RAW UNITY 5- The Whole Shitteree

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

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

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

I was wrong.

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

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

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

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

Insanely easy 629, but was a little high.

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

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

I was slightly lean at this meet.

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

Dust one side with the following

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

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

Cumin

Chipotle Pepper

Garlic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What I Learned

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

The deeds we do shall be the stuff of legends.

Much like this pic.

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

Just Sitting Around on Your Ass This Sunday?

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

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

A Complete Aside To Discuss How Much America Currently Sucks

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

This about sums up my feelings on everything.

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


A good day to you,


Jameson Lewis


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

  

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

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Stop Being a Pussy- Go Fucking Feral

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

A Preface:

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

This will not do.

You motherfuckers brought this on yourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will profane your fucking remains.

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

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

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

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