Ask The Asshole: The Flaming Asshole Edition

First, I shall start with something that's not a question, but that I'd like to address in any event.  Tim Lambesis, frontman for a band that's produced naught but monotone dreck for the entirety of its existence, As I Lay Dying, is blaming his attempt to hire a hitman to kill his wife on "roid rage".  No, I am not making that up- a Christian metal singer is claiming a nonexistent side effect of exogenous testosterone usage caused him to act violently and impulsively- so violently and impulsively, in fact that he calmly and collectedly attempted to hire another person to kill his estranged wife as part of a fiduciary contract to be executed at some undisclosed point in the future.  Generally, I log things like a snap decision to have a cheat meal or to take another crack at a 405 behind the neck push press as "impulsive".  Maybe popping into Texas Roadhouse on a non-carb day for a burger and fries.  What I don't consider to be impulsive, however, is to seek out a contract killer (a process I assume takes more than 45 seconds), meet with said contract killer, hand him photographs of my estranged wife and a list of the places she frequents, and then bargain with him over the price.  that, instead, strikes me as methodically, in addition to being incredibly non-violent.  An impulsive violent act is randomly punching a person in the face while you're walking down the street.  Haggling over contract details, however, is not.  All of that, of course, assumes that "roid rage" is a thing, which it (according to science) is not.  Instead, "roid rage" is a boogeyman invented by weak people to demonize the strong.  Sheep likely have a similar nonexistent mental disorder ascribed to wolves.  Given that Lambesis is a "lamb" it only stands to reason he'd act like a sheep.  Even more disturbing here is that I'd recently gotten back into Point of Recognition and was rocking out to Society's Finest the other day, both of which featured Tim "Ladykiller" Lambesis on guitars.  Hopefully, the court will rule Lambesis is too stupid and confused to incarcerate and will instead hand him over to Gorgoroth and Thy Art Is Murder to sacrifice onstage.

Gorgoroth.  Not big fans of JC, and their music is dogshit, though they can make the hell of a good video.

Thy Art Is Murder.  Their song "Whore To A Chainsaw" should be played while Lambesis is being tortured to death.

Having covered current events, let's launch into the meat and brotatoes of this Ask The Asshole, in which I shall mock the everloving fuck out of some of the people that email me.  Generally, my emails in response to people who take the time to ask me a question are pretty gentle, as I appreciate inquisitiveness.  I do not, however, appreciate dumbfuckery, and there appears to be some sort of competition to see who can jam the most dumbfuckery into an email and send it to me without exploding into flames from the hate I send their way.  Before I launch into the dumbfuckery, however, I would like to share with you people the best email I've received in a while.

I've been following you for years but your recent blog about Jón Páll Sigmarsson and Kaz rivalry has prompted me to write you an email. 

For a year I have been training at a gym called Jakaból (Giant's Nest) which is run by Magnús Ver Magnússon. Since the owner is a legend the gym has slowly turned into a nexus of some sort for the local wildlife.Once when I was incline benching an older beast approached me as I finished one of my working sets. He looked, unimpressed, at the weight on the bar and said:

"Kid, I trained around Jón Páll and do you know what he called people who couldn't incline 185 KG (407 lbs) for reps?"

I replied that I didn't and he said:

"Faggots."

His quip was met with murmur of approval from the other lifters present.  True or not I thought it was a funny story and so I decided to share it with you.

A:  That was awesome.

Now, onto some of the most ridiculous, uninformed, confused, willfully ignorant, lazy, saddie/fattie questions anyone has ever received, and I got these all in the last week.

Q: What are some lifts I can throw in my push/pull day?

A: Military press, push press, behind the neck push press, jerks, bench press, close grip bench press, dips, wide grip bench press, incline bench press, decline bench press, rows, dumbell rows, cable rows, pullups, pulldowns, chinups, one arm chinups, horizontal pullups... basically, anything that is a pull or a push.  You know, shit you'd see if you opened your fucking eyes while in the gym and cleaned the shit out of your ears. The aforementioned lifts were only listed to show you how catastrophically, epically, breath-takingly stupid your question was.  Were you really confused as to what constituted a push or a pull?  Do you have an IQ above room temperature?  The fact that you managed to turn on the computing machine you utilized to transmit your insipid question across time and space is astonishing given your apparent low levels of intellectual maturity.  Dumber questions have not been asked in elementary school special education classes.

I am not in the business of hand-holding and hope never to receive another question as pantently witless as the one this idiot has foisted upon me.  As I'm not an idiot and actually read books, I obtained the vast majority of my training knowledge from a variety of books, most of which were initially "encyclopedias" of lifting.  The ones I own/have owned are:

• The Arnold Schwartzennegger Book of Bodybuilding (which every lifter should already own.  In bygone days, my friends and I referred to it as "The Bible", and I've gone through at least four copies since I started lifting)
• MuscleMag's Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding
• Gold's Gym Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding (which is where I first learned of the Barbarian Brothers- this books is the balls).

Q:  So, according to your last article, I'm not even in "Bitch Mode". I'm not even a person.

How do I become an actual person, and not be a bitch?

I got your book, but I find the routine you propose a bit confusing. I like the approach, and I'm trying to create a similar routine, but with a bit more structure. I want to focus on getting my numbers up on the big 4 lifts. I've noticed that, like you've said, more is better - the more often I lift, the better my performance becomes - so I definitely want to lift at least 6 days per week, and maybe even start fucking with 2-a-days if I can handle it. But I don't think I'm good enough at lifting to just follow my instincts and lift what I want when I want. You said you bench pressed 5-6 days per week to get your numbers up, but in your book, you say to not do the same lift 2 days in a row. Meanwhile, the Bulgarian method, at least one of them, is to bench press 6 days a week and set a PR each time.

So I'm just trying to work on a template right now. I want to train the big 4 lifts as much as possible. I was thinking something along the lines of a heavy squat/push/pull every other day, at least. Then either a light squat and heavy push/pull, just a heavy push/pull, just a light push/pull, or barbell complexes on days that I can't do a heavy squat/push/pull. Then I can just do accessory/hypertrophy stuff as I see fit.

Do you see anything wrong? Do you have any other overarching advice (other than to kill myself, haha)?

And thanks for verbally kicking my ass every week. It helps keep me motivated.

A: You missed the entire point of the article- it's not so much what you do is that you do it, do it hard, and enjoy it.  Your generation's retarded preoccupation with programming is why the lot of you suck shit at everything- you fiddlefuck around talking about shit and never actually do it.

There is no one perfect way.  

By virtue of the fact that you've asked how not to be a bitch, you're virtually guaranteed to remain one forever.  Instead of forging ahead and trying to figure it out for yourself with a liberal application of ball sweat and testosterone, you've decided to sit down, dither, write an incredibly whiny email, and do fuckall.  Congratulations.  What you need to do is:

1. Purchase a firearm, preferably a pistol.
2. Purchase a single round of ammunition in the correct caliber for your new weapon.
3. Load the weapon.
4. Place the barrel of your weapon in your mouth.
5. Savor the taste of the bluing solution and the tang of the metal.
6. Use whatever paltry strength you have to pull the trigger and pain the walls with your brains.

With any luck, this is what the email writer looks like right now.

I'm really not kidding about the fact that the writer of this email is fucked beyond repair.  He will likely live the bulk of his adult life in his parents' basement and will almost certainly die a virgin, swaddled tightly in his childhood blankie that reeks of failure and self-loathing.  To forestall the receipt of another email in this vein, here's a very simple training regimen:

Monday:  Squat and Overhead Press
Tuesday: Heavy Rows and Pullups
Wednesday: Bench and dips
Thursday: Front Squat and Light Overhead Press
Friday: Deadlifts.  Go fucking nuts
Saturday:  Bench again.

Do whatever rep range suits you.  If you're weak as a kitten, pretty much anything other than the silly bullshit you're currently doing (i.e. dithering and not really focusing on lifting) is going to work.  There is no golden rep range, and no magical number of sets.  There is no one volume that will be perfect for every person, nor is there a volume that will be perfect for you every week in a given month.  Frankly, there are more questions than answers when it comes to lifting, and you should be focused on the journey, rather than the destination.  Without question, however, focusing on details is not the way you get strong initially- it's the effort that counts at first.  You might want to just pyramid down on the big stuff (squats, deads, bench, and overhead press) and go 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 (after warming up) and just go close to failure.  Max out when you want.  If you want to do the same lift two days in a row, feel free- my point in the book was that I didn't think doing the exact same thing daily (exercise + sets + reps) was a good idea.

They'd look super sexy in a gas chamber.

I'm starting to wonder the generation called the "Millennials" gets their clothes on in the morning before leaving the house.  They must spend an hour trying to decide what underwear to put on, and then have to have a conference with their parents to ensure that 1) their parents still love them after making their decision, 2) that they're still a beautiful and special snowflake, and 3) they've exhausted every possible opportunity to dither, mindlessly debate, create a public exhibition of their stupidity, and 3) dishonor their family in as public a manner as possible.  If you're under the age of 21 and reading this, there's a reasonable chance everyone who knows you would be happy to see you dead, because they're sick to fucking death of watching you text incessantly and beg the world for attention and affirmation.

From there, the emails get progressively less stupid.  We can still all learn something from them, however.

This has something to do with hernias.

Q: Have you ever had any problems with hernias?  I got one a few weeks ago while deadlifting.  I went for the PR but I'm afraid I might have gotten the ER instead.  It's not bothering me too much, and I haven't stopped lifting, but my buddy's mom, who is a nurse, is urging me to get it operated on or at least looked at.  Any advice?

A: I have never had a hernia.  I'd have someone look at it and avoid squatting and deadlifting until you get it diagnosed.  I've no idea how or why you people get hernias with the frequency you do, but it's disconcerting.  Quite frankly, I cannot envision a scenario that would end in me getting a hernia.  You guys seriously need to start doing some fucking ab work.

If you have, or think you have a hernia, go to the fucking doctor.  If nothing's bulging, it's likely a strained ab, but go to the doctor anyway.

Q: I purchased Noopept,Oxiracetan,Aniracetam,Adralin,and Synedrex today via the web. How would you recommend stacking these  if you work out in the morning ? The only other supplement I would be taking is Animal Pak.

A: I don't use the oxi and ani preworkout- I use those for reading, writing, and listening to music.  Preworkout, I'll usually use two Synedrex and 20mg of noopept, then drink a Bang .357 for the caffeine.  In re Bang, if you can find it, DO NOT DRINK THE CAMPAGNE COLA FLAVOR.  Lemon Drop is awesome, and champagne cola tastes like what I'd imagine cow shit would taste like if you fucked it out of the cow using strawberry flavored lube, and then ate the cow shit off newly laid asphalt.  To call that flavor offensive would be like saying that raping a Muslim with a kiebasa is mildly out of line.  I've used Adralin preworkout but think Synedrex is the better choice, and Adralin works better for intellectual pursuits.

Q: I came across this and I was wondering what you thought about it. I know that you've most likely come across this research before but you still drink lots of protein in liquid form.

What do you think?

A:Makes sense.  Luckily, most proteins are fortified with enzymes.  Additionally, studies have shown that high levels of protein consumption raise absorption rates over time.

Pierre Van Den Steen, just because I've not yet used a pic of him.  Dude was fucking shredded.

Q:  Just wanted to ask your thoughts on something. I'm 19, and got the chance to get my test levels looked at recently. To my abject fucking horror, I found out that my test levels sit at a very uncool 461 ng/dl.

Obviously, I can't turn to anabolics, but these relatively low test levels probably account for at least some of the reason it's so hard for me to make lean, muscular gains. Any ideas? Everything I'd read says that median test levels for a man are 700 ng/dl. I've read your blogs on increasing test regularly, but just wanted to know if you had any other ideas.

A: Try megadosing D-Aspartic Acid, tribulus, and ashwagandha.  3g of the former, and 5g each of the latter per day, split into two doses.  They're all reasonably cheap, and the former and the latter have been shown in clinical studies to increase test levels.  Tribulus has not, but anecdotal evidence seems to support its inclusion in high doses.

... and with that, I'm out.  Coming up- jump squats, neck work, and possibly the end to the Indian blog series.