There Is Nothing New Under The Sun- Faddism In Exercises And Implements, Part 1

Sadly, Zubaz pants seem to have fallen victim to the death of a fad.

Having been involved in lifting for two decades, I've been highly amused to see what training methods, exercises, and nomenclature come in and out of vogue.  When I first started training, body part regimens were all the rage, and that's basically all we did  for years.  Certain exercises faded in and out of popularity at that time, driven mostly by the degree to which the bodybuilding magazines pushed them.  There was the early push to abandon barbells "because they cause muscular imbalances" and adopt dumbbell-only programs, super slow training, the mystifying obsession with bosu and Swiss balls that accompanied the loathsome "core training" nonsense, and then the gradual decline into total idiocy wherein everyone decided to stop thinking for themselves and do cookie cutter programs to avoid "wasting their time" in the gym.  Given my recent penchant for harping upon the most modern of these trends, I thought exercise faddism throughout the ages might bear some investigation.  Avoiding the aphorisms of George Santayana would likely benefit us all, so we'll just go with the idea that only the retarded and the deliberately ignorant ignore the lessons of the past.

I'm afraid "Jesus told me to kill the bitch" is not a sound legal argument.

Given that exercise faddism has an history longer than Tori Spelling's face, this series is going to get split into exercises/implements and training programs.  Mashing the two together would likely just make this entire enterprise a bigger mess than Tim Lambesis's legal defense.  To preface the treatment on exercises, it's of note for all of the anti-bicep curl wunderkind out there that the bicep curl only fell out of favor when male testosterone levels decided to drop more precipitously than a 20 something's frequency of erections after switching to a vegan diet.  That's right- curls for the girls has been a thing as long as there have been things to curl to catch chicks' attention.  This, I suppose, accounts for the rise of the anti-fap movement in concert with the anti-curling movement.  If you're never going to get in the game anyway, what the fuck is the point of practicing?

The Minoans liked their women with huge forearms and huger tits, and jumped over stampeding bulls in their free time.  Brb- building time machine to go to ancient Crete.

Unfortunately, we don't know a hell of a lot about the anomalous ancient civilizations (like those of Turkey that predate the Neolithic).  Frankly, we don't know much other than they were likely massively strong because they constructed cyclopean stone structures we'd have trouble recreating today.  Though we know more about the civilizations, we're in the same Vin Diesel style Pitch Black dark about strength training with the Mesopotamians, Chinese, and Egyptians, all of whom were holding regular athletic competitions as far back as 3,000 BC.  The Egyptians, insofar as we know, tested their strength with stone lifting, but that's as far as our knowledge goes.  Likewise, we're in the dark about the Minoans and Mycenaeans, both of whom appear to have been jacked from their art, but about whom we know little more than what we can glean from their artifacts.

Not surprisingly, this picture was accompanied by a statement on Reddit to the effect that halteres were not used as dumbbells.

Anal Sex Wasn't the Greeks' Only Form of Exercise- The Halteres
The earliest instance of systematic weight training we can find, then, comes from the Greeks.  As can be seen from any Grecian art, the Greeks placed more value on physical perfection than do the guidos down the Jersey Shore, so it would stand to reason that they'd have a system for obtaining those beach ready bodies.  Their tool in the war on weakness were the halteres, the earliest version of the modern dumbbell, which was developed by the Greeks for use in the broad jump (athletes were able to extend the distance of their jump significantly by swinging the halteres and allowing the lead weights to carry them forward).  By the 5th Century BC, the halteres seem to have become weight training implements, as depictions of their use included something akin to a lateral raise.  By the second century AD, an entire system of weight training with the halteres had been developed, with the physician Galen outlining their use in strengthening the body.  This style of weight training, known as "halter throwing" consisted of three main movements:

1. Bicep curl.  Nothing surprising there.  Curls for the girls was a thing long before Jersey Shore and tanning beds.
2. Walking lunges.  The Greeks had an interesting take on these.  They focused heavily on fighting, so strong shoulders were even more important than strong legs.  As such, they held halteres at arms length in front of them as they did the lunges, not unlike the arm position for pistols.
3. Suitcase deadlifts.  The lifter would take two heavy halteres and place them six feet apart, with himself in the middle.  He'd then reach out and deadlift up the left hand halter with his left hand, then the right hand halter with his left, then replace them and repeat (Gardinier 153).

Clearly, the model who posed for this statue was not skipping arm day.

Halteres were basically used as conditioning for sports, it seemed, as the Greeks lacked a system for measuring weights (outside of currency).  Thus, the halteres they used were likely pretty unevenly matched and could not have provided a true measure of strength.  Real heavy lifting was done with stone blocks, which would have comprised the bulk of the the "strong man" workout.  Unfortunately for us, though, no one really wrote about the manner in which the stones were lifted or what the competitions involving stones looked like.  Instead, we simply have a couple of inscriptions showing us that they definitely competed in two stone lifting events and used heavy sheets of rock or lead (tabula plumb) in training.

Competitive Lifts

1. Stone throwing.  One 315 lb block of badass sandstone remains inscribed with a statement about a lifter, Bybon, who picked it up and threw it one-handed over his head.
2. Stone lifting.  Another block of red sandstone bears the inscription that some badass named Eumastas lifted it from the ground (Gardinier)

Note the strong creeper element in 16th Century gyms.

The Development of the Dumbbell
While the Romans certainly carried forward these traditions, they left us all too little in the way of documentation about their training techniques.  After the fall of Rome and the coming of the Dark Ages, it seems strength training took a backseat to not contracting the gangrene and swollen lymph nodes that came with the onset of the Bubonic Plague.  Thus, we have to skip forward to 1569, when Girolamo Mucurialis published what became basically a mix of the Atkins Diet-P90x-Physicians' Desk Reference of the Middle ages- De Arte Gymnastica.  Though De Arta Gymnastica was published some thirteen centuries after Galen penned his 500 treatises on health and medicine, De Arta was little more than a synopsis of the salient points contained in Galens' and others' work, but it served as a call to arms to the men of the Middle Ages, particularly knights, to get their asses in shape.  

I highlighted the dumbbell and plate so you wouldn't have to treat that pic like you're trying to find bitch-ass, sneaky, untrustworthy, possibly-of-gypsy-origin Waldo.

It was also that this time that the dumbbell truly began to take shape.  If you check out the 16th Century gym pic, you'll notice what where formerly curved hand weights are now two cones joined at the point, much more like modern dumbbells.  Dumbbell work continued to flourish after the publication of De Arte Gymnastica, which went through five reprints over the subsequent hundred years and remained Europe's training manual of choice (Milo 4-6).  As others continued to write about the benefits of heavy lifting, drawing heavily on Mercurialis's work, the use of dumbbells continued to spread.  Over the 200 years following the publication of De Arte, strength training became reasonably popular among the average person, and traveling strength shows began springing up in Europe and travelling to the US.  Benjamin Franklin was one of the first American public figures to pick up on the use of the dumbbell, which he used primarily for swings, and he claimed that he was still lifting when he was at the ripe old age of eighty.  Likewise, General Custer of the ill fated Little Big Horn battle was an avid lifter at Fort Hays to combat the intense boredom brought on by living in Kansas.    

And here, I thought group fitness classes had always been about staring at chicks in booty shorts.

Amusingly, this was also the time when group fitness classes started springing up, all revolving around the use of the dumbbell.  About as unlike modern group fitness classes as the wondrous t-back thong is unlike broads' undies in that period, group ex classes in the 19th century were primarily for men, all of whom appeared to be dressed for the theater (If you're curious, and you should be, about how these classes were conducted, check out Watson's Handbook of Calisthenics and Gymnastics here).  These lifting classes were, like most modern classes, conducted with ridiculously light (3-12.5 lb) dumbbells, but the movements they used would not be foreign to the modern BodyPump enthusiast or recreational lifter- they were curling, doing lateral raises and upright rows, lunges, and even a dumbbell squat.

Ladies were pimps, too.

Plenty of other books were written on the subject of training with dumbbells, all of which had slight variations of the same theme.  By and large, however, dumbbell work was kept pretty light except in places where strongmen trained, as people still held tightly to Galen's belief that training for health was not heavy strength training, but rather more like the Crossfit conception of lighter weights for time.

 "In the blessings of the mind athletes have no share.  Beneath their mass of flesh and blood, their souls are stifled in a sea of mud... Neglecting the old rule of health that prescribes moderation in all things they spend their lives in over-exercising, in overeating and oversleeping like pigs.... They have not health nor have they beauty.  Even those who are naturally well proportioned become fat and bloated.... Even their vaunted strength is useless.  They can dig and plow but they cannot fight"(Thomas).  

Galen said it, but it could literally be the words of any Crossfitter remarking on powerlifting.  Because of this sentiment, strongmen really weren't all that prevalent or popular in the early 19th Century, so most training was done relatively lightly and for high repetitions, but all of that was about to change.

Someone's looking forward to the next installment...

Sources:
CTCWeb Editors.  The Ancient Olympics.  Classics Technology Center.  Web.  7 Jan 2014.  http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/consortium/ancientolympics2.html

Gardinier, E. Norman.  Athletics in the Ancient World.  London:  Oxford University Press, 1930.

Kansas Historical Society.  Cool Things - Custer's Dumbbell.  Kansopedia.  Nov 2006.  Web.  8 Jan 2014.

Sinclair, John.  The Code of Health and Longevity.  Edinburgh:  Arch. Constable & Co, 1807.  

Thomas, Edward.  Martial arts: the Western connection.  Tae Kwon Do Times.  Jan 1997: 58-59.  Print.  Available online: http://www.ihpra.org/Western%20Connection.pdf.

Todd, Jan.  The classical ideal and its impact on the search for suitable exercise: 1774-1830.  Iron Game History Nov 1992: 6-16  Print.

Todd, Jan.  From Milo to Milo: A history of barbells, dumbells, and Indian clubs.  Iron Game History.  Apr 1995: 4-16.

Watson, J. Madison.  Handbook of Calisthenics and Gymnastics.  New York: Schermerhorn, Bancroft, and Co., 1864.

Prepare For War!

My long-awaited ebook on meet prep and cutting is finally complete!  The perfect companion to the other ebooks, this expounds upon things I've written previiously and walks you step by step through the three months leading up to a meet, then takes you through water cutting, recomposition, choosing weights at a meet, and getting through a bad meet without losing your mind.  For anyone who plans on prepping for a meet and cutting weight, this book will get you through the worst of it with not problem.  I can't be there to help you through it, so consider this book the consigliere to my Godfather.  Snag it at the CnP website for half of what you'd pay for similar (*cough cough* inferior) stuff!

Yeah, that's right- you can cut weight getting hammered, too.  Oh, I bring the fucking ruckus, son.  Feel free to head over to the forums to debate my insanity.

FUCK NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS- I PORTEND DOOM

Maybe a year ago there was a commercial I witnessed on Youtube while waiting to check out some metal video that literally took my breath away with the horror it represented.  The commercial, which I cannot find now, was a Dell commercial in which some vapid label whore was watching a rave on her laptop, happy as a pig in shit that she didn't have to brave the dangers of the big wide world to enjoy some shitty electronic music and perhaps actually interact with another human being.  The tagline, however, said it all- "Being There, Redefined", a phrase representing a mindset so prevalent, and yet so incredibly repellent to me that it took over a year for me to actually bring myself to write on the subject.

About this legit as a lifter.

What follows is not simply an outgrowth of that commercial and the concomitant reinforcement of that mentality on a daily basis on the internet, wherein people talk incessantly about a subject until it appears they believe they have actually performed the activity about which they are discussing, but also a series of discussions I've had with friends in regards to the myriad, and trust me they are legion, problems with the modern sport of powerlifting.

Clearly, getting fucking SWOLE.

To kick this motherfucker off, I might as well address the elephant in the room, which will come off as rather hypocritical given my internet fame, but the internet is fucking ruining powerlifting.  Gone are the days when a kid would just decide he wanted to be big and strong and start lifting, with no conception of what might be the best method of doing so and generally no more knowledge about the lifts he should perform than a person might glean from looking at the side of a machine to see what muscles are worked.  That guy, the go-getter, just rolled out of bed one day and said, "fuck it, it's time to get fucking brutal", threw on some shorts and a tshirt and headed into the fucking gym.  After a few weeks of aping the biggest guys in the gym with the idea that they know what they're doing (and they often do), the kid would start doing a little research in bodybuilding magazines and the like for a bit more information.  He might pick the brain of a lifter or two, and he might discuss lifting with his friends a bit.  All in all, that kid might spend a grand total of 5% of his "lifting" time talking, and the other 95% of it ACTUALLY LIFTING WEIGHTS.  Not foam rolling, not prehabbing and rehabbing injuries that only exist in the empty mind of the Chucks and Elite FTS clad morons waltzing around the gym like they know what the fuck is up, but actually lifting weights.

Those are the shins of a br00tal strength athlete.

Now, we're inundated with assholes all over the internet, meticulously researching and picking apart various lifting styles, debating the legality of techniques, gear, steroids, and sundry other issues about which they're not, and likely will never, earn the right to have a fucking opinion about, shopping for exactly the right shoes, shorts, wraps, and other assorted accouterments of lifters, foam rolling, stretching, researching programs, debating programs, researching exercises, debating those exercises, and possibly eventually getting around to embarrassing the fuck out of themselves in the gym because in spite of all of their gear, they're piss fucking weak.  TALKING ABOUT LIFTING DOES NOT MAKE YOU A LIFTER.  INTERNET MESSAGE BOARDS ARE NOT A FUCKING PROXY FOR GOING TO THE GYM.  REDDIT IS NOT "BEING THERE, REDEFINED."  If you're a male and don't bench considerably more than body weight, squat double body weight, and deadlift the same, you should not even have it in your head you're a fucking lifter, much less defining yourself as such with your fucking clothing.  Anyone who does is a fucking poser- they're a posturing bitch with no respect for the sport they're besmirching by claiming to be a part of it and are thus beneath contempt, in addition to being huge pain in the ass to work around while real lifters are actually getting shit fucking done in the gym.  Kill yourselves and save the real human people the trouble of having to wash your tainted, stomach-churningly weak blood off our calloused hands.

And holy fucking shit, could you phaggots stop with the gym etiquitte posts?  Anyone who is reading them already knows about them, and anyone who is not reading them is not going to fucking care anyway.  Holy fuck, what a pompous bunch of brainless fucktards... posting rules for your fellow gymgoers.  NO ONE CARES WHAT YOU THINK, AND YOUR INCESSANT WHINING ABOUT CURLS IN THE SQUAT RACK MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE THE DICKLESS BITCH YOU ARE.  

Feel free to tel Jay Cutler to cut that shit out.  I'll be the one laughing at your closed-casket funeral.

Holy fucking christ- if someone wants to do curls in the squat rack, they might as well- at least they're using the fucking thing.  Squat racks are generally used to hang laundry and preserve space for people to do lunges with preloaded barbells in most gyms, and half the people whining about curling in the squat rack have squat numbers so pathetic they shouldn't even be discussing lifting in public anyway.  Your invective to the contrary notwithstanding, the shit is going to continue.  Shut the fuck up already, you whiny, inconsequential, useless, self important dickbags.  Real people are busy waiting to lift in those racks, not posting passive aggressive phaggotry on the internet.  Goddamn, people suck.

That brings us to our next issue- the incredible disparity between the elite in the sport and everyone else.  As I've mentioned before, I simply started competing in this sport to prove a point.  I had no interest in making it my life, nor did I have any interest in becoming a powerlifter.  I simply wanted to prove the efficacy of my methods.  As it turns out, this sport is ridiculously easy to be competitive in.  RIDICULOUSLY.  We're talking about a guy who barely benched for ten years because he sucked shit at it, never squatted to depth, and basically made shit up as he went along triumphing over legions of people who devoted their existence to the performance of three simple lifts.  

I'm this good at lifting weights.

Not only am I better at the vast majority of the people at my bodyweight at those three lifts, but I'm better at just about any lift at which you can throw at me, because I train to be brutally fucking Viking strong.  That's what Chaos and Pain is all about- being so fucking strong that the only time you find yourself incapable of wrecking shit is when you're sleeping.  Fuck consigning yourself to a single strength sport, especially when barely anyone could give a fuck about strength sports and even the people who do spend the vast majority of their time talking shit about other competitors rather than actually lifting weights.  

CnP's not about training to be a powerlifter.  It's not to satisfy some stupid fucking goal set by some 150 lb. bitches as the ultimate mark of manhood.  While we're at it, 300-400-500 is a 1200 lb total.  SWEET JESUS CHRIST ON HIGH THAT'S PATHETIC.  Are a 120 IQ and a 15% bodyfat percentage on your shopping lists as well?  Mediocre much?  Moreover, what's the point of perfecting your technique if that just means that you perform perfect lifts with paper weights?  They don't give out medals for perfect form, and no one gives a fuck if you fully engage your transverse abdominus when you're pulling.  Managing lordosis while lifting should not be a goal- lifting the fucking weight should be.  Motherfuckers are busy being stuck on stupid and weak because they lack the will do get awesome, and it's fucking pathetic.

Dude's a sub-200 lb physique competitor and apparently benches 500.  Yeah, bodybuilding doesn't work.  Tell me another, geniuses.

While we're on the subject of lifting more, powerlifters and olympic weightlifters might want to take note of the fact that the strongest people in the world BODYBUILD.  Dear god in heaven, you'd think that getting fucking jacked would not be the anathema to the saddies populating message boards, but the suggestion that they might want to do an exercise that might involve a machine makes most of those tards break out into fucking hives.  Suggest to someone that a few sets of cable crossovers might help them bench more than the paltry 185 with which they're struggling and they act as though you suggested they masturbate with 600-grit sandpaper and then rub rock salt onto the remaining bloody nub.  They act that way because they're fucking retarded, of course.  The biggest and strongest people in the world ALL use bodybuilding exercises as accessory movements because, surprise, THEY LIKE LIFTING WEIGHTS AND LOOKING GOOD.  Additionally, getting stronger really helps you get stronger!  How that could come as a shock to someone is a mystery I will never resolve.  Before the word "carryover" bubbles forth from your slack, drool-covered lips, consider the following, courtesy of Olympic weightlifting coach Coach Dan Bell:

"When the Bulgarian training craze swept the sport of weightlifting some years ago, it became dogma almost overnight that you only need to train six exercises to be a successful weightlifter: snatch, clean & jerk, back squat, front squat, power snatch and power clean. The idea was that constant practice of the competitive lifts makes you strong in the lifts, with squats giving you the leg drive for big weights. The idea that areas of the body other than the legs should be targeted for strength gains got lost in the race to emulate the latest breakout foreign program. But even the vaunted Bulgarians of the eighties and nineties did foundational bodybuilding as juniors. Zlaten Vanev did a lot of curls to protect his elbow after blowing it out on a jerk. There is a lesson there for the rest of us.

The Chinese believed that being Asian they started behind other nations in upper body strength, an essential quality for success in a strength sport, they properly reasoned. So they busted their asses at rows, presses, pullups, handstand pushups and even benching. Judging by the stunningly muscular specimens they put on the podium year after year, it’s paying off.

A strong upper body is vital in widening the overhead “groove” for the snatch and jerk. The stronger the lifter’s upper body, the more room for error–front to back displacement of the bar from the ideal doesn't necessarily mean a missed lift." 

Without the help of the miraculous textiles, you would be looking at the smashed corpse of a reasonably attractive chick.

And holy fucking hell, as if the race to utter public disgrace wasn't going fast enough, we've got the fracture of the sport into 987,329,873,498,734 federations, which are then separated into weight classes, age classes, gear classes, and fuck, we've even split raw into two fucking classes.  What better way to ensure that the saddest pack of self important bitches on Earth all get trophies than a system in which there are barely ever three people competing in the same fucking class?  What makes it even more fun is the incessant shit talking, which now even extends to the manner in which people perform the fucking lifts WITHIN THE STRICTURES OF THE RULES.  The next motherfucker I hear whining about sumo gets stabbed.  Same goes for low bar squatting and hard aches in the bench.  Bitch less and lift more, for fuck's sake.

The only song on this idiot's phone ought to be Razorblader by Myndflame.

I suppose it doesn't really fucking matter if the sport's fractured, though, as it seems most of the people involved in it are simply doing it because they're attention whores .  Is it even possible for people to enter a gym without a fucking camera at this point?  Holy fucking hell.  Three years ago that was the sole purview of 140 lb dudes in board shorts doing thrusters with 110 lbs., and the primary driver behind Crossfit mockery.  Now, every asshole on the planet's filming themselves doing nothing of any interest to anyone except for other attention whores, all in the apparent search for bragging rights over the most Facebook "friends" and Youtube views.  Gone are the days, apparently, when people just fucking lifted weights because they liked lifting weights.  Now, it's just a pack of sloppy assholes taking fucking pictures of themselves all goddamned day and filming every lackluster set they happen to perform in the gym.  You deadlifted 405 at 180 lbs?  WHO THE FUCK CARES?  Narcisissism should be reserved for pople who actually have something to fucking brag about, goddamnit?  Where are these inflated egos coming from?  Certainly not their physiques or their fucking lifts.  Jesus fuck.

Okay, that's justified narcissism.

Hey! If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I'd like any one of these assholes, an one of the dipshits ruining our sport, right here tonight. I want them brought from his happy holiday slumber and I want them brought right here, with a big ribbon on their head, and I want to look them straight in the eye and I want to tell them what a useless, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is! Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol?  Frankly, I don't give a fuck what you people do, but if you people want the sport of powerlifting to persist beyond the next couple of years, you might want to do something about it.  Get stronger, quit your fucking bitching, and let's start investing in razor wire and fencing so we can start sending these assholes to the camps and get back to the business of picking up heavy shit.

Cleanse.

Source:

Bell, Dan.  Bodybuilding in Weightlifting.  Coach Dan Bell.  13 Dec.  2013.  Web.  2 Jan 2013.  http://coachdanbell.wordpress.com/2013/12/13/bodybuilding-in-weightlifting/

Baddest Motherfuckers Ever: Mas "Bare-Handed Slayer of Bulls" Oyama

You ever get so pissed off at a cow that you spend a couple of years in the woods beating inanimate objects to undeath, seething with rage that the fact that cows are just, you know, sitting there, chewing and pooping and mooing, living their lives without the slightest flicker of intelligence behind their big, wet, cow eyes, and then descend from the mountains and tear a swath trough the bovine community, knocking out ungulates like they raped your mom in a 7-11 while smiling at the security camera?

No?

Me neither, but Mas Oyama did.

Well, at least, that's how the story goes.  In reality, Oyama just chopped the horn off a single pet ox one time after beating the confused animal for some time and the Japanophile press decided that Oyama was to become a fearless killer of horned, male ruminants.  Irrespective of how meaty-delicious animals Sosai Masutatsu Oyama killed barehanded in the name of his beloved karate, no one in their right mind will debate the fact that Mas Oyama was one bad motherfucker.

Born in Japanese-occupied Korea, which was an avowedly shitty place, Oyama was forced to move as a child to an even shittier place- what can only be described as hell on Earth, Japanese-occupied Manchuria.  Bear in mind that at this point Japanese soldiers raped anything that would hold still long enough to get their cocks into it in Manchuria during world war two, and the Japanese had a team of "doctors" in the same vein of medicine that the dude from Human Centipede was a "doctor" roaming the countryside in search of people on whom they could test theories that basically amounted to seeing how long it would take you to die if they sewed a dog's head into your groin in place of your cock.  After learning the rudiments of kempo from an itinerant worker who ostensibly hoped this would help a small boy retain the structural integrity of his anal sphincter, Oyama adopted the name "Oyama Masutatsu", which was a transliteration of an ancient Korean kingdom Oyama would knew would piss off the Japanese, and moved to Japan to piss off the Japanese even more.  From there, Oyama embarked upon what could only be described as a hate-fueled journey through Japan with only one goal- to shed as much Japanese blood as humanly possible with his bare hands.

So Nei Chu knew a thing or to about bringin' dat swole.

In Japan, Oyama started collecting black belts in every style of martial arts he could that no Knockout-obsessed gangbanger in the world would find himself with saggy pants if Oyama could help it.  After pulling down multiple-dan black belts in Okinawan and Shotokan karate, Oyama did the same in judo, studied boxing, and then happened upon another Korean ex-pat martial arts badass in the form of So Nei Chu.  A goju-ryu master, So Nei Chu was also a bit of a meathead, and began adding a great deal of strength training to the already stocky Oyama's training routine.  Under So Nei Chu, Oyama started focusing heavily on hojo undo, which are traditional Japanese kareteka strengthening exercises that include the use of barbells and more cinderblock lifting than you could possibly find in Marky Mark's Good Vibrations video.  Since I've already covered this and have not only never seen the implements but have never used them, check this shit out if you want a primer on hojo undo.

The really great man can only be produced through continuous heavy training.

-So Nei Chu

Yo!  It's about that time to bring forth the rhythm and the rhyme!

Discontented with his training and the fact that the people who fucked his people in the ear were now being fucked in the ear by gaijin, Oyama did what any sensible person would do and fled to the mountains.  There, he built a shack and proceded to train for 14 months in an effort to hone himself into the most brutal killing machine the world had ever seen, at least until the martial arts epic Gymkata was released.  After climbing the mountain on which the great unwashed asshole swordsman Mushashi penned The Book Of Five Rings,  Oyama proceded to build a shack in which he'd live for six months with one of his students and then another six months alone after his student peaced the fuck out (understandably) from stir-craziness.  Having spent a great deal of time building up his conditioning under So Nei Chu (who was also the financial backer for Oyama's homage to the Unibomber), Oyama spent twelve hours a day using trees as makiwara, riping the bark off trees with his fingers (a trick he learned from So Nei Chu, who learned it from the dude who invented their style), punching rocks, meditating under freezing waterfalls, channeling his inner Dean Karnazes for a shitload of trail running, and doing more stone and tree trunk lifting than a drunken Scot in the months before a Highland Games festival. Thus, when Oyama's funding ran out, he descended from the mountains a man with whom no part of nature wanted to fuck and handily destroyed the competition in an all-Japan karate competition.  Feeling like that simply wasn't enough awesome and filled with so much hatred for modern society that he even made Julius Evola wonder what the fuck had gotten up his ass, Oyama returned to the mountains for another 18 months of 12 hour a day training with no days off, because overtraining is fuck pussies and Oyama apparently gave less than zero fucks about Mark Rippetoe's eventual opinion on the matter.

Back in civilization, Oyama went back to doing what he did best- beating the brakes off everyone he could.  Before he founded his own school, Oyama was the assistant instructor at the home of goju-ryu with none other than Masahiko Kimura, legendary judoka who's one of the godfathers of modern mma.  Kimura and Oyama trained together constantly, and Oyama's physique was that much the better for it.  Kimura had by this point developed a pants-shittingly awesome practice we could all stand to adopt called "San-bai no Do-ryoku (Triple Effort)."  This method consisted of him just tripling the effort of his competition to ensure that he would never lose.  Having heard his opponents were training three hours a day, Kimura started training nine.  This, he believed, would turn him into a real life Ultron- he'd me insanely confident and virtually indestructible, as his mind and body would exist to do nothing other than to propel him onto victory.  Thus, this brutal lunatic would awake in the middle of the night to train, and lacking a hair shirt and a knotted whip, decided that as penance for a lackluster performance (after winning his first championship) he had to do 500 pushups, one kilometer of bunny hops and 500 karate strikes before hitting the hay.  At 5'6", 185 lbs, Kimura was pretty much unstoppable- he honed his throwing strength by practicing it on trees (ripping them out of the ground) and dragged Oyama through workouts like this:

Dem pecs.

Pushups or Hindu Push-ups- 1,000 
Bunny Hop- 1 km
Headstand- 3 x 3 Minutes
Judo Practice- 100 Throws
One-Arm Barbell Clean and Press- 15 Reps each side OR Bench Press- 3 Sets: 3, 2, and 1 Reps
Situps off Partner's Back or Decline Situps- 200 
Squats with Partner/Log/Barbell/Sandbag (150-200lbs)- 200 
Judo Practice- 100 Submissions
Shuto (Knife-hand Strikes)- 500
Judo Practice- 100 Entries
Judo Randori- "X" x 3 Minute Rounds
Practice Throws (particularly Uchi-mata) Against a Tree- 1 Hour
Additional Judo Practice- 1 Hour

According to a couple of sources, another influence on Oyama at this time was Japanese strongman Takemaru Wakaki.  Though I could not find much in the way of information on Wakaki, you can see he was a middleweight strongman and bridged the gap between the truly old schoolers (Saxon, Strongfort, Hackenschmidt, etc) and the Grimek era.  As such, the name of the game was volume, and Oyama's routines definitely reflected that.  Though he was about as reluctant to give a definitive program as the team for Half Life 2: Episode 3, here's what Oyama himself said he did on a daily basis in his seminal work, My Karate:

Running- 4km per day
Rope-skipping- 20 minutes per day
Dumbell shoulder press- 200 reps
Dips- 100 reps
Pushups (on knuckles)- 300 reps
Inclined push ups- 100 reps
Jumping side kick over 4 foot vaulting horse
Incline dumbell bench press- 200 reps
Bench Press (175 pounds)- 500 reps

Exercises requiring a partner:
Hitting bag with upper elbow and side of elbow- 200 times each
Practicing jumping kick with bag
Exercises for neck (with partner)
Leg exercise (squat with partner on back)
Back and Abdomen exercises with partner

Think it couldn't work?  Think again.  Oyama used this conditioning routine to found one of the first truly hybrid styles of the Far East, Kyokushinkaikan, a style in which you have to fight 100 guys in a row, bare knuckles, to achieve the highest belt status.  Oyama was the first to do so, and since then only 13 other people have managed to pull it off (and all of them went directly to the hospital, from what I understand).  Oyama is also alleged to have defeated over 270 opponents, and his one punch slaughter technique earned Oyama the nickname "The Godhand."  

If he hit you, you broke. If you blocked a rib punch, your arm was broken or dislocated. If you didn't block, your rib was broken.

I honestly don't know who was more excited in this pic, but I can tell you I am fully erect.

Thus, when it's not giving its best fighters rhabdo, Oyama's baby has given the world Bloodsport (Oyama invented the kumite), Street Fighters Ken and Ryu, Tekken's Jim Kazama, knockdown karate, K-1, Marius Pudzianowski (he's a European kyokushin champ), Dolph Lundgren (who was also a European kyokushin champ), just about every useful karate style ever, mixed martial arts (Oyama taught Kimura striking, and Kimura went on to beat Helio Gracie's ass in one of the first mma fights), and threw some big brass balls on the universe as a whole.  Thus, the next time you think you've done enough in training- think a-fucking again and find some way to do more.

Or imagine she will fuck you if you hit a 3.5x bodyweight raw squat.

Sources:

Keaveney, Liam.  Mas Oyama.  Original link dead, but taken from British Karate Kyokushinkai
Magazine.  Excerpt from http://www.kyokushin4life.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6971&highlight=wakaki+takemaru&page=2

Kimura, Masahiko.  My Judo.  JudoInfo.  Web.  16 Dec 2013.  http://judoinfo.com/kimura2.htm

Mas Oyama.  Web.  17 Dec 2013.  http://www.mutekikyokushin.com/content_bio_masoyama.html

The Mas Oyama Workout.  Pierced Visions.  7 Jan 2010.  Web.  16 Dec 2013.
http://piercedvisions.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/the-mas-oyama-workout/

Ross, Steven.  Masahiko Kimura's Training.  Real Anime Training. 2 Apr 2013.  Web.  16 Dec 2013.  http://real-anime-training.blogspot.com/2013/04/judo-in-anime-and-manga-masahiko.html

Tsui, Dom.  Masahiko Kimua Training.  26 May 2011.  Web.  16 Dec 2013.  http://www.livestrong.com/article/455237-masahiko-kimura-training/

Young, Robert.  How Kyokushin Karate Master Kenji Yamaki Endured the 100-Man Kumite.  Black Belt.  25 Nov2013.  Web.  17 Dec 2013.  http://www.blackbeltmag.com/daily/traditional-martial-arts-training/kyokushin/how-kyukoshin-karate-master-kenji-yamaki-endured-the-100-man-kumite/

In Death Ground, Fight- Part 2

Ground on which we can only be saved from destruction by fighting without delay, is death ground.  In death ground, fight. 

"Suppose an army invading hostile territory without the aid of local guides:—it falls into a fatal snare and is at the enemy's mercy. A ravine on the left, a mountain on the right, a pathway so perilous that the horses have to be roped together and the chariots carried in slings, no passage open in front, retreat cut off behind, no choice but to proceed in single file. Then, before there is time to range our soldiers in order of battle, the enemy is overwhelming strength suddenly appears on the scene. Advancing, we can nowhere take a breathing-space; retreating, we have no haven of refuge. We seek a pitched battle, but in vain; yet standing on the defensive, none of us has a moment's respite. If we simply maintain our ground, whole days and months will crawl by; the moment we make a move, we have to sustain the enemy's attacks on front and rear. The country is wild, destitute of water and plants; the army is lacking in the necessaries of life, the horses are jaded and the men worn-out, all the resources of strength and skill unavailing, the pass so narrow that a single man defending it can check the onset of ten thousand; all means of offense in the hands of the enemy, all points of vantage already forfeited by ourselves:—in this terrible plight, even though we had the most valiant soldiers and the keenest of weapons, how could they be employed with the slightest effect?"

You know what you do in this case?  Fucking ATTACK.  We've all been in this position in the gym- broken/torn whatevers/horrible illness/etc.  Something that not only cripples you physically but cripples you psychologically.  I've had it happen twice in the last year, first with walking pneumonia and then with the broken hand/torn bicep combo.  In both cases, it wasn't just the fact that I couldn't train the way I liked, but the fact that I'd been proven mortal by the universe at large.  Though that might seem preposterous to most people, if you think of yourself as mortal and consider your own mortality, you will never transcend mediocrity, never rise out of the muck, never crawl over the assembled, teeming,unwashed, blind, stinking masses to grab the brass ring.  Thus, a catastrophic setback initially freaks me the fuck out and throws me into whatever my best impression of "depressed" is.  I, however, have never allowed myself to get sad for all that long- like they said in the original Red Dawn, I "let it turn into something else".  Instead of getting sad, I get mad at myself for being a Fucking Awesome Guy and get insanely, ripshit angry.  I get angry at everything- the sun, the fact that a book I love has a shitty cover, the fact that my dog pointedly ignores certain command, pants (because fuck pants), my crippled body, everyone driving a car, EVERYTHING.  Then, I channel that energy into creativity.

Yes, creativity.  It might come as a great shock to everyone under 25 who's reading this, but the gym is the perfect place for you to express your creativity.  If you're not creative, you're going to be a shitty lifter, plain and simple.  Allow me to explain- in order to be a great lifter, you have got to get creative to overcome hurdles, train around injuries, get lean, fix weaknesses, and sculpt your body however you want it to look.  If you just do what you're told, you're going to suck- it's just that simple.  Lifting is not a science- it's an art.  For those of you who are going to expose your utter blindness to the truth and irrefutable ignorance, consider that just as science influences and supports art (the creation of colors and mediums, explaining why certain art appeals to the majority, etc), science also influences and supports lifting... but lifting cannot, will not, and never could be made into a science because there are too many independent variables involved in programming, exercise selection, and loading for anyone to accurately utilize science or math in their calculation.

Skeptical?  I have taken advice from people on a number of occasion, and it has always ended in disaster.  One time I didn't cum for almost a year because getting off would "hurt my gainz".  No only did my gainz suffer, but my dick developed schizophrenia and would not respond to normal commands when called into battle.  If I could have found the old fuck who gave me that advice, I'd have sent everyone in his family a fucking nailbomb.  Likewise for when my squat stalled and someone suggested that since Bill Kazmeier only did 10-12 reps in the off-season, I should too.  My squat literally dropped 50 lbs over three months and it took the better part of a year to make a five pound PR over my previous plateau weight.  People, as it turns out, know precisely fuck all about what will make you strong.

I'ma dig a ditch, bitch, and throw your ass in.

Speaking of knowing exactly fuckall, there is one major caveat to what I am suggesting- if you're under the age of 27 at this moment and happen to ever find yourself injured, you might as well quit lifting and eat a fucking bullet.  Not since Al Qaeda conquered the assembled unwashed and uneducated dirt merchants of Afghanistan has there been a less well-educated or more pompous, self-aggrandizing, entitled pack of dogmatic, uninteresting, dickless, brainless fucktards than the under-27 crowd of "powerlifters" fucking up any decent discourse on the subject of lifting on whatever public forum they currently choose.  So wedded to the idea that they have to adhere to a "program" lest they fail to achieve the baseline mediocrity for which they so desperately wish in order to impress the other saddie bitches yammering on about the program du jour, they're completely incapable of enacting a damage control system of "improvise, adapt, and overcome" to train around an injury.  Frankly, I've no idea how these assholes manage to get out of bed and get their fucking shoes on ("Thanks for tying them, mom!  I'll get it before I turn 30!  I promise!"), but that set of actions certainly stretches the limits of their autonomy to the breaking point.  They'd be more likely to transmogrify themselves into a rape monster in the form of winged bag of pulsating ectoplasm covered with turgid 10" cocks than they would be capable of determining a course by which they could train around an injury.

Hate those motherfuckers about this much.

If that offended you, good.  Anyone who defends that generation of lifters will join them in the fucking camps.  Lest you worry, we know your work capacity isn't going to allow for much slave labor, as your CNS allegedly has less balls than a geriatric AIDS patient covered in cancerous goiters.  Nope, we're just going to lead you fucking lemmings to the edge of a deep pit (dug with bulldozers, because again, you fuckers would fall down dead of exhaustion from digging a potted plant out of the ground) and shove you in, where you can lament the fact you never did a fucking pullup with all of the other assholes in your generation as you starve to death.

I always had the desire to inflict pain on others and to have others inflict pain on me. I always seemed to enjoy everything that hurt. The desire to inflict pain, that is all that is uppermost.

-Albert Fish

For the rest of you, what's important is that you get creative and tried new shit.  That is the only thing you can do when you get injured, because when you're facing a serious injury, improvisation is all you have.  Consider my latest clusterfuck- confronted with the issue of a torn bicep and broken bone in my right hand which still hurts like a fuck), I was reduced to unilateral pulls that did not involve my palm with my right hand, nothing with my left, and machine leg training.  As such, I simply started training legs as much as possible, alternating between machine squats and leg extensions/leg curls.  Then, on alternating days, I did explosive unilateral pulldowns, curls, one arm pullups, and triceps pressdowns.  Once I had surgery, I added in two non-unilateral movements that I basically invented myself- band crossovers with the bands on my biceps rather than in my hands (to remove the load from my bicep) and band rows with the bands over my triceps.  You might be thinking to yourself, "that's not gonna do shit", but you know what?  It's more than the average person does, and I was trying to keep my back as conditioned as humanly possible.

For anyone who wants a new goal, how about a triple bodyweight one arm dead?  Pete Cortese: 370 lbs. at 116 lbs.

As my arm healed, I started doing one arm deadlifts with the other arm to keep moving heavy weight, and at 5 weeks cautiously started squatting again, working up to a double with 585 in my first squat session in 7 weeks just fucking because.  That week I also started benching again, working with a wide grip to refrain from compressing my bicep too much, adding in a bunch of machine bench presses just to get my volume up.  I also added overhead presses, starting light and not going to lockout just to keep the strain and stretch off my bicep, and gradually (over a week and a half) worked to full lockout.  At the same time, I remained cognizant of the strain holding a bar at lockout on my bicep, so I simply put the bar as for over head as possible without retearing my bicep and dumped it.  Clearly, none of this should be Earth-shattering- it's just a combination of a bit of creativity and not being a fucking bitch.  Pursuant to the latter bit, I've perhaps taken nine days off in the last two months (I had surgery exactly two months ago)... so it seems your body and your CNS is capable of handling both recovery from surgery and heavy, frequent training without giving you cancer of the IDS provided you feed it plenty of food and remember to avoid being a bitch.

To most of you, that strikes you as a waste of time.  Leg extensions?  Band crossovers?  WHAT'S THE CARRYOVER, BRO?  The carryover is you're a fucking retard and your parents fucking hate you, bro.  Every time I'm asked what the carryover is from one exercise to another I want to burn the world and fuck on the ashes just a little bit more.  I want spray random passers-by with acid.  I want to grab a small child by the feet and beat an entire college campus to death with its corpse.  I want to breathe smoke.  You know why?  BECAUSE THE CARRYOVER IS THAT ANY TIME YOU MAKE YOURSELF STRONGER, YOU'RE FUCKING STRONGER.  Te aforementioned question is a tacit admission that 1) the questioner does not like lifting weights, and 2) knows precisely fuckall about strength training, 3) that person is beneath your contempt and should be treated as thought they just crawled bare-ass naked out of a public porta-potty with their mouth wide open and a baby doll stuffed up their ass.

If you think I am alone in acting in that manner, I am not.  The progenitor of the modern bodybuilding competition and basically the person you have to blame for the popularity of physical culture in the US, Bernarr MacFadden, was a harder motherfucker than you will probably ever be at age 12.  Having grown up in an environment wherein he was constantly being reminded that his death from tuberculosis was eminent and wherein his mom dropped dead of the same disease and his dad peace out when he was a baby, Bernarr decided to get hard.  Essentially an orphan and had no money to join a gym, so he did what he could- too poor to join a gym at age 12, he bought a set of dumbbells he used religiously every morning until he couldn't lift them, replacing them with heavier dumbbells when he needed a bigger challenge.  As if that weren't enough, he took nothing but physically demanding jobs, with the thought that desk jobs would lead him to his death... and he was still a tween.  

Harder Than You Crew circa 1900.

That's right, a twelve year old kid out-harded you.  He idolized the badass motherfuckers he saw coming out of mines and loathed the bitches he saw in banks, so he started carrying a lead ingot everywhere he went at age 15 so he wouldn't go soft as he worked for the company that eventually became Dunn and Bradstreet.  As he grew older and got more wealthy, his penchant for experimentation expanded, and he became a renowned wrestler and strongman weighting only about 150 lbs due to a fanatical, round the clock lifting program and in spite of a near vegetarian diet.  MacFadden wasn't busy worrying about carryover, his CNS, loading protocols for the squat versus the bench, what particular minute adjustment to his bench form he could agonize over, or any of the other stupid shit with which "lifters" find themselves preoccupied these days.  He made himself stronger so that he would be stronger, in spite of whatever bullshit life happened to throw in his way, be it poverty or pneumonia.

In summary, this shit couldn't be any easier.  You're backed into a corner by life, so you fight your way the fuck out and leave nothing alive.  Pretty fucking simple, frankly.  Everyone who's been worth a shit in the past has done it, and so will we, if we aspire to even being mere shadows of our much tougher forbears.  Time to stop making excuses and harden the fuck up people.  

Don't forget- we've got forums now, in case you assholes want to bitch about how I just touched your inner child in its no no place.

Sources:
Adams, Mark.  Mr. America.  New York:  Harper Collins, 2009.
Gentle, David.  Some Amazing Feats of Grip Strength.  Bob Whelan.  Web.  7 Dec 2013.  http://www.bobwhelan.com/history/gripstrength.html
Sun Tzu's Art of War.  Web.  3 Nov 2013.  http://suntzusaid.com/book/11