Nothing Is True; Everything Is Permitted: The Evolution Of Chaos And Pain

"We don't want to be popular.  

We want to be infamous.  

I wake up in the morning and say, "How could I be more despicable?"

-Jon Basso

Doing it right, guys.  We're doing it right.  Nofappers, SUCK MY MOTHERFUCKIN' DICK.

Having received a shitload of requests to detail my current training routine and the evolution of my methodology, I thought it was high time to drop an update on what I'm doing.  I'll reassert that I generally detest detailing my own training, as most of what I do is provide the information I've used to arrive at my own training methods.  I like to lead a drunk to a vodka factory rather than pour him a shot, as it were.  Additionally, it seems rather pompous for me to detail my own training methods, as I've continually reasserted that my training methodology is not so much innovative as it is successful because of my hyper-aggressiveness.  So what you're about to get is blasted in the face bukkake-style with my current training methods, my current diet, and the occult shit I've alluded to, but never outright detailed, that formed the philosophical basis of Chaos and Pain.

This isn't the fucking Dark Carnival, people.  The Jewish corpse god doesn't live here.  You're about to get whacked with a shitload of chaos magick, Luciferianism, and demonology, because that's the ideological foundation for my training and diet methodologies.  Once you've read this, you might feel like going back through parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of my Get Your Fucking Head Right Series and you'll see that although I explained it utilizing what is called the "Cybernetic" model, I generally use a combination of the spirit model and the cybernetic model in my own life.  I realize that many of you are probably already mentally checking out, in large part because you're conditioned to be small-minded dipshits, I'll give you a TLDR so you don't get lost:

• the Cybernetic model of Chaos magick is essentially the use of minute neurological changes to cause changes in the universe at large.  When you see Chaos magick associated with quantum physics, the author is using the cybernetic model... and even quantum physicists will admit there's something to chaos magick.
• the Spirit model of Chaos magick is exactly what it sounds like- it's the belief that otherworldly creatures do exist, and that they and powers from their plane of existence can be called upon for aid in our own

Preferable to and more helpful than asking strangers on the internet about a proposed course of dieting or lifting action.

In short, all of the science I have bandied about in past blogs wasn't bullshit- it was backfilled.  I have never in my life read a study and used it to formulate a plan for success going forward.  Instead, I harness energies and utilize them in the gym to great success, then find studies and science that justifies my success after the fact.  It's a bit like that old adage that it is easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission, except for the fact that I'm not begging for a fucking thing and I would sooner ask a person to spray me with acid than to give me their opinion on a plan for training or dieting.  My successes and failures are entirely my own... as should be yours.

The reason why I am opening with this explanation rather than just getting to what you people have been asking for is that I think the most important thing to ask a person when critiquing a program is to ask them why they are doing what they are doing.  If they have no justification for any of it, or it's superficial, just dip and roll out- they're going to fail because they are not intellectually and emotionally invested enough in the process or the outcome.  I'm also going to great lengths to explain myself because I invariably run into the "BUT THAT'S NOT CHAOS AND PAIN!" exclamations when I tell people my current training methods, which I have to say is more aggravating than trying to pull a candiru out of your pisshole.

GAMEBOOKS TURNED ME INTO A SATANIST IN MY YOUTH.  The fact that some Christian somewhere is thinking that makes me want to burn a fucking church.

Chaos and Pain, obviously, is whatever the fuck I want it to be.  Or whatever the fuck you want it to be if you feel like you're carrying the CnP banner- it's the only 18+ Choose Your Own Adventure, filled with dogs and sex and gore and metal.   This is where the occult shines a bright light on the whole Chaos and Pain methodology, because Luciferian gnosis is "freedom as it removes need for inner justification" and is "the point where mind and intuition compliment rather than negotiate" (Ford 39).  As such, you are free to, and encouraged to, allow your intuition to guide you rather than blindly follow the dogma of a system with hard rules.  You're practicing "mindfulness" in the same way samurai did, being fully present in the entire process of preparing for and engaging in training, rather than acting like a fucking schmoe, jerking your dick on the sidelines while oily female wrestlers flex and submit each other... which is of course an allegory for you sitting idly by and accepting at face value a program written by a person you've never met and not in any way an excuse for me insert muscle porn into this article.

 ... maybe it was after all.

With all of that freedom in mind, let's get down to my training and dieting of late.  From late May of last year through November, it'd be pretty accurate to say I trained sporadically.  Most of what I was doing was continually restarting the training process in a variety of ways and learning what worked and what didn't when coming back off a layoff.  The machine-based program I outlined in Like a Phoenix Rising From the Ashes is what I've found to be by far and away the most useful method for coming back off a layoff, and I would highly recommend you heed my advice and build some baseline strength with machine work prior to embarrassing and or hurting yourself with an assault on free weights with the wild-eyed enthusiasm that's second nature to us and generally only reserved for suicide by cop outside the gym.

My general attitude when entering the gym, captured perfectly by Jacen Burrows.

Assaulting machines with that kind of glassy-eyed bath salt induced enthusiasm right out of the gate is just fine, and should be encouraged.  You might get a little fucking sore, but dunk your ass in a hot bath with Epsom salts, eat a bunch of steak and tater tots, and chug water.  You'll be fine, buttercup.  The evil rhabdo monster is not hiding under your bed and the only things that ever died from overwork on machines are fatness and laziness.

"Be mindful that the Deconditioning Process is not merely an intellectual experience. It is relatively easy to ‘intellectually accept’ some experience or belief which you have previously rejected or dismissed. It takes more resilience to take action from your new position, and risk the emotional upheaval that may result afterwards" (Hine 44).

If the IMs and emails I get are any indication, there seems to be quite a lot of emotional upheaval and consternation at my contradiction of past articles like "Friends Don't Let Friends Do Leg Extensions."  At various times I've lampooned, lambasted, and libeled such exercises as lateral raises, Hercules curls, leg extensions, and a wide variety of other exercises, and I've managed to decondition myself to these standpoints in a lot of instances.  I still maintain that Hercules curls are about as useful as a plastic pussy at a gay male orgy, but I've come to see that there is a lot of utility in lateral raises (for both strengthening the shoulder girdle and improving range of motion for some people) and in leg extensions in particular.  These I began doing a couple of years ago when I was training while drunk, and heavy drunken squatting rivals nude bareknuckles bear fighting in stupidity and lethality.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, the manner in which I was conducting my leg extensions is precisely the style in which the Chinese Olympic weightlifting team does them- namely, explosive concentric movement with a static hold at full extension.

The Chinese Oly team seems to know a thing or two about building their quads.

In spite of the fact that tr00 powerlifting bros on the internet eschew such menial exercises as leg extensions, the Chinese team and the Egyptian weightlifter Mohamed Ehab swear by isometric holds on that exercise.  For my part, I can attest to the fact that they do seem to bring up leg strength, definition, and size quickly- my earlier reticence to do them was in opposition to a growing trend in bodybuilding to discard squats altogether in favor of easier exercises.  Ehab apparently didn't need to arrive at the conclusion it was alright to do extensions as a supplement to squats in a middle-aged epiphany, and does them for three sets of 20 second holds with 90kg, which is a not insubstantial weight for a 77kg lifter.  I tend to do them with ten second holds for reps, doing more sets and less weight.  I will sit up in my seat to reduce the shearing stress on my knees at the starting point, then explode to full extension, hold for ten seconds, and lower the weight in about four seconds.  I follow a similar pattern with my leg curls as well, as hamstring strength plays a major role in both pulling and low bar squatting.

Anyone else feel like they're living in a fucking cartoon lately?  

A soon-to-be post-apocalyptic cartoon.

Like the leg extension/squat issue I had early in my writing, I had a very strong opinion about laterals- they were pretty much pointless.  I had good reason for making this assertion, as prior to my adoption of a three day a week overhead pressing habit, I had dogshit shoulders.  My overhead pressing strength rivaled Donald Trump's leadership skills in terms of awesome, and they looked like flattened heads of wilted lettuce glued to my torso.  As such, I decided that laterals, which had previously been the mainstay of my shoulder workouts, were utterly useless.  Over the years I noticed that pretty much every person with massive shoulders in the history of mankind has done some kind of lateral raise, and thought perhaps it would be a good idea to revisit them.  I still don't do them as a majority of any workout, no matter how light, but they're a frequently utilized movement in the ever-increasingly weird world of Chaos and Pain.

"A key to magical success is veracity of belief. If you want to try something out, and can come up with a plausible explanation as to how/why it should work, then it most likely will. Pseudoscience or Qabbalistic gibber (or both) - it matters not so long as the rationale you devise buffers the strength of your belief in the idea working. I find that this happens a lot when I try and push the limits of how I try to do some magical action that I haven’t tried before. Once I come up with a plausible explanation of how it could work in theory, then of course, I am much more confident about doing, and can often transmit this confidence to others. If I’m 110% certain that this rituals going to ‘bloody well work’ then its all the more likely that it will" (Hine 36).

So, we're finally at my current training routine, at which I arrived with a combination of demonic tarot readings and a healthy dose of "if I'm gonna make a comeback, I had better train as epically as I want to perform.  Thus, I've ditched the 45-60 minute rule to which I had clung so assiduously for so long- in rereading Zatsiorsky, I should be training 3-4 hours a day anyway, so my hour to an hour and a half a day bullshit was insufficient.  At present, I'm training 10-15 hours a week and gradually increasing the volume and insanity to see how crazy I can get with training.  Given that my rest periods are between 60 second and 150 seconds as a general rule, you could rate the density of my workouts as "motherfucking black hole-esque." 

Interestingly, the first card I blindly pulled from my Daemon Tarot deck is that of my patron, Buer.  Either a bizarre coincidence or something non-scientific that could still be explained with quantum entanglement, pretty cool.  I'll occasionally use a two card draw in the deck to determine how my training should go on a given day.  For instance, when i drew Dantalion and Belphagor, I determined that I needed to be more creative in that workout's approach.  Rather than using the system I'd been employing, I looked through old articles I'd made notes on and used Steve Justa's isometrics suggestions for a day of overhead pressing.  Rather than doing military or klokov pressing, I spent what proved to be an agonizing ninety minutes doing overhead lockout static holds with a shitload of weight until I nearly blacked out on each attempt.  I was sore for the next three days from my pelvic bone to my fingertips... which i assume is a good thing.

Although what follows is an example of what I have been doing, nothing whatsoever is set in stone- not the exercise pairings, frequency I train a bodypart or lifts, or rep ranges.  The only constant is that I will do a compound movement first and keep the reps between one and three on that lift, and I will perform the lift for roughly an hour with rests no shorter than a minute and no longer than about three minutes.  As before, I don't bullshit around in the gym- I rarely speak to anyone, I don't answer phone calls or spend 20 minutes making duck faces in the mirror and trying to get the best lighting. 

[If you're an IG superstar, go fuck yourself- I truly hope you die in a fiery car accident filming one of your idiotic opinion pieces about whatever inane topic happened to strike you as worthy of our attention.  In any other era your needy ass would have been dragged behind a shed and beaten with hoses for presuming to be anything other than an annoyance and a detriment to society as a whole.]  

I seem to have the shoulders situation pretty well figured out.

So, finally, here is a sample week of what's put about 25 lbs on me in the last three months.  These are all approximations to give you an idea.  Each workout lasts between 90 minutes and three hours.

Day 1:
Military Press- 1x3x135;185;205, 1x1x225, 5x1x235; 3x1x245 (form gets a little loose here), 3x1x235, 3xMAXx205
Hammer Strength Press- 5x10, 3x8, 3x6
Machine Lateral Raise- 5x10
Machine Real Lateral- 5x10
Strict Bicep Curl- 4 rounds of max reps with 75lbs in 30 seconds (there's an event at the Philly Fit Expo my gf and I might do that's 60 seconds with 65 lbs at my weight)
Whatever abs I feel like

Day 2:
Front Squat- 1x3x135;185;225;315, 1x1x365, 1x1x405;415;425;435;445, 5x1x405, 5x3-5x365
Seated Leg Curl- 10x6 (5-10 second holds at peak contraction)
Leg Extension- 6x10 (5 second holds at the peak contraction)
Calf Raises- 5x25
Abs and forearms and whatever else

Day 3:
1.5 to 2 hours of cable and machine rows.  Reps range from 6 to 25.  Every conceivable handle and angle.
(I partially tore my lat a month and a half/two months ago doing super explosive rows off the floor and am trying not to aggravate the injury as it heals, so these are pretty controlled and focused on squeezing my shoulderblades together and getting a pump)
Bicep Curl same as Day 1

Day 4:
Close Grip Bench Press- As many sets of 2-5 reps as I can get in an hour with 325.
Machine Incline Bench Press- As many sets of 4-10 reps as I can get in a half hour
Pec Deck- 6x12
Rope Pushdowns- 6x10

Day 5:
Shrugs: 1x10x495;585, 5xMAXx675, 5xMAXx765
Half hour of cable rows
Face pulls- 6x20
Abs

Day 6:
Miscellaneous bis, tris, forearms, and abs for 90 mins

Day 7:
Fuck around on extensions and curls or take off, depending on how I feel.

When confronted with a choice between being rich or jacked, Dan Bilzarian ripped a line of coke in the shape of Bolivia, roared "BRING ME WHORES AND GOATS!", washed down a handful of Viagra with a handle of Jack, and proceeded to be both.

In other words, I have far less of a system than I had before.  There is no structure beyond basing a workout on an ultra-heavy compound movement and then backfilling the workout with volume on machines.  I might do shoulders four times in a given week and skip squatting because my knee is stiff or I just don't fucking feel like it.  I might train 21 days in a row.  I might only train 5 days in a week.  For the first time in my training career, nothing is true, and everything is permitted.  I have more freedom than a Dan Bilzerian in international waters and I utilize that freedom to force progress in every fucking direction, at all times.

Pro Tip: I am not the only person I know who does this either- I surf Tumblr porn between sets during most workouts.  Contrary to what you might have heard on some Ted Talks of very dubious scientific footing or from the mouths of a pack of psychotics with ED who claim porn is to blame, porn raises your testosterone levels the instant you view it.  According to some sources, pornographers pointedly attempt to elicit the "maximum drug/hormone release by mixing sexual images with male dominance, aggression and violent images intended to shock and stimulate simultaneously", which stimulates the production of much higher baseline levels of hormones essential to getting strong and lean, "especially testosterone, but also adrenaline, epinephrine, and others."  
Not only does it create an awesome biofeedback loop, particularly in men, but watching porn causes an immediate release of "enormous amounts of additional testosterone, which further increase male narrowing, loss of reason, feelings of aggression, and sexual drive and arousal."  In other words, porn is to your endocrine system what nofappers are to weird anti-semitic conspiracy theories (Kastleman).  But what about furry porn / shit porn / tentacle rape / throatfucking or whatever dark secret-style porn you have lurking on your computer?  Great news, ladies and gentleman- that shit simply makes you more awesome.  Paraphilias are triggered by, and cause the release of, massive amounts of testosterone.  That shit is so potent, in fact, that psychiatrists use massive doses of anti-androgenic drugs like methylprogesterone to control these "deviant" predilections.  As such, you should probably just go ahead and watch www.hogtied.com between sets if you're looking to hit a PR that day (Prescription).

So there you have it- my current treasure trove of secrets has been laid bare.  Comingsoon in this series, I'll provide a bit more of the hazy logic defining my insanity, the current diet that fuels this insanity, how you might apply this bizarre shit to your own training, and my gauzy conception for how this will be tailored to fit powerlifting and honed to a fine edge as I get closer to my return to the platform.  And before you guys call bullshit on these workouts, know that I've no fucking reason to make this up- I stand to make no money off this and know most of you are looking at this and thinking I'm directly out of my mind.  I am.  Sanity is for the unimaginative and the uninteresting.  

Go be interesting and do something fucking epic.

Sources:
Ford, Michael.  The Bible of the Adversary.  Houston: Succubus Productions, 2007.

Hine, Phil.  Condensed Chaos.  Las Vegas: New Falcon Publications, 1995.

Kastleman, Mark.  How internet pornographers market to men vs. women.  Netnanny.  Web.  15 Feb 2018.  https://www.netnanny.com/learn-center/article/117/

New prescription for paraphilia Psychiatric Times.  1998 Apr;15(4).  http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/addiction/new-prescription-paraphilia