Baddest Motherfuckers Ever #26- Steve Stanko

There have been times when the best among us hasn't felt like hitting the gym- whether it be the common cold, not enough sleep, stressful day, or getting identified in some super-sweet gay porn, the urge to skip the gym will occasionally strike.  Few people have been able to resist the siren call of the couch on a training day from time to time, but it's exactly those motherfuckers who rose to levels of greatness about which few modern men dream outside of the leader boards in Call Of Duty.  One man, however, stands head and shoulders above the rest,  due to the mere fact that after he hit 35, he could barely fucking stand- Steve Stanko.

"Seriously, though.  He fucking hates you!"

For those of you unfamiliar with this former titan of strength, allow me to shit some knowledge on your proverbial chests.  Prior to contracting phlebitis, which is a disease wherein your doctor simply shakes his head and explains "God really fucking hates you, champ" when diagnosing you, Stanko held the following distinctions:

• he was the first person in the world to total 1000 lbs. in the three Olympic lifts (press, snatch and clean and jerk).  In doing so, he even chumped John Grimek, which would be more or less akin to Dmitri Klokov getting owned by a teammate who weighed ten pounds less than he did.  In 1941, Stanko represented with a  Press of 310.5 pounds, a Snatch of 310.5 pounds, and a Clean and Jerk of 381 pounds for  a total of 1002 pounds in 1941 at a bodyweight of 220. (Willoughby 167)
• he could run 100m in 10.8 seconds in street clothes, at a time when the world record was 10.2.  In other words, it'd be like an Olympic weightlifter who could more or less keep up with Usain Bolt without removing his club clothes after a night of fist pumping with the Jersey Shore kids at Neptune's. (Roark, Wiki)
• he was the first Mr. Universe, a distinction later held by guys you might have heard of like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sergio Oliva, Reg Park, John Grimek, Frank Zane, Brutal Bertil Fox, and a whole shitload of other notable bodybuilders.
• At the time Super Athletes was published, Stanko was one of the two most heavily muscled Mr. Americas (along with John Grimek) at 5'10", 223lbs, for a 3.119 height to weight ratio.  (Willoughby 167-168)
• Stanko was one of three men to do a snatch holding the largest plates at the end of the barbell, snatching 145 lbs. in that fashion in 1945.  Only Hermann Goerner outlifted him with 165 lbs., though he outweighed Stanko by about 80 lbs.(Willoughby 216)
• In one workout, Stanko cranked out ten single clean and jerks with 380.
• He could do 3 one arm chins at a bodyweight of 220, making him the 7th best chinner in history (according to David Willoughby).

Most of that shit was accomplished prior to the onset of phlebitis, which sounds like it sucks hard- it's a shitload of clotting in the legs.  You can't massage them away, since they'll dislodge and get stuck in your lungs, heart, or brain.  As such, you basically live in a shitload of pain.  This had to suck extra-hard for Stanko, who was a goddamned superman prior to contracting the disease.  He dropped from 223 to 178 after getting the disease, and was forced to walk around with crutches like a modern-day Tiny Tim.  Unlike most people, however, Stanko didn't just sit on the couch getting fat and bemoaning his shit luck.  Instead, he started lifting light and eventually got back up over 200 lbs in spite of the fact that he couldn't do any standing lifts.  When pressed to do something while tottering around on his rebellious legs,  rickety-assed Stanko busted a 190 lb strict curl standing, and that is the only record of a standing exercise I could find of Stanko's after contracting what amounts to AIDS of the legs.  Not fucking bad for a cripple.

Giving zero fucks.

Prior to being smited by the angry Jewish god of the Old Testament, Stanko's workout was fucking hardcore.  He trained five days a week, lifting massive amounts on the Olympic lifts daily.


Press
280
290
300 for 8 singles
260 for 5 sets of 5 reps

Snatch
280
290
300 for 8 singles
260 for 5 sets of 5 reps

Clean
360 for 5 sets of 3 reps

Clean and Jerk
370 for several singles

True to form in terms of being a cast-iron badass, Stanko didn't give a shit about warming up- he just did some old-school calisthenics and ate a shitload of baked beans (seriously) before starting to press.(Fair 67)  After he got done with the serious business of his workouts, Stanko would fuck around with weights at which his contemporaries shit their pants:

• overhead dumbbell press-100lb dbs x 12-14 reps, 120lb dbs x 8-10 reps (Murray)
• dumbbell swing- "in which he used a pair of 100’s for six reps"(Murray)
• squat- 380-400 for 10 reps (Murray) 
• high pulls to the chest with 350-400 pounds (Murray)
• quarter squats held in the clean position- with 400 lbs for sets of 10  (Murray)
• continental 410 or 420 to the chest just to “get the feel of the weight.”  (Murray)

After getting all crippled up, Stanko continued breaking his ass in the gym, but modified his movements because he had trouble standing.  “Plenty of reps, with heavy weights – that’s my system,” Stanko once noted, which pretty much puts his philosophy in line with John Defendis.  Eventually, Stanko worked up to 322 pounds on the pullover and press on bench, "never attempting to press more than he could pull over with bent arms. His bodybuilding routine often included 4 sets of 20 bench presses with 205."(Murray)  While that might seem retarded to you or I, you've got to remember the bench press had only recently been invented, and they were jury-rigging bench stands.  I can't imagine utilizing the retardedly dangerous toomfoolery they got up to when attempting to construct a bench on which to press, but it makes sense they wouldn't want to load up their hilariously rickety apparatuses with a bunch of weight.

While Stanko's lifts don't seem all that insane in retrospect, the takeaway here is that whatever excuse you think you might have to quit training or skip sessions, you fucking have no excuse at all.  Steve Stanko was a bad motherfucker simply because he looked god directly in the eye and told him to go fuck himself, and then proceded to be a horrifyingly bad motherfucker to the point that he won the most prestigious bodybuilding competition of his day while barely able to stand.

Stop making excuses and go crush shit.

GOMAD isn't always the wrong choice.

Sources:

     Everson, Jeff.  Strongest Man in History.  http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/planet28.htm
     Fair, John D.  Muscletown USA: Bob Hoffman and the Manly Culture of York Barbell.  State College:  Penn State Press, 2008.
     Murray, Jim.  Steve Stanko's Training.  http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2008/05/steve-stankos-training-jim-murray.html
     The Roark Report.  A history of the Mr. Universe and Mr. World Competitions Before 1950, Part One: Mr. Universe 1947.  Iron Game History, Vol 3, Number 4
     100m World Record Progression.  Wikipedia.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men's_100_metres_world_record_progression
     Willoughby, David.  The Super Athletes.  1971.

Chaos And Bang Your Earballs #10

The one for which you've all been waiting, in which I discuss the recent exciting news flying around message boards.  Also, you can download it here, so you people can quit yer bitchin' about 4shared.

The pics we discussed:
Tits McGee

A guy eating a horse's shit from www.reddit.com/r/spaceclop

Feel free to ask questions/talk shit/regurgitate inane, suburban, judeo-christian morality at me in the comments.

Chaos And Bang #9

A new CnB (Download here)!

We cover:

• squatting 
• drinking and lifting
• zombies
• getting shot in the chest while wearing a suit of armor comprised of naught but care tires
• sundry other shit.

Here's the Chestbrah pic I detailed.  Don't be either of thses guys.

I Like To Break A Mental Sweat, Too: Documentaries You Need To See

In previous entries in this series, I've recommended training and nutrition non-fiction, fiction, and short stories I think are noteworthy.  In this installment, I'm tipping you fuckers off to some documentaries that are definitely well-worth checking out, ranging in topics from global political economics to armwrestling.  Training's as much mental as it is physical, and if you're going to be superhuman, you might as well be hyperintelligent and well-informed to boot.  Thus, documentaries you need to see.

But first, tits.  Doing it right, guys.  Doing it right.  Violet Erotica is her name.

Now, the documentaries:

Pulling John-  This is a documentary you HAVE to see.  Let me start by enjoining all of you not to armwrestle if you can possibly help it if you don't train to armwrestle.  Naught but evil will arise out of armwrestling for the layperson, no matter how well-conditioned you think you might be.  I recently armwrestled a couple of people who interrupted my wing-eating session because I was covered in veins, reading a book, and rocking an Emmure jersey, a combination that is apparently is catnip for drunk hipsters.  First, two broads (one hot, the other not so much) insisted they use both hands simultaneously against my one, which I won easily.  Then, a hipster librarian challenged me with the same arm for no reason whatsoever, and butts were hurt when he (unsurprisingly) lost.  In spite of the fact that I armwrestled three fairly weak people for a total of perhaps 30 seconds, my right arm has hurt pretty much constantly since.  It's kept me up for two nights and prevented me from doing anything from behind the neck push presses to playing with my nipples while jerking off.  My arm's pretty well fucked to pieces.  The issue seems to lie with the fact that it is now absolutely riddled with knots, large and small, which start in my armpit and extend to my wrist.  Everyone I've discussed this with had similar tales, some ending in torn labrums and others ending in broken arms, but none ending in happiness, rainbows, or unicorn farts that smell like cinnamon.  

Putting the real world aside, however, this documentary is fucking amazing for several reasons.  One, it features Olympic bobsledder, Olympic judoka, and world champion armwrestler Alexey Voevoda training and competing, which by itself worth the price of admission.  Voevoda is a fucking freak- great at everything, insanely strong, and unconditionally Russian.  He looks like a man born out of time who should be wearing a suit of black armor and commanding a legion of orcs against some hapless elves rather than smiling and eating ice cream on the shore of the Black Sea.  The dude's so Russian that he and his friends play a game with the dog where they throw it by it's collar onto the roof, like the dog is a fuzzy brown frisbee.  The dog, in a move even more Russian than the one that got it onto the roof, then jumps down and climbs all over the assembled Russian behemoths until they throw it back onto the roof.  Did I mention they're all (dog probably included) hammered to bits?  In any event, Voevoda's pitted against former armwrestling lightweight phenom John Brzenk, who was one of the dudes who armwrestled Stallone in Over the Top, and American goofball and pro-shittalker Travis Bagent at the end.  There's some awesome training footage and a hell of a lot of manliness to be found within the confines of this dvd.

Fathead-  Fathead's the brainchild of alleged comedian Tom Naughton as a rebuttal to Morgan Spurlock's ridiculous and wildly popular Supersize Me.  Though it drags in spots and is less funny than Naughton seems to think it is, Fathead's a great synopsis of Gary Taubes' arguments regarding heart disease and diet.  The documentary also exposes the links between the radical, wild-eyed, freedom-hating, logic-hating, erection-hating, anti-science, patchouli-stinking, pro-feelings, yoga-doing, fat and useless vegan/vegetarian movement and the anti-dietary fat campaigns throughout the last 30 years of American political history.  Frankly, I'd never considered the possibility of a vast conspiracy behind the dietary recommendations of the health community, naively believing them to be the legitimate produce of well-intentioned but ultimately idiotic doctors.  Instead, they appear to be the results of a tremendous amount of lobbying by people with a political agenda and absolutely no regard for human health.  Beyond that, Naughton draws some really interesting parallels I won't spoil for you, and successfully loses 12 lbs over 30 days eating nothing but fast food by simply keeping his carb intake to 100g a day or less.  While it might not be eye-opening to any of us, it's worth watching simply so you recommend it to other people thereafter.

Zeitgeist: The Movie-  Occasionally, I'll get a recommendation for a "truly eye-opening movie" that I "have to see" and will "change my life".  Those recommendations are invariably full of shit.  As such, when I was recommended this film, I was beyond skeptical, and thought perhaps the person doing the recommending had spent a bit too much time in their basement wearing a tinfoil hat and reading David Icke books.  That was unquestionably true.  This movie has got to be the darling of the tinfoil hat crowd, for the simple fact that it makes a hell of a lot of interesting points and actually contains facts.  For a conspiracist's film, that makes this the Holy fucking Grail.

Zeitgeist is split into three parts, all of which are loosely drawn together at the end.  The first third covers the Christ myth, essentially stating that Jesus is no different than any other prophet in any other epoch.  Though I was aware of a lot of the factoids presented in this section, there were enough new tidbits that I found myself rewatching parts to commit them to memory.The second's a Truther bit on 9-11, which was amusing if nothing else.  The third was a thought-provoking segment on the American Federal banking system, some of which was nonsense and other parts were pretty poignant.  Though I wouldn't recommend this as a source of a lot of new information, Zeitgeist is if nothing else thought provoking, and could spark some interesting and heady conversations should you find yourself in useful company.  As I rarely do, I simply enjoyed it as an inflammatory piece that drew together a lot of disparate elements to form a fairly cohesive thesis, which (if you hadn't already noticed) I love more than Germans love David Hasselhoff.  Worth a watch simply to argue against, should you want to be thoughtful for a bit.

Knuckle-  Ever felt like you're not terribly manly, no matter how hard you try?  You think that because you're not.  You know who is?  Irish Travellers.  Though you might only know them from Snatch (the "fucking Pikies/Gyppos"), Irish Travellers are a group of people in the UK and US (there are a bunch of them in North Savannah, Georgia) who combine all of the worst traits of American white trash with that of Roma Gypsies, and then throw in a love of fustigation that would make James L. Sullivan look like a fucking pacifist.  By all accounts, they're shiftless, dirty, thieving hobos, but these motherfuckers love to brawl and they love to carry grudges, leading to bareknuckles matches to resolve 20 year old feuds and fought by people who weren't alive when the instigating factor occurred.  Additionally, they're all closely related, so it's akin to your family devolving to the point where they live in trailers, cannot read, steal everything that's not nailed down, and everyone is filled with a burning, violent hatred for all of your cousins on one side.  Then, you get together once a week for an entire Saturday and stage dozens of bare knuckle fistfights and create more new problems than old ones are resolved.  It's utter insanity, but it's thoroughly entertaining.  While nothing in this movie will cause you to think on any deeper levels than "I resolve never to set foot in a national park in England", it's a highly entertaining look into what your life would be like if you gave into every base desire you had and avoided usefulness like Gyppos avoid sobriety.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster-  Quite frankly, I would be surprised if any of you had not seen what amounts to a masterpiece of storytelling in Bigger, Stronger, Faster.  The film chronicles the lives and dreams of three brothers, two of whom use gear and one who does not.  The youngest brother, "Stinky", is none other than Mark Bell, owner of the renowned gym Supertraining in Cali.  Another brother is a WWE jobber who allegedly offed himself shortly after the film's release, and the third is a non-steroid user who is the commentator and protagonist in the film.  The latter gives a spectacularly even-handed look at the politics behind steroid bans and use, and sheds a lot of light on a subject most people know little about.  If you've not seen it, you must, no matter your stance on steroid use.

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey-  If you don't like metal, you should not be reading this blog.  For the rest of you, this is required viewing.  Metal: A Headbanger's Journey is a comprehensive anthropological and historical study of metal, from its roots to current day.  The documentarian is himself a metalhead and bass player for a number of non-headlining metal bands.  He covers a number of subgenres in metal, including a short expose on black metal that he continued in his badass follow-up, Global Metal.  If nothing else, get it on Netflix and watch the interviews in the Extras- they're cool as shit and cover everyone from Dee Snyder to the hot chick with shit vocals in Arch Enemy, who's cool as hell in spite of using effects on her vocals.

That concludes my list of eye-opening documentaries.  This weekend will feature a massively long CnB and possibly a new Baddest Motherfuckers entry, if I can fit it in.  Until then, more viorotica.

Stop Bitching And Start Benching #4- My Two Cents

As I stated more than once over the preceding three blogs, there are only a couple of consistent features to the greats' bench routines:

1. They all benched at least twice a week
2. They all used moderately-high to high volume
3. They all utilized fairly low reps at least part of the time.

For regular readers of this blog, these features shouldn't be terribly revelatory.  With a few minor exceptions, the greatest lifters in history have all practiced their craft frequently, heavily, and enthusiastically.  As such, it would stand to reason that one would have to do the same to obtain a huge bench.  I discovered this myself over the last year through trial and error, and quite frankly regret ever abandoning the bench in the first place.  Had I not done so, I would almost assuredly be benching over 400 now, rather than simply flirting with 400 like a sorostitute with a fratboy while waiting to see what car manufacturer is emblazoned on his key fob.  I have, however, made great strides in the bench press in the last year and continue to do so, owing in no small part to the following changes to my workouts.

"A BMW?  Really?  What series?  Well then, allow me to whore it up!"

Paused Benching.  There is perhaps no change I've made in the last year or so that has had greater effect on my bench press than my conversion to 100% paused benching.  My conversion occurred, oddly enough, as a result of my episodic incline reverse grip bench press fetish.  As I mentioned in my post on the exercise, I was forced to do it from the bottom position because I never have a spotter.  Though dangerous, probably ill-considered, and definitely irresponsible, I got my bottom-position reverse grip incline up to 330, which was impressive considering that at the time I did it, I'd not benched that much on the flat bench in competition.  After making an ass of myself in two consecutive meets on the bench, I resolved to apply myself to to an effort to prevent my parents from committing seppuku when seeing my bench press numbers.  There are, after all, three lifts in powerlifting, and my obsessive focus on a single lift seemed to be doing me little good in terms of snatching the world record total.  I began flat benching with a 2 second pause on every rep at the bottom, and my lifts began to increase.  When I increased the pause at the lockout as well, my max bench increased further still.  Though this may not hold for non-competition benchers, I think it bears in mind that one should practice how one intends to play, ego be damned.  Thus, if you intend to compete in powerlifting, put your ego aside (and holy shit, that's the most herculean effort one will probably make in increasing one's bench) and abandon touch and go bench presses for (at the very least) the first repetition of each set.

Ryan Kennelly says "Fuck touch and go bench press" and "I hate jail".

Increased Frequency.  Certainly, practicing the lift at all has a massive impact.  In my first year of lifting, I benched perhaps three times a week, and did weighted dips at least that often.  I was consumed with increasing my bench at all costs, and made massive gains, going from >135 to 285 between my sophomore and the end of my junior years in high school.  From there, my bench fluctuated up and down but hovered around 300 for over a decade.  My bodyweight increased, but my bench didn't.  At the time, I was still rocking a bodypart split like my name was Joe Weider, and I suffered the consequences.  After a while, I abandoned the bench altogether for concentration on the lifts that actually moved, going back to the bench only in times of boredom or necessity (like for a meet).  For perhaps three years I rarely benched at all, and my bench press didn't backslide all that much due to ancillary growth in other areas, but it didn't increase either.  Thus, as I found it necessary to bench press for competitions, I discovered something- the more I did it, the better I got.  That's not to say one should bench every day and expect to rival Scot Mendelson in a year.  It did work for Bev Francis, however, and all of us likely know some beach-muscle laden freaks in our respective gyms with wildly disproportionate benches who obtained them with hyper-frequent benching.  Thus, increased frequency bears investigation.

As seems to be most common, I generally bench twice a week, with one workout consisting of extremely heavy triples, doubles, and singles, followed generally by a touch-and-go death set, and a second workout consisting of sets of 5 and 3.  In the second workout I focus on explosiveness, whereas on the first I focus on simply moving the most weight possible.

At the very least, you should consider twice a week benching.  I have not decided if the benefit of twice a week benching comes from improved form (as Ken Fantano would insist), comfort with the lift, increased strength from the frequency, or a combination thereof, but the why does not matter nearly as much as the what.  If we learn nothing from history, we are doomed to repeat it, and there's plenty of shitheads throughout history with shitty benches who ignored the methods of the greats.  Let us not repeat their inexcusable mistake, shall we?

I have a very good reason for posting this, but I've forgotten what it is.

Greater Shoulder Strength.  This cannot be undersold.  Not only does increased shoulder strength confer awesome fucking shoulders, but it improves your bench.  I'll allow my vanity to take over for a second and I'll impart a bit of what I've learned about the human body over years of seeing jacked people in the gym- if you've got striated, vascular shoulders, the rest of your body could look like dogshit and people will still think you look phenomenal.  I've been mocked by a variety of chicks in the past for my obsession with my shoulder striations, but they know as well as I that they give the impression of massive strength (in addition to looking cool as fuck).

As Dmitry demonstrated, badass shoulders look awesome.  Ripped abs don't hurt either.

Vanity aside, increasing shoulder strength will always, in my opinion, lead to increased bench strength, though the obverse is definitely not true.  there are three exercises I utilize at a minimum of four times a week to constantly improve my shoulder strength:

• Klokov Press: Known over the years as behind the neck snatch grip strict press, or somesuch unweildy nonsense, Paul from Lift-Run-Bang and I have taken to calling them Klokov Presses in honor of the Russian monster himself.  There's a video I've posted before of Klokov doing this press, and it's done more to popularize the movement than any other mention or example in history.  Klokov's a fucking beast, the lift is a bitch, and you will get stronger doing it.  
• Military Press: I am not referring to the colloquial version of this press, but instead the real fucking deal, which I've outlined here.  Omit these at your peril.
• Behind the Neck Push Press:  Also known as behind the neck push jerk, or on Reddit and Bodybuilding.com as "the exercise guaranteed to paralyze you", this exercise is a man-maker.  Over the last year I've hit 345 a couple of times, which while not incredibly impressive to some, impresses the balls off me.  I've hurt myself on these in weird little ways at least five times in four years, and still include them weekly because they work.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, motherfuckers, and you're not going to kill yourself doing them, though you are guaranteed to get a horrible crick in your neck from time to time from a bad descent.  It's the price of doing business, and anyone who avoids them will pay the price of having a shit overhead.  Be sure to laugh at them when you put their max bench over your head and then warm up with the same weight on bench.

There is no reason on Earth, in my opinion, to do lateral or front raises, unless you just hate the shit out of your rotator cuffs and wish to hasten their demise.  Face pulls and rear delt machine lateral on the pec deck machine are worth doing on a regular basis, however, and I include them in my light morning workouts a couple of times a week for high reps (12-20 reps).  That's right- high reps.  My morning workouts are about flushing blood into my muscles, getting in a bit of extra volume, and filling in gaps.  I'm not going to claim I need to have speed prescribed to me, but I get bored as fuck after about 75 minutes in the gym, so I like to break up my workouts into two sessions of 15-30 minutes and 45-75 minutes. That way, I manage to dot all my i's and cross all of my proverbial t's without approaching a set of weighted crunches like a trial of Hercules rather than the bullshit, fuck-around set that it is.

Though you'll see in the foregoing posts that some of the epic benchers in history disagree with me about laterals, the certainly do not about shoulder strength.  Thus, make increasing your shoulder strength a priority if you want your bench to make big jumps.

Kara Bohigian demonstrating the weirdest fucking bench form you're likely to see.

Find Your Best Form.  This is the hardest part, and the part with which I cannot help you.  No one can, really, other than yourself.  If you look at the first post in this series, you'll see no two great benchers have the same form.  Jen Thompson has lauded other benchers in interviews for their elbow flare, much to Louie Simmons' apparent consternation.  You can rest assured for each accepted bench form platitude you uncover, you'll find several amazing benchers that not only violate the precepts set forth, but do so like they're gang raping the broad in Last House on the Left after making her piss her pants.  On a wholly unrelated note, the actress in the original actually pisses her pants in that scene, making it ten thousands times as hot as it already was.  Thus, pretend you're Wes Craven- you have no budget for special effects, and are going to have to figure out how to make it happen by your motherfucking self.  Though specific form tips generally don't apply across the board, certain methods do seem to apply across the board:

• Stay tight.  During my last meet I texted with Paul from Lift-Run-Bang quite a bit, and utterly ignored his advice in this regard.  on my second attempt, which was light, I missed the lift because I laid down on the bench like I was about to take a fucking nap.  That was a mistake.  Since then, I've set up and performed every single bench press exactly the same way- tight setup, shoulder blades retracted, and fully tensed.  Because of this, I've found that I perform much less erratically on the bench, and feel stronger on every heavy attempt.
• Drive with your legs.  You'll read a lot of bullshit about proper placement of your feet.  It's all nonsense- you'll figure it out with trial and error, and the occasional strained thigh muscle.  That's right, if you drive correctly with your legs, they actually get that involved.  Dig in with your feet and try to push the floor away from you when you're pressing the bar upward.  You'll get a transfer of power, a veritable shockwave as Ken Fantano described it, and that will help move the bar.
• Grip the fuck out of the bar.  I've never gotten anything out of trying to "snap" the bar in half, as Westside guys seem to claim to attempt.  I have noticed, however, that if you grip the shit out of the bar, it will help you maintain tightness in your upper body.

Fill In The Blanks.  Whether it's face pulls, which appear to be the darling of every shitty lifter on the planet, or something else you've identified as needing extra attention, most of you are going to need to do more accessory work that you'd like to think to eliminate sticking points.  In my previous entry about Rick Weil, I included his prescriptions for failed bench presses at certain points in the lift.  Other lifters, like Bill Kazmeier, for instance, believe that hammer curls are essential for a great bench press, while I realized that my pectoral development was lacking and started banging out high rep sets of cable crossovers to rectify the issue.  I do think that frequent, high-rep work on supporting muscle groups are a good idea to strengthen tendons and increase blood flow to those regions, so you might want to consider some high repetition sets of rope pushdowns to flush out your triceps, among other things.  

Are any of the above a panacea for an ailing bench press?  Certainly not, but the above recommendations can certainly get you back on the path towards a respectable bench press.  There's very little that's universal about weightlifting, but the above seems to be pretty standard across every good bencher's routine and technique.  Thus, it's time to stop fucking about, sack the fuck up, and start benching hard and heavy if you want to get respectable at that lift.

Your Fat Is Unequivocally Your Fault

A few years ago, a book was released entitled Your Fat Is Not your Fault.  Though the book likely wasn't popular enough to have effected great change in the American zeitgeist, it certainly echoed the strongly held beliefs of a lot of extraordinarily fat people trundling their worthless asses around your local Walmart.  Virtually anything other than their lack of self-discipline and willpower is generally identified by one of these jiggling crybabies as the root of their surfeit of adipose tissue- poverty, genetics, unavailability of healthy food, insufficient time, income inequality, overwork, marketing, governmental complicity, societal pressure, and vast conspiracies implicating some or all of the aforementioned.  Of the lot, certainly poverty is bandied about the most, as a number of studies have drawn a correlation between poverty and obesity.  Unsurprisingly, this correlation does not hold if one looks at the United States in prior eras, nor does it hold consistently outside of the United States.  As these statistics are easily obtained through a google search it seems obvious that obesity is more strongly correlated with sloth and stupidity.  Again unsurprisingly, that correlation holds no matter what spatial or temporal boundaries are employed, and actually extends further.  As such, I propose that the root of the problem behind obesity in America is a combination of stupidity and laziness, with the amusing correlates of religiosity and bad driving to boot.

Before I expound upon my earth-shattering findings, let me state that I understand that the book Your Fat Is Not Your Fault didn't blame any of those things, but rather ascribed fatness to bad parenting, food allergies, and a bunch of other happy horseshit.  Irrespective, it still takes the onus off the fat person and places it on everyone else, which is preposterous.  If you're stuck in a room slowly filling with raw sewage, you would likely find some way to reduce and then eliminate the flow, and you'd make it your first priority.  They should be even more motivated in that scenario if they'd caused the sewage inflow, since it was their responsibility for having caused it.  That is, of course, unless they enjoyed wallowing in sewage.  One would think that a penis disappearing under folds of fat would cause people react with much the same level of distress, alarm, and heightened motivation towards resolution, but they're too fucking lazy to bother.  Thus, they blame everyone and everything else for their problems and continue to get fatter while they scream about their rights as an alleged human being, their persecution by the skinny right, and the fact that their obesity is not a direct result of their own actions.  No matter what their preposterous accusations, however, it's not society that made them fat, and the only thing keeping them from resembling an actual human is their unwillingness to start bailing out the house slowly filling with shit.

The most common correlation mentioned between fatness and anything else is poverty.   Fat people and leftists love to claim that obesity is the result of poverty, and use a variety of studies to illustrate the correlation. If you're thinking to yourself that this makes no sense, you're right, but they confuse correlation for causation because they're stupid and lazy, and they seem to think that all poor people are so fucking dumb they don't know what food is bad for them and what's not.  As I show above, there's much more to this issue, but it appears clear to me that stupidity and sloth, not poverty, are at its root.  Fat people aren't fat because they're poor- they're poor because they're fat and stupid.  To wit:

• Stupid, lazy people make terrible decisions.  
• As such, they get fat, a condition exacerbated by the fact that they're incredibly lazy.  Perhaps extending out of their sloth, they are terrible drivers, and this makes it difficult for them to get to the whatever low-paying jobs they might have been able to obtain.  
• They are only able to obtain low-paying jobs because ugly people earn less than attractive people.  This isn't fatism- it's a simple sociological fact that people are nicer to attractive people, and attractive people are more successful as a result.
• Finally, after being fired for failing to show for their job stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart, they fall back on the idea that their station in life is divinely ordained, and that they can do nothing to resolve the situation that their intellectual insufficiency and breathtaking laziness have created.  

This, then, explains why they're poor.  Before you shit your pants screaming about the logical leaps I've just made, consider the following:  I added in the bad driving and religion simply because I thought it was amusing, but it seems obvious that fat people are genetically predisposed to anything, it's sucking at life more than Channing Tatum sucks at acting.

Perhaps you're concerned that my statistical analysis is flawed.  Frankly, I don't give a shit.  This isn't intended to be an in-depth statistical analysis.  Even if it were, everyone worth a shit (read: everyone but fat people) who has been through business school has read all or part of How To Lie With Statistics.   If you've not, it's a book that clearly explicates the fundamental problem with statistics, which is that they can be manipulated by clever statisticians to support nearly any aim.  Irrespective of the shallow nature of my statistical analysis, I'm certain that were students of anthropology were to look deeply into the data, my supposition would likely be borne out in great detail, and would then be blasted in the press and  suppressed for being "mean."

Why would it be suppressed?  Because nonsense like the following is more accepted than the truth:

"It’s no secret that there’s a correlation between poverty and obesity. We’re living in the supposedly richest nation in the world (thanks to a glorious legacy of slavery and property theft), where the majority of the people are either poor, or hopelessly debt-riddled and overtaxed middle class. The majority of Americans don’t have enough money relative to the quality of life we’re expect to maintain for our families, and at best rely on consumer debt to survive, and at worst criminal activities that may land us in jail. Many of us live or work in areas where we don’t have access to affordable healthy food. We may not have the time or money or energy or desire to work out or cook healthy meals at home when they’re already working 2 or more jobs to barely get by. Most of us don’t have adequate healthcare. Most of us don’t have gyms in our office buildings (my building even discourages us from using the stairs), can’t afford or don’t have access to a public gym, and may not live in areas where it’s safe  to go jogging at night, or for our children to get exercise by playing outside. We’re encouraged to self-medicate our exhaustion and misery with booze, cigarettes, television, video games, internet, and processed food that is literally chemically engineered the hit the pleasure centers of our brains like narcotic drugs, driving the urge to eat more (a hence, buy more). This narcotic food is cheap, even cheaper if you go for the 64 oz. Big Gulp, the King Size candy bar, the supersize fast food “value meal.” You can buy this “food” almost anywhere, and it’s a quick makes you feel good when you’re tired or cranky, at least temporarily. And it’s no big surprise that this lifestyle often leads to obesity, diabetes, and other issues."(James)

Blood-thirsty capitalist?  Yes.  Thin?  No.

To summarize: fat people are fat because rich, thin, blood-thirsty capitalists force them to live beyond their means and internalize the belief that they can afford anything and everything.  Thus, having overspent on trinkets, there's no money left for food, so the overworked and under-appreciated proles are forced to feed their families processed foods because they're too lazy to cook real food.  Then, they're not given free gym memberships or rides to the gym by the aforementioned blood-thirsty capitalists, replete with top hats and monocles, and they must live with their big-screen tvs and smart phones in undesirable areas with people in the same situation but are whom apparently dangerous.  Finally, they're forced to apply a chemical salve to their wounded, flabby psyches with junk food, nicotine, and alcohol to escape from the reality in which they live, and those medications are the only things that the rich provide them, as a soma for the Betas, Deltas, Epsilons, and Gammas of our cruel world.

Betas should do less smiling and more fetching me delicious beef ribs.

Only the fattest simpletons on Earth could possibly buy this ridiculous tripe.  The fat broad who penned that ridiculously intellectually disingenuous bullshit has cast herself as nothing more than an easily led herd animal manipulated into a lifestyle she could have easily avoided if she didn't suck, and then managed to paint her fellow cattle as dangerous miscreants and criminals.  Had this genius ever read Rhetoric, she might have developed the ability to formulate a cogent argument, but that would again require she not be a lazy piece of shit.  She'd also know, were she not so fucking disgracefully slothful, that the correlation she mentioned between poverty and obesity only exists in the last decade of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century in the United States.  This, of course, brings me back to my premise- our problem is that people are hideously, shockingly, and inexcusably fucking stupid and lazy.  The fattie above blames everything on capitalism and income inequality, but fails to take into account that the United States of of the early 20th Century had nearly as much income inequality, yet they were far leaner.  The immigrants coming across the ocean weren't whining about how fat they were, simply because they were too busy working hard and making their own fucking food to get fat, in spite of the fact that they were hard-drinking, chain-smoking, street fighting motherfuckers who likely never once thought about their waistline because their lifestyles kept them from getting fat.  Nor does this correlation exist outside of the United States, because the correlation is nothing more than the root of a stupid fucking argument that's the brainchild of intellectually lazy socialists.  The less intellectually lazy socialists at PBS had this to say to their red-banded compatriots last year:

"There are an estimated 1.46 billion overweight adults worldwide, and 502 million of them are considered obese. While nearly all countries are seeing rates rise, the severity of the problem varies greatly from country to country, said the WHO.

In Japan, about one in every 20 adult women is obese, compared to one in four in Jordan, one in three in the United States and Mexico, and up to seven in 10 in Tonga.

In the United States, where health officials have termed obesity an epidemic, more than 50 percent of the adult population could be obese by 2030 if current trends continue, a team from Columbia University and Harvard University wrote in a separate paper in the series."(Miller)

In other words, everyone's seeing people getting fatter, and it has little to do with poverty- in poor countries, the rise in obesity is among the rich.  Where's the indignation on their behalf, fat bitches?  On what day shall we weep for them- people who are likely getting rich off the literal blood of their countrymen.  It's not like there are any motherfucking Sudanese getting loot by expanding their cosmetic lines to serve outlying populations in northern Uganda.  People in truly poor countries will eat anything on which they can get their hands, and still, unsurprisingly, manage not to be fat.

Avon's calling!  Come get our new eyeliner!

Before we continue, we might as well address that fat broad's contention about the ability to find affordable food, which is utter fucking nonsense.  Think I'm lying?  It's possible, even in Europe where meat is hideously expensive, to eat paleo on the cheap.  I personally managed to eat very well for about $30 bucks a day, and I was eating 2 kilos of chicken breast and a big bag of mixed veggies daily in Vienna, the 24th most expensive city on Earth.(Bloomberg)  I'm not saying that paleo's the only healthy manner of eating, but it's indisputably healthier than what most poor people in the US eat, and it's generally considered to be hideously expensive.  The former-American-turned-Czech over at Prague Stepchild ran a 7 day challenge with his readers, and the three winners showed it was possible to not only eat extremely healthily, but also extremely well for between $25 and $85 a week per person- "Brendon spends $30-35 a week in South Korea. Jonathan spent $27.75 for a week, simply shopping at his local supermarket, and Margaret spent $85.49, around the national average, for very high quality food (grass-fed beef, etc)."(Prague)  Thus, it's not a matter of cost, but a matter of sloth, which the fat bitch freely admits- "We may not have the time or money or energy or desire to work out or cook healthy meals at home."  Thus, it's not a matter of accessibility or affordability, but rather of work ethic.  This is why the poor Americans in the early 20th Century looked like badasses and many of the poor people of this century looks like the shiftless, disgusting sacks of shit that they are.

They could afford healthy food because they didn't spend all of their cash on crack, guns, and iPhones.

Let's get back to my awesome chart, though, since I went to the trouble of making it.  On that chart, we see a very strong correlation between shit test scores in grade school (which we can attribute to a combination of shitty parenting and laziness), low rates of college graduation, religion, and poverty.  Perhaps we should start broadcasting public service announcements that science and math are not the works of the Devil, and if you actually work hard in school you can get a job that will allow you to shop at Whole Foods if they wished.  Certainly, I'm not going to blame Jesus for this problem, as that motherfucker had a badass six-pack, but the cattle who worship him around the clock seem to love Ring Dings and couches just as much as the Good Book and hate learning, exercise, and vegetables like they're the Devil himself.

So, what are we left with?  How about the fact that people are so lazy that they consider it a victory to walk a marathon.  That they will put on exercise clothes to walk the dog, because that, to them, constitutes exercise.  That's not exercise- that's LIFE.  Living your life the way humanity was intended to- moving the fuck around.  Fat people are fat because they're lazy.  They don't understand it because they're stupid.  They're stupid because they're as intellectually lazy as they are physically.  Think I'm exaggerating?  Think again.

"Only 5.07% of Americans reported doing any vigorous-intensity activity like running, while at the other end of the scale, more than 95% said they had engaged in the highly sedentary activity of eating and drinking.
The next most common activity was another sedentary one — watching television or a movie, which 8 in 10 Americans did.
The “most frequently reported moderate activities were food and drink preparation (25.7%), followed by lawn, garden, and houseplant care (10.6%),” the study said."(Song)

Food preparation, my friends, is not moderate exercise unless you're a teppanyaki chef at a Japanese restaurant and you're busy flipping knives and dodging fireballs like you're in a live action episode of Dragonball Z for hours on end.  The problem, obviously, is that people are incredibly fucking lazy, and that's why they're fat.  For whatever reason, the government decided to exacerbate this issue by deeming housework as moderate activity, which must be how the obese decided that preparing the food they jam down their gullets is exercise.(Rhone)  By prepare, of course, I assume that they mean "drive to KFC, order KFC famous bowl, return home, eat disgusting gelatinous brown glop in shame."

Speaking of lazy, how about we address the laziest of all excuses that land whales bandy about as the source of their bodyfat- hypothyroidism.  Whenever anyone blames glandular issues or their thyroid, they're claiming they suffer from hypothyroidism, which is an insufficiency of thyroid hormone.  Fat people generally assign blame to this in addition to their genetics, which they seem to think are part of the vast global conspiracy to consign them to a life trapped in a fat suit and the ridicule and scorn that comes with it.  Again, this is nothing short of laziness, because if they were in any way motivated to come up with anything other than a half-witted rationale for being a disgusting fatass, they'd know that only 4.6% of the population of the United States suffers from hypothyroidism.(Golden)  Again, we've got nothing more on our hands than a pack of fat, stupid, lazy people who can't drive to Dunkin Donuts without smashing into other cars and parking on the sidewalk while bellowing odes to Jesus at the top of their lungs and shrieking in horror at the sight of a book.

Venusian.  10/10 WB.

Oddly, I have no problem with people being fat, necessarily, if that's what they want to be.  I believe that the male archetype is the Farnese Hercules and the female archetype is Venus, and venusian figures are generally a bit chubby.  I enjoy a fat ass on a chick, a little belly, and some big tits- that, to me, is what a female figure is designed to look like.  What I cannot abide, however, is the intellectual disingenuousness that begins with people whining about the alleged discrimination under which they supposedly suffer fora condition they themselves embraced and actively cultivated, only to turn and state that they're victims of a mysterious and nebulous third party.  It's the same bullshit that resulted in 10 Minute abs and the Thighmaster- sloth.  If they love eating and fucking and want to lay around all day eating cheesecake, awesome, but keep your fucking mouth shut about discrimination- they chose a lifestyle that led to their current state.

Thus, I think there's a compelling case to be made for the idea that a person's fat is their fault.  Whether or not they choose to do something about it is one thing, but they certainly can have a coke and a smile and shut the fuck up about it.  They made their soft, pillowy beds, and now they can lie in them- a state of repose should be fairly natural for them at this point, anyway.

Cleanse.

Sources:
     Abbott, Sean.  7 day challenge--everyone's a winner.  Prague Stepchild.  http://praguestepchild.blogspot.com/search/label/7-day-challenge
     Amber, Snarky.  How Smart (Or Dumb) Is Your State?  Mama Pop.  http://www.mamapop.com/2011/09/how-smart-or-dumb-is-your-state.html
     America’s Poorest States.  24/7 Wall St.  http://247wallst.com/2011/09/14/americas-poorest-states/2/
     Bloomberg.  The World's Most Expensive Cities 2010.  Bloomberg Businessweek.  http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/06/0622_most_expensive_cities/25.htm
     CalorieLab.  Mississippi is the fattest state for 6th straight year, Colorado still leanest, Rhode Island getting fatter, Alaska slimmer.  http://calorielab.com/news/2011/06/30/fattest-states-2011/
     Golden SH, Robinson KA, Saldanha I, et.al. Prevalence and incidence of endocrine and metabolic disorders in the United States: a comprehensive review. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology Metabolism. 2009;94(6):1853–1878.
     Healthy Americans.  F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America's Future 2010.  Trust For America's Health.  http://healthyamericans.org/reports/obesity2010/
     Huffington Post.  Most and least religious states in America.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/27/most-and-least-religious-states_n_1383482.html
     Huffington Post.  State Education Rankings: The Best And Worst For Math And Science.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/11/state-education-rankings-_n_894528.html
     James, Bianca.  Health at Every Size and the Important Difference Between Thin and Healthy.  Ms. Behaved.  http://msbehaved.com/2012/06/07/health-at-every-size-is-awesome-and-the-difference-between-being-thin-and-healthy/
     List of countries by income inquality.  Wikipedia.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
     Miller, Talea.  Obesity Rates Rising Worldwide, Half of U.S. Could Be Obese by 2030.  PBS.  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/08/obesity-rates-rising-worldwide-us-could-hit-50-by-2030.html
     Obesity statistics.  Nationmaster.  http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity
     Newport, Frank.  Mississippi is the most religious state.  State of the States.  Gallup.  http://www.gallup.com/poll/153479/mississippi-religious-state.aspx
     Rhone, Shauna Scott.  Housework as workout.  Cincinatti Enquirer.  http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/01/26/tem_tem2a.html
     Shellenbarger, Sue.  On the job, beauty is more than skin deep.  Wall Street Journal.  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203687504576655331418204842.html
     Song, Sora.  Americans Count Cooking Food as ‘Moderate Exercise’.  Time.  Healthland.  http://healthland.time.com/2010/09/20/americans-count-cooking-food-as-moderate-exercise/#more-9245
     States With the Lowest Percentage of College Degree Holders.  Huffington Post.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/21/least-educated-states_n_733348.html#s142964&title=Texas
     Top 10 Most Dangerous States to Drive In.  LegalBlogger.  http://www.legalblogger.com/top-10-most-dangerous-states-to-drive-in/

Chaos And Bang Your Earballs #8

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