It's Time To Stop Mocking Indians For Their Clubbells #3: Yoga, The Indian Way, Is Actually Fucking Badass

As I mentioned before, weightlifting was the preeminent sport in India from about the 15th Century through the 17th Century, and was a sport in which many people around the country participated far earlier than that.  The reason for this, as I also mentioned, is that there exists in India no Cartesian duality, that is to say a separate mind-body relationship, in the minds of Indians, who rather believe that the one is a reflection of the other.  Thus, they lifted weights because they literally thought they'd die if they didn't.

"Activity is life, while stagnation is death.  Exercise brings healthful activity to every organ, gland, and cell of the body; it makes the entire body actively and radiantly alive with a feeling, energy, and well being that make one so buoyant and alert that you feel like running and jumping.

Exercise is the best insurance against disease or sickness.  It builds a fund of resistance of healthy blood-corpuscles, which can attack and overcome any disease germs which come in contact with the body.

Lastly, exercise builds confidence; for there is no road to supreme confidence as sure as the knowledge of one's physical and mental ability.  It cultivates power of will and determination; it gives you complete mastery over your physical and mental self; it promotes personal efficiency and all desirable mental characteristics" (Mujumdar xvii)

For the religious amongst you, this should speak fairly strongly to you, for it makes far more sense than most of the bullshit you hear out of "spiritual" people:  "You were meant to have a fine looking strong and super healthy body.  God cannot be pleased with the ugly, unhealthy, weak and flabby bodies.  It is a sacrilege not to possess a fine, shapely, healthy body.  It is a crime against oneself and against our country to be weak and ailing"(Ibid).

Though I am rarely so eloquent, that seems to echo my sentiments pretty much exactly, and should resonate with the lot of you as well.  This is the type of shit Indians thought before the Brits clipped off their balls and sent them back to join the rest of the crown jewels- they were badasses because they thought they would drop dead on the fucking spot the second they gave up in the effort to become hard as titanium nails, and then they would burn in hell thereafter for pissing off their gods with their suckitude.  The crazy thing here is that you'd never expect that sort of attitude out of the Indians these days- certainly, you could see a mustachioed, Rasputin-looking Russian Orthodox priest screaming fire and brimstone at Dmitri Klokov on Sundays, insisting that if he failed to snatch a world record the following week that Jesus would suck out his soul and shit it into the worst hell imaginable, but you can hardly imagine a potbellied Indian defending physical culture with the same vigor.  They did, however, and with a vengeance for the better part of a millennium, becoming a nation of legendary wrestlers that were often emulated but never duplicated, like the Bulgarian weightlifting teams of the 1980s and 1990s.  That, my friends, is how hard motherfuckers are made, and that's how Indians rose to prominence as the fittest, strongest people on Earth before Western technology fucked India harder than a six year old male swimsuit model at a NAMBLA convention.

Indian exercise methods can be broken down into two distinct types:

• Gymnastics
• Weightlifting

Gymnastics:  Though Cracked recently blew the butt cheeks off of the concept of yoga as an ancient form of exercise, they weren't really 100% accurate.  According to Cracked, "Yoga as we know it today -- a set of postures (asanas) combined with breathing techniques -- dates back to around the grand old year of 1960"(Coville).  Hatha yoga has never, in India, been considered to be exercise.  Instead, that shit was used by yogis who basically tried to remain still as they starved to death.  Hatha yoga dates to the 15th Century and was apparently invented so monks could stand around and just breathe, and was later introduced to the West as a codified series of movements taught by people wearing pastel and speaking with a ridiculous, super-chill affectation in their voice in the mid-1900s. Western yoga is basically a combination of the standing around done by the ancient monks and their breathing exercises with a couple of traditional strength movements added in for fun, which is why people think it's "exercise" I suppose.  The strength movements that form the basis of yoga have existed for about a thousand years thousands of years and are considered to be both gymnastics (mallakhamb) and bodybuilding exercises.  Most of the movements you see in a yoga class at your gym arise out of basic mallakhamb asanas (postures).  Mallakhamb was used by wrestlers and the average people since about the 1100s as a means by which to develop and maintain physical strength without equipment.  Over time, the movements expanded in scope and it flourished, then fell from national prominence with as foreign powers took hold of India.  There are two distinct types of mallakhamb in its current form, and neither of which is performed on the ground like modern yoga.  What you think of as yoga, by the way, is about as much like traditional Indian gymnastics as the broad from Shrek is like Texas Alexis- nothing whatsofuckingever.  The postures you assume in yoga are essentially the first baby steps toward doing real mallakhamb asanas, which are postures for which you have to be equal parts high-wire artist, balance beam expert, and loincloth-clad pole dancer.  Oh, that's right motherfuckers- they do all that shit on top of a nine foot tall freestanding pole or hanging from a fucking rope .

As you can see from the video above, yogic movements as they were performed in India in the past is nothing whatsoever like the stupid bullshit your girlfriend does on Saturday mornings.  Instead, yoga as the Indians used to do it was often performed atop a "pillar" which was more or less a vertical miniature telephone pole, or a gigantic club bell, based on your perspective.  That's right, motherfuckers- according to the Encyclopedia of Indian Physical Culture, which predates the yoga movement in the West, "Yogik Body-Postures have been treated as health-giving exercises from ancient times in India.  Breath-control (Pranayama) is the key to these exercises.  These exercises should first be practiced and steadied out on the ground.  When the performer has gained thorough control over these, he should try them on the top of the Pillar, with the help of an instructor.  To practice these on top of the Pillar really requires remarkable skill and courage.  The feats are greatly appreciated by the spectators"(Mujumdar 359-360).  If you're not thinking "of course they fucking were", consider this- there were people exerting just the right amount of force with their bodies to stay upright on an unsupported pole while swinging around like drunken monkeys and managing to not smash their face to fucking pieces all of the ground.  Anyone who could see that and not appreciate it is either retarded or... really retarded.  there's just no way you could not be impressed with that.

Quite frankly, it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows much about India to find that Indians traditionally did their "yoga" atop a nine foot high pole while onlookers screamed like they were in the front row of a Metallica concert circa 1987- these motherfuckers have not one, but two individual traditional sports in which they fought horny elephants.  Satha-Mari is a "manly sport in which foot-men irritate the intoxicated elephant.  In this sport they try to save themselves by tricky moves from the excited elephant"(Mujumdar 296)  The other "manly sport involving a horny elephant is Dag-Daree, in which dudes on horseback "try to irritate an intoxicated elephant and save themselves and their horse from the attack of the elephant"(Ibid).   Let me repeat that- they fuck with an animal weighing between 4,000 and 11,000 lbs. by yanking on his tail repeatedly, while the animal is in heat, for sport.  Try that with a golden retriever and see what happens- I cannot imagine the reaction from a Godzilla-sized stomping machine with massive tusks.  If you think that sport is an anomaly in India, you can throw that on top of a pile of other "manly sports" like Vajra-Mushtee wrestling, which is mma with one hand clad in a weapon made of bone that looks suspiciously like brass knuckles; the Thai-style kickboxing  in Benares I mentioned previously in which spectators routinely kill each other in hand to hand combat; Lathee fighting, which is basically unprotected stick fighting using a leather-wrapped billy club; Ban fighting, which is the most preposterous sport in this list- it's a massive bottle rocket battle between 100 people wrapped in wet canvas so they don't CATCH ON FIRE; and a whole shitload of armed combat sports with swords and garrotes.  Shit was officially off the chain in India before the arrival of the British, so feel free to pee on a Brit if you see one.  In any event, it should not surprise you that Indians think yoga's just as fucking stupid as the rest of us do in terms of exercising.  

Getting to modern yoga, however, the most prominent of those exercises arose out of some of the oldest movements in traditional Indian exercise- the surya namaskar, or what your hippie friends refer to as the "sun salutation" during their yearly one-week detox from weed.

"Of all the exercises, Indian and foreign, intended to impart health, strength, and longevity, the Surya Namaskar Exercise is the first and foremost.  The principal organs which keep the body fit are the brain, the spinal cord, the stomach, the heart, the lungs and the respiratory organs,  All these organs and others as well are fully developed and strengthened by Surya Namaskars.  If the Surya Namaskar Exercise is scientifically done daily and regularly with proper diet and rest by men and women, old and young, there will be no danger of any disease attacking them.  They will enjoy superb health and strength throughout the span of their life.  The Surya Namaskar Exercise also makes a body beautiful and with Dands and Baithaks added to it makes it graceful" (Mujumdar xxiii).

The face of patriotism?

The movement was actually invented with Indian cultural and national integrity in mind, as it combines traditional Indian gymnastics movements with meditation and stretching to basically make what the Indians considered the Superman of exercises.  Though it seems like a fucking weird concept to modern Westerners, who believe our mind controls our bodies, the Indian lack of dichotomy between the mind and body led them to this conclusion: "In the beautiful and harmonized movements of surya namaskar, [the guy credited with popularizing the movement] clearly saw the harmonized body of a united Indian polity that would turn, collectively, away from the gross sensations of modern life—sex, drugs, power, pride, prosperity— and toward the pure experience of self-realization"(Alter 9-10).  Thus, this hybrid movement, however maligned and embarrassing when viewed with modern eyes, was pretty much considered to be an exercise capable of resurrecting Indian pride when it was invented.  It consists of ten individual movements, a couple of which are stages of the wacky Indian pushup known as dands.  Frankly, I think they should have stuck with anything involving the pillar, as the pillar is the height of baddassitude.  In any event, they went with the sun salutation, which goes a long way to explain why India's sucked at lifting ever since.

Even Indian saints are jacked- Samartha Ramdas is a saint in India and used to bust out 1200 surya namaskars perday, as did his disciples, one of whom got so jacked he subjugated the entire nation and founded the Maharatha Empire.

Though it appears at first glance to be exactly the sort of silly bullshit you'd see in yoga, the surya namaskar is actually considered a mass bodybuilding exercise- in other words it's intended to be performed in a large group with the express purpose of building muscle, such as in the military during calisthenics or kids in gym class, etc (Mujumdar 453).  A national diet of namaskaras was actually prescribed to strengthen the Indian populace, with the daily regimen set at 25-50 namaskaras for kids aged 8-12, 50 to 100 per day for kids 12-16, 100-300 for people 16 and up.  A cursory internet search showed that the maximum number recommended by yoga instructors in the US was 12, which really brings home exactly how far from actual Indian exercise "yoga" actually is.  If they weren't so hot in those black pants, I'd say any time is a good time to punch a yoga instructor in the face for besmirching a culture of elephant-taunting bottle-rocket battling MMA fighters.

Up next, I'm going to cover the weightlifting portion, then touch on the Indian hygenic ideals, diet, and whatever else I can wedge into this series.  If you haven't caught on yet, an Indian from the 15th Century would have torn your face off and fed it to you while chanting a hymn to Hanuman, just because he didn't like the color of your shirt.   These people are to be studied in depth, or we may well meet the same, sad, potbellied fate of modern India.

India still has its redeeming qualities.  Too bad their food still sucks.

Sources:
Alter, Joseph.  The Discipline of the Wrestler's Body.  The Wrestler's Body: Identity and Ideology in North India.  12 May 1992.  California Scholarship Online.

Coville, C.  7 'Ancient' Forms of Mysticism That Are Recent Inventions.  Cracked.com.  6 July 2011.  Web.  6 Nov 2012. http://www.cracked.com/article_19283_7-ancient-forms-mysticism-that-are-recent-inventions.html

Malinowski, Erik.  Wince-Inducing Wonder of Mallakhamb, India’s Extreme Gymnastics.  Wired.  20 Aug 2010.  Web.  7 Nov 2012.  http://www.wired.com/playbook/2010/08/mallakhamb-extreme-gymnastics/

Mujumdar, DC (ed.).  Encyclopedia of Indian Physical Culture.  1950.

Vijayakar, Pradeep.  Mallakhamb going places but not in India.  Times of India.  23 Sep 2004.  Web.  7 Nov 2012.  http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2004-09-23/mumbai/27168669_1_mallakhamb-jutta-schneider-yoga-forum

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Zercher Part 4

When not lifting stones, Basques have been known to kick a motherfucker or two dead in the mouth, just because.

So I've covered the stone lifters about whom you've likely never heard.  Now, it's time to cover the ones of whom you have.  The big boys.  The guys who've kept stone lifting on the lips of anyone who knows a motherfucking thing about strength training.  That honor basically belongs to three groups of people:  the Basques, the Icelanders, and the Scots.  Of the three, perhaps the least is known about the Basques, who are an enigmatic people known mostly for speaking an incomprehensible language and blowing up trains in Spain.  If any of you have seen Grosse Point Blank, Benny "The Jet" Urquidez is actually half Basque, though from what I've seen he was missing about six inches and one hundred pounds to truly be representative of that pack of pissed off goofballs.  Next on the list are the people of Iceland, less well known than their Scotch counterparts in terms of stone lifting, but no less prolific.  The Icelanders have more or less dominated stone events in strongman competitions in the modern era, and for good reason- they're huge, they're descended from Vikings, and they love picking up heavy shit.  Finally, the bearded, ginger, crossdressing descendants of William Wallace are pretty much what the world thinks of when stone lifting comes to mind, as the Highland Games are the progenitor of the most prolific of stone events- the Atlas Stones.  Those skirt-wearing, plaid-loving, haggis-eating maniacs probably lift more stones, per capita, than any other group of people on Earth.  Unfortunately, they seem to be too busy drinking beer, buggering sheep, and watching men's field hockey to be bothered to win a major strongman competition.  Nevertheless, they're worth checking out.

The Basques: I've covered the Basques and their stone lifting fetish before, but as a refresher, the Basques are stone-lifting virtuosos.  The shit these guys pull off as a matter of course is beyond amazing- it's practically inhuman.  The two top lifts for men in the stones are 322 and 329 KILOS, or 708.4 and 708.4 lbs for the metrically and mathematically handicapped.  They didn't just lift them off the ground, either- they shouldered the motherfucking things, while weighing around 130kg (286 lbs).  Women also get in on the action, as the Basques have always been far more progressive than their machismo-laden neighbors and have been rocking a remarkably egalitarian society for the entirety of their history.  Unfortunately, however, I couldn’t find records information for the broads, as all discussion of Harrijasotzaileak revolves around two guys- Miel Saralegi for lifting the heaviest stone to date, weighing 329 kg, and Iñaki Perurena, who’s lifted the 322 kg stone.  The latter also holds the records for heaviest weight for reps, having lifted a 660 lb stone to the shoulder three times in three minutes.

Time to reconsider that Under Armour bullshit you've been wearing to the gym.

As I've no interest in reinventing he wheel, I'm just going to repost an interesting bit I found on Basque stone lifting.  The TL:DR is that every Basque on Earth, newborns included, are harder than you.

"Stone-lifting, perhaps the most spectacular of Basque sports, has its origins in the quarries and in the use of large standing stones to mark off boundaries. Over the years it has managed to avoid the dangers threatening the survival of other traditional games, which are so often forgotten by the press, overlooked in the distribution of official grants and squeezed out of education programmes by more fashionable disciplines imported from other continents. However, the sports events of the Basque Country continue thanks to the support of local councils which include exhibitions in their festival programmes, and thanks also to their extensive coverage in the press by expert journalists who have managed to carve a niche for themselves among the pages reserved for football, the king of sports in Spain.
The first step for a “harrijasotzaile” (the Basque word for “lifter”) is to go to a stonemason’s workshop, find a stone he likes, and have it properly prepared for the challenge: to lift one kilo more than at his last attempt. This is done by injecting lead into holes that are worked into the original granite slab, until the stone weighs exactly what the lifter wants. The current world record for stone-lifting is held by Migeltxo Saralegi, a 27-year-old from Navarre, who succeeded in lifting 320 kilos. But because of his youth Saralegi has not yet replaced the greatest lifter of all time, his neighbour, friend and teacher, Iñaki Perurena, in the memories of stone-lifting aficionados. Perurena, who is also known as “the colossus of Leiza” (his native town), has achieved popularity ratings in Spain that are unheard-of for a rural sportsman, though they are understandable in light of his competition history. He became national champion at the age of 17 with a lift of 175 kilos, and defended his title year after year with progressively heavier stones until 1987 when, at the age of 31, he achieved what was thought to be impossible: lifting a 300- kilo stone onto his shoulder. Once this psychological barrier had been broken he continued to break his own records, up to 318 kg. There was competition among the Basque local councils to host his record attempts, which were supported by private sponsors, while booking agents helped maintain a rising interest in the events.
Despite the inevitably rough-hewn image of a man weighing almost 130 kg who lifts stones for fun, Perurena, who also works as a butcher and farmer, has given free rein to his more sensitive side by writing poetry about his land and its people. As he grasps the stone and tries to lift it onto his shoulder, he talks to it and asks it for help. He is even capable of disqualifying his own valid lifts if they are performed with the necessary strength but “‘without grace”. The main ambition of stone-lifters is to be considered as sportsmen, not just as local curiosities. Like all other athletes they need daily training, a balanced diet and a refined technique. Because of their exceptional physical condition some have received offers to become boxers or weightlifters, but most stone-lifters reject such offers without a second thought. They don’t want hasten the demise of an entire people’s tradition"(Russell)

In Basque stone lifting, four different kinds of stones are used for four different events: a cylinder, a rectangular cube, a granite cube, and a granite ball.  Of those, they utilize the two cubes, both of which weigh in at 440 lbs.  Typically, Basque stone competitions are timed events, in which the lifters lap their beast of a stone, shoulder that motherfucker, then toss it backward over their heads into a padded pit like they're 1990s Steven Seagal tossing some hapless jamoke over a bar and through a window.  The events usually last three minutes, and begin with the weight on a base of automobile tires or sandbags.  From there, these wacky badasses lever the weight onto their padded thighs, then rotate it onto their padded chests and then drop it.  If they're using the ball, the weight is instead rotated rolled around their neck and dropped, rather than dropped behind them. Occasionally, they'll see who can lift the heaviest stone in an effort to see which of those leather-clad maniacs is the baddest of the bunch, but most often it's reps for time (Jeck 44-46).

Iceland:  Like everyone else, the Icelanders have their own spin on stone lifting.  Frankly, it's hard to conceive of there being so many ways to compete in stone lifting, but one's imagination seems to be the only limit in this sort of testosterone-fueled shenanigans.  The Icelanders have two main stone-lifting events- the lift and carry and the lift and load.  The former is most famously done with the Husafell Stone, which is a 396 lb. flat monstrosity with three oval corners.  The stone was carved by an Icelandic pastor with a fetish for stone lifting and stone wall building who was apparently named after one of the seven dwarves, Snorri Björnsson.  To test the strength of travelers, he set the stone out with the challenge of carrying it around a goat pen he constructed just for that purpose.  The event can also be conducted with the smaller Dritvik Stones, which comes in four flavors- the fullsterkur ("full strength"), a 341 lb. stone; the hálfsterkur ("half strength"), a 228.8 lb. stone; the hilariously-named hálfdrættingur ("weakling"), a 107.8 lb. stone; and one I cannot imagine anyone wanting to lift, the amlóði ("useless"), a 50.6 lb. stone.  While I imagine this sort of thing began in the Viking Age as a way for a man to prove he was worthy of raiding, it's been used since the Vikings turned their swords into ploughshares to determine who was fit to work on fishing boats, "with the hálfdrættingur being the minimum weight a man would have to lift onto a ledge at hip-height to qualify" (Wikipedia, Lifting Stones).

Scottish:  The Scots take stone lifting incredibly seriously, or at least as seriously as they take sheep-rape.  They are constantly testing their strength with a wide array of stones, and have traditionally had what they refer to as "manhood stones" in every clan for their youth to lift as a measure of their maturity.  As such, they have a dizzying array of stones in places that range from pretty much unpronounceable to "holy shit is that even a real human word"-type unpronounceable names.  The most famous of these are perhaps the Inver Stone (268 lbs), the Dinnie Stones (which weigh 413 and 321 lbs, respectively), the Menzies Stone (253., the Blue Stones of Old Dailly (which Steve Jeck estimated to weigh 290 and 320 lbs., respectively), and the North Sea Stone (which Jeck estimated to be between 350 and 400 lbs).  There are, however, a set of stones even more famous than the aforementioned that have become the gold standard of stone lifting strength, and perhaps the only you've ever seen lifted- The original set of Atlas stones, the McGlashan Stones.  These stones have been used by those furry motherfuckers for years as a Scottish Highland games staple, and consist of five stones weighing 90, 110, 120, 130, and 140kgs.  The guy who created the McGlashan Stones later produced a second set, which he called the Atlas Stones and are used in every World's Strongest Man competition, weigh 95, 105, 115, 125, and 135 kgs.(Jeck 73)

That pretty much covers stone lifting in every public permutation I can find, though I highly doubt it's a comprehensive list.  In the final installment of this series, I'll tell you how the world's best stone lifters train, and how I mimick their movements in the gym without stones.  I realize that will get the Diesel Crew all abuzz with fury because they believe there are no gym lifts that mimic those movements, but fuck 'em- some of us don't feel like wandering around the countryside looking for rocks to lift when there are perfectly good weights right in front of us.

Chaos And Bang Your Earballs Carb Backloads Like A MOtherfucker

Check it- we interviewed the carb backloading guy, and the result was solid gold.  In the meantime, don't let dogs eat your face.  TYhat looks to be a bad time.

Download that shit here.  It'll make you feeeeeel goooooood.

I Think This Is Officially Middle Aged- Random Shit I've Learned #2

I started this series last year on my birthday and might as well keep it up, as it seems to be an appropriate way to reflect upon shit I've learned in the previous year without any real structure or guide.  This year was pretty fucking crazy for me, as it's still odd to think of myself as a powerlifter, nevermind as a world record holding powerlifter.  In any event, here are some things I've learned on the road to breakin' fools while their bitches drool.

• You can learn shit from bodybuilders.  They're much maligned, and often for good reason, but they're not entirely retarded individuals.  One would think I'd have learned this already, what with the fact tht I've cited examples like Marvin Eder and Chuck Sipes in the past, but it wasn't until I really tried to get my bench moving that it occurred to me that bodybuilders are the best proof of my contention that high frequency is critical for steady progress.  After all, we've all seen countless "bodybuilders" with massive upper bodies and no legs, and we all know they train the same muscle groups two to four times a week.  When I started examining the problems with my bench, it occurred to me that the "bodybuilders", not the strength athletes, are the by far and away the best benchers in any gym.  Garrett Griffin's a great example of a current bodybuilder/bencher.  If you want a decent bench, you're going to have to train the fuck out of your chest and arms just like the bodybuilders in your gym.  If you don't, you're probably going to make an ass of yourself when you hit a meet.  That's not to say that I'll be adopting a bodypart split (ever again), but if you've got a lagging bodypart, utilizing the techniques of a bodybuilder who's got that bodypart in spades might not be the worst idea you've ever had.  If nothing else, it'll be better than deloading to the bar after getting terrible advice from redditors about your shitbox squat.

• More is generally better.  In line with the above, it seems the more frequently I train, and the more frequently I train the powerlifts or permutations thereof, the better I get.  At this point, I bottom position squat, jump squat, and partial squat once each per week, bench at least twice a week, and shrug twice a week.  I've never been stronger, never looked better, and never felt better just walking around.  Thee are pretty few exceptions to the rule that "he who rules does more", and if you look at guys like Platz, Belaev, Young, and Gant, you see that doing more seems to be the way to go.  Ronnie Coleman, the most successful bodybuilder of all time, trained 6 days a week for the majority of his adult life, and it paid the fuck off.  Bust your ass in the gym and the gods will confer upon you greatness.  Skimp and you'll suck harder than a meth-head in an oral gangbang.  

You don't get legs like that with a 5x5 program.  Did I mention Platz squatted 635 for 8, ass to the floor, and 350 for 52, at a bodyweight of around 212?  Again, you can learn shit from bodybuilders.

• Sleep is easily as essential as training and dieting.  Every time I hear that my style of training "broke" someone, my response is always to ask how much sleep they got.  The answer's always some bullshit about how busy the person is, yadda yadda.  If you're not going to sleep, your training is going to suck.  plain and simple.  There is no fucking way around it.  I've blogged about sleep before and how to improve it- get at least eight hours of sleep and make sure it's quality.  If you're not going to get eight hours of sleep or more on the regular, accept you're going to suck and shut the fuck up about it already.

Sometimes you have to go that extra mile.

• You're almost never not going to be injured or hurt.  This is perhaps the hardest thing for people to accept and understand, but they need to figure out, in a fucking hurry.  If you're training hard and heavy with the goal of lifting something awesome, something is always going to hurt.  Whether it's your wrists, elbows, knees, hamstring, or even something ridiculous like a serratus muscle, one bodypart or another is always going to be giving you some bullshit.  The elite athletes train in spite of or around those injuries.  Sometimes they get worse, sometimes they get better, and sometimes they just get supplanted by another recalcitrant bodypart.  Any way you cut it, something's always going to be bothering you.  Suck it the fuck up and keep going.  If it's an intense pain or a chronic pain for weeks, treat it like you would any other injury and rest the are until it the intensity of the pain is markedly diminished or until you're frustrated enough to risk a real injury to train through the pain.  Bear in mind that minor injuries often precipitate major ones, however.  Before he tore his bicep, Dorian Yates had a shitload of niggling pains in that arm for months.  He trained through and tore the ever-loving shit out of his bicep as a result.  Thus, it's up to you to decide if you're hurt or injured and either soldier on or take time off.

If you're gonna make an omelette, you're gonna have to break a couple biceps.

• Most of us should overhead press more often.  Because big shoulders look awesome and bigger shoulders look awesomer.  The bigger my traps and shoulders get, the more insane the comments I get about my physique, when the rest of it's more or less unchanged.  Additionally, having a badass overhead press is probably more impressive than anything else.  Igor Lakunin, Russian world champion, trains twice a da, for 2 to 4 hours a session, and puts weight overhead at almost every session.

• Bottom position squats are fucking key.  I credit these with the ease with which I get out of the hole, no matter what the weight is on the bar.  Try them and see- they're brutal, but they're worth it.
• Every single setback you encounter in your life will become a boon if you approach it aggressively and positively.  This runs the gamut from work to relationships to lifting, and it's always true.  When I've found myself injured in the gym, I altered my technique and training to allow me to continue training hard, and my lifts have always improved as a result.  Sitting around moping like Eeyore off his meds is going to result in nothing more than continued failure and misery.  If you hit a wall in life, figure out a way to go over or through it without stopping to consider the wall's existence.  You can figure out how it got there after you get past it.  The important thing it to continue to progress to avoid stalling altogether and then backsliding.  
• Getting older sucks subjectively, but is pretty fucking awesome objectively.  As you get older, you should get better, not worse.  I've personally never looked better, been stronger, fucked harder, or been more erudite and articulate than I am now.  There's no reason you should give ground to age.  For those of you who bitch when you get out of bed in the morning, you're fucking doing it wrong.  

Grab life by the throat and fuck it into submission.  Anything less is undignified.

Chaos And Bang Your Earballs Cheque Drops Edition

We ran the gamut on this one, and I went off, again, on form check videos.  Download here.

For the people wondering why I linked Eat Big Lift Big, here is your answer: they promote heavily tatted chicks with big booties who can lift shit.  

Who does not enjoy this?  People who post form check videos, I assume.

And to those of you who post those godawfulfucking vids, do the right thing.  Get Budd Dwyer on the deal.  you have to be sick of listening to your mother crying herself to sleep at night.

It's Time To Stop Mocking Indians For Their Clubbells #2

The ancient period of Indian history, as I've explained, was definitely an era in which developing physical strength was important, it didn't become institutionalized until the Rashtrakuta kingdom, which was extant from the 6th to 10th Centuries.  During that period, India basically became a place that only exist in most of our wet dreams (except, of course, for the godawful food), as every village under the control of the the Rashtrakuta contained a gym called an Akhada.  This could have been a carryover from the Grecian occupation, as all Greek towns contained an agora, wherein people would gather, lift weights, wrestle, and fuck.  Given the fact that modern historians believe that most or all hard-style Asian martial arts are descended from pankration, which was introduced to the East by Alexander the Great through India, it would stand to reason that the martial arts themselves would bring with them Greek-esque gyms.  Should you think I just took a Matrix-like leap from one metaphorical building roof to another, settle down Neo- the Akhada, like the Greek agora, were places where the men of the region developed their physical strength and martial skills simultaneously.  Thus, they were similar enough that it's not that big a leap.  In any event, by the time the Rashtrakuta were in power, club swinging and wrestling were the two most common forms of heavy exercise, and are credited with the development of "awe-inspiring" figures in a number of historical figures and the populace.  It was at this point that the first accounts of Hulk Hogan-esque descriptions of historical figures began in Indian history, The physical culture craze really took off with the rise of Krishnadevraj to power in the Hindu empire.  From 1509AD onward, the entire Indian populace (men and women alike) became obsessed with heavy club swinging, wrestling, and other "hard manly exercises" (Mujumdar 15)  Thus, in a time when Europeans had completely forgotten we'd already discovered and mastered central heating, we were shivering in half-frozen stone buildings looking like sickly scarecrows and trying to pray away the plague while the Indians were busy getting jacked as fuck.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with club swinging, it's a recently revived exercise with an extremely long history in India.  The war club and heavy mace were two of the most prominently utilized weapons in ancient India, and as such were utilized heavily in training in the akhara to ensure the bearers of those weapons wouldn't tire in combat.  In the past, I've posted about how badass it was that English railway navvies were able to handle sledges three times heavier than moder construction workers, but Indian mace and club swingers blow even those guys out of the water with the weights they handle.  When you think of club bells, if you know about them at all, you think of some skinny, ambiguously homosexual karateka in the back of your gym swinging 5 lbs bells in the darkened back corner of your gym while screaming his ridiculous karate screams and throwing the occasional piss-poor punch at the mirror.  If you've never had the pleasure of witnessing such a spectacle, you need to get out more, as there are few things funnier than American karetekas doing pretty much anything.  In any event, Indians training in akhadas still use heavy stone maces and clubs for training.  They'd start with 5kg clubs and maces and then work up to 35 to 45 kg maces and 25 to 60lb clubs (that measured up to four and a half feet in length), getting so good with them that they could swing them all day (Wikipedia, Pahlavani).  In training.  For those of you who are unaware, it'd be hard for most people to raise a 77 to 99 lb club with both hands, because the majority of the weight is in the tip away from your hands.  That sort of training should give you wrists and hands to rival freak of nature and unstoppable arm wrestler Denis Cyplenkov, in addition to badass shoulder strength. In short- club and mace training in India during India's strength training heyday was nothing whatsoever like the stupid shit you see bandied about on the internet these days- in their day, shit got real when the Indians busted out their clubs.

I don't think that's a club bell.  It looks suspiciously like a giant dildo.

As time progressed, Indians became more and more obsessed with physical culture, stone throwing, wrestling, and weight lifting.  By the establishment of the Maratha Empire, gymnasiums were incredibly widespread, and were associated heavily with the worship of Hanuman in Hinduism.  This became so prevalent that the Indians began putting idols of Hanuman, the monkey god representing strength and valor, in every gym in the country.  Though that seems about as reasonable as putting a statue of Samson in gyms throughout the American Southeast, it actually points to a really interesting facet of Indian physical culture.  In the West, there exists in the minds of the populace what is termed the Cartesian formula, wherein the mind and body are two separate entities.  In the Cartesian dynamic, the mind is the superior organ,and the body exists as its subordinate- the effeminate and adolescent Robin to a grizzled, hirsute, foul-mouthed Batman.  There is no such distinction in the Hindu belief system, wherein the mind and body are much more like the Catholic Yahweh and Jesus, two components or equal parts of a larger whole, no more able to be separated than the elemental components of air with one's bare hands.  Thus, a hulking, ripped, Herculean physique is incontrovertible evidence of a disciplined mind in India, whereas it is generally ascribed to heavy drug use or some other disordered behavior in the West.

"In American physical education and sport, strength is a purely physical phenomenon. It can be measured in objective terms: body mass, arm size, muscle-to-fat ratio, heart rate, weightlifting ability, and so forth. As such, strength is something that can be developed as purely somatic and as quantifiable and calibrated. While strength is also manifest as a physical attribute in India, it is, more significantly, linked to such ineffable cultural values as duty, devotion, and morality. It is neither purely somatic nor strictly quantifiable. A wrestler cannot be strong if he does not follow his guru's mandate.  He cannot be strong and indulge in sensual pleasure. Strength is manifest not only in the size of his arm but also in the sparkle of his eye and the luster of his skin, symbols that indicate spirituality, devotion, and moral control." (Alter 4)

The closest thing to which I could compare this in the West is the "muscular Christianity" movement, which is without question one of the most preposterous movements in any religion, anywhere.  The principle concept in muscular Christianity is to build one's body for the subjugation of the world the Jewish god of the Old Testament gave to the Christians. This is, of course, fucking retarded, since the New Testament is a paean to pacifism and basically being a chill bro.  To emulate the Indians, muscular Christians would have to modify statues of Jesus to make him look like a mashup of Buddy Jesus and Derek Poundstone, then start lifting and acting in such a way as to convey that they were attempting to achieve the ultimate in themselves rather than "glorify[ing] God in your body" (1 Corinthians 6:20), as Indans strove to emulate Hanuman's example and channel his spirit rather than worship him by making themselves more awesome.  Given the abject failure of Muscular Christianity t gain a foothold in the minds and hearts of the West, and it's failure to produce more than a handful of elite athletes, I would posit that the Indian method appears to be the BMW M5 to Christianity's Ford Fiesta in that regard.

Hanuman got his fucking swole on.

Instead of engaging in the mild retardation exhibited by muscular Christians, Indians have utilized a very holistic methodology for developing the mind, body, and spirit simultaneously.  It's for that reason that statues of Hanuman were found in gyms.  In the mind of Indians, a strong, muscular body was a reflection of their strong mind, rather than evidence of their mind's ability to force the body to bend to its will.  Additionally, unlike exercise as is generally practiced in the West, Indians specifically tailor their programs to the individual, and they feel their body expresses their individual personality.  Thus, from an Indian's view, Westerners develop their bodies to exhibit "the lines of force of the generic human animal", whereas Indian training displays physically in the individual the "eccentricities his tastes and vices leave in his carnal substance" (Alter 5).  Thus, you're not going to find in any old Indian training text a rigidly defined program of  lifting and conditioning, as they believed (rightly) that there is no single system that will suit multiple people, and this belief has persisted for over 1000 years.

Former WR holder Karnam Malleswari might clean more than you do- 249 at 119lbs, and 286 at 151.  Did I mention her 220 lb snatch?  Also, holy fucking triceps.

"But", you might be thinking, "didn't you kick this fucker off by telling us that the Indian people are collectively worse at lifting than a tiny nation of car thieves?"  I did indeed, but I was referring to modern Indians, who are basically a pale, sad shadow of their former selves after being systematically raped and robbed by the British.  When the Brits raided the Indian national treasury and planted their boots on the throats of India, India pretty much gave up on lifting.  They were, however, unmatched athletes in bygone eras.  

• In the early 20th century, the professional wrestlers of India could "on the average, perform in their training five series of 300 'dunds'(body-swaying [pushups]) and three series of 1000 'batticks'([squats] performed on their toes) (Willoughby 258).  To put that in perspective, that means that there were literally thousands of men in India 100 years ago who could match or exceed Herschell Walker in his legendary workouts, in spite of the fact that they were vegetarians.  East Indians took this training a step further and added jump squats performed like baithaks, only they jumped as high as possible at the top of every reps.  They could do up to 700 of those in a a row, which is a volume of work that would kill Crossfitters who consider a giant bowl of rhabdomyolysis part of a balanced breakfast (Willoughby 200).  
• Rama Murti Naidu was a pro strongman from Madras known as the Indian Hercules who could support a 7000 lb elephant on a plank at a bodyweight of 195 (Willoughby 177).
• The Great Gama, legendary professional wrestler of the early 20th Century, was still doing 200 dunds and 400 baithaks followed by a four mile walk/run and three hours of wrestling a day... at age 69 (Willoughby 370)
• Hamida Banu, daughter of a famous Indian wrestler named Nadir, fought 300 professional wrestling matches after turning 19 and only faced other women three times (Willoughby 579).  This is probably because she was built like a brick shithouse at 5'3" 215lbs.  She remained unmarried long past what was considered proper due to the fact that she'd only marry a guy who could beat her in a match, and hardly anyone could.  
• The aforementioned Karnam Malleswari is India's badass modern lifter and the holder of India's sole medal in the Olympics.  One broad coming out of nowhere to take the mantle from Malleswari is Chandrika Tarafdar, a tiny lifter who just pulled down a bronze at the Youth World Weightlifting Championships.  The 15 year old 97 lber just busted a 121lb snatch and 162.8lb clean and jerk in competition.  Time to bust out the razors and the rat poison, fellas.

Dara Singh laughs at your legs and your squat rack.

Next, I'll cover how Indians trained and ate at the height of their dominance of the professional wrestling world, at which point you'll understand why I'm so impressed at their pushup and free squat abilities.

Sources:
     Alter, Joseph.  The Wrestler's Body: Identity and Ideology in North India.  California Scholarship Online.  12 May 1992.
     Mujumdar, DC (ed.).  Encyclopedia of Indian Physical Culture.  1950.
     Schatz, William Jackson.  Club Swinging for Physical Exercise and Recreation.  Boston: American Gymnasia Company, 1908.
     Traditional Iranian Martial Arts (Varzesh-e Pahlavani).  Pahlavani.com.  Web.  30 Sep 2012.  http://www.pahlavani.com/ish/html/ph/new/meel.htm
     Wikipedia.  Mace (club).  Wikipedia.  Web.  30 Sep 2012.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mace_(club)#Indian_Subcontinent

Baddest Motherfuckers Ever #28- Ivan "The Polish Hammer" Putski

Poland is an interesting place.  Wedged in between the titans of Europe, the Germans and the Russians, the Poles pretty much fought a two front war against both groups for centuries, and finally had their shit handed to them in the 18th Century when the Russians and Prussians basically just walked in and started pointing at random shit and yelling "Mine!" like a couple of  fat, retarded girls in an ice cream shop.  Thereafter, both countries started what pretty much amounted to the least fair campaign of discrimination and disinformation of all time, shouting to the mountaintops about how the Poles were a pack of ugly, stupid pack animals that you'd like in your kitchen less than an unwashed, rotting donkey's ass.  For those of you who've never been to Poland, Poles are actually pretty fucking awesome.  In fact, you could throw a rock into a crowd in  Poland and hit three chicks that look like this- there's a reason Hitler had the SS banging the ever-loving shit out of every broad in Poland.

There exists, however, a Pole who exists simply to disabuse you of the false notions you might hold about the Poles, and his name doesn't rhyme with "oodzianowski".  Nope, before Marius could doff his fishnet tank top to hand you a beating, another badass Pole would rip off your arms and beat you to death with them were he to hear you spout off with some Polish jokes in his presence. That man is Ivan "The Polish Hammer" Putski.  Putski, born Josef Bednarski, was born in Poland and immigrated shortly thereafter.  You'll hear a lot of bullshit about how his English sucked, but that seems purely a gimmick- in the interview to which I listened, the motherfucker sounded like he was speaking on the phone from horseback in West Texas with chaw in his mouth and bowl of bean-free chili in his lap. 

For those of you who are unaware, Putski was a professional wrestler in the early years of the WWF, in a time when WWF wrestlers looked much more like superheros than men's board shorts models.  He was one of the massive motherfuckers in league with guys like the benching phenomenon Ted Arcidi, Olympic weightlifter and strongman Ken Patera,  and overall beast and badass facial hair rocker "Superstar" Billy Graham.  Throughout his career he mostly feuded with Billy Graham and the successor to Graham's original look, none other than Jesse "The Body" Ventura.  At the time, because there were so many jacked-to-bits dudes dripping testosterone and chugging cans of whoop ass that they regularly had to dispense with the bullshit histrionics and just settle shit Over the Top style with arm wrestling matches.  It was clearly a different time then, as the 180 lb oily goofballs predominating the modern WWE would have been eaten alive in Putski's era.

Putski stood a mere 5'6", but his weight as a wrestler and strongman vacillated between 225 and 300 pounds.  Most of the latter part of his career, in which he was more or less a bodybuilder, he was a lean 250 lbs, which is the same billed weight as Triple H, who's considered huge by modern wrestling standard in spite of the fact that he's almost a full foot taller than Putski.  If you haven't yet caught on, Putski is and was not to be fucked with.  Throughout his life, Putski was a professional football player (in the fledgling Continental League), a strongman (he placed 8th in the 1978 World's Strongest Man), and Tag Team World Champion with Tito Santana.  Thus, he did more awesome shit in an average day than most of us will likely do in our lives, and thought nothing of it.

I first read about Putski when researching Destroy the Opposition, (which is on sale on the right if you haven't already picked it up) and found him mentioned in a story about Doug Young.  Young was one of the greatest benchers in history, and a fucking beast at 242.  When Young was coming up in the scene, he happened to hit up the gym where Ivan Putski lifted.  By any account I've been able to find, Putski gave exactly zero fucks about programming- he just went in the gym, found someone doing something epic, and attempted to best them at their pet lift in marathon workouts that left everyone covered in vomit while Putski happily munched on boiled eggs and patted them on the head like they were small, harmless children.  According to Terry Todd, here's what happened when these two lunatics met on the iron battlefield.

"The word had gotten around to all the local horses, and so we had a big bunch at the T.A.C. when Doug began to train. No one, however, except Ivan Putski, the Polish pro-wrestler, seemed very interested in benching that day; and we suspect Putski didn’t know, or care, what was on the bar. The rest of us, though, surely knew – and cared. Doug took 135 for 100 reps as a warmup and then went to singles with 225, 315, 405, 485, 505, and 520. He then dropped back to 405 for 8 repetitions and 315 for 15. Not bad, seeing as how he had just lost weight down from 260 in an effort to stay somewhere near the 242-pound class limit"(Todd). 

That, my friends, is how babies get made.  Putski didn't give a shit that Doug Young was the greatest bencher in history at that point, that Young benched more in a week than most people do in a month, or that Young had benched 545 with three broken ribs in the past- he just said fuck it and matched him rep for rep on anything like the motherfucking beast that he was.  From other anecdotal accounts about Putski, that seemed to be his M.O.- he'd just step up to keep his rep up, whether it was Ken Patera doing overhead presses or some goofball doing calf raises like he was training for the world championships of accessory movements.  Lest you think I'm joking about the latter bit, I'm not.  One account I found online was from a self-professed nobody who happened to work out at a World Gym frequented by a bunch of WWE wrestlers and a couple of East Coast bodybuilders, including Mike Katz of "Pumping Iron" fame.  This guy recounted the following of Putski:

"I remember I was working out my strongest body part "calves" when Ivan politely asked me if he could work in on the standing calf machine with me. I was thrilled to be working out with the man who patented the "Polish Hammer" as a finisher. I remember Ivan eating a couple of dozen hardboiled eggs during his workout. He would do a set then eat a couple of eggs, do another set eat a couple more eggs etc. Ivan's English was very broken back then but when I was laughing at his eating so many eggs during his workout he simply said "Putski eat, Putski push." and push he did......an amazing powerhouse!

We eventually had the calf machine maxed out with all the weight that it could handle. 1400 lbs. to be exact, we had the entire weight stack pegged plus hung and placed 100 lb. dumbells and plates anywhere on the machine that we could safely add to the resistance of that poor overloaded machine. We both did our last set with 1400 lbs. for several reps when Ivan downed a couple more eggs, then came over and patted me on the shoulder, gave me a thumbs up, and a wink, as he grabbed his gym bag off a nearby bench and headed to the locker room" (Massie).

It becomes fairly apparent from those accounts that Putski didn't really stick rigidly to a set program- he just fucking loved lifting.  He did have a basic program he apparently stuck to rather loosely, just because he traveled so much for the WWE.  According to the interview I heard with him, however, he still trained on the road, and ensured that he took the earliest flight possible so he could get in a morning lift and then wrestle in the evening (Guttman).  His brutal workouts, however, all took place in the beginning of the week, when he wasn't traveling.

His main training days, then, were as follows:

Monday  

Bench Press:  225 x 10; 325 x 10; 425 x 8; 425 x 7; 425 x 8; 425 x 8; 425 x7; 425 x 7; 425 x 8; 425 x 6; 425 x 7; 425 x 7; 425 x 6; 425 x 5; 425 x 4.  Each set was taken to failure, and he continued doing sets until he noticed a significant drop-off in bar speed and strength.  He called it "train yourself til you strain yourself." Putski, incidentally, was reputed to have a 600+ pound bench.

Push Press: 225 x 10; 275 x 10; 325 x 10; 325 x 12; 325 x l1; 325 x11; 325 x 10; 325 x 10; 325, x 10; 325 x 10; 325 x 10; 325 x 8; 325 x 8; 325 x 9; 325 x 6; 325 x 5

Tuesday

Box Squats (which he did to a high bench, actually): 300 x 10; 500 x 10; 15 x 10 x 650 

Stadium Stairs:  He would run the stairs of a local high school football stadium for a hour if the weather allowed.

Wednesday

Standing Barbell Curl or Seated Concentrated Curl:  15-20 x 10 x 200 or 100lbs, respectively.

Skullcrushers or Standing Tricep Extensions: 15-20 x 10 x 200lbs, going until his form gets sloppy.

(Marunde Muscle)

Another source had Putski busting out a pulling day on day three, though it provided no information on that (Furman).  I would ascribe the discrepancy to the fact that Putski simply did a hell of a lot of whatever the fuck he felt like every time he entered the gym.

The rest of the week, he'd be traveling and wrestling at night, so he would get into the gym early and do smaller workouts.  Frankly, the fact that he wasn't in a coma by Wednesday night is a testament to the type of beating you can put on your body and survive.  By all accounts, Putski was the nicest fucking guy on Earth, and was constantly smiling.  He was one of the few wrestlers to remain a babyface his entire career, because he was just too nice to play a heel.  This, I suppose is proof that you needn't be a total cock to be a badass, which is somewhat disappointing, as I like to think that channelling my inner Tommy Conlon spurs me on to victory.

Instead of being fueled by hate, however, Putski was fueled by the produce of his massive appetite.  Like most of the old-school, Putski ate more in a sitting than most of us eat in a day.  When Putski was first starting out, he lacked the money to eat anything expensive, "so a usual evening meal would consist of a quart or two of raw oysters. a pound of cheese, some Polish sausage, and fresh fruit. As he began learning about U. S. cooking, he developed a taste for fried chicken and it’s not at all uncommon for him to eat 20 or 30 pieces after an evening bout"(Marunde Muscle).  In case your math sucks, that's between two and a half and four WHOLE fried chickens in a single meal.  As he gained prominence in wrestling and became a bigger earner, Putski started eating steak three times a day, in addition to what was reputedly an absurd amount of kielbasa.  This then, lends a great deal more support to the credo of "eat big to get big", because Putski was a gigantic motherfucker.

Thus, to bring it all home for you, the following can be gleaned from Putski's example:

• you can, and likely should, be doing far more volume than you are currently doing.
• you can pretty much eat whatever you want in whatever quantities you want if you train your ass off, provided that your diet is heavy as hell on proteins.
• you don't have to be an asshole to be a total badass.
• compared to Ivan Putski, we are all a bunch of pussies.

Go eat something already.

Sources:
All WWE Westlers. The Wrestler Ivan Putski. All WWE Wrestlers. Web. 20 Sep 2012. http://www.allwwewrestlers.com/ivan_putski.htm
Forum Post. Ivan Putsky's Training. Marunde Muscle. 26 Nov 2006. Web. 20 Sep 2012. http://www.marunde-muscle.com/
Furman, Tom.  POLISH POWER TEMPLATE.  Physical Strategies. 22 Nov 2006.  Web. 20 Sep 2012. http://physicalstrategies.blogspot.com/2006/11/polish-power-template.html
Guttman, James.  Ivan Putsky Interview.  World Wrestling Insanity.  23 Oct 2010.  Audio.
Massie, Roger.  Memories from World Gym in Connecticut. Online World Of Wrestling.  5 Sep 2005. Web. 20 Sep 2012. http://www.onlineworldofwrestling.com/columns/misc/rogermassie01.html
Todd, Terry. Doug Young. The Tight Tan Slacks of Deszo Ban.  3 Sep 2011. Web. 20 Sep 2012. http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2011/09/doug-young-terry-todd.html
Wikipedia. Ivan Putski. Wikipedia. Web. 20 Sep 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Putski