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.