You're Focused On All The Wrong Sort Of Details

Lately, everywhere I look, I've noticed that people tend to focus on all the wrong sorts of details, in nearly everything they do.  They obsess about minutiae, but ignore the entirety of whatever it is that they're doing.  For instance, most people will now go and purchase "the best" materials and tools prior to learning their use, in the belief that the tools themselves, by their quality, will confer success on the endeavor, no matter how ineptly executed.  Kids think that they're owed degrees by virtue of the fact that they've paid for them.  Guys go to Home Depot and purchase levels with lasers on them and ornate, expensive power tools, then bitch when the tools fail to produce a spectacular result- which is due entirely to the fact that the guy was too busy learning about the tools to find out how to build his homosexual bird house, or whatever nonsense he decided to produce.  Though it's a prevalent issue in our society, brought on by what amounts to the collapse of our civilization, the demise of the human spirit, and the preface to genocide (hopefully).

If Rwandans had maps or books, they'd hate Armenia too.

Supplementation
The focus on random bullshit is different for men and women when it comes to exercise.  Women focus on clothing- few women will embark upon a program of physical fitness without dropping a couple of hundred bucks on shoes and workout clothes, no matter how fat, out of shape, or generally unsuited to spandex they might happen to be.  While few things are more comical than watching a couple of fat broads yammering away at each other while they waddle down the sidewalk or through the mall in their fancy Nike gear, the skinny idiots who walk into a supplement store yelling about how they need NO Explode are even funnier.  These idiots actually believe that their workouts are worthless without supplementation, and the only way they'll get any results is to spend $100 a month on sport supplements.  Just like the fat broads, no amount of expenditure will compensate for their lack of effort in their stated goal, their lack of education about exercise and nutrition, or just their general utility as a human being.  They're focusing on all the wrong sorts of details.

I love these ads.

Diet
Just like these people will obsess over supplementation, too many people are overawed by the Joe Weider conception of diet at 85% of muscular gains.  That's fucking idiocy.  Clearly, I spend a lot of time discussing diet- ways to get leaner and bigger simultaneously.  I've read a lot about it.  I'm well educated about it.  I fucking kill myself in the gym, and I require a dietary regimen extreme enough to support my workouts.  That stated, most people don't- they workout infrequently, at low intensity and volume, and no amount of dieting will resolve the negative situation into which they've put themselves with their lack of intestinal fortitude.  Thus, a diet obsession is helping nothing, and is sapping their reserves of discipline and effort that would be far better used in the gym.  You can't out-diet shit training.  Additionally, too many people focus on dietary minutiae while ignoring important points, like getting excessive amount of protein.  Getting kelp into your diet is fucking ancillary, at best.  Eat more meat, lift more weight, and quit obsessing over details until you have a reason to do so.

 That's allegedly a deadlift.  It appears he's focused on every wrong detail.

Form, Setups, and Routines
There are more inane threads on lifting message boards decrying poor form and pontificating endlessly (entirely theoretically) about lifting routines than I care to count.  Anyone who's been on bodyspace, t-nation, or any other major site knows this- it's fucking absurd.  They'll scream about how someone's out of position here, cheating there, or not hitting depth there, in spite of the fact that they cannot reasonably approximate the weights being lifted with any kind of form.  This, in turn, gets other people into the game, and they'll all but diagram lifts online, blather on about leverages and the danger of certain positions, and generally fear-monger half the readers and insult the other half.  The result- there are people in gyms right now lifting with nothing but pvc pipe.  Know what you can learn by lifting pvc pipe?  NOT A MOTHERFUCKING THING.  The very assertion that one could is the worst form of intellectual dishonesty and outright fucking stupidity I've seen.  These are the same people, who having learned the lifts going very slowly and so light that it cannot be called exercise, that spend a minute and a half setting up for a lift, and then lift ultra-light fucking weights.  They're focusing on the wrong shit- learn the exercise, get insanely strong, and fine tune your form at the end.  Oly guys bitch that I'm stronger than they are at their lifts, and it's because I fucking go for it when I lift, and they obsess about making every lift perfect.  They're not all fucking gems- gut it out, get brutally strong, and get your form right as you go.  Over-reliance on form is as bad as anything else- perfect form's not getting the weight up... brute fucking strength is.

The weight's off-center!  His upper body's out of position!  Mariusz has something to say about that, but not on the internet, because he understands those know-nothing bitches on the boards are too busy whining and typing to lift.

The same goes for routines.  Is it useful to have some guidelines?  Yeah.  Are there a lot of fucking great routines to follow?  Hell yeah- Smolov, Sheiko, the Bulgarian System, Wendler's 5/3/1... the list goes on and on.  That's not to say, however, that they're magical.  You'll get out of them what you put into them, and if you half-ass it through a badass workout, you'll continue to suck.  Conversely, if you bust your ass at a shitty program (maybe even HIT?), you'll get gains.  Intensity, dedication, and enthusiasm are the fucking keys there.  Stop focusing on the wrong shit.

Intensity+awesome genetics+coke-fueled workouts+shit program can still equal good physique

What You Should Be Focused On

Three things:

1. More weight.  Lift heavier.  Then repeat.
2. More protein.  How much is too much?  There's no such fucking thing, unless you shit out a kidney.
3. More of everything- fucking, reading, fighting, lifting, living.  Stop studying how to live and just fucking do something already.

Worthy of focus, and drive.  With the hips.

How I Prepped To Crush Shit At A Meet

First, a disclaimer- this is not what I suggest everyone does, but rather what I did in preparation for this meet for a month.  Frankly, it didn't deviate all that much from my normal training, and it's certainly not exact, as I detest recording my daily workouts.  With those things in mind, I'm not a powerlifter, so I've no idea if this shit is in any way ideal for that sport, but it afforded me the opportunity to kick a bit of ass.  As an fyi, I technically started my diet 5 weeks out, as I knew I would take 4 days off before the meet.

I'll have that.

First, the diet.  My diet was essentially low carb and low fat for the duration of the prep, as I needed to cut weight.  As such, I ate between one and two lbs of 93% lean ground beef a day, supplemented with 3 to 5 Matrix 5.0 or Myofusion Shakes a day (including one overnight).  This meant that I was consuming roughly 32 -64g of fat and 92-184g protein from the meat, and 138-230g protein, 12-20g carbs, and 12-20g fat per day from shakes.  For the first three weeks, I ate probably more along the lines of 2-2.5 lbs of ground beef a day and had around 3 or 4 shakes, but it depended greatly on my level of hunger.  To keep my carbs as low as possible, I made the burgers into patties and topped them with low carb beef gravy for the first 2.5 weeks, and then switched to Sriracha sauce and Piri Piri sauce to lower the carbs further.  Additionally, since spicy foods speed the metabolism, I thought this might aid with last-ditch fatloss.  In the event that I was particularly exhausted or hungry, I supplemented the beef with either beef ribs with a dry rub or my ubiquitous chicken wings, which helped stave off hunger and gave me a needed calorie influx to aid training.  Though it wasn't an exact science, I found that although I dropped visible bodyfat, my weight didn't really change until I started cutting down on my cheats.

Best. Diet Food.  Ever.

I had one cheat meal a week, friday night, during which I generally ate pizza and went to the movies, and then had one or two additional low-fat, medium carb days thereafter.  Prior to my cheat meal, I generally kept my carbs as low as I did during the week, but on the weekends, I made low-carb Flatout pizzas with low carb pizza sauce and had the occasional Chicken Schwarama, which is essentially a burrito, topped in this case only with the hottest Lebanese hot sauce.  If I drank, I'd do it on Saturday, during a medium-carb day, and drank vodka in Minute Maid Light Lemonaid to keep the carbs low.  I also ensured that I took extra fatburners on those days to facilitate more thermogenesis with the influx of the alcohol calories.  My fourth cheat was really just 93% lean ground beef made into taco meat, and eaten with Tostitos scoops after being slathered with Taco Bell hot sauce.  I washed that down with a liberal amount of Minute Maid Light Lemonaide and Vikingfjord, which got me hammered to pieces in very short order, and had me asleep before I was able to wreck much havoc.

For fatburners, I was taking 25-50 mg ephedrine, 200-400 mg caffeine, and 25 mg aspirin.  In the last week, I switched to a diuretic caffeine pill, Kranker2, to help me shed water in the last couple of days, and bumped my water intake up to 2-3 gallons a day until the Thursday prior to the meet.

I stopped eating and drinking on Thursday night around 10, and had nothing until weigh in.  That fucking sucked, but chewing gum the entire day definitely helped.

For training, not much changed.  I never lifted fewer than 8 times a week, and believe I lifted 11 times a week for the first two.  My morning workouts generally consisted of either bodyweight exercises or light barbell work for 20-30 minutes, usually done in a circuit fashion.  Evening workouts were 3 reps or fewer on everything, and I dropped arm workouts altogether during this time.  I squatted light in the mornings 2x a week, and heavy twice a week as well, working partials at various heights.  To my recollection, I might have done full squats three times in that month, which was ill-considered, given my subsequent inability to gauge my depth.

Monday after the meet.

For the most part, I abandoned direct arm work.  I would occasionally do a few sets of pushdowns here and there, and frequently did curl and press in the mornings, but more or less abandoned my arm supersets.  They appear, however, not to have hurt my arm development at all.

If I had anything approaching a typical routine, it looked like this:

Monday:

AM: 30 mins

Curl and Press 4x10, 4x5, 3x3

Bodymaster Machine Squat 10x10x225

PM

Shrugs

8x5x775

Reverse Grip Bench Press from the bottom position 8x3x315, 5x1x335

Tuesday: 30 mins

AM

Abs and Donkey Calf Raise (superset)

Dips and Pullups (superset)
Grip

PM

1/2 Squat 15-20x1x775

Weighted Dips 5x5-8x3 plates
Grip

Wednesday

AM

Clean and Press 10x3x225
Grip

PM

BTN Press 10x3x295

200 pullups

Abs
Grip

Thursday:

AM

Machine circuit for 20 mins, on whatever machines struck my fancy.  Found myself doing pullovers a lot, for some reason.
Grip

PM

Jump Squats 10x5x225
High Pulls 10x3x315
Grip

Friday
AM
I occasionally skipped this, due to exhaustion, but would come in and work anything that didn't hurt horribly.

PM
Either Reverse Grip again, or Flat Bench Press for 45 mins, doing singles, doubles, and triples.  I only flat bench pressed with a regular grip 2 or 3 times, due to the fact that 1) I fucking hate the flat bench press, 2) I was dealing with a weird shoulder issue, and 3) I fucking hate the bench press.

Saturday
Either a Pull and Squat or Push and Squat Fiesta.  This workout usually lasted 1.5-2 hours and consisted of whatever exercises I wanted to do that day, be they cleans, deadlifts (which I only did once in the 5 weeks leading up to the meet, for reasons I will describe in a second), rack deads, shrugs, or one arm lifts.  For presses, I mostly stuck to overhead work and weighted dips, and for squats, I worked off the pins at various heights ranging from parallel to just below lockout, but always singles on everything.  I also hit grip on this day, exactly as I did on the other days- a mixture of heavy wrist rollers, plate pinching, baseball curls, and simulating the lever with a sledgehammer with a cambered, preloaded barbell.  I never went to complete failure, but made sure I hit them hard every day.

My gym sucks ass, so it closes on Saturday at anywhere between 12 and 2 (they like to change their hours) and is closed on Sunday, which fucked me in my prep.  I let them know about it, loudly and frequently.

That was pretty much it.  I trained everything as heavy as I could, as often as I could, with as much volume as I could, for between 1.5 and 2 hours a day, every day.  As far as  deadlifts, my back cramps horribly, as I've mentioned, when I deadlift heavy.  Additionally, I couldn't train without straps because I've bent all of the bars in my gym into a U shape, and they're all bereft of knurling.  Thus, I stuck to a shitload of heavy grip work, squatting, cleans and high pulls, and shrugging.

Though I see things I might have done differently (like practicing full squats, for instance) and adding in more full squatting with front squats, I'm pretty pleased with my efforts.  I can't guarantee you'll all see the same results I did with this style of PL meet prep, but I can tell you that it seemed to work for me.

One last note- you do not need to carry on like a fucking lunatic whilst setting up to complete a lift.  As you've seen from my videos, I don't fret like a fucking bitch about foot placement, the clothes I wear, or take a minute and a fucking half to set up for a lift- I grab the bar or get the fuck under it and lift it.  I saw more ridiculous bullshit while people much larger than me prepared to lift much lighter weights than I, and couldn't help but wonder if they felt as embarrassed as I felt disgusted.  It's akin to setting up a press conference to display to the world the "artwork" of a 3 year old artistic kid.  You're embarrassing yourself when you do that, and it's fucking pointless- if you're not strong enough to lift the fucking weight, no amount of fucking carrying on will allow you to be.  If you're confused, I'm not talking about the slapping and and the poppers, which are simply amusing- I'm talking about the 30 seconds to set one's feet, then an ultra-dramatic rise of the arms in the air and equally slow and dramatic lowering to the bar on deadlift... the 2 minute setup underneath the bar to squat an opener... the 90 seconds spent getting a beautiful arch while benching.  I opened with weights I could lift cold, and still fucking crushed everyone.  Don't be that fucking guy- just lift the fucking weight already so everybody can go the fuck home.

See?  No shenanigans.  Grab it and fucking lift it already.

Soy is the Devil, And Not in A Fun Way, 22 1/2

Though I'd prefer to witness a Katy Perry shocker, this will have to suffice.

For those of you who hadn't yet noticed, this blog focuses on the unconventional.  As such, soy's a pretty good topic for investigation, as it's a fairly unorthodox source of protein for a non-herbivore.  Given that both sides of the soy debate have dragged out their gigantic, Goebbels-esque propaganda machines, investigation of this issue gets even more interesting.  On one side you have vegetarians, the government, and massive chemical-agricultural companies.  These groups obviously have a vested interest in disinformation and obfuscation of any evidence pointing to the idea that soy is deleterious for one's health, and a very pointed interest in painting soy as the ultimate protein source.  Derek Poundstone claims to eat soy protein in massive quantities, which makes sense, given that he's sponsored by DuPont, who just built a new soy processing plant- the man makes chicken shakes... he's not getting 25% of his fucking protein from beans.  Think it through.  On the other side of the debate, you've got a bunch of people who are afraid of growing man-tits, and have seen enough studies showing soy to cause health problems to be rightfully scared, especially given that our current living environment is literally awash in xenoestrogens.

Female urine is high in estrogen, especially if they're on the pill.  As such, make sure you're taking anti-e's if you let chicks piss in your mouth on a regular basis.

To wit, here's what happens when animals are exposed to high levels of environmental estrogens:

"An upsurge in the number of male fish growing female reproductive parts is sounding an alarm bell for the dangers of pollutants and estrogen-like compounds in U.S. rivers, where millions of Americans get their drinking water, environmental experts say.
A recent survey of bass in the Potomac River, a major tributary in the nation's capital, found almost 100 percent of the smallmouth bass species were feminized, or had eggs in their testes. In largemouth bass the incidence of feminization was lower, but still highly prevalent.

Some evidence has suggested the chemicals also have a cumulative effect -- at low concentrations, it might take a month or two for the fish to be affected.

Kolpin examines a multitude of chemicals considered emerging contaminants, and some of the most egregious offenders are pills, which may also contain estrogen-like compounds. Drugs provide immeasurable benefits to human health, but there may be a downside, he said. Consumers get little guidance as to how to dispose of unused medication.

Leftover pills flushed down the toilet end up in the sewage system, and medication thrown in landfills could leach into groundwater. Sediments in riverbeds are also highly concentrated areas of emerging contaminant pollution" (Dell'amore).

Imagine a fish that has this going on.

In another study:

"In one lake," he explains, "they treated it with the pharmaceutical that's in most birth control, in a concentration of six parts per trillion -- similar to what we often see in wastewater effluent, although Boulder's wasn't quite that high. They treated it for three years in that concentration, and within two years, they'd virtually wiped the fish out of this lake, because the females couldn't make eggs, and the males were so busy making female protein that they weren't making any sperm."

Shit like this is why I think we should all don our fucking tinfoil hats and say fuck the soy- we've got enough xenoestrogens in our water to make us impotent anyway.  Have you noticed at the degree to which infertility and erectile dysfunction has risen and birthrates have dropped in the developed world recently?  Why add insult to injury?  And what are the studies showing these insults?

In one study of 42 healthy adult males, 

"Diets were isoenergetic, with either 150 g lean meat or 290g tofu daily providing an equivalent amount of macronutrients, with only the source of protein differing between the two diets. Each diet lasted for 4 weeks, with a 2-week interval between interventions. Blood concentrations of sex hormones did not differ after the two diets, but the mean testosterone:oestradiol value was 10 % higher after the meat diet. SHBG was 3 % higher; whereas the FAI was 7 % lower; after the tofu diet compared with the meat diet. There was a significant correlation between the difference in SHBG and testosterone:oestradiol and weight change" (Habito et al).  

This means that, at the very least, your test levels will be higher on a diet eating meat, even if soy doesn't lower your test levels.

Another study describes the short-term effects of dietary phytoestrogens on regular behaviors like food/water intake movement and body weight, prostate weight, prostate health, reproductive hormone levels, and testicular activity in rats. The rodents were then fed either a phytoestrogen-rich diet or a phytoestrogen-free diet, and after 5 weeks the plasma phytoestrogen levels were 35 times higher in animals fed the phytoestrogen-rich vs phytoestrogen-free diets. Body and prostate weights were significantly decreased in animals fed the phytoestrogen-rich diet vs the phytoestrogen-free fed animals and plasma testosterone and androstenedione levels were significantly lower in the animals fed the phytoestrogen-rich diet (Weber, et al).  

The rub?  Sounds like a diet high in phytoestrogens lowers your test levels.  This finding was echoed in another study, which concluded that "soy protein, regardless of isoflavone content, decreased DHT and DHT/testosterone with minor effects on other hormones, providing evidence for some effects of soy protein on hormones" (Dillingham et al) .  A study of 69 Japanese men and soy protein also found a inverse correlation between soy intake and testosterone, however minor, and found that  "soy product intake may be associated with the endogenous hormone levels in Japanese men"  (Nagata, et al).

The Japanese anti-soy.

So, what about that estrogen?  For those of you who are unaware, soy has been prescribed to menopausal women for years as an alternative to estrogen supplements.  Let me restate that- soy is considered to be herbal estrogen.  Why, then, would they claim it's not estrogenic?  It either is, or it isn't.  Instead, the soy industry talks out of both side of their mouths, and no one seems to give a fuck.  "Women who are pregnant are warned to avoid high doses of plant estrogen" according to a site about breast cancer, and "scientists also caution women who have estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer that phytoestrogens may not be safe."  

Intriguing- now soy's not even good for chicks, due to the fact that it's super fucking estrogenic (Flax).  A five year study at the University of Illinois, however, showed "that the positive or negative health consequences of exposure to soy isoflavones depend on the timing of the exposure (whether it occurs in early, mid, or late life), tissue type (breast or brain, for example), and dose."(Yates)  Positive for non-preggo women, negative for men, I'm assuming.  I did find a study showing that isoflavone content is lower in fermented soy products, which is what the Japanese typically eat, than in unfermented products (like soy protein), which means that if you want to eat the soy in your miso soup, you could be fine with that.  It shows fairly definitively, though, that the US consumption of soy is a fucking highway to hell (Chien et al).

For those skeptics out there who still insist that the anti-soy campaign is nothing but ridiculous scare tactics, I challenge you to identify for whom these tactics are working.  Propaganda does not exist without a motive, and I fail to see one inherent in this movement, as there's no danger whatsoever of the meat-farming industry going belly up.  Thus, think of this what you will, but I know that the only estrogens I plan to ingest are in female urine... provided I have clomid on hand.

You'd do it if she asked you to- and hers is probably high in test anyway.

Sources:

Habito RC, Montalto J, Leslie E, Ball M. "Effects of replacing meat with soyabean in the diet on sex hormone concentrations in healthy adult males." Br J Nutr 2000 Oct;84(4):557-63.

Dell'amore, C. Growing Concern Over Estrogen-Like Compounds In US Rivers: The American lifestyle of materialism has left an indelible impression on U.S. waterways, and no one knows the exact repercussions.  Washington (UPI) Oct 18, 2006

Weber KS, Setchell KD, Stocco DM, Lephart ED.  Dietary soy-phytoestrogens decrease testosterone levels and prostate weight without altering LH, prostate 5alpha-reductase or testicular steroidogenic acute regulatory peptide levels in adult male Sprague-Dawley rats.

J Endocrin (2001) 170, 591-599

Dillingham B, McVeigh B, Lampe J,Duncan A. Soy Protein Isolates of Varying Isoflavone Content Exert Minor Effects on Serum Reproductive Hormones in Healthy Young Men. J Nutr. 2005; 135:584-591.

Nagata C, Inaba S, Kawakami N, Kakizoe T, Shimizu H.Inverse Association of Soy Product Intake With Serum Androgen and Estrogen Concentrations in Japanese Men.  Nut Cancer; 2000: 36(1) 14 - 18. 

Yates, D. Team to study health effects of botanical estrogens.  Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.  http://www.genengnews.com/keywordsandtools/print/2/93377528/

Is Flax the New Soy?  Breast Cancer A to Z.  http://www.a-zbreastcancer.com/articles/aflaxseed.htm

CHIEN HL, HUANG HY, CHOU CC. Transformation of isoflavone phytoestrogens during the fermentation of soymilk with lactic acid bacteria and bifidobacteria.  Food Microbio; 2006: 23(8) 772-778.

Whoops! I Appear To Have Broken Something...

Though it's not official, as the meet promoter's computer didn't work yesterday, so he couldn't confirm the numbers.  I happened to be passing through Georgia yesterday and decided to pop into the APF Georgia State Championships for a bit, to see what was what.  According to the APF Website:

If that's correct, which I find difficult to believe because my openers broke all of those, they'll now read:

S: 257.5 Lewis, Jamie

B: 157.5 Lewis, Jamie

D: 280 Lewis, Jamie

T: 695.5 Lewis, Jamie 

This means that I totaled Elite as a Raw lifter (no wraps, no suit, no briefs, and no belt [just as a bit of icing on the cake, however unnecessary]), as the cutoff seems to be 1396, and I hit 1531 for the 181 weight class.  So much for the internet shit talkers who predicated the entirety of their criticism on the "fact" that I hadn't competed- that's right, I did this meet almost entirely out of spite.

Tonight, the lone wolf rides alone.

It was actually a pretty good learning experience.  I decided to do this meet about a month ago, so I started cutting calories and carbs back further, and knocked my cheat meals down to 1 per week.  Due to the fact that I've only got one meet on which to base my experience, I'm not entirely convinced of the veracity of the following reflections, but here are my initial thoughts:

• I might have cut a bit slowly.  I leaned out nicely, but as of last week, I was still 195.  I hung onto my strength by cutting very conservatively, but it made the last day a literal hell, and I'm not certain how much that took out of me on meet day.  My diet for the last month generally consisted of 4 or 5 days of low carb and low fat, drinking around 5 shakes a day, supplemented with either a couple of lbs of 93% lean ground beef or a lb of that an something more calorically dense, like wings or beef ribs.  I never tested my bodyfat, but I was accused on many occasions of being a bodybuilder at the meet.
• Shrugging and squat lockouts help the deadlift immensely.  I do not think, however, that squat lockouts have much of a direct carryover into the full squat.  My hips are retardedly tight and I have a hell of a time getting into the bottom position of a squat, but 1-2" above parallel, I am a fucking beast.  This is not conducive to making people shit out their spleens watching you squat in a meet.  Additionally, if you have to pay a hobo to do so, find anyone to call your depth while squatting- it'll save you the heartache of missing lifts because you're too deep or too shallow.
• Deadlifting with straps in no way hurts your deadlift.  I didn't deadlift without straps once in training, due to the fact that my gym's bars are bereft of knurling and bent all to hell (by me).  Stiffness and boredom were my downfall in my final attempt of the deadlift (the reason for the stiffness will be addressed later, as it's awesome).

You might be asking, "how'd you lose 14 lbs in a week?"  I really ended up losing 10 lbs in a day.  I cut out my last cheat meal, opting instead for two medium carb days the weekend before the meet, and weighed about 191 a day out.  As I knew I would weigh in on Friday night, I started drinking 2-3 gallons of water a day on Tuesday, and from Monday through Thursday ate as close to 0 carbs as I could, and kept my fat under 50 g.  That basically meant 6 protein shakes and 2 meals of 1 lb of 93% lean ground beef, topped with Sriracha hot sauce, for Monday through Thursday- making sure to keep my sodium as close to 0 as possible, and my potassium as high as possible.  Incidentally, topping your food with Ms. Dash gives you the same amount of potassium as any potassium pill you'll likely to find in a health food store.  At 10PM Thursday, I stopped drinking liquids and eating.  Friday fucking sucked.  I spent the day popping ephedrine, caffeine, and aspirin in an effort to stay awake, and chewed so much gum that by the end of the day my jaw was horribly cramped.  I did, however, learn that massaging the jaw muscles from the inside of one's mouth is far more efficacious than the outside- you stick your index finger inside your mouth and push outwards on the muscle.  In any event, I weighed 185 at lunchtime, so I hit the sauna for a half hour, wore a sweatshirt at work for the remainder of the day, and then started the roadtrip from hell.  Birmingham is about 2 hours from Atlanta, so I alternated full blast heat and mild heat for the first hour, and then left the heat on high, wearing a sweatshirt the entire time, for the last hour of the drive.  I arrived alive, though I'm pretty sure I followed my spirit animal on a fucking vision quest during that drive, and weighed in at a paltry 179.  That's how you fucking make weight.

Refeeding was surprisingly difficult.  By the time I made weight, I was running an awesome fever and had heat rash all over my body- it was ultra hot.  I looked like a fucking tomato.  I slammed two liters of water, at half a box of Captain Crunch, and checked into my hotel.  Thereafter, I struggled to finish a burger, fries, and rolls at Texas Roadhouse, due to the fact that my stomach is now the size of a preteen girl's, and I had so much water and cereal in me.  I knew I needed the salt and calories though, so I pushed through, nearly crashed my car from exhaustion on the way back to the hotel, made two protein shakes and left out the Captain Crunch, along with a gallon of the mineral infused water for infant you can find at any store, and crashed.  Every time I awoke, I had some protein and as much Captain Crunch as I could fit down my gullet, and polished off the water by 4AM.  

The day of the meet was a lot more Captain Crunch, Supreme Protein Bars, Baked Lays and the like.  I tried to get as much salt into my system as I could due to the cramping I was getting, and the carbs and protein for obvious reasons.

The result?  I learned:

• Cutting weight is much harder without wrestling practice to aid it.
• I should not ever drive in that state.
• Severe water and food depletion can make you oddly euphoric, in a wildly angry way, but you're too tired to happily smash anything.

As to my lifts, in anyone's interested.  I opened at 534 on the squat, as my legs were cramping badly and I had no one to call my depth.  As an aside, as much fun as it is to be the lone wolf who rides alone due to his acerbic wit and the fact that I'm surrounded by nothing but humorless, angry, judgmental evangelical Christians, having any moderately friendly person along with you to call your depth would help.  I sat way into my opener and 567, and then dropped way in the hole on 598 and crapped out halfway to the top.  Had I turned it around at parallel, my numbers would look far better.  On the bench, I opened at 331, then smoked 347, whereupon I discovered that I could reverse grip in the APF.  I had unracked the weight myself on the first two attempts and didn't want to risk dropping the weight in my mouth doing so with a reverse grip, so I stalled out halfway through my lift with a conventional grip and 363 lbs.  Next time, I'll reverse grip like a motherfucker, and hopefully have someone who doesn't want me dead doing the liftoff- the search begins.  On deadlift, I was a fucking beast on my opener at 574 and my 2nd at 617.  At the beginning of the 3rd attempts, some awesome chick named Erica projectile vomited in the midst of her pull like she was auditioning for the Exorcist and sprayed down everyone in the first row with half-digested Muscle Milk.  As such, there was a massive delay cleaning shit up, whereupon I lost my momentum and missed my 3rd attempt at 639, as did everyone else who lifted after the delay.  I wasn't pissed though, as the chick was fucking fun, tatted, and happily turned the meet (which was perhaps the most boring thing I've endured, though it gave me the time to finish a Vince Flynn novel and get halfway through Chuck Hogan's The Strain) into a fucking GWAR concert.  I've no idea what her last name is, but that chick's metal as hell, as she got three whites while puking her intestines onto the platform.

Final analysis?  APF meets are a pretty good time, all things considered; I kind of want to try to total Elite for equipped lifters while still competing raw and sans belt; powerlifting now boasts hot chicks; and finally, Alabama sucks ass- do not ever come here, as Georgia looks like fucking Vegas by comparison.  Apologies for the lack of pics, but all my cell pics were shaky, and I had no one to take pics for me.  Example of a shaky pic- me the morning of the meet:

Blurry and generally shitty.

Soy Is The Devil, And Not In A Fun Way

The mythology of the Devil is actually pretty fascinating.  I'm not going to spend an hour recounting the entire etymology of the word Satan, the historical concept of the Devil, or pantheistic demonology, though I assure you, that shit is tremendously interesting.  Once you've followed every link you can from that one, you'll have a clear understanding of what the Devil represents- pure evil.  Across every Mediterranean-based religion since ancient Egypt, however, there's existed a malevolent energy or god with which people then and now have concerned themselves.  Innumerable methods have been articulated for ridding themselves of this evil, ranging from exorcisms to jihad to a hell of a lot of prayer.  I'm not advocating any of that, and I'm informing you about a much greater evil than the entity who is conventionally referred to as the Devil- I'm referring to soy.  Would an exorcism help?  Likely not, but there are some executives at Ralston-Purina and DuPont who could do with some stabbing.

The devil in a fun way.

For those of you who are unaware, there's currently a massive push to get soy into the diets of Americans, allegedly due to the magical health-improving effects of the soybean.  Apparently positing that the American diet is bereft of soy, and that the Chinese and Japanese can fly, live to 200 years of age, and never get cancer due to their constant inhalation of so, various special interest groups have funded studies alleging this bean's magical properties.  This is, of course, utter horseshit.

1. Americans eat far more soy, per capita, than any other people on Earth.  In 2005, Americans ate 25,261,750 tons of soy.  That breaks down to 0.0852255847 tons of soy a year (25,261,750/296,410,404), or 170 lbs a year.  The Chinese, by comparison, ate only (50957450 / 1315844000) 0.0387260572 tons per person, or 77 lbs.  This is fucking retarded.(Swivel for the soy, and Wikipedia for the population)
2. According to health activist and occasional kook Joseph Mercola, soy may increase the risk of breast cancer in women, brain damage in both men and women, and abnormalities in infants, contribute to thyroid disorders (especially in women), promote kidney stones, weaken the immune system, and cause severe, potentially fatal food allergies. (Mercola)
3. Soy contains isoflavones, plant hormones that have been shown to have an estrogenic effect on the body (it mimics the actions of estrogen, which reduces test levels and inhibit muscular hypertrophy. (Nutrient Timing, 128)
4. Biological changes in the function of sex glands, central nervous system, and thyroid are attributable to soy isoflavones.  Soy also contains phytic acid, an anti-nutrient that blocks the uptake of calcium, zinc, and magnesium.  Low zinc throws copper levels out of balance, and high levels of copper can depress thyroid function. (Crazy Makers, 81-82)
5. Many beans contain toxic compounds designed to dissuade animals from eating them, and soybeans are no different.  Raw soybeans contain antienzymes, hemagglutinin, phytates and goitrogens, which will have varying effects on people based on the biological individuality, but are toxic nonetheless.  (Neanderthin, 56)

I realize that at this point, half of you are scoffing at these claims, having eaten soy your entire lives, and immense amounts of it.  Before you get too haughty, consider this- Americans are fatter, less libidinous, weaker, and more pathetic than ever, and we're eating unprecedented amounts of soy.

Why are we eating so much soy?  Because agribusiness is filled with evil assholes who hate you, and they line the pockets of politicians who also hate you and are looking for ways to make you more dependent on them, so that the politicians will do what they'd do on their own a little more quickly.  According to Joseph Mercola, soy began in the US as a product that in 1913 was listed in the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an industrial product, rather than a food.  (Mercola)  Although the soybean was introduced in the US a couple centuries prior to that, it didn't really carry much weight until is was picked up by none other than Henry Ford as a super-bean he primarily used to make plastics and textiles- Ford bragged that two bushels of soybeans went into each car he sold, and even wore a suit made of faux silk (made of soy) on a daily basis. This fiber never really caught on, having been beaten by DuPont's nylon, but illustrates the fact that soy was initially considered to be primarily for industrial use.  Ford's experimentation with soy milk eventually led to Ralston-Purina's widespread use of soy in animal feed, due in large part to the fact that soy is incredibly cheap to farm and process.  

18 year old, hot as fuck Swedish chicks could kick most American males' asses.

As the years passed, and soy made its slow transition into the American diet, that industry received a welcome boost from the findings of the Club of Rome, a global think tank who focusses on political issues, and wishes "to act as a global catalyst for change through the identification and analysis of the crucial problems facing humanity and the communication of such problems to the most important public and private decision makers as well as to the general public."(Wikipedia)  The Club produced their seminal work in 1972, called the Limits to Growth, which was essentially a dire prediction that the Earth's industrialized societies would collapse under their own weight and the combined scarcity of petroleum and food.  This book was an outgrowth of the Malthusian catastrophe theory of Thomas Malthus, which "was originally foreseen to be a forced return to subsistence-level conditions once population growth had outpaced agricultural production," and it led to a variety of well-received and well-regarded works of Malthusian dystopic fiction.  The two best-known works in this genre are The Wanting Seed, by Anthony Burgess, and Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, both of which depict a future Earth plagued by overpopulation.  Both books are fucking awesome, by the way, if you like dystopic fiction, and Harrison's book was made into the epic Soylent Green.  From works like these, people picked up the notion that meat would eventually be impossible to come by or unbelievably expensive (see just about any science fiction novel written in the last 30 years for evidence of this) and nearly all of which prophesied that soy would be the meat of the future.

In I Come In Peace, Dolph protects us from a likely soy-loving evil alien.

This momentum made it easy for companies like Ralston-Purina and DuPont to ramp up their soy production, and start fleecing the fuck out of our politicians.  The politicians, greedy, soulless sacks of shit that they are, eventually changed the protein rating systems to make soy look good, which afforded those companies the opportunity to make ridiculous claims about the bioavailability of soy.  (Body Opus, 76)  Lobbyists are the reason there are so many different rating systems for protein- not scientists.  To wit, there are the following rating systems for protein:


Biological value (BV)
Net protein Utilization (NPU)
Protein Efficiency Ratio (PER)
Nitrogen Balance (NB)
Protein digestibility (PD)
Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS)

Just within BV, you can get two different rankings for protein, one of which places soy at the same level as whey for bioavailability, and another that ranks it at about 3/4 of whey.  PDCAAS is the newest, and thus ranks soy on par with egg, whey, and casein, while NPU, one of the oldest, ranks whey at 92 and soy at 61.  Suspicious?  I sure as fuck am.

Up next- Will soy make men's cocks fall off and have them grow tits, and will it make women even womenier?  Studies have shown that it might...

Another pic of the above chick- Sarah Bäckman, Swedish National armwrestling champ, and painfully, ridiculously hot chick who would rip your arm off and beat you to death with it, given a reason to do so.

Sources:
Joseph Mercola.  http://mercola.com/2004/jan/21/soy.htm
Ivy, John.  Nutrient Timing
Simontacchi, Carol.  The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry is Destroying our Brains and Hurting our Children.
Audette, Ray.  Neanderthin.
Duchaine, Dan.  Body Opus.

Enough Already- Sex and Baddassery Are Definitively Interwined, Part 2.

Never before have I been so pleased at my ability to sow the seeds of discord as i have been with this series of blogs.  Frankly, I thought that everyone could agree that we should all fuck more and masturbate more, since getting off is pretty much the best fucking thing to happen in the history of forever.

Apparently, I was wrong.  Some of you, it appears, find that it saps you of your will to live, or something, which is as hilarious as it is sad.  Still others are deeply convinced by a study done in China that cumming more than once every seven days is less than optimal.  That's understandable, I suppose, because recent studies have shown that 9/10 of the people on Earth suck really fucking hard, and 19/20 of the people on the planet suck anywhere between a lot and really fucking hard.(Study I just made up)

First, a logical argument for constant sexual stimulation.  It's been definitively proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that libido is heavily dependent on testosterone in both men and women.  For both, supplemental testosterone is positively indicated to treat hypoactive sexual desire, which would indicate that more testosterone creates more sex drive.  For evidence of this, you merely need to google it- I'm not going to post citations to the dozens and dozens of studies that corroborate my statement.  Should you feel the need to do so, feel free- I assure you that this is for all intents and purposes an incontrovertible fact.  Given that this is a fact, it would stand to reason that engaging in sexual activity would not negatively affect your sex drive, as to do so would defeat the purpose of the rise in testosterone in the first place.  Additionally, it would defy the biological imperative towards procreation, and diminish one's interest in sexual activity, which would indicate that one's genetic material would not get passed on to subsequent generations.  Thus, the idea that fucking or jerking off would lower test levels is fucking absurd.

Casting logic aside, as so many people appear to do when it comes to sex, let's continue to look at the science.  First, a recent study has shown that optimal sexual performance requires hormonal changes that are best developed through regular sexual activity.

"Our results showed that a 9-day training period was not sufficient for some male rats to acquire a good level of sexual performance. While 42.5% of the rats displayed excellent sexual performance during the training sessions, 17.5% showed adequate performance, 7.5% had low sexual activity, and 32.5% of the rats did not display any sexual behaviors whatsoever. Additionally, after 4 days of training, rats with excellent/adequate performance showed a significant decrease in ejaculation latency relative to the first day of training. The rats with low or no sexual activity had lower progesterone levels relative to those displaying the highest sexual performance after 9 days of training. Testosterone, in turn, was also significantly reduced in animals with low/no sexual performance compared with excellent/adequate rats."(Tufik, et al.)

This means that fucking/jerking off a great deal will reduce your downtime, make you a better lay, and will raise your testosterone levels.  Given that it's my supposition (backed by science) that sexual activity raises testosterone levels, this is fairly compelling- not only does it raise your test levels, but it provides you with the necessary biological response to get you laid more, rather than less (as the obliquely cited Chinese study above would assert).

Built for sex.

As an aside- practice makes fucking perfect with sex.  There are entire books devoted to helping you train to be a better lay (like Built for Sex and Nate Green's book), and everyone from urologists to sex therapists recommend that masturbation is the perfect way to prime the pump for people with low libidos.  Additionally, for those of you who might be a little quick on the draw, there's some evidence that compulsive levels of masturbatory activity will increase your staying power and your turnaround time. That's just a little icing on the cake for you.  If knights in the Middle Ages would practice fucking goose down with 30 lbs of weights attached to their hips so they could fuck without removing their armor, you people can spend a few hours a week jerking it like you mean it so you're not firing the second you get out of the gate when some broad finally gets naked for you.

Ready to fuck his way through his codpiece, if need be.

For those ladies out there, personal experience and some studies I failed to cite gave compelling evidence that masturbation is pretty much essential for your sex drives and markedly increase your chances of cumming during sex (although overuse of pocket rockets seem to desensitize the clit like no other, so take it easy with those things).  As I cited in the last blog, orgasms raise female test levels as well, and will thus make you stronger, leaner, and generally more awesome in just about every way, so start giving it up (at least to yourselves, if not to anyone else).

Next, there's no evidence whatsoever supporting the idea that orgasms from sex or onanism in any way have a negative physical effect on athletic performance, and there is some evidence showing that sex within 24 hours of competition actually improves it.  (BFS 205, and Discovery News)  There's anecdotal evidence, however, that the psychological affect of sex can have an either positive or negative effect on athletic performance, but it's unknown whether this is due to some particular psychological makeup, or if it's simply a placebo effect.  I'm inclined toward the latter, due to the fact that many people appear to convince themselves that certain activities or supplements will result in a given effect and create the perception of the effect simply by willing it to be so.  If your body can reduce your perception of pain due to the expectation of a reduction in pain (Mind Matters), then it would stand to reason that you could either suck or kick ass in athletics from the placebo effect as well.

Finally, and in direct relation to the title of this blog- there's direct evidence that badassery and a prolific sex life are intertwined.  One really needs to look no further than Genghis Khan, who was both the penultimate badass and the most impressive sexual athlete of all time.  There's really no evidence of a dedicated masturbatory schedule for Genghis, but this is likely due to the fact that he was far too busy fucking and killing to have a spare moment for masturbation- .5% of the people in the world trace their lineage to Genghis (34,336,748.6 people on Earth can honestly call him their super-great-grandpa) and the Mongols are credited with the deaths of 40 million people.  Additionally, he was credited with having "great physical strength", so any idea that he was weakened by sex can be discarded.

Right up there with Genghis was Rasputin, proud owner of a cervix-destroying 13" Godzilla cock, the ability to control the weather, massive physical strength, and the only libido on Earth that could match Genghis's.  He fucked every broad on whom he laid eyes, including the Empress of Russia, and survived be poisoned, shot multiple times, stabbed, and strangled, only to die of drowning after he was tossed into a river.

He might seem like a douche, but this "bad boy" gets more ass than a toilet seat at NASCAR... and he fucks Keira Knightley.

At this point, it should come as no shock to you that bad boys (who demonstrably possess more testosterone than "nice guys") get far more ass than "nice guys".(Nice Guys)  I would attribute this to a variety of factors, but they all boil down to testosterone in the end- guys with more test have more masculine facial features, better bodies, harder and bigger cocks, and smell better (due to their heightened immune system), all of which increase their attractiveness to women. (I have no specific citation here, but check out the Anatomy of Love, the Anatomy of Sex, and sundry Discovery Channel and TLC programs on this)

The Jewish god killed Onan because he refused to knock up his brother's wife, not because he jacked it or blew his loads on her back.

If you're unconvinced, at this point, that extraordinarily frequent orgasms are hormonally essential and indispensable for your overall health, you're either dyslexic or a fundamentalist Christian.  In the first case, seek medical attention, and in the latter case, you need to reread the Bible and investigate the definitions of words like "adultery" in the historical sense.  You'll be pleasantly surprised at what you find.  For the rest of you- get off as much as you can, and not only will you be some ridiculously happy motherfuckers, but you'll see positive changes in body recomposition, overall wellness, and athletic performance.

Let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.

Sources:
Alvarenga TA, Andersen ML, and Tufik S. Influence of progesterone on sexual performance in male rats. J Sex Med 2010;7:2435–2444.

Grayson, A.  Why Nice Guys Finish Last: New Research Points to Biological Reason Why Girls Like Bad Boys.  http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5197531&page=1
Hays, Scott.  Built for Sex.  NYC: Rodale, 2005.

Mirsky J.  Expectancy and the Placebo Effect: How Cognitive Processing Utilizes the rACC to Alter the Perception of Pain.  Mind Matters: The Wesleyan Journal of Psychology; 2007:2 19-28.

Sohn, E.  WORLD CUP 2010: CAN ABSTINENCE AFFECT ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE? http://news.discovery.com/human/world-cup-soccer-abstinence.html

Enough Already- Sex and Baddassery Are Definitively Interwined, Part 1.

On nearly every strength training and bodybuilding website on the internet, there's some jackass asking a question to which the answer should be obvious- "will jerking off/fucking negatively impact my workouts?"  Now, putting aside the fact that said moron should drown himself in a fucking bucket of bleach for even contemplating abstinence were the answer to be in the affirmative, allow me to lay this sick dog to rest:

Sexual activity and Badassery are inextricably intertwined.

This should not be anything that needs to be investigated, as it seems about as obvious as anything could possibly be.  

The best in this series are Ashley Blue and Gia Paloma, fyi.

Watch porn.  Men and womens' test level raise 100% and 80% in response to sexual stimuli.  That means that both of your libidos will rise accordingly, due to the fact that both men and womens' sex drives are dependant on their testosterone levels. (New Scientist)  Additionally, studies have shown that sexual stimuli will increase both LH production and test levels, so not only will your cock be rock hard, fellas, but you'll be droppin' motherfucking loads like Nick Manning all the live long day.  (Stoleru)

Fuck or masturbate (or both) AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.  A study in Mexico showed that serum testosterone levels in rats rose markedly after two consecutive orgasms, and even further after four.  (Hernandez)  Additionally, "frequent sex improves sex hormone regulation in men and women, and boosts blood vessel health.... [and] Frequent ejaculation reduces the risk of prostate enlargement and cancer.(JSM) On top of that, studies have shown that in addition to those positive hormonal fluctuations, cumming has positive effects on your endocrine system, and causes your body to produce more adrenaline, prolactin, and killer cells, which in turn improves immune system function.(BB.com)  Thus, by getting off as much as humanly possible, you're generating a shitload of testosterone in both men and women, leutinizing hormone in men, and improving your recovery time from hard workouts in both.  It goes without saying that you're also getting off, which means that you'll have elevated levels of dopamine (which reduces pain and improves mood), and that you'll be burning calories, which will make you leaner, in addition to improving your cardio.

For those guys, who like me, want kids like they want AIDS, there's more good news with this type of a compulsive fucking/masturbating scheme- your sperm count drops like a motherfucker (to about 27% of norm).  That means (though I'm not endorsing this) you can go bareback without the bare facts and not worry quite so much.(Freund)

In the second half of this, I'll go into a bit more detail, but in the meantime, use this as a reason to spend labor day laboring your ass off in the bedroom.

Sources:

New Scientist. 22 Aug 1998, p. 11.  

Stoléru SG, Ennaji A, Cournot A, Spira A.  LH pulsatile secretion and testosterone blood levels are influenced by sexual arousal in human males.  Psychoneuroendocrinology. 1993;18(3):205-18.

Hernandez M , Soto-Cid A, Aranda-Abreu G, Díaz R, Rojas F, Garcia L, Toledo R,  Manzo J.  A study of the prostate, androgens and sexual activity of male rats.  Reproductive Bio Endocrin. 2007, 5(11):1186/1477-7827-5-11. http://www.rbej.com/content/5/1/11/abstract/ 

Emmanuele A. Jannini, W, Fisher J, McMahon C.  J Sex Med. 2009, 6: 2640-2648 Article first published online: 6 OCT 2009 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2009.01477

M. FREUND. EFFECT OF FREQUENCY OF EMISSION ON SEMEN OUTPUT AND AN ESTIMATE OF DAILY SPERM PRODUCTION IN MAN. J Reproduct Fertil. 1963 6: 269-286.