Iron Sport Gym. Best Fucking Gym in the Northeast. Go there.

1.  It's is run by Mr. Incredible, who also happens to be a WSM competitor and Master's Highland Games National Champion.

2.  The gym is ridiculously well equipped.  He's got every Atlas Stone you could want, logs, chains, bands, and tires up to ~1000 lbs.
3. He's surly enough to compete with Red from That 70s Show, only funnier, and he might eat your children.
4.  No one will say shit if you slap the fuck out of some retard curling in the squat rack and accidentally pee on him, so long as you use the retard to mop up the pee.
5.  For all of you WWE marks, all of the WWE guys lift here when they're in town.  I've met Tony Atlas, Mark Henry, Kane, and a bunch of other guys I cannot even name because I stopped watching WWE in 1986 (TNA is the shit though).  The WWE guys are cool as fuck, however.
6.  There are national-level competitors and champions in bodybuilding, strongman, and powerlifting who train there, and they're all cool as fuck.  If you want to learn anything at all about training, that's the place to do it.
7.  It's not Planet Fitness, Gold's, Bally's, or any of the other chromed, cookie cutter, horseshit gyms populating the planet and driving real fucking gyms out of business.

Tell me he doesn't look like Mr. Incredible

So why am I bringing this up?  I'm bringing it up because there's currently a fucking holocaust going on in the gym industry, and every one of you motherfuckers who lives within 45 minutes of a real gym but trains at a bullshit gym out of convenience is no better than a jailer at a fucking death camp- you suck.  In your short-sightedness, you're consciously bringing about a future in which your choices will be limited to shit and suck, and you'll have to buy all of your equipment yourself, or risk setting off the lunk alarm upon entering Planet Fitness every day.  Stop fucking sucking and join a real gym- don't let these gyms die off because you want to save a couple of bucks on gas.  Your physique and future generations will benefit greatly from the tiny bit of extra effort you have to expend training at a real gym.

A real gym

So, Paul, get your fucking ass over to Iron Sport and stop being a bitch, and take some people with you.  This fitness bullshit has got to be stopped.

Awesome gyms where I've trained:
Iron Sport Gym Philadelphia, PA
SC Barbell Columbia, SC
Top Gym Vienna, Austria
Powerhouse Gym San Diego, CA
Some shithole gym in the middle of campus at Renmin Daxue Beijin, China

The rest, like World's in Tucson and Black's in Cleveland, are fucking closed, because people are assholes and don't support real gyms.

Feel free to add to the list in the comments, and if you're not training at a good gym, find one.

Baddest Motherfuckers Ever #13 - Hermann "I Rock A Hitler Mustache" Goerner

How many people do you know a physical giants who easily lift weights unknown outside of the gyms he frequents, who has fought in a brutal war and lost an eye therein, and then rocked the fuck out of the strength world thereafter? I only know of one- the guy who has held the record for the one hand deadlift for 90 years- Hermann Goerner.

Hermann Goerner leapt out his mother's womb, replete with Hitler mustache and an impressive set of guns, in Leipzig, Germany in 1891, a year before newly unified Germany adopted a national flag. I don't know if Goerner was just filled with the "we're going to crush everything in our paths and fuck its sister" nationalistic mindset of Imperial Germany or if he was just the shit all in and of himself, or if he embodied a combination of the two characteristics, but however he did it, he ended up one insanely strong, ripped, and mustachioed motherfucker. [That was the best run-on sentence ever] Many pundits and historians of the field of strength sports consider Goerner to be the single strongest human to have ever lived, when tested across the broad spectrum of strength sports. Certainly, there are people who did and have since outlifted him in a variety of events, but at least one of his lifts has not since been duplicated, in spite of the crazy advances in pharmacology, nutrition, and training science.

Some of his myriad strength feats:

• Goerner could bust out a two hands power clean & push jerk with a solid globe barbell weighing 330 lbs in street clothes, dead cold, with no warmup, through his 20 year competitive career. Did I mention that the shaft of the non-revolving barbell happened to be 2⅜ inches in diameter?
• In 1920, two decades before testosterone was isolated, Goerner pulled a one-handed deadlift of 727lbs, with a hook grip- no strap. Fucking sick.
• That same year, he also rocked a 595.5lb dead using just 2 fingers of each hand.Again, in 1920, he pulled 793.75 using a double overhand hook grip.
• Leg pressing 24 men, total weight 4123lb, on a plank with the soles of his feet, 1921.His best deadlift was pulled off in a weird manner, but his ripped up 830 using a 441 lb barbell, then had two men stand on either side. He locked it out and held it for a couple of seconds though... when he was 42 years old.
• 275 lb power clean and strict press
• 363.5 clean and jerk -> The best part about this is that his form apparently blew shit, and he just forced it up with retard strength and hate. George Jowett insisted that if Goerner had decent form, he could have put up 440 in that lift.
• an easy one hand swing of 220.5 lbs
• a CROSSED-HAND snatch with 231.5. Give that a fucking shot sometime.
• 430 lb two hands anyhow
• 442.5 continental lift

As you can see from his pics, Goerner wasn't fat about it, either. He walked around in his prime at 6'1 and 264-293 in his prime. That's drug fucking free, bigger than most of the bodybuilders walking around today. Were he alive today, there'd be legions of slack-jawed pussied queued up online jabbering away about how he was juiced to the gills, that the shit he did was impossible for a natural lifter, that he was using fake plates, etc. You know- all of that good-natured, "here's why I suck at lifting and at life" pontification that pervades the interwebs in our era bereft of both testicular fortitude and any discernible sense of pride or honor. The shit-talking would have begun at age 14 for him, by the way, as he was pulling off one arm swings with 110 lbs at that age. In his prime, Goerner had:

• 20" neck
• 52.5" expanded chest
• 18.75" bicep
• 17" forearm
• 38" waist
• 27" thighs

So, how'd get get to this point? Surprisingly, it was from training just once a week, as he felt that training more than that would not leave him sufficient time for recovery.

HAHAHAHA. Just fucking with you. He trained 5 days a week at a gym that actually had a bar attached to it, and every lifter would place his personal beer stein on a shelf over the dumbbells so that he could go drinking after he finished. That's a fucking gym, right there. His workout is as follows (taken from Dezdo Ban's article "Goerner’s Training - Terry Todd/Charles Smith.

"Monday –
1.) Two Hands Snatch: After loosening up with calisthenics he would work up in 8 or 10 sets of between 1 and 3 reps from around 125 to 300 lbs. on a good day.
2.) Two Hands Clean & Jerk: Beginning with 220 lbs. he would work up slowly to near his limit, which was almost 400 lbs. It should be noted that he used a very shallow split style on both the snatch and the clean & jerk, barely dipping under the weight.
3.) Two Hands Continental to the Shoulders: When he felt really well, he would put more weight on the bar after his heaviest clean & jerks and do several single continental lifts. He did them by taking the weight from the floor to his belt, then boosting it from there up to his shoulders. His best was around 450 lbs.
4.) Two Hands Curl: Goerner usually did 4 or 5 sets of this, working up to a maximum super-strict rep or two with 220 lbs.
5.) If the weather permitted, he usually ended his sessions with either some slow running or some swimming.

Tuesday –
1.) Curl & Press with Kettlebells: Approximately 10 sets, going from 55 lbs. to 110 lbs. in 5½ lb. jumps (2½ kilo) jumps. These were done very strictly – usually only 1 or 2 reps with each arm, working up quickly to the 110 lb. bells.
2.) Clean & Military Press: Approximately 8 sets of 3 to 5 reps, going from 198 to 264 in 22 lb. jumps, doing 2 sets with each weight.
3.) One Hand Swing with Kettlebells: Approximately 8 sets (4 with each arm) beginning with 110 and sometimes going as high as 254 (using two kettlebells grasped in one hand).
4.) Deadlift: Usually 6 to 8 sets, never exceeding 3 reps. He usually began with 440 lbs. (200 kilos) and worked up to almost 800 lbs. Often he would do his lighter sets without a hook, or with only three fingers on each hand, or two, or only one.

Wednesday
Rest

Thursday
1.) Curl & Press with Kettlebells: Same as Tuesday.
2.) One Hand Snatch: Usually, he would work up slowly in this lift, going from 110 to 220 with each hand.
3.) One Hand Clean & Jerk: As in the snatch, he would do quite a few sets, always using low reps (usually just one), working up to a best of 265.
4.) One Hand Deadlift: Alternating hands, Goerner would work up gradually in poundage from around 220 to over 700 lbs. on his good days, doing 10 to 12 sets.
5.) Squats: During this period, he usually squatted once each week, never more, and he would begin with around 220 and work up to approximately 600. He never really concentrated on this lift. Again, he favored low reps, 3 to 5.

Friday
1.) Clean & Press: Same as Tuesday.
2.) One Hand Swing: Same as Tuesday.
3.) Muscle-Outs with Kettlebells: He usually did these with “light” (up to 65 lbs. in each hand) weights and higher repetitions as a shoulder developer.
4.) Grip Work: Often, Goerner would practice lifting heavy barbells and dumbells with one, two or three fingers.

Saturday
1.) Curl & Press with Kettlebells: Same as Tuesday.
2.) Two Hands Snatch: Same as Monday.
3.) Two Hands Clean & Jerk: Same as Monday.
4.) Front Squat: From time to time he did these, going up to a best of over 500 lbs.
5.) Two Hands Curl: Same as Monday.

Sunday
Rest.

Even after being kept in a concentration camp during the second world war, and at the age of 58, he weighed 253 lbs and had an 18' upper arm.  That's what happens when you spend your whole life lifting brutal poundages, eating meat, and generally rocking peoples' fucking socks all day long.

Partial Squats are the Shit

Well, apparently I can't count, and it was 525, but the depth was good and had I not been sweating my fucking cock off, that would have been far easier. As you can see in my progression over the last few months (the first two vids are from the first two weeks of Jan), dieting and doing a shitload of retardedly heavy partial squats, Paul Anderson style, has definitely paid dividends.

Additionally, I dropped the bodyweight days and started doing two a days for the last two months, doing the Bear in the morning and then a seriously heavy lift at night , or on light days (when I was too sore to do anything useful), doing 20-30 mins of arms, neck, and calves twice a day has paid off. Who says lifting 11 times a week will make you smaller and weaker? A pack of lazy, lying motherfuckers, obviously.

"There's no such thing as overtraining- just undereating and undersleeping." - Barbarian Brothers

Training The Same Lift Every Day- Cattle Call

This entry is more or less an entreaty to the lot of you-  send pics, workouts, and results of your week of doing the same lift every day.  I'll compile them into a comprehensive blog and bust that out next week, because I don't know about you people, but I'm interested to see what everyone got up to.  I personally benched 9 times last week, and shit turned out pretty fucking alright.  I already emailed Dray, since he lifted a rock for the week, pics of which I definitely want to see... but all of you should hook up some pics, testimonials, and whatever else you want, be it unibomber-style manifestos or a list of your favorite foods, and I'll start compiling that into a Hooligans Row section of the blog.

Send the info to chaos_and_pain@yahoo.com in the next week so I don't spend the rest of my fucking life waiting for it.

Anyone Can Get In On This Shit- Hooligan #2

There's a great deal of bullshit being bandied about online about how this style of lifting is only conducive to building strength, and that it's only useful to people taking a shitload of gear. Though I've got theoretical proof of the efficacy of my methodology, and a couple of examples of people who've succeeded using it, I've really, to this point, had not visual evidence of a regular guy having success with my style.

Until now.

Alex loves pork, and that fucking shirt, for some reason.

Some of you might recall the post on www.chaosandpain.com wherein someone describe his porcine holocaust diet, in which he keto dieted on virtually nothing but pork- it was written by a buddy of mine whom I met in Austria, and the kid is the shit. This dude went to a rave in Hungary one time, fell into a coma from consuming massive amounts of something, awoke a day later in a Hungarian hospital in the country, and proceeded to check himself out with only one shoe in a hospital robe and wander 10km through the countryside in a nation whose language was invented by aliens, until he got picked up by the rave promoter and driven back to the fest. He's the only person I know to score in the same percentile as myself on the GRE and GMAT in the verbal section (99 and 97%, respectively), and he's a German national (which kind of makes me wish I could have scored in the 100th percentile, haha). He's a guy who thinks that black pepper is actually spicy, and that lemon and lime taste exactly the same, which is fucking weird. Alex is not, however, a guy at whom you'd look and think that he's much in the way of a lifter. Instead, he was a cardio-obsessed, machines-only exerciser who I could not convince for love nor money to convert to free weights and drop the cardio until recently, when he realized that his slash-and-burn, conventional-wisdom-style workouts were not yielding shit in the way of results. He claimed that free weights wouldn't work for him due to the fact that he has a gimp arm- he was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, which cut off circulation to his left arm, which is now shorter, smaller, and weaker than his right arm. Additionally, this kid pretty much only ate carbs, ate fucking low cal as shit all week, and quite literally measured distance in how many beers it would take to walk from one place to another in Europe. Good times. As he's also one of the two or three smartest people I know, however, I found his adverse reaction to my training and diet to be... disconcerting, shall we say. In any event, Alex eventually saw the light.

Alex pulls more hot bitches than anyone, even with no muscle and a gut.

After checking out my blog Alex got hooked, as he shares my general hatred of all things modern, and wanted to try something different (and that might actually fucking work). As such, he's been killing it in the gym, and is spreading C&P throughout Deutschland, so they will hopefully be uber alles once again. The following questions were fired at him in an email, but if you guys are curious about other shit about him, what with him being accessible and all, I'm sure he'd be happy to answer them.

Alex and I were partners in every class we had in b-school, and were well known for giving controversial presentations for controversial product ideas.

Your old workout was a bunch of cardio and machine-based bullshit as I recall. Some kind of circuit, right?

Yeah, when I started in June 2009 I rode 1 hour on the exercise bike every morning after waking up, and I went to the gym 3 days a week doing machines only, 3 sets of 12 reps. It worked fairly well, I lost a lot of blubber and developed first hints of muscle, but I plateaued fairly quickly. So after the first months I didnt see any strength gains anymore, and I didnt lose much fat either, even though I was keeping to a 1500 calories a day diet, which is nothing for a guy of my size. Plus I got so fucking sick of riding that bike every morning, it was (literally) a pain in the ass.

Clearly, Alex had not yet begun his weightloss program when we were in Vienna, haha.

What's the new workout look like, basically? Still a circuit, but with the sets and reps more or less inversely proportional? What are some of your staple exercises?

Right now my work-out is always evolving. After reading your blog and getting some personal advice from you, the first thing I did was to lower the reps, increase the number of sets and jack up the weight by a lot, and working through all that really, really fast paced. My personal goal with all the machines is to "play through them" like a video game, in other words work my way up to use all the available weight plates on the machine (which isnt very much, since my gym is "wellness orientated"). I achieved that goal with a bunch of machines now, like the calf raise (100kg), rowing machine (150kg), leg extensions (120kg). With leg related exercises I switched fairly quickly to free weights, squatting is my favorite exercise and definitely the staple of my work-outs now (my PR is 140kgs), I do it every time I am in the gym, with different weights and rep structures. However, due to the birth handicap I have on the right side of my body, I was always very careful not to use free weights with anything arm related, because my right arm is much weaker and 5cm shorter than the left arm, and I can hardly move my fingers on my right hand. It turned out however, that I should have started doing free weights much earlier, I completely fucked up my shoulder doing bench presses on the smith machine with 100 kgs, because my joints and tendons on my gimp arm didn't develop as fast as the major muscles and cant take the load. Once my shoulder is good again, I will completely drop all machines from my work-out and focus on free weights to get more stability on the right side of my body to be able tackle the really heavy shit. I'm already doing lots of things for my right grip, because that is always the limiting factor when I do things like shrugs. Still, considering that I can hardly move my fingers and that it took me 3 years to learn how to tie my shoe as a kid, I am very proud of the 120kgs I can hold for shrugs right now for 10 sets of 3.

Not bad for a dude who had a gut and no muscle 10 months ago.

We all know your diets is pork-based. What's it look like from day to day? Do you still measure distance in beers on the weekends?

Indeed, my diet relies heavily on pork. I guess 80% of the meat I eat is pork. Usually I eat some kind of meat and 4 scrambled eggs for breakfast, then cooked ham and/or other sliced meats as a morning snack, then meat for lunch, cooked ham and/or other sliced meats as an afternoon snack, and meat again for dinner. As such, it stays fairly true to the CnP diet, however I dont use cheat windows, but a whole cheat day on Saturday, sometimes it spills over into Friday night or Sunday. On those days, I really let it rip, usually nothing less than 5 liters of beer and all other things that make life fun. I calculated, just for the fun of it, my caloric intake Saturday 3 weeks ago when my aunt had me over for the traditional german "Kohl und Pinkel" meal (the fattiest sausage one can imagine with green cabbage), and it came out to just above 10.000 calories. But thats what I like about the CnP diet, I can eat a lot, eat bloody meats and fatty sausages, and I still lean out and build muscle mass. I have read up on metabolic typing and can say with 100% certainty that I am the protein type, so I guess Im lucky I have found just the right type of eating system that works for me.

I am aware, however, that I could lean out much quicker if I didnt indulge as much on Saturdays, but life is supposed to be fun, and the improvements I see in the gym and in the mirror are enough for now.

How much shit to you catch in the gym for bucking the wellness trend in the formerly tough, now ur-schwule (translation "super-gay"), German nation?

The trainers in my gym are actually all really cool people, however when I first told them about your methods say were very skeptical, to say the least. However, seeing the increase of strength I achieved lately, one of them actually asked me for more information about "that crazy program from that friend of yours", hahaha...

You went from fatass to badass. How long did it take, how much weight did you lose, etc?

I started to work out and diet in June 2009, so 10 months ago. Back then I was weighing something like 115-120 kgs of blubber at a height of 6`4´. When I first joined the gym I benched a whopping 20 kgs on the smith machine and was sore for days afterwards...it was disgusting. Last December, so 4 months ago I weighed 100 kgs, so I had lost around 15 kgs, but I had hit a plateau. I didnt lose anymore weight and didnt get any stronger. Then I read your stuff online and finally decided to follow your advice, and after 4 months of following my version of CnP, I still weigh around 98 kgs, so I havent lost much weight, but I lost 7 cm around the waist and got A LOT stronger, I almost doubled every exercise I do in the gym since then, and I look a lot leaner and fitter. My body fat is around 14%-15% now according to the caliper, my goal is to get between 10-12%.

To sum it up, compared to most of the guys who read your blog I still am a weakling and of course there are a lot of newbie gains involved, but I feel like I have found a way eat like a pig and still get lean and very strong. Since I am very competitive by nature, as long as there anyone else in the gym who lifts more than me on any particular exercise I cannot rest and will try to beat him, particularly if that someone is smaller than me or in the least bit fagotty looking.

Hahahaha. Back to your gimp arm for a sec, how's the strength come along in that overall? Have you noticed that it's actually become a useful appendage?

Yeah, my gimp arm got insanely stronger, however i have been using lots of machines on all arm related things, because they add stability. However, I got so strong that all the joints and tendons in my gimp arm couldnt keep up and got fucked up, so I actually have to rest the arm for 4 weeks now because my shoulder hurts like shit. To give you an example, when I started working out 10 months ago I benched 20 kgs on the Smith machine (amazing!!!), now I bench 100kgs on the machine (always doing 3 sets of 10 reps, i didnt even go for the max because it felt weird on the shoulder), and my shoulder just gave out. So basically, once my shoulder is fine again, i will only do free weights to add stability to my movements on the gimp arm, because i feel now i have reached a basic level of strength in my right arm that i can start messing with free weights. And my grip strength in my gimp hand is shitty as well, thats always the limiting factor when i do things like shrugging.

So there you have it. Even if you're crippled, live in a nation with gyms in which they actively attempt to prevent people from lifting heavy, you've got no fucking background in lifting at all, and you are literally drunk from the time you wake on Saturday until the time you wake on Monday, this shit will work for you. In four months, this dude doubled all of his lifts and lost almost 3 inches on his waist, and actually grew some definable muscles.

To all of those who think CnP is too intense for you... you are pussies.

My Favorite Foods- Only because You Goofballs Requested This

After this one, I'm taking a break from these inane blogs.  This question is nearly as ridiculous as addressing why I wear Nike Frees, but I'm going to blog it simply to jump on my soapbox.

My diet is not magical- it works for me because I've determined, through a shitload of trial and error, what works for me, and because it suits my personal taste.  As such, I'll address diet foods that have worked for me in the past, and why, and shit that I eat when I'm having semi-free days with my cheat windows.  If you follow my diet, you will likely fail miserably, for a variety of reasons.  This is why I find this particular entry to be the height of absurdity.

Why Won't My Diet Work For You?

1. I've been dieting, fairly strictly, for the better part of a decade.  My body is trained to avoid lipogenesis and to remain in a state of lipolysis.  This affords me the ability to tinker with my diet, and get away with far more metabolic trickery and dietary indiscretions than most, if not all of you.  There's a guy in particular who will remain nameless but who's been emailing me for a couple of years who's never really changed in his appearance or strength levels, in spite of constantly mining me for training and diet advice.  He does this with at least one other prominant strength athlete of whom I know, and likely more.  Why, then, does he fail?  Likely because he's not stuck to any of the advice we've given him, and gives up long before he should on any given program or diet.  As such, his body never adjusts, he doesn't lower his bodyfat setpoint, and none of his metabolism changes significantly enough to have lasting effects.  
2. I know how to manipulate my body due to the fact that I've read voraciously on the subject, and train hard enough to overcome any dietary missteps.  
3. I understand my metabolic type, and utilize it to my advantage.
4. You likely do not share my taste for spicy foods, which raise your metabolism significantly.  I've said before that bland food makes a bland person, but it also makes a fat person.

That stated, on to the next part of the blog.

Shit on Which I Diet or have Dieted
Steamed Chicken and Broccoli- My first staple diet food was the traditional steamed chicken (`10oz) and broccoli (2 cups) with white rice (1.5-2 cups, cooked) bodybuilder diet.  I drenched the entire thing in shitloads of Thai Sriracha sauce, and ate it three or four times a day, along with three or more whey protein shakes.  This took me from 140 to 160-165 lbs between 1997 and 2000, during which time I maintained a basically steady bodyfat setpoint that I'd estimate to be around 10% bodyfat.  That's the fattest I've been in my adult life, having gone from collegiate wrestling right into that bodybuilding diet.  If I still lived in Tucson, I'd likely still be eating at Oriental Express on University, where I ate that  meal thrice daily, because that place ruled and that meal was delicious.  Yeah, I'm plugging that place, because Thui and An are awesome, and I ate there so often they had me over to their house a couple of times for barbecues.  Eat there if you get the chance, and tell them I said hi.  The result of this diet was that I gained a shitload of muscle over the 5 years or so when I ate there regularly, though I didn't lose much, if any, fat.  Had I not eaten the rice, I would have been gold, but that shit tastes amazing with the sriracha on it, so it was hard to pass up.

No, I'm not oiled up- that's sweat.  China was fucking hot.  Me in 1998.

Chicken Soup-  While in Vienna, I saw the first veins pop out on my abs eating virutally nothing but chicken soup and chicken kebaps.  I'd make 2.5 lbs of chicken breasts in broth with mixed veggies, typically brocolli, cauliflower, and carrots, every day.  I added a ton of minced garlic and cayanne to this, and my roommates fucking hated me for it, because the apartment always smelled like my soup.  I didn't care, because I fucking looked amazing.

Climbing in Vienna, 170ish and lean.

Chili-  For about a year after returning from Vienna, I tried to make chili into the ultimate superfood.  I experimented with adding and subtracting everything from bean mixes to cucumber to organ meats, and everything in between.  I had fairly good results with this, but didn't get quite as lean as I'd have liked.  I blame the beans, though that's probably not the real reason.

Not quite as lean as I might've liked, obviously.  At least this isn't flexed, though, haha.

Turkey Meatballs-  I got insanely lean eating turkey meatballs around the clock.  The type I was eating is only available in the northeast at Acme, for some reason, and I've forgotten the manufacturer, but they were ultra-lean, contained a shitload of fennel, which I love, and low carb.  They were insanely good, and I'm fairly bitter I can't get them down here.  Trader Joes also has some insanely good turkey meatballs, and it was making these things a staple of my diet that first brought our veins on my abs at a bodyweight over 175.

My Jon Pall Sigmasson imitation.  First time I had veins on my abs.

Chicken wings-  I've already covered these in a previous blog.

93/7 Lean ground beef and low carb pizzas- These are the mainstays of my current diet, and I rotate them every other day.  It seems to be working like a fucking charm, because I'm steadily leaning out and gaining muscle.

The pizzas.  I make them using Mission Carb Balance Tortillas, a low carb pizza sauce, Kraft Fat-free mozzarella, and Publix Hot Italian Chicken sausage, as well as a shitload of garlic powder, black pepper, red pepper, garlic, and italian seasoning.  No, I don't put veggies on my pizza, because I don't like them- and before you ask, there's no overriding nutritional reason.  On the days I eat these, I typically eat three of them, along with two Ultramet shakes and two whey protein shakes (one of which I drink while pissing in the middle of the night.  That gives me a macro profile of:

48.5g fat

209g carbs

371.5g protein

2762.5 calories

79g fiber

110g adjusted carbs

The other days, I generally eat between 2 and 4 lbs of ground beef, either in burger patties with brown gravy w/ peppercorns, or with taco seasoning, giving me somewhere between 72g fat and 184g protein, and 144g fat and 368g protein before any shakes.  Frankly, I drain the shit out of the fat in my beef, so I think it comes out considerably under that number, but I've got no hard numbers other than the ones I've provided.

What I eat off diet:
Generally, I keep it pretty low fat and moderate carbs, eating a lot of grilled chicken sandwiches and the like.

This isn't fucking brain surgery, people- it's trial and error and understanding your body, and the cessation of any belief that following anyone else's diet exactly will give you the same results it gave them.  It won't.  Frankly, I eat food so spicy it would likely kill the fucking lot of you, so I'm not posting any recipes, as I don't want your families suing me because you lack the intestinal fortitude to emulate my diet precisely, haha.

Interview With Steve from "Let No One Say You Can't"

Steve Reishus recently interviewed me for his blog, and I've decided to post the uncensored version (in which I censored the living fuck out of myself and thought that it was fully PG) here, for the edification of you people.  For the G-rated version, check it out on Steve's blog.  Steve's a trainer and strength coach, and maintains a blog thereupon.

Q: Jamie, tell us a little about yourself and your training history.

A: Trying to adhere to a staunch advocacy of brevity- I’m a strength athlete who’s wildly overeducated for his job in software and who has no academic background whatsoever in physiology or nutrition. I’ve got an MBA in Marketing, quit a JD program a year in, have lived in three countries and 19 different cities, and have held a panoply of jobs that would confound any reasonable person. I was a trainer and group fitness instructor (yes, I know, hilarious) for a couple of years, during which time I developed an abject hatred for 99.9% of the trainers on the planet, and massive disrespect for the various luminaries in the field. My knowledge of strength training and nutrition is the result of about 15 years of training, a voracious intellectual appetite, and the fact that I’ve read more texts, and far more esoteric texts, than most of the purported exerts, though I’ll give Anthony Roberts the edge over me in that regard.

Over the years, I’ve tried virtually every kind of training under the sun, and adhered mostly to bodypart training routines for the first 7 years or so of my 15 years of training. Thereafter, I started experimenting more with full body and push-pull style routines, and started gaining more muscle and shedding more fat. Things really took off for me when I lived in Austria in 2007, where I started using a couple of Waterbury routines and adhering to Ray Audette’s Neanderthin blended with the cheat window philosophy of Warren Willey. Using that, I got incredibly lean and tremendously strong for my weight, to the point where I was front squatting 440 at a bodyweight of around 170. Three years later, utilizing the lessons I’ve learned thereafter, I’m a lean 195-200, front squatting 535, back squatting 615 (though it’s been a while since I maxed and I’m betting I’ve got at least another 20 lbs on that), deadlifting 625, and I randomly reverse grip bench pressed 405 last year, haha, something I’ve not come close to duplicating since. That’s a far cry from my chubby 130 lbs where I started in 1994, especially given the fact that I got pinned under 135 the first time I tried to bench it.

Q: What is Chaos and Pain?

A: Chaos and Pain is a training and nutrition methodology I devised as an expression of my basic rejection of all for which the modern world stands. Essentially, I’m what Mike Mentzer should have been- a philosopher utilizing an anarcho-capitalist, postmodernist philosophy to define a lifestyle that centers on the idea that modern man is physically and mentally weak. Unfortunately, Mentzer completely cocked up Ayn Rand, and arrived at the conclusion that one should do less, rather than more, and that the human body was an impossibly fragile, nearly useless husk that should be babied and coddled. This could not be further from the truth- history is filled with examples of the insane workload under which the human body can flourish, and the feats of which we’re capable when we simply refuse to acknowledge the possibility of failure.

Drawing upon these examples, and combining them with both anecdotal and clinical evidence that the human body thrives under great stress, I developed this philosophy: If you train more, and much, much heavier, you will grown and get stronger. I know this runs counter to conventional wisdom, but conventional wisdom results in conventional strength and physiques.

• The Bulgarians are the most accessible example of this philosophy- they lift weights for roughly 45 hours a week, training 6 days a week for 6-8 hours a day, and they’re the most dominant group of athletes in the history of strength athletics.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is considered the greatest bodybuilder of all time, and he trained 6 days a week. Other bodybuilders who were both strong and jacked on a high-volume routine include John Grimek, Bill Pearl, John Defendis, Arthur Saxon, Franco Columbo, Marvin Eder, Sergio Oliva, and countless others.  
• Interestingly, the most successful bodybuilders were generally the strongest as well. Notable exceptions include Flex Wheeler, who now looks like hammered dogshit and boasts a 13” neck, Frank Zane, and Serge Nubret, all of whom lost their size and shape shortly after they abandoned competition. The bodybuilders who trained heavier, however, seemed to retain their physiques for far longer.

The diet I espouse is a combination of metabolic typing, ketogenics, carb cycling, and Paleolithic dieting. While this might seem esoteric and overly complex, it’s actually fairly simple- given the fact that people of bygone eras were far stronger and more muscular than modern humans, we should emulate their diets to achieve similar results. Thus far, it’s worked wonders for me and the CnP hooligans- I guarantee you the guys following my methodology can kick the shit, mentally and physically, out of any adherents of any other philosophy out there.

Q: It takes a lot of mental and intestinal fortitude to train the way you do day in and day out. What words do you offer critics who would scream “overtraining”?

A: They suffer from clinical vaginitis, and lack library cards. Anyone who’s read anything about successful strength athletes is aware that nine times out of ten, it’s the guys who train more, not less, who have the majority of success. For that matter, they lack the ability to view the issue logically- who has ever gotten better at something by doing less of it? No one.

Mike Mentzer, Stuart McRobert, and anyone else who preaches against the evil, ephemeral, and generally nonexistent phenomenon of overtraining are preying on the modern tendency towards sloth and weakness. They’re the same people who will get snowed by John Basedow later in life.

English railway navvies in the 1850s were expected to shovel, by hand, 20 tons of earth daily. Nepalese porters weighing an average of 49.7 kilos routinely transport loads of 90 kilos over 95 kilometers of steep mountain trails per day. If they could do it, so can we.

Q: Aside from being a freak under the bar, you possess an impressive physique. Tell me how you feel your style of training has influenced that.

A: I believe wholeheartedly that form follows function. If you train like a beast, you’ll look like a beast. If you don’t, you’ll have that lame, puffy, cartoonish look that guys like Flex Wheeler had. If you’d like to be referred to as a pretty man, high reps on machines are the way to go. If you want to look like you were carved out of granite, however, heavy, brutal, nearly insane workouts with death-defying weight are the only way to achieve this goal.

Q: You stay incredibly lean well maintaining high levels of strength. Any secrets there? Your eating habits? I know you’re a proponent of metabolic typing; can you explain that briefly?

I’m not sure who it was that initially promulgated the theory that being a disgusting fatbody makes you stronger, but it’s a ridiculous supposition. Arthur Saxon pressed 400+ pounds overhead, a feat no one has since reproduced, while being tremendously lean. You’ll notice that powerlifters are definitely tending more towards leanness, like Kroc, and the best strongman competitors now look like bodybuilders a month out from a show. I think the key lies in both understanding your metabolism, and keeping your workload high enough to force your body to maintain a very high metabolic rate.

Metabolic typing is actually an old nutritional philosophy, but one only rarely espoused by strength coaches or nutritionists. Insofar as I know, it’s only Paul Chek and and I who espouse this philosophy. Metabolic typing can take a tremendous number of forms, ranging from Paul D’Amato’s nonsensical blood typing diet to the Ayurvedic system to William Wolcott’s system, and I espouse the latter. It utilizes a fairly complex test (in his text, though the online tests are abbreviated greatly) to determine your ideal macronutrient profile, dividing people into three types: protein type, mixed type, and carb type. For anyone who’d like to take the abbreviated test, you can find it here: http://www.naturalhealthyellowpages.com/metabolic/self_test.html. Frankly, I don’t accept that diet on its face, but find that it’s a useful guide for developing a diet plan in conjunction with Paleolithic dieting and more cutting edge sports nutrition, and it explains in complex terms why you’ll find some people who can flourish on a ketogenic diet (like myself) and others who have no benefit, or on whom it has deleterious effects. As a protein type, I’ve found that if I rotate my carbs between virtually none and about 100g a day (except for those days on which I have a 3 hour cheat window) I can stay lean, or get leaner, and build muscle simultaneously.

Q: Jamie, thanks so much for your time. Is there anything you’d like to add?

There will be those who will state, with no factual basis whatsoever, that only lifters taking an immense amount of drugs can achieve the types of results that I have. This is nonsense- pre-steroid era routines were almost uniformly more volume-intensive than are modern routines, and they produced results that we cannot reproduce in the modern era, even with the benefits of cleaner drinking water, vastly improved equipment, and more readily available food. The belief that humans are incapable of adapting to vastly increased workloads is borne of nothing more than intellectual weakness, historical ignorance, and a complete lack of understanding of ontogeny.

Essentially, the adoption of high-volume, heavy weight workout routines is a rejection of the modern tendency to suck, and an attempt to reclaim the physical and mental strength of the Paleolithic era. People need to stop bitching and start lifting. Ronnie Coleman pretty much said it best- “Everybody wanna be big, but don’t nobody wanna lift no heavy-ass weight.” I might take issue with his grammar, his demeanor, and his wardrobe choices, but he’s on the money with that statement.

Q: Website, contact, shameless plug of any kind?

My blog is chaosandpain.blogspot.com and the associated website is www.chaosandpain.com. Anyone who doesn’t suck ought to check them out.

What You Can Do To Stem The Tide of Suck

Want to know the state of the world in which we now live?

"A recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts found that 53 percent of Americans surveyed hadn't read a book in the previous year." (Source: McManus, John. "The New American. 5/26/08)

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. (Source: Jerold Jenkins, www.JenkinsGroupInc.com)

Each day in the U.S., people spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines. (Source: Veronis, Suhler & Associates investment banker)

Only about half of Americans exercise regularly (at least three sessions a week for 30 minutes at a time), and the percentage of exercisers declined last year compared to 2008. (Source: WebMD Jan 21, 2010 http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20100121/are-americans-backing-off-exercise)

Percent of noninstitutionalized adults age 20 years and over who are overweight or obese: 67% (2005-2006)

Percent of noninstitutionalized adults age 20 years and over who are obese: 34% (2005-2006) (Source: ttp://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/overwt.htm) 

What does this tell us? It seems to indicate that Americans there are very few intelligent people remaining in the United States of America in 2010. Instead of the robust, crafty motherfuckers who populated this nation centuries ago, we've reduced ourselves to a nation of fat slobs who can barely read, and who are educated entirely by the television. Additionally, the last two statistics show that prison is essentially celebrity fit club for criminals, as criminals are by and large indigents, and it is perennially impecunious who boast the highest incidence of obesity.

I realize that a significant proportion of my readership resents every single call to arms that I post on this blog, finding them for whatever reason distasteful. Luckily, I don't give a flying fuck, because I work for free. To this point, I've posted 130 blogs, which I estimate average of 3 hours in terms of direct prep work in the form of research and writing. This excludes the countless hours of reading spent outside the direct result you find in this blog, but for the sake of relative accuracy, I'll go with 3 hours per blog. That means that you have benefited from the result of nearly 400 hours of work on my part, free of cost, and as such, I'll post whatever the fuck I want, as I don't owe you a motherfucking thing.

The most amusing part of the negative reaction I find with this blog is the fact that people seem to think I'm wasting their time with my rants. This is humorous for two reasons: one, it's a scathing indictment of our society that everything has been commoditized to the point where people actually believe that their free time has a significant, if ephemeral, monetary value. This just in- it has no value, real or perceived. How do I know this? The answer to that question lies in the second reason I find the negative reactions to be humorous in the first place- I know that the free time of the overwhelming majority of Americans is valueless because "people spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines" every day. If that time would not be otherwise occupied by something important, and no, 24 is not fucking important, then that time is completely without value.

Conceited, but not that conceited.

I don't have the conceit to think that one lunatic could buck the will and ideas of millions. I do think, however, that I might shed some light on the situation in which we find ourselves. Once we do so, we might become a new race of Titans, bent on the destruction of the sea of decrepit, slothful, idiotic teeming hordes in which we find ourself constantly mired. Rather than being the dying breath of a bygone era, we could become the new face of humanity, standing as bulwarks against the obesity and ignorance that pervade the modern world. I also believe that a complete rejection of the world as it stands is essential to forging the strength of body that I espouse, due to the fact that a society as lazy and useless as our own is incapable of the painful, protracted battle against suck that are our daily trips to the mecca of metal.

It is partially for this reason that I refuse to adhere to any strict program in the gym- modern society has developed a frighting obsession with reducing each day to a mechanical void wherein billions of people relive the same miserable, desolate day in a neverending virtual film loop, like a horribly dull, unfunny, politically correct mashup of Equilibrium and Groundhog Day. As such, there's little sense in making every visit to the gym just as robotic and rote as the rest of one's day- Why pile on more repetition in a life that's defined by a series of barely altered iterations of the same 24 hour period?

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad."

-Network, which is an awesome fucking movie that I highly recommend.

I will fucking tell you, however, what it is that you can personally do to stem this tide of suck.  This is your homework for the week:

• Read a book, in full. The topic is immaterial. I'm personally going to read Natural Hormone Enhancement by Rob Fagin, in addition to my usual spate of fiction.
• Pick an exercise on which you want to get better. Do that exercise, at a different point in your workout, and for an array of sets and reps, every day this week- this means, however, that you'll have to drop your volume on the lift for each workout. By the end of the week, you will likely not see dramatic improvements, but you will prove to yourself that you can do the lift as much as you fucking want, and you will definitely determine the form on that exercise that will facilitate gains, due to the fact that by the end of the week you will have to figure out how to make it hurt the least, haha. If you're still worried about the evil, mythical, overtraining monster, consider this: English railway navvies in the 1850s were expected to shovel, by hand, 20 tons of earth daily. Nepalese porters weighing an average of 49.7 kilos routinely transport loads of 90 kilos over 95 kilometers of steep mountain trails per day. (Manthropology, pp. 30-31) I think you'll be able to handle a week of doing the same exercise every day.

• Attempt a PR on something at least once. 

If you don't want to be an average American, it's time to start fucking acting like a Titan.  Let's do it without the half shirts, though.

The Growing Fascination With My Footwear...

Is puzzling.  Nevertheless, I'll address the Frees issue, in spite of the fact that I feel I've already done so.  I wear Nike 3.0s and Nike 5.0s, and I fucking love them.  For those of you who don't know what they are:
"Nike Free attempts to simulate barefoot running while wearing a shoe.  As this shoe allows the muscles in the foot to gain strength by providing less constriction, runners are advised to gradually break into the shoe rather than immediately running long distances as to prevent muscle cramps and other discomforts.  The Nike shoe scale goes from 10.0 to 0.0 with a '10' being a fully supportive shoe, and '0' being completely barefoot.  Example: The 5.0 Nike Free is like running halfway barefoot, the 3.0 is even less shoe, and the 7.0 is a bit more supportive."(Wikipedia)

Why I Like Nike Frees

1. They're insanely lightweight.  This means if I feel like doing plyo shit, or I just feel like walking around without stomping like a miniature godzilla like all of the assholes in those gigantic, homofabulous skater shoes, I can do so.
2. They have a very low, highly compact sole, that's more or less flat.  This means that my weight will not be shifted to my toes, nor will my stability be compromised while squatting.  The tightly compressed, low heels also put me lower to the ground, so if there's any advantage to be gained in this for the deadlift (and I'm skeptical that there is), I'll be able to reap the benefits thereof.  Conversely, squatting or deadlifting in those Nikes with the springs in the heels (Shox) puts you a couple of inches off the ground, weight on your toes, and wobbling around like you're on a fucking Bosu balls.  It's nonsense.
3. They're remarkably durable.  I have a three year old pair of frees that are still in remarkably good condition, especially given the countless hours of strongman training and gym work I've done in them, in addition to a fuckload of wearing them around town.  They breathe well and wash well, too, so they don't smell like an elderly cat used them for a litterbox.
4. They have sewn-in tongues.  I hate it when the tongue slides to the side, and the sewn-in tongue obviates this. 
5. They're not flashy.  Few athletic shoes seem to be made with non-wiggers in mind at this point.  My name's not Marshall Mathers, and I'd rather not look like it is.

 

What.  The.  Fuck? 

 I know the question in all of your heads is "why don't you wear Chucks?"  Mostly because I don't fucking want to.  Partly because everyone seems to think you have to, and I think I've pretty much proven that false.  Are Chucks good footwear for powerlifting?  Most likely.  Will I ever own a pair?  No.  For the same reason that I'm not going to wear a skully in the gym and grow a fucking goatee after shaving my head, I'm not going to buy a pair of Chucks.  I'm not Chuck Vogelpohl, and I'm not going to ride Vogelpohl's nuts like every other powerlifter out there.  None of his wardrobe is magical, and aping his style will definitely not make you any stronger.

While I'm on the subject, I find it intensely aggravating that people feel that there's some sort of special attire that they need to wear in the gym to legitimize their presence there.  Chicks invariably HAVE to have some sort of outfit before commencing a workout program, and it seems that men have recently followed them down the path to shitty consumerist vapidity and general ignobility.  Don't be the fucking guy who wears an UnderArmor outfit in the gym.  That guy's an asshole, and so's every single person he knows.

Case in point.

Other, similar shoe choices are the following:

• New Balance MT100.  A guy at work swears they beat the shit out of Frees.  Frankly, I'd never heard of them before this week, but they seem comparable in every way.
•  Vibram Five Fingers.  They look fucking stupid, and they're the baby of Crossfitters everywhere, who insist upon taking pictures of their feet in them, which is also fucking stupid.  Is that a reason to dismiss them out of hand?  Quite possibly.  Marc Bartley, however, world record holder in the squat, fucking loves them, and wears the shit out of them.  I doubt I'll be buying a pair, but Spud knows his shit, and loves them, so they can't be all bad.

Puzzlingly, Spud abandoned the Vogelpohl for the Crossfit.  As he will eat your children if you have shit to say about him, I suggest we just let the man wear whatever he fucking wants.

As to the rest of my wardrobe choice in the gym, since that's recently been of interest- I wear cargo shorts and sleeveless (or very occasionally sleeved) t-shirts pretty much every moment I'm not at work.  Call it what you want, as I could honestly fucking care less.  It's comfortable.  I then wear the shit to the gym, as it continues to be comfortable there, in addition to providing me pockets for my musclerub, straps, elbow sleeve, and mp3 player.  I generally have a pair of cargos explode off my ass once every couple of months.  This doesn't bother me, as I get them at Target for $20 a pair, and usually patch the ass with denim and use them until they explode a second time.  I'll occasionally rock my Vans slide-ons in the gym on non-heavy days, but wouldn't squat in them because they don't lace.  Vans lace-up are on the list to try for squatting shoes, however.

There you have it.  Not sure why you wanted it, but there it is.

... and It Appears Paul Anderson Was Right.

A new day is dawning, as I am going to admit that I was wrong.  In a previous blog, I stated that I didn't like Paul Anderson's method of doing progressively deeper partials to build strength.  I had tried it years ago, and was underwhelmed by the results.  I've discovered the nature of my problem, however- I wasn't training often enough.  Anderson squatted 3x a week, while when I tried a similar routine, I was doing bodypart training, and saw virtually no progress doing partials once per week.

Anderson's Program, for the hyperlink-clicking challenged (and because I know one or all of you lazy assholes would ask for a link to the fucking program):

T/TH/S
Full squat
2x10x600
1x2x825
1x2x845
1x2x900

Half Squat
1x2x1200

Quarter Squat
1x2x1800

Deadlift
4x6-8x650

M/W/F
Press Off Rack
1x6x300
1x2x400
1x2x390
1x2x370

Press Outs (from sticking point to lockout)
1x4x500

Press From Shoulders To Top Of Head
1x4x500

Push-Press off Rack
1x3x450

Bench Press
1x6-8x400-450

I recently decided, for no real reason whatsoever, that I'd give them a shot, since I liked training partials anyway.  Two months and several utterly destroyed pairs of cargo shorts later, I've discovered that this method is fucking genius.  I arbitrarily picked 700 as my goal for a full squat, and started training multiple partials, for workouts ranging from 40 minutes to two and a half hours, with between 700-800 lbs for a variety of reps, stances, and depths, with fairly startling results.  Over the past two months, I've increased my front squat max, which I've barely trained, by 20 lbs, and have gotten to the point where I recently did a fairly easy bottom position squat from parallel with 565.  For those of you who think this is a simple matter, try squatting 90% of your 1RM from a dead stop at the bottom of a squat.  It's ridiculously hard, if not impossible.  My goal is to get my bottom position squat to 630, at which point I'm virtually guaranteed a 700 lb squat, with no belt and hopefully no wraps.  My routine has varied, but here's the gist:

2x / week
Partial squats of progressively greater depth
10-20 x 1-5 with goal weight.  Obviously, the smaller a fraction of your competition depth, and the fresher you are, the higher your reps.  After a particularly successful day of squatting with your normal stance, move your feet in on the successive workout to increase your range of motion.

I did one workout with a stance that was essentially one foot-width apart (as in, my feet were only spaced far enough apart to fit a spare shoe in between them), and then dropped the depth.

After I got comfortable with that, but was getting close to the bottom, I added weight, so that I was doing 800 lb 3/4 squats with 800, with my normal stance.

I generally try to throw in a third workout of either partials or lighter full squats, and have even worked in my old friend the BodyMaster Squat machine to work range of motion and to play with my stance.

This shit is working, and I'll keep you posted with my progress.  Additionally, I've gained about ten lbs of bodyweight since mid-December and leaned out, which I  attribute mostly to this new squat routine, and the rest of which to my 2 a day routine about which I've already posted.  Videos coming soon, you jackals.

If You Absolutely Fucking MUST... (edited 8/1/10)

Frankly, I think this topic has been done to fucking death (queue the assholes with the "hackneyed" button fetish), a couple of you have asked me a question along the lines of "if you have to eat like an asshole, what should you eat?" This is obviously a difficult question to answer, as my diet is a constantly evolving process, rather than a static macronutritent ratio. So many factors go into food and macro choices that it's difficult to identify a single food that will perfectly suit your needs if you're stuck and you have limited options. Thus, I'll give you a couple of ideas.

If you're WAY the fuck away from any kind of food that might be construed as useful, eat some kind of meat. That's the key to the whole deal. For instance:

If you're at a gas station, skip the Balance bars. Here's why- a Balance bar consists of a bit soy protein, a shitload of sugar, and a bunch of fat.  It's a fucking shit Zone macro thing, only done in the most half-assed way humanly possible.  Instead, go for the beef jerky with the least sugar. That way, you'll get a massive dose of protein with only a bit of carbs and fat.  It's the original protein bar-esque snack.  Failing that, you can go with a protein bar they have there, but before you buy a balance bar, check to see what the nutrition on their microwavable burgers are. I'll bet that the burger will be better for you, most times.

At a fast food place, you're generally best off with a couple of grilled chicken sandwiches or one and some chili.  You'll keep your carbs moderate, your protein high, and your fat low, which is essentially the easiest healthy way to eat when your food isn't pre-prepared.

Hoagies will get it done, as well, provided you pass on the mayo, stupid non-meats like pepperoni/salami, and the dressing.  I generally get roast beef, turkey, or a club with roast beef, turkey, and ham, and then double the meat on that bitch.  Additionally, Quizno's Sammies with grilled chicken are pretty badass, but you've got to eat at least three of them to get a useful amount of protein.

Nuts are a good compliment to the jerky if you're keeping the carbs low. If you want to up the carbs, eat a bag of Baked Lays.

Basically, just don't be fucking retarded. I get a shitload of questions about diet, and the shit is not brain surgery. If your carbs are high, your fat is low. If your fat is high, carbs are low. Protein is ALWAYS FUCKING HIGH. THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH PROTEIN. You could be eating unnecessary amounts, but no one's ever fucking gotten fat from protein, because the thermic effect of protein is too high, and no one has ever died from eating too much. Therefore, find the shit that fits your profile the best and eat it.

Not sure how the fuck this happened, but I guarantee it wasn't from eating too much steak.

Shit you shouldn't eat?
Mayo. If you eat mayo, you're a fat fuck, you hate your arteries, you're generally disgusting, and your friends probably hate you. It's vile, useless shit, and you should avoid it.

Hot dogs. I mean, seriously. Why would you eat a fucking hot dog? There's barely any protein, it's filled with nitrates, and it's the random organic detritus of the butchering process. It's like processed chum, with bugs mixed in for good measure.

Any packaged baked good containing sugar. You want diabetes? Fine. Stop reading my fucking blog. You're an asshole for stuffing that fucking Ring Ding in your mouth. You might as well stuff it up your fat fucking ass, because it's shit.

Fish Filets. If you don't know why, you're a dick.

Fried chicken sandwiches. Again, if you have to ask why, you're a moron.

And that's that. Simplicity. To be addressed later this week: Shit I like to eat on and off diet, and an update on my squat training, and my evolving theory thereof. I just hit a 535 PR on the front squat to depth with no belt, so the shit is working.

Baddest Motherfuckers Ever 12: John Grimek

You ever think to yourself, "Maybe I should plan out my workouts? That shit might work better... after all, that's what everyone else does"? Well, here's a newsflash, fuckface- EVERYONE ELSE SUCKS. I know, you might think you know someone who doesn't suck. Consider this for a second: are they alive right now? If so, they likely suck. This includes me- I'm aware that I'm alive and have not yet attained the strength or muscularity of people of bygone eras(1), nor have I fucked my way through multi-thousands-broad harems(2), slain any dragons(3), or done any of the other insanely cool shit that used to occur.

In any event, here's the shit that occurred on John Grimek's watch:
The following measurements are from 1940/1941:
Height: 5'8½"
Weight: 195 lbs.
Neck: 17 inches
Arm: 17.5 inches
Forearm: 14 inches
Chest: 47 inches
Waist: 31 inches
Thigh: 25 inches
Calf: 17 inches
Wrist: 8 inches
Ankle: 9.8 inches
In other words, he was jacked to shit, pre-gear. Testosterone wasn't even synthesized until 1937, and steroids weren't even introduced in the Eastern bloc until the 40's, so it's fairly certain Grimek was drug free for most, if not all, of his career. His career included the following highlights:

1939 York Perfect Man
1940 Mr. America
1941 Mr. America
1946 Most Muscular Man In America
1948 Mr. Universe Short & Overall
1949 Mr. USA

Basically, this motherfucker was the shit. How'd he get there? Training way too fucking much, by any modern standard. What'd he do? This shit:
"I'd usually train about five days a week and sometimes six. How long? Sometimes when I felt ambitious and I wanted to do more, it would take four to five hours. Normally it would not last more than two hours at the most. I trained everything in every workout-I didn't do what they call split workouts and train legs and arms one day, back and other stuff the next day. No, the only way I ever isolated a group of muscles was when I was finished with my routine for the day and I still thought I needed more for my back or chest or legs or whatever. Then I threw in an additional two to three exercises and much heavier-you know, trying to maximize the thing. And that was it. What is called split training wasn't used then, although I had read somewhere that Hackenschmidt was using a method where he would isolate certain groups on certain days or else put more emphasis on a specific part while training the entire body on a given day. But I never had a yen for that. I was making progress all over, so there was no need for a concentration on a certain area. And I never found that training the whole body in each workout was too tiring. In fact, when I got through, I was feeling a helluva lot better and more ambitious and energetic than I did when I started."(4)

In other words, he was a fucking CnP adherent long before the shit existed. He was a bad motherfucker who knew nothing of overtraining- he just trained his fucking ass off, and was a world champion as a result. Oh, well he must have programmed, right? Fucking WRONG:
"Instead of always taking an exercise and repeating it in sets four, five, six times, I often preferred, if I was working the arms, for example, to do five, six or seven exercises that were different. I felt that there were some deep-seated muscles that needed an extra jolt. And the only way to get that jolt was to either exercise it from another angle and see if you could make it function as fully as the other part of that muscle was working. And that's what I always tried to do. I did a lot of exercises for the same part of the body. And it worked! At least it felt like it was working. That's why, when people ask me how I trained, I can't think back right now and say, "Oh, yeah, that was the one exercise I did which promoted everything." No, I cannot say that, because I did a variety of movements even for the same part of the body. And I would also do what I felt like doing on that day That's the thing. If I felt I needed additional repetitions or additional exercises, I did it. But if I felt, "Oh, the hell with it! I've had enough of that," I would quit! See, there was no sense of a routine that was stringent in any way, something that I felt I had to do. The hell with it! I did what I wanted. If I started an exercise, and I found that I didn't like it or need it that day, I just bypassed it. In the beginning, of course, I followed a more formal system of training, like the kind you would get when you ordered a set of weights from a company like the Mb Barbell Company." (5)

Fucking WHEELS. Nice loafers, too. How the fuck did they lift in loafers?

The fucking kicker? This story from natural strength:
" "Well," says John. "I've done many possible stupid and strange things. One of which was squatting very heavy when I was between 74 and 75 (years of age) but I NEVER strained or fought going down, deep and struggling to raise up, never. In later years, say after the 30s (his age) when I squatted, I always did HIGH reps, and the last time was in my late 70s, I did squats, just simply because I wanted to do some training, but not the usual workout. One professional football player (Philadelphia Eagles) was visiting the gym and no one else wanted to train. He came up to see the guys train, but that I was the only one, none of the others wanted to do anything, but I needed a light workout, so I squatted.

"I began with 225 lb. and did about 28 consecutive reps. Then I added 90 lb more and did another 18 to 20 reps and continued in that fashion, adding weight, while cutting the reps and always working up to where I would do only one to three reps with 645 lb usually, but occasionally working up to 695 lb [when he was over 70 years of age, remember] and by then I already completed 75 to 80 reps. But as mentioned, I never struggled, for some reason I felt that was straining, avoiding that because I felt it did nothing for except cause pain. The visitor looked at me when I was finished doing 20 reps with the second set of 315 lb and asked, 'I thought you weren't in the mood to train hard?' I said I wasn't, but what the heck, squats are easy. He looked at me and said, 'I squat too, but on my best days I could never do that.'"(6)

Next person to brag about their squat gets punched in the fucking teeth, unless they're 70+ and squatting over 600.

We are all a pack of pussies. Get to squatting, motherfucker.

1. There's plenty of examples, but the Viking at Stamford Bridge single-handedly fought off an entire army of Saxons for an hour until being stabbed in the cock by a treacherous Englishman.
2. Khosrau II had a harem of 3000 wives, in addition to 12,000 other bitches. Epic.
3. This is more shitty than cool, but according to the apocrypha of the christian Bible, Daniel killed off the last dinosaur by poisoning it in a temple of Marduk, because he was a giant pussy. Should I ever meet one of his decendants, you'll see me piss on his corpse on Youtube. What kind of pussy poisons a dragon because it's an "abomination before god"? Moreover, who worships a god that hates dinosaurs? That's 11000 different kinds of fucking suck. (Bel and the Dragon, a book of the Apocrypha, http://wesley.nnu.edu/biblical_studies/noncanon/summaries/bel&dragon-notes.htm) Check out Ooparts for more evidence of man coexisting with dinosaurs.
4. "John Grimek: Insightful Look &Interview With Bodybuilder John Grimek." FitFlex. http://www.fitflex.com/johngrimek.html
5. Ibid.
6. Whelan, Bob. "John Grimek Talking About Squats." http://www.bobwhelan.com/history/grimeksquats.htm