30 June 2009
*Get Fucking Motivated! Randomness, Volume 2.
Pray about it. I don't mean that you should fall to your fucking knees in the middle of the gym, weeping and wailing and acting like a fucking general asshole, but just think a silent prayer to whatever gods of your ancestors you might want to beseech. In my opinion, if you're head's in the wrong place, this sort of thing is a good idea, as at the very least, it gets you focussed. You might not get any magical boost in power from a fantastical source, but you will get your head right before a big lift.
I personally don't recommend Yahweh for this job- he's pretty much the patron saint of skinny martyrs and slaves. If that offends you, suck it up- it's the truth. I'm of the opinion you should get a little more old school in your prayers, and think back to when big, brutal motherfuckers roamed the Earth seeking good old fashioned adventures chock full of brigandage, with the rapine and pillaging and the beheadings. making the streets run red with rivers of Ron Burgundy's blood. That sort of thing. If you're of Jewish descent though, and you really need the old Semitic god of Thunder, salt pillars, and spite on your side, you might want to read up on the Old Testament and find the appropriate passages.
For the rest of you, I suggest picking a god of your heritage and giving him or her big ups. Why? I think it activates some primal part of your brain, the kind of brain that doesn't give a fuck about helping old ladies across the street, but just wants to break shit and ruin lives.
Some suggestions:
Norse/Germanic:
Tyr- The god of single combat, and pretty much the hardest person of Germanic blood ever to walk the Earth, this motherfucker is the MAN for psyching up for lifts. ChAoS&PAIN approved, right here. As he had one hand bitten off by a giant wolf in an effort to save the Earth, maybe a good choice for unilateral lifts...
Thor- Norse god of thunder, this badass slab of Germanic muscle is generally acknowledged as a true hardass, and would be a great patron god of GPP work with the sledge, since he's known to slay motherfuckers with a bigass hammer.
Freya- Goddess of love, sex, war, and beauty, she's important to pretty much everything that involves testosterone.
Japanese:
Hachiman- The Japanese god of war, this motherfucker brooks no shit from anyone. If there was ever a Japanese person capable of squatting a house WHILE disemboweling his mother-in-law for running her mouth, it's him.
Hindu:
Shiva- It gets no better than Shiva, since he is the destroyer of worlds. Use his power to destroy gym records.
Russian:
Perun- The head of the Slavic pantheon, Perun is pretty much a combination of Tyr and Thor, only he carries a big assed axe and crushes serfs under his boots.
Aztec:
Camaxtli/ Mixcoatl- The Aztec gods of war and hunting. Kind of a pain in the ass to deal with in the gym, as they were generally given human sacrifices. Maybe a weak lifting partner? Up to you.
Xochipilli- Aztec god of competition and beauty, a perfect fit for bodybuilders in particular. If you love lucha libre and have a bug up your ass to be oily and in a thong in front of your friends, he's your man.
Celtic:
Dagda- This Irish fucker could kill 9 men at once with his magical club, and is the Celtic father god. Good times.
Morrigan/ Nemian- Irish fitness competitors should be psyched about this broad, as she is the Celtic goddess of war, and is associated with the Valkyries, who were badass bitches, not unlike The chicks in the movie D.O.A., hot and hard as nails.
Greek/ Roman:
Herecles- You know who he is. Recognize.
Enyo- A goddess of was thought to have been the mother or sister of Ares, usually pictured toplessx, covered in blood, and carrying weapons.
Hermes/ Mercury- Patron gods of greasy-haired athletes.
Apollo- Much like the god of lucha libre enthusiasts listed above, only for those who believe that Windex cures all ills, or those who call marinara sauce "gravy", Baldur was the god of beauty. the Frank Zane of the gods.
Next time- magic stones, and a bunch of other random shit. The key, however, is that motivation can pretty much come from anywhere... it's just all about finding out what works for you, and then using that to crush the opposition.
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Now playing: Recon - Revenge
via FoxyTunes
*If this doesn't fucking motivate you...
By the way, unless you want to watch me wander around for a minute, fast forward about 2/3 of the way. I have neither the interest, nor the software, to edit that thing, haha.
The moral of this video is that nothing, not even a botched tricep surgery and a cast and a shitload of demerol, should get in the way of a good squat workout. Or at least a heavy squat workout. Heavy, for all intents and purposes, equals good.
That is all.
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Now playing: rhinoceros - No One Will Hear You Scream
via FoxyTunes
25 June 2009
*Get Fucking Motivated! Randomness Vol. 1
My very first tattoo was an effort to utilize the religion of my ancestors to my benefit in the gym. My ancestors, if you couldn't guess by opening your eyes and looking at me, were Germanic, and they took no shit from anyone. Their religion centered upon this general theme as well, and though they didn't impose it upon the peoples who they conquered and slaughtered, because clearly they weren't man enough to worship Germanic Gods, they used it to their benefit daily. My tattoo? Two runes in elder Futhark that serve as a bindrune of my own creation consisting of runic wishes and talismen whose power I evoke my using incantations, and by wearing them. Now, that might serve as some wacky fucking witchcraft horseshit to you, but I'd imagine Benny Podda would be right there next to me ripping out your entrails and feeding them to your children as an object lesson if you found yourself making light of them. Why? They fucking work, for one, and they're fucking metal, for another.
Lemme tell you why. For one, I believe they work. Whether or not that is a placebo effect or not is immaterial, because the outcome is the same. For another, it's in my blood to believe in them and use them. The Norse and Germans utilized the Runes, which were discovered by Odin after impaling himself upside down with his own speak onto the Tree of Knowledge for them, and after ripping out one of his eyes as payment for other knowledge. the man was a fucking beast. Anyway, they were used from pre-Christian times until the 13th Century, were primarily used for divination and runestones, and consist of 24 letters (in Elder Futhark, one of three runic types).
My tat consists of two runes- Teiwaz (Tyr) and Uruz. Tyr is the creator god of the Germanic peoples, and warriors used to call upon him to grant them courage and righteousness to secure victory. He was a model of masculine honor and courage and his rune was the phallic symbol of procreative energy, so as you can imagine, this is the perfect badass to call upon in times of strength events or epic nights of fucking. In addition to invoking courage and brutal hardons, Tyr is connected with the astrological symbol Libra (my symbol), and the color red, like the blood of your enemies, or the color all over your shins after a set of deads so brutal your kids are left retarded and the bar has to be brushed with a brillo pad to disinfect it. In essence, my ideal fucking symbol.
Uruz signifies an aurochs, and for those of you who don't know, they were wild bulls that roamed Europe until the 17th Century and were described as "slightly smaller than an elephant" by Julius Caesar, not a man given to a great deal of hyperbole. Uruz means strength, courage, skill, and determination, and represents primal force.
Together, they fill you will all of the badassitude of ten Chuck Norrises, and that's why I put them on my wrist. When I feel like I need a little boost, I concentrate on those symbols, which I conveniently located on my wrist so I can see them while lifting, and it's on like fucking Donkey Kong.
That's just one of the many things I use to pump me up for a lift, and an idea of the kind of wacky shit you fuckers can use to get you psyched. In an effort to cover all of the bases, I've done a bunch of research on alternative methods to become a bonafide Godzilla of lifting, and shall share them with you in installments, as it's been brought to my attention that my blogs typically rival David Copperfield in length, and as I find Dickens to have been a verbose hack with no skill whatsoever at writing, I'll shoot for brevity and keep this one to half a million words. More to come, fuckers...
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Now playing: On Broken Wings - On Violins
18 June 2009
**Shit You've Never Tried Before #1- Steinborn Squats
Before I get into the whys and wherefores of how they're done, I'll tell you why I do them, why they were invented, and why I'm posting this blog, after so many fucking yahoos have blathered on about the exercise.
First, I'm posting this because some whiny bitch on Bodyspace was bemoaning the fact that he couldn't squat because he had no rack, and innumerable goofballs suggested such retarded shit as loading the barbell onto a dip station. Don't bother with any of that. Be a fucking man and do a Steinborn Squat.
These things were invented for the simple reason that no one had a squat rack back in the day, and Henry Steinborn was too fucking manly to be bothered with silly shit like leg presses, sissy squats, or leg extensions. Instead, he loaded up a fucking barbell and manned the goddamned thing up. Eventually, that fucker was Steinborn squatting 500 lbs, and being generally so fucking hard that babies wilted and died in his presence and women would involuntarily give up their virginity to him.
Why'd I start doing them? I read about them, and Steinborn, in an old school lifting book and they looked like someone who wanted to eat plate steel and shit pins would do. Thus, I began doing them, and my lifting partner decided to take pics to try out his new camera.
How to do them:
- Be a fucking badass.
- Load up a barbell with at least 135, and put on collars. tight collars. In fact, collars are the limiting factor here, which is why I'm only using 225 in the pics. 315 kept pushing the collars off, and I didn't have any good locking collars.
- Stand bar on one end.
- Lean into bar with legs bent.
- Set bar onto your traps, and bend legs further, pulling the bar into place on your back.
- By now, you should be in a full squat with the bar on your back. Start squatting.
- Reverse all the steps to get it back onto the ground.
- Rape and pillage.
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Now playing: I Declare War - Nworb Ydoc
via FoxyTunes
14 June 2009
Stallone is the FUCKING MAN
Some goofball called bullshit on Stallone's 62 years and tats in a recent blog, so I've linked this. He looks fucking awesome, and his ink is real.
If this guy can train like this and look like this, so can you.
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Now playing: Elysia - Sadist
via FoxyTunes
*It's All About the Little Things...
That's right. Singles, doubles, and triples, dead cold. I have no idea why anyone would practice differently than they play, and I know for a fact that you cannot use the same form you'd use on a heavy single for reps. It just doesn't work. Thus, my leg workouts will look a lot like my partial squats workout last Friday, and it went as follows.
Quarter Safety Bar Squats
1x1x235
1x1x415
1x1x595
1x1x685
1x1x775
1x1x865
12x1x955
I did the warmups as with only as much rest as it took to walk 5 feet to the water fountain, drink, and then load the next weight. My singles were done with rests ranging from 30 to 90 seconds. The entire thing was done within 40 minutes, all told, even with taking a leak, and my "warmup"
Oh, but YOU said YOU DON'T WARM UP.
I don't, really. What I do is repeatedly slather the highest-strength Target brand Muscle Rub or Tiger balm all over any sore bodyparts until they're on fire, and massage the living fuck out of them while I do so.
That's how you get it done, and how you get the fuck after it with a minimum of bullshitting. I have no time for stationary bikes, treadmills, or any other assorted repetitious nonsense, but I certainly have time for lifting hard and heavy, and for Icy Hot. Mmmmmmmm. Menthylated goodness.
Now, go squat. Pics of the wheels of a cripple should inspire you.
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Now playing: Suffokate - Souls And Lost Memories
via FoxyTunes
08 June 2009
Wanna-be Necromancer and Randomly Herbal Pharmacist
Today's odd herbal concoctions consist of remedies for joint health after severe trauma and one for depression. I personally don't get depressed, but tried one of the supps as a kind of herbal adderal and it worked, and then suggested it to someone who was coming off cymbalta and it worked like a fucking charm.
Fuck Joint Pain!
It sucks, and it's stupid, much like my current elbow injury.
So my 20 staples aside, what to do when faced with this sort of catastrophic bullshit? Take 3 grams of MSM, 1500 mg. of Vitamin C, a handful of a good digestive enzyme like Wobenzyme or Medizyme, and 5 grams of L-Glutamine, on an empty stomach, thrice daily. Swelling and pain go bye-bye, and doctors marvel at your striking resemblance to Wolverine.
Fuck Shitty Attention Spans!
As for the other, I've got two ways to go with it. First, combine a Biotest Spike with a serving of Happy Pills for a sort of herbal Adderal. The shit will wake you up and focus you nicely. Great for working on a massive tome of strength training and nutrition knowledge, ahem, or for just searching the internet for the perfect porn. Good stuff.
Fuck Depression!
The second way is to take a serving of Happy Pills in the morning, and a serving of SAMe at night, which will apparently work like Cymbalta, but without the inability to show emotion or generally get excited about anything at all, haha. Thus, if you find yourself bearing a stark resemblance to Weepy Smurf, get on top of this shit and you should be right as rain the next morning.
Until that day, fuckers.
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Now playing: Knights Of The Abyss - I Pledge Agrievance
via FoxyTunes
*Be Like Water
Bruce Lee trained the way I would train if I were a 140 lb Chinese speed freak with a penchant for beating up random passers by on the street. That is, he trained constantly, praising function over form, and all the while obsessing constantly about his level of bodyfat, haha. Though we hardly share similar training regimes, we do share one key opinion- people should be like water.
Obtuse, you say? Fuck no. Simply poetic, bitches. Lee applied the idea of being like water to switching betwen styles, wherein he'd "flow" easily through styles, using what worked and abandoning what didn't, so that he could maim motherfuckers and be home to bang his wife and do some situps. I, on the other hand, apply it to my lifting program, since people rarely want to fight me, and I have no wife to bang. As such, when I hit a roadblock in my training, I adapt the fucking program to reality, rather than blindly following a program and doing a workout because Sheiko/Rippetoe/whomever is the flavor of the week said to do so. Thus, if you're following the program I outlined last week, bear this in mind:
CHAOS AND PAIN IS ABOUT DOING WHAT YOU WANT.
And what I wanted to do on this day was hold a kettlebell and flex for a pic. Sue me.
It's the ultimate libertarian ideal of a program, and is not to be followed dogmatically. You can change out exercises or drop them altogether if you dislike them, or if you find yourself simply incapable of performing them one day. This will happen. Don't worry about it. This is why I don't recommend a moderate program of moderate volume with intricately designed poundage incremental progression. That shit is boring, and it's never once worked for me. Moreover, I'm not a goddamned robot, and if I'm having a day wherein I'm on fucking fire, I'm gonna up my poundages 10 lbs rather than 1.25 per side and have the fuck at it. Who wants to bother with 1.25 lb plates anyway? Seriously.
When, then, will it happen, my fuckers? Well, I'll tell you. During a squat routine. Most likely, after two weeks of squatting an insanely high volume of high poundages, you're gonna start cramping up, feel like your legs are tearing themselves to pieces, and want to generally bleed out of your eyes and die. Don't. Just cut back on the volume, or skip a leg session. No harm, no foul. This is how ChAoS and PAIN works.
You're not a fucking robot, so don't train like one.
PS- Wall-E sucks, and if you like that movie, you do too.
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Now playing: Misericordiam - Subjugate
via FoxyTunes
03 June 2009
*Dude, So and So Got SO Fucking Jacked For That Movie!
Ed Norton in American History X:
Shoulders and traps, and not a hell of a lot else.
Brad Pitt in Snatch and Troy:
Shoulders, abs, and traps.
Hugh Jackman in Wolverine- Nothing but shoulders and traps.
I think my point is made, but you can look to Ryan Reynolds in Blade Trinity for more evidence, or even the astonishing shit show that is Brandon Rausch in Superman.
Getting there is easy, and you might want to give it a try for the beach later this summer.
Diet:
This part is ultra simple. 5 day keto runs with a carbup on the sixth day. Nothing spectacular. Just keep your carbs at or below 5% of your total calories for 5 days, and on the 6th day, eat 60% carbs, 30% protein, and 10% fat. If you want to, and you're feeling good about your fat loss, have a cheat window on that day as well. Keep it to three hours, on the dot, but enjoy. Many times, I will keep my carbs low all day, as well as my fat, and then have the cheat window, follwed by a couple of shake-only meals.
The workout:
Day 1:
Push Jerks (behind the neck push presses with leg drive to get the bar moving) 10x3
Front Squats 10x3
Weighted Pullups 10x3
Keep the rest periods to 60 seconds, and use a 5 rep max weight for all sets.
Day 2:
20 minutes of nonstop bodyweight exercises. I like ab wheel, pullups, and dips.
Day 3:
High Pulls 6x5 (7RM weight, 60 sec rests)
Weighted Dips 6x5
Back Squats 1-2 sets of 3 minutes of straight squatting. I use 135lbs for this, usually.
Abs and calves
Day 4:
Light arm supersets, usually overhead tricep extensions & reverse curls, followed by cables. I keep my rests to 15-30 seconds. Then, I go with more ab wheel.
Day 5:
Back squats 15x1 (3 RM weight, 45-60 sec rests)
Strict Military Presses 4x8 (10 RM)
Shrugs 8x3, 6x1 (5RM and 3RM respectively)
Day 6:
Anything you want. Get in anything you think needs more work.
Day 7:
Rest.
After 6 weeks of this, you should be ready for the beach, given a reasonably decent starting point, haha
Go get you some Daniel Craig-type ass!
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Now playing: The Acacia Strain - JFC (Jesus Fucking Christ)
via FoxyTunes
01 June 2009
You Can Never Have Too Much Testosterone
- Handling a gun may increase test levels and aggression.
- The color red may increase test levels and improve athletic performance.
- Being alone in a room with a woman (even those you don't find attractive), causes mens' test levels to rise. I'd venture to guess this doesn't work with women whom you'd find so completely unfuckable as to cause you to consider them fodder for a trip to the camps, but apparently average looking women will do.
- Enjoyable music increases dopamine levels, and dopamine levels are positively correllated with testosterone levels, so it's possible that music you like (i.e. metal) will increase your test levels.
- Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Segal, and Van Damme movies raise your test levels. Take my fucking word for it.
WE ARE THE HUNTERS! We kill the weak so the strong survive. You can't stop the New World. Your filthy society will never get rid of people like us. It's breeding them! WE ARE THE FUTURE!