit of metabolic conditioning, as you can do carries for distance and rest only the amount of time it takes for your partner to go the distance, as it were. If you happen to have a partner not quite on the same superhuman level as yourself, it's no skin off your upper lip- just adapt and overcome. The guy with whom I've done these in my gym can get across the gym, Beast mode style, with 315. As such, I carry the bar in a 3:1 to 4:1 ratio in terms of gym lengths to his- I'll go down and back twice to his single trip. This gives him an opportunity to recover and me the opportunity to get in a decent amount of time under tension.

"So why do them?", you might be asking yourself. If "because they're awesome isn't compelling enough for you, perhaps this is: Weighted carries like the trap bar deadlift carry can have a profound carryover effect to your deadlift, due in large part to the fact that the deadlift is a show movement that doesn't rely on a stretch reflex (unlike the squat). According to Mike Tuscherer, isometrics are excellent for this sort of an exercise, and given the fact that the carry portion of this movement is, for all intents and purposes, an isometric, it should help your deadlift considerably.(Tuscherer 34) The fact that it combines a variety of movements just adds icing to this awesome cake.

Weighted carries also have the benefit of increasing the amount of muscular tension over your entire body, the quality of which "determines how big and strong you can become", according to Charles Poliquin. (Poliquin 47) Lifting weights at 90% or more of your 1RM results in the maximum hypertrophy in Type IIb muscle fibers, as does slowing down the tempo of your repetitions, both of which occurs when you're doing an exercise along the lines of a weighted carry with extremely heavy weights. (Poliquin 48-50) According to Dan John, loaded carries will allow you to "build more muscle faster, drop fat quicker, and kick any ass on any field of play" and recommends doing them three times per week.

Seems to be working for me- this was last Saturday at 196 lbs.

In short, trap bar carries are awesome, and you should start working them into your workouts, stat.

Sources:

Bondarchuk, Anatoliy. Transfer of Training In Sports. Michigan: Ultimate Athlete Concepts, 2007.

John, Dan. The Secret of Loaded Carries. http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/the_secret_of_loaded_carries

Tuscherer, Mike. The Reactive Training Manual.
Weller, Craig. Weighted Carries for Size and Strength. http://www.wannabebig.com/training/weighted-carries-for-size-and-strength/

Baddest Motherfuckers Ever, For My Amusement- Danny "The Ginger Badass" Bonaduce

2011-09-27T17:29:00.000-07:00

How many people do you know who are former child mega-stars, bang Playboy models, have fought pro mma fighters and boxers, are best friends with A.C. Slater, has trained at the Incredible Hulk's house, wrestled professionally, is a restaurateur, gym owner, and radio disc jockey, and who smashed someone's face in at an awards show without getting arrested, all while being pretty well fucking jacked for no reason? Let me answer that for you- one. Danny "The Ginger Badass" Bonaduce.

Not bad for a 52 year old who was fat as shit at 43.

I realize that half of you are about to shit your pants over the fact that Bonaduce's not a strength athlete, but that half of my audience can go ahead and fuck themselves, as Bonaduce is the real deal. In addition to being progressively more awesome as he gets older, I can virtually guarantee that not only does the Ginger Badass look better than you naked, he more than likely would whip your ass silly and then fuck it just for shits and giggles, because that's the kind of guy he is. Still need convincing?

For the uninitiated among you, the guy who just broke that poofter's face is also one of the most accomplished fictional bass players of all time, as Bonaduce was the bass player in the Partridge Family. After that show got canned, young Bonaduce went on a decades-long coke and crack bender, beat the living shit out of a transsexual prostitute and landed himself in rehab. As is common, Bonaduce got fat after kicking his coke habit and becoming a morning show dj. Unlike most morning show guys, Bonaduce was shamed into getting in shape after he was signed to work with none other than Mr. A.C. Slater of "Saved By the Bell" fame.

... clearly, not afraid to fuck someone up or fuck someone in front of a live audience.

Soon after he resolved to get his ass in shape, Bonaduce went fucking bananas lifting twice a day. He dropped 50 lbs of bodyweight and got jacked at the same time, hitting the gym twice a day and doing a ridiculous amount of cardio. As Dr. Atkins once stated, to become fat as shit you've done "something 'unbalanced'. To get yourself back to sleek, lithe, firm and fantastic, you honestly can't do a balanced approach." (John) The Ginger Badass must've taken this shit to heart, because in his own words,

"I'm obsessed with lifting and getting more cut up. I have a gym at work, at home and here. [Bonaduce is part owner of Groove Fitness in Hollywood.] I train from 3:30-4:30 a.m. every day. Then I meet my trainer at 11 a.m. almost every morning. And I often run home from work, which is 8 miles."(M&F)

Tireless in his pursuit of getting ever more ripped, Bonaduce has tried every goddamned thing under the sun- he's lifted with Lou Ferrigno many times, trained with the aforementioned prettyboy Mario Lopez, sparred with Chuck Liddell and Sugar Ray Leonard, and even does "Wii Zumba, the Michael Jackson dance game, and Dance Dance Revolution for cardio."(BB.com) Amusingly, Bonaduce's been knocked out by the latter three people I mentioned in sparring, and had the shit kicked out of him on the radio by Tito Ortiz as a goof.

As if that shit wasn't enough, Bonaduce upped the insanity by fighting other celebs in charity boxing matches, and is undefeated in his ass-whippings of the Reverend Bob Levy, fellow child stars Donny Osmond and Barry Williams, and fought attorney Robert Shapiro and former baseball star Jose Canseco to draws. Thereafter he dipped his toe into the muddy puddle of pro wrestling, where he's 1-1 against former child star Christopher Knight and actual pro wrestler Eric Young (who has 6 inches and 75 lbs on the the Ginger Badass). Awesome? I'd say so. He also benches over double his bodyweight (though he never trains legs), which is a feat few of the people who're undoubtedly going to talk shit on this blog can match.

Did I mention he's the grand world champion of assholes, smokes like a fucking chimney, holds three black belts, and has banged a chick so hot you'd probably suffer first degree burns if you stood next to her? Check this shit out:

Q Seems like you're also obsessed with smoking. Any plans to quit?

A No. I've quit so many other things! I have a stair-stepper at home with an ashtray welded to it, and my gym has a smoking section.

Q So it's safe to say you're not working out for your health?
A I have the desire to appear healthy. I want somebody to go, "Nice ass," not "Nice lungs." I have mirrors everywhere in my house, and I walk around with no shirt on constantly. I keep resistance bands in my car, and if I'm going into a situation in which I haven't met the people, I'll take the heaviest band out, lay my car seat back, put my feet up on the dashboard and curl until the veins pop up. If someone came out and saw it I'd explain, "I have this cool vein and I wanted all the secretaries to see it."

Bonaduce's ex. Dear Eight Pound, Six Ounce, Newborn Baby Jesus, in your golden, fleece diapers, with your curled-up, fat, balled-up little fists pawin' at the air...

If you're curious as to how he pulled it off, Bonaduce trains six days a week, rotating through rep ranges and workout structures as he sees fit. "Some weeks it's push-pull, some weeks it's max reps, some weeks its max weight, and always cardio and abs." (BB.com) He's also a big fan of training opposing muscle groups together, and does cardio everyday, as he's obsessed with never getting fat again. Not a bad obsession, frankly. His diet's pretty standard fare (save for the power bar) and generally looks like this:

Breakfast:
Gold Standard Whey Protein drink
Snack:
Power Bar
Lunch:
Skinless Chicken Breast or Fish, serving size no bigger than my hand
Another Healthy Snack
Dinner:
Lean Chicken or Tuna Steak and once or twice a week, a big fat juicy hunk of Red Meat

All meals supplemented with the appropriate amount of carbs/protein ratio, rice, brussel sprouts, etc., in addition to amino acids and whatever thermogenics on which he can lay hands. (BB.com)

In short, if a former crackhead child star can go from 43% bodyfat to 3%, bang a gang of hot bitches, and compete in a shitload of combat sports after the age of 45, anyone can do it. The key, it seems, is to be complete fucking insane.

Get insane.

Sources:
Body Of Work: An Interview With Danny Bonaduce. odybuilding.com. http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/body-of-work-interview-with-danny-bonaduce.html
Danny Bonaduce. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Bonaduce#Boxing
Detz, Jeanine. Little big guy. Muscle and Fitness. 9/2005. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0801/is_9_66/ai_n14922597/
Not It. Itthing.com. 10 Child Stars who Grew Up To Be Morons. http://itthing.com/10-child-stars-who-grew-up-to-be-morons
John, Dan. 40 Years of Insight, Part 1. http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/40_years_of_insight_part_1

Shit You've Probably Never Tried- The Overhead Walk

2011-09-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

To begin, I hold no illusions that this is in any way a novel exercise. I'm sure a quick google search will reveal that 198,734,867 other videos detailing the manner in which other people do this. I don't care how or why they do it, however, and figure you guys might like another take on how this exercise could be done.[ed.- After initially writing that, I actually bothered to look, and the results were hilarious.] Before I get into the hows, let's deal with the wherefores.

For those of you who are foreign, non-native English speakers, or possibly retarded, "wherefore" doesn't mean "where"- it means "why". The misuse of this word annoys the tits right off me, so stop doing it.

So, the wherefore for the Overhead Walk- it will probably boil down to boredom and curiosity. I started doing them initially because my old roommate and I started taking a bunch of plates and a barbell to the park on Saturdays, grilling a shitload of steak, drinking a tremendous amount of liquor, and lifting for a few hours. We ended up getting bored with cleans and snatches and the like, so one of us decided to snatch 135 and walk with it as far as they could. When they ditched it, the other one of use would yank it out of the ground (where it would be deeply embedded) and then walk as far as they could. We'd do this for an extraordinary period of time, and left us sore as a motherfucker the next day. Given a preference, that's how I'd still do it, outdoors, over uneven ground, drunk, and to death, but I lack access to both a masochistic training partner and barbells and plates I can take outdoors, I'm forced to do it inside by myself (as will happen occasionally to the best of us). Which means I go as heavy as I possibly can, because fuck cardio anyway.

For those of you who want a little more reason for the things you do in the gym, you'd do well to remember that many bodybuilding pontificators and some sports scientists (among them Dr., Charles Staley), emphasize the time during which one's muscles are under tension as a critical part of program design. Clearly, as I spend the vast majority of my considerable time in the gym lifting as violently and briefly as possible, this is not a key component of my training. I do, however, believe that it is a fairly good indicator of training volume, and thus should probably not be completely ignored. This type of exercise will drastically increase your time under tension, as it's a sort of combination static-hold, microrep partials, and endurance exercise all rolled into one gigantic bag of awesome.

As to the how, it's fairly simple- you clean and press or jerk, or snatch, a weight overhead and then walk with it until you don't feel like it any longer or cannot. I enjoy using a variety of rep ranges, weights, and techniques for this type of exercise because mixing this sort of thing into a workout is all about spicing shit up a bit. Like just about every other facet of training, this is hardly rocket science- just figure out what you like and do it. A lot of it.

As to the when, Overhead Walks are a nice way to mix it up, give you something to do on a day you want to train but have no idea what you want to do, or are spending the day in the park grilling, drinking, and lifting. I do them very infrequently (like, once a year), but I always enjoy them when I do them. If I did them more often, I'm certain I'd have no problem going heavier with them, but I'm far too focused on other lifts right now to get sidetracked with this silliness. For those of you who are already winding up a nice cry about how I walk around with more weight than you overhead press and you could never do this and blah di fucking blah blah- suck it the fuck up and press more. When you're pressing, make sure you lock out each rep and hold it. If you do that, walking around with heavy weights overhead's easy as fucking on a dead bear.

SHAKE THAT BEAR.

To Cut Or Not To Cut #3- The End

2011-09-18T21:26:00.000-07:00

Remember, lean doesn't mean weak.

For starters, let's back it up a second- let's take it back to two days out. I left out something of note for Wednesday which interests the shit out of me, but happened to forget to include in the last installment. Beginning Wednesday morning, no matter what diet you've been following, cut out starchy carbohydrates and red meat. Both starch and the creatine in the red meat will cause you to hold water (3g of water per gram of glucose or creatine).(Ferriss, How To Lose)

Having gotten that out of the way, let's move onto the day before the weigh in. Friday morning, you should begin limiting your liquids to 1/3 of what you normally drink, and it should consist of naught but purified or distilled water. Your consumption of food and water will end with a light meal on Friday evening around 5, and that's when your water consumption for the day will likely end. Prior to hitting the hay, however, you should weigh yourself to see where you stand. Time Ferriss recommends using 2 scales twice each, and then averaging the results. Additionally, he recommends consuming enough water that you're two to three pounds off from your desired weight before you hit the hay if you're close or under, and I can personally attest to the fact that going to sleep with horrible dry mouth makes for a terrible night's sleep.

Unless you're sleeping next to that, in which case you might have trouble getting your eyes closed.

Should you find yourself more than two or three pounds away from the promised land, you're not going to run. In fact, I strongly advise against doing cardio in a "sauna suit" for those of you who are familiar with them. It'll leave your legs weak as shit, and it's far less effective than the method about which I'm about to tell you. Additionally, you do not want to do this shit the day before your weigh-in- this is strictly day-of shit. You need to limit the time you spend in a dehydrated state, as dehydration drastically impairs your performance. According to one study, even mild weight loss from sweating (1-2% of pre-exercise weight) resulted in a significant degradation in performance.(Armstrong) More extreme dehydration can reduce your endurance by about 55% (Sawka), and depending which of four separate studies you consult, can reduce maximal strength by up to 11%.(Maughan) Additionally, Ferriss chimed in with a statistic of his own (unfortunately uncited, but I believe it's Bosco et al (1968)), that dehydrating a muscle by 3% can result in a loss of 10% of contractile strength and an 8% loss of speed.(How To Lose) For those of you posting numbers that aren't world-changing, this means that dehydration can be the difference between first and last in a meet, and as such, you'll want to be at your weigh-in weight for as little time as humanly possible.

Though liquor is a diuretic, this is only ideal when the meet's either a ways off or in the past.

To get to that weigh in weight, however, you're going to use one of two things- hot baths or steam rooms. Ferriss is a huge fan of the former, as a hot bath has 100% humidity, and the "higher the humidity, the less the evaporation, and the more your body must sweat to cool core body temperature."(How to Lose) For this you should use a bath containing water "that does not burn the hand but causes pain if the hand is moved underwater."(How to Lose) For anyone who's been in an overly-heated jacuzzi, this can generally be a godawful experience. Never fear, however, as Matt Kroczaleski has the solution for you- use a combination of hot bath and steam bath, in thirty minute intervals. According to Matt:

I start by entering a bath with the water as hot as I can get it without scalding myself, and I submerse my entire body except for my mouth and nose. I prefer the hot bath because it facilitates raising my body temperature as fast as possible and being submersed in the water is somewhat more comfortable (at least for me) than sitting in a steam room, especially a dry heat type of sauna. After fifteen minutes, I get out of the bath. I leave the shower running though on pure hot to maintain the steam and heat in the room. I don’t know what the precise temperature gets up to, but it’s typically as hot as any steam sauna I’ve been in. Next, I either sit or stand in the steam for another fifteen minutes. At the 30-minute mark (bath and steam time combined), I exit the bathroom for five minutes. This allows me a break both physically and mentally and lets my core body temperature return to a more normal level. I’ll feel much better physically. After five minutes in the cool room, I return to the hot bath (I drain and refill the water each cycle to keep the water as hot as possible) and begin the process again. (Kroczaleski)

To make the steam room he mentions, Kroc has a pretty slick method- he just fills the tub by running the shower on full hot with a towel stuffed in the crack under the bathroom door. Using this method, you'll just keep weighing yourself with your two scales until you're there. To aid your loss at this time, you can use two over-the counter supplements- Dandelion Root and Caffeine. The two work synergistically to help you shed water, and taken at the prescribed doses shouldn't have much of a negative impact on your helth, especially since dandelion root is potassium sparing, in addition to being high in Vitamin A and Choline. Ferriss recommends 250-500 mg 3 times daily (preferably with food) of the Dandelion and 200-400 mg 2-3 times per day of the caffeine, and suggests they should be taken with a potassium supplement, though if you've taken my advice on Mrs. Dash, you're getting more than enough potassium. For my last meet, I used a supplement called Cranker 2, which seemed to work pretty well, although it only contained caffeine of the aforementioned ingredients. Instead of the Dandelion Root, it includes a variety of other herbs, so if you try that, it might not hurt to throw some Dandelion in on top.

Electroshock therapy for your nipples and tongue is unnecessary, and might be best reserved for the post-win orgy than the pre-weigh-in prep.

Obviously, if you're doing a same-day weigh in, this shit is not for you. You could use some of these methods, but given the research I cited above, you might be too fucking drained, or lack the necessary rehydration time, to make hard cut feasible. As such, I'd experiment with a few different cuts and test your strength thereafter. More than a few pounds, however, is likely going to be way too much for you to recover.

Perhaps a better way to commence the carbohydrate consumption.

Rehydration and replenishment is even more important than the dehydration phase. Yes, that should be an "is", as the two words are parts of a singular hole- there are some grammar nazis on Reddit who were going to get all up in my shit if I didn't make that apparent. The first thing you're going to want to do is rehydrate- eating will come later. For this, Kroc uses Gatoraide diluted 1:1 with water, but Ferriss recommends straight Pedialyte instead. "Commercially available sports drinks" he contends, "and so called 'replacement fluids' contain much too high a concentration of sugars (high fructose, dextrose, glucose, sucrose, and maltodextrin) or other solutes to move efficiently from your stomach to the primary site of absorption in the small intestine."(Hot to Lose) The key at this point is to achieve a state of hyperhydration, which differs considerably from what most housewives will tell you when they see you chugging water and tell you that "too much water can kill you." This is true, but that condition is called hyponatremia (water intoxication), is caused by a sodium imbalance rather than a surfeit of water, and is characterized by "nausea and vomiting, headache, confusion, lethargy, fatigue, appetite loss, restlessness and irritability, muscle weakness, spasms, or cramps, seizures, and decreased consciousness or coma."(Wikipedia) Hyperhydration, on the other hand, is awesome, as it can induce improve power output and oxygen delivery. Endurance athletes use hyperhydration for this reason, and the way to ensure that you end up with the one rather than the other is to consume 75mg of sodium per 8oz of water. Additionally, Tim Ferriss and Christian Thibaudeau recommend consuming hand moisturizer to increase the amount of water you hold intra-muscularly. Before you start rummaging through your nightstand and eating your onanism lube, ensure that it's made of glyerol, which will be called glycerine on the cover label. As the majority of you likely roll with something more along the lines of Lubriderm, your stash should remain at home, uneaten. Glycerol has been shown to improve rates of hydration, and even if you don't give a shit about looking "full", "pumped", or "shredded", you should consider including .543g/lb LBM of glycerol and .3984 fluid ounces/lb. LBM.(Ferriss)

Ninety minutes to two hours after you've chugged a gallon of glycerol-infused Pedialyte, you've got two options. Ferriss recommends using the time-tested endurance ratio of protein to carbs (4:1)- this is probably most easily accomplished with some Waxy Maize and a blended protein (not whey, as you don't want to go catabolic during your meet). Throw on top of that 100mg of ALA per 75 lbs of bodyweight and 50 mcg of chromium polynicontinate (not picolinate) to increase your insulin sensitivity, in addition to a 15 minutes soak in an Epsom salt bath for magnesium supplementation and muscular reaction, and you're off to the races. Ferriss, by the way, mentions that you can absorb a tremendous amount of water through the skin even in a shower, demonstrating that it is after the weigh-in that you should shower or bathe, rather than before.(How To Lose) Kroc, on the other hand, eats a real-food meal as soon as possible, and eats as much as he can possibly fit down his gullet. He also recommends continuing to drink throughout the day, which I would think goes without saying if I didn't see so many people do so much stupid shit every day I leave the house.

I was looking for a picture of some hot hippie broads with the intention of saying that they needn't ever shower and I will still smash the fucking granny out of that, and found this picture of Dirt Diva, where's she's hilariously referred to as a hippie by someone who cannot spell a simple six letter word.

... and that's how it's done, motherfuckers. If you'd like to read about how I did it before doing any research of any kind, check it out here. Expect the posts to come fast and furious over the next couple of weeks, as I have been slacking.

Sources:
Armstrong LE, Costill DL & Fink WJ (1985): Influence of diuretic-induced dehydration on competitive running performance. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 17, 456–461.
Ferriss, Tim. How to lose 30 pounds in 24 hours: The definitive guide to cutting weight. The Blog of Tim Ferriss. http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/01/18/how-to-cut-weight/
"Hyponatremia." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyponatremia#Symptoms
Kroczaleski, Matt. How to Cut Maximum Weight for Competitions with a 24-Hour Weigh In. http://www.elitefts.com/documents/cut_max_weight_for_comp.htm
Maughan RJ. (2003): Impact of mild dehydration on wellness and on exercise performance. Eur J Clin Nut. 57, Suppl 2, S19–S23.
Sawka MN & Pandolf KB (1990): Effects of body water loss on physiological function and exercise performance. In Perspectives in Exercise Science and Sports Medicine. Vol. 3, ed. CV Gisolfi & DR Lamb, pp 1–38. Misc: Indianapolis: Benchmark Press.
Thibaudeau, Christian, and Chris Shugart. Shredded In Six Days. http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_diet_mass/shredded_in_6_days
Wingo JE, Casa DJ, Berger EM, Dellis WO, Knight JC, McClung JM. nfluence of a Pre-Exercise Glycerol Hydration Beverage on Performance and Physiologic Function During Mountain-Bike Races in the Heat. J Athl Train. 2004 Jun;39(2):169-175.

To Cut Or Not To Cut #2- Cutting Like You Listen To Texas Is The Reason

2011-09-06T20:21:00.000-07:00

So, you've decided to do the meet and now you need to make weight, eh? If you're one of the half dozen people who've emailed me that these blogs come just at the "right time" because you've got a meet this month, you're probably fucked. Proper fucked. Done correctly, weight cutting will require a decent amount of pre-competition experimentation to determine how your body will react, a shitload of dieting, and a hell of a lot of unpleasantness- there's a reason why cutting goes with emo music, as it fucking sucks. Allow me to explain:

While strength athletics don't generally require bodybuilder levels of leanness, anyone this side of Ray Charles can see a trend emerging amonth the dominant elite in powerlifting and strongman- they're fucking lean. Take a look at the guys who are dominating these days.Matt Kroczaleski, Derek Poundstone, Mariusz Pudzianowski, Konstantin Konstantinovs, and Stan Efferding are all shredded... I mean, fuck, even Phil Pfister's gotten lean in the last few years, and the world's strongest woman, Aneta Florczyk, is lean (and fucking hot). This means that before you even bother cutting water weight, you're going to need to drop some fat. I've outlined ways to do so here, here, and here, so you can check those out for some ideas. As anyone who is familiar with this blog knows, I'm a big fan of ketogenic diets and I think they're even better when making weight is an issue, as you get some idea of bodyweight when you're not holding water and will thus have a better idea of what's feasible for a weight class. My bodyweight fluctuates 5-15 pounds after a carb-up, so I'm especially keen on experimenting with a carb-free week, every now and again, just to know where I stand.

The chick on the left is 5 time World's Strongest Woman Aneta Florczyk- notice how she's actually pretty hot, and definitely not fat.

Though it's not necessary that you get ripped to the fucking bone to compete in strength sports, you might as well use a competition as an excuse to bring your abs out of hiding. They're likely not Jewish, so there's no reason for them to be treating your abdominal fat like's it the fucking attic and their name is Anne Frank. For those of you who want to remain fat, go read something else and try not to burn any calories doing so- I'd hate for you to develop vascularity or some other indication that a heart attack's not your idea of a normal Saturday afternoon.

Britney really wanted to drop ten pounds for her wedding day.

Skipping forward, crunch-time for a cut starts not a day or to out, but rather a week out. Assuming a Saturday meet 9Friday weigh-in), as they're by far and away the most common, your immediate weigh-in prep is going to begin the preceding Sunday. This will go like the standard glycogen supercompensation week, so no matter what diet you had been following, you're going to be low-carbing the shit out of this week like your last name was Atkins and you're a sorostitute the week before her wedding, only without the "fatloss" gangbangs. Thus, you're going to avoid carbs like Robert Downey, Jr. used to avoid rehab and chug water all the live-long day Sunday through Wednesday. During this time, I recommend keeping your carbs absolutely under 50 grams a day and preferably under 30 grams a day. Remember that you hold 3 grams of water for every gram of carbohydrates (Thibaudeau and Shugart). And try to do yourself a favor by letting your body shed water as easily as possible. Before you ask, that includes post-workout carbs and carbs from shakes, as well. As you'll find later, sugar alcohols will also make you hold water, so it's also advisable to skip protein bars.

From the proceeding, if you aren't under the impression that all you'll be eating this week is meat, you are dumber than you look. Unfortunately for you and your taste buds however, you're going to be avoiding sodium with almost the same cock-fueled determination as the aforementioned sorostitite avoids carbs. This means that Mrs. Dash is about to become your number one fuckbuddy - she'll take good care of you and the additional potassium should reduce any cramping you might get while shedding water. Additionally, using Mrs. Dash should also fight feelings of hunger that would otherwise result from your cut if it included salt as the increased salivation and gastric acidity that comes from eating salt can make you hungry as shit (Dukan 35).

Another critical component of this week will be the inclusion of 2-3 gallons of water per day in your diet. Your pansy-ass sensitive teeth can get fucked - this shit should be ice-cold. Cold water is an ultra-easy way to burn calories as it takes 60 calories to raise the temperature of 39.2 degree water (that's Fahrenheit, fuck your Celsius nonsense) to body temperature (Dukan 118). Additionally, cold bath immersion, application of cold packs, and the consumption of cold liquids all reduce core body temperature, which will necessitate an increase in metabolic rate to compensate and result in additional fat loss (Feriss 142). If your teeth bother you when you drink cold shit, throw on Invasion USA and watch it with your teeth bared for a half hour. They'll either toughen the fuck up or you will - either way, it's time to chug some fucking water.

Tim Feriss actually has some really interesting stuff in his book Four Hour Body about using cold application for fat loss, and here are a couple of points he made in that regard:

1. Short-term cold exposure (30 minutes) in humans leads to fatty acid release to provide fuel
for heat production through shivering. This same shivering could be suffcient to recruit GLUT-4
to the surface of muscle cells, contributing to increased lean muscle gain.
2. Even at shorter durations, cold exposure with shivering could increase adiponectin levels and
glucose uptake by muscle tissue. This effect could persist long after the cold exposure ends.
3. In the absence of shivering, it is still possible to capitalize on “fat-burning fat” through the
stimulation of BAT thermogenesis. Curiously, even without shivering, there are small but
unaccounted increases in lean muscle tissue when comparing underwater (superior) vs. land-
based exercise.
4. Cold water improves immunity. Acute cold exposure has immuno-stimulating effects, and
preheating with physical exercise or a warm shower can enhance this response. Increases in
levels of circulating norepinephrine may account for this.
5. Not germane to fat-loss, but another reason to use cold exposure: cold showers are an
effective treatment for depression. One study used showers at 68°F for two to three minutes,
preceded by a five-minute gradual adaptation to make the procedure less shocking. (Feriss 142)

So, by this point, we're one day out from the weigh in. In the next blog, I'll cover how to manipulate water for a weigh in both the day before and the day of the weigh in, and how to eat and drink after weigh ins to maximize your performance and avoid dying (which can result from a hard weight cut, as Andreas Munzer showed us a few years back).

He was, by all accounts, an exceptional-looking corpse.

Sources:

Dukan, Pierre. The Dukan Diet.

Ferriss, Timothy. The Four Hour Body.

Thibaudeau, Christian, and Chris Shugart. Shredded In Six Days. http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_diet_mass/shredded_in_6_days