Chaos and Pain News, Or Why You Don't Have A New Article This Very Minute

As some of you probably know, the CnP supplements dropped on Friday, which is slowing my output here a bit.  In spite of certain idiot Brits' completely unfounded (and given the amount of free entertainment I provide, insolent) assertions to the contrary, I really don't use the blog to pimp my wares.  Nevertheless, I know not all of you are Facebook fans, so I thought I'd give those of you a heads up.  To the butthurt- since none of you bitches have offered to step up and keep your rep up, might as well close your mealy, ignoble proverbial mouths and wait a couple of days for the next exercise fads article.  For the rest of you, here's what's up:

Cannibal Ferox

Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I pine for the halcyon days of training and supplementation- that late 1990's/early 2000s period where gyms were filled with lunatics, and those lunatics were filled with Ultimate Orange.  There were no rules against chalk in real gyms, or cursing, or yelling, or slamming weights, or lifting shirtless.  Fuck, in those days, anything went.  Every real gym owner was a total psychopath, and was unseen until some hapless fuck broke some byzantine rule about which they could not have known if they were a regular (in the case of Worlds in Tucson it was leaning plates against machines or racks), and that broke rule was often met with a foaming-at-the-mouth insanity-fueled tirade, a beating, and the aforementioned hapless fuck broken and bleeding in the parking lot.  Water fountains were ripped out of walls and thrown at members.  Fistfights would break out as a matter of course.  Bodybuilders would attend powerlifting meets and vice-versa, and everyone would get good an hammered afterwards, eat a shitload of pizza, and fuck with each other good-naturedly about their respective sports.  We're talking about places where 125 lb girls would get under 185 to squat it, then cross one foot over the opposite like a man sitting with his legs crossed and squat it to depth.  Competitions to see who could throw 315 into the air the highest.  The good old days.

Those days are deader than disco and most men's libidos.  Gyms are sterile, quiet places filled with uninteresting people performing banal workouts before they return to their trite, bland home lives.  This sickens me, and I decided to do something about it.  That's why I designed Cannibal Ferox- it might not be Ultimate Orange, but it might also be a damn sight fucking better.  Ephedra's gone the way of the dodo, but so fucking what?  Instead of ephedra or DMAA, I found the next best things, jammed them together at the highest dosages the FDA would allow, added in nootropics to focus your jitters, and put it in the best-looking fucking container you've ever seen.  This is how Cannibal Ferox came to be- it's a stackable, focus-oriented,  transparently-labelled  preworkout  that  addresses my beloved and oft-ignored “stimulant junkie” demographic.  Though Wayne (my partner in the business) prevented me from beating our old manufacturer to death with a claw hammer over their myriad fuckups, we learned from the experience and busted this one out using one of the original manufacturers for C4, so it's fucking tasty, and brought you Watermelon Warmachine and Luminous Lemon Ice.

Some highlights:

• No “proprietary blends.”  With Cannibal Ferox, you know every wonderfully insane ingredient and their dosage within the bottle.  No more  guessing, and no more hoping- what you see is exactly what you get.
• Contains stimulant newcomers higenamine and hordenine to replace the hard edge of our fallen comrades ephedra and DMAA (1,2). 
• Jammed full of mood enhancers and  nootropics to ensure that workouts fueled by Cannibal Ferox will make you smash weights, rip water coolers out of walls, slap your lifting partner, and fuck your significant other into a coma when you get home... did I mention the blend causes steel hardons and euphoria?  No?  Well, it does.   

Cannibal Genius

Ever thought to yourself "I'm smart enough- I don't need to be any smarter"?  If so, fuck off and die, as your idiocy might be contagious.  For the rest of us, I decided that the fuckers popping Adderall like Tic Tacs shouldn't be getting one up on us just because they claim to have a disease invented by pharma companies to sell amphetamines to children.  Additionally, there are plenty of compounds out there that have actually been definitively proven to raise IQ, cognition, and memory.  thus, fuck those frat boys- it's time we show them what happens when you load up on stimulants and racetams and tear through entire libraries in a weekend.  That's why I made Cannibal Genius- there is a fine line between genius and insanity, and I intend to straddle it like a porn star on a Sybian.

I will have a Sybian fund contribution with every sale of Genius.

Some highlights:

• As with all of our products, there are no bullshit proprietary blends.  
• Contains the racetam Noopept, a Russian pharmaceutical-grade supplement clinically proven to reverse the signs of aging and alcoholism on the brain, improve short term memory, and improve cognition (3).
• Includes acacia rigidula, a naturally occurring shrub that contains over 40 different amines, providing anyone who consumes it with an exceptionally broad spectrum of stimulants, including small amounts of a couple of different kinds of amphetamines, nicotine, and lots of other fun shit (4).

Cannibal Swole

I've made no secret in the past of the fact that I am not a fan of pump products.  They generally cripple me, as my lower back gets too pumped to move, and that generally puts me in a stabbing kind of mood.  I know, however, that I do not have the sole opinion of supplements on the planet, so i set out to make a pump product that actually serves a real purpose, rather tan simply serving to make 155 lb assholes in small Under Armour shirts look like 155 lb assholes.  As such, I jammed together a few of the pump ingredients that have been definitively shown to increase strength and endurance to make Cannibal Swole, a product that can also be stacked with Ferox to get the best of both worlds (and happily, agmatine also serves as a nootropic).

• Ideal for competitive athletes in tested competitions- 100% free of banned substances.
• No proprietary blends.
• Contains L-Citrulline and Agmatine, both of which are essential for the cell volumization that change increased strength and endurance and improved recovery from strength and endurance training from a dream into reality (5,6).
• Increases glucose uptake and regulation, so you get leaner as you get stronger (7).

 

Cannibal Inferno

This was, of course, the fist thing that hit the market, and was the outgrowth of about 7 years of tinkering in my kitchen to make myself the best fat burner I could.  I bought ingredients in bulk, weighed and measured and capped everything myself, then gave it to myself and my friends for experimentation.  What resulted from that experimentation was Cannibal Inferno, a transparently-labelled thermogenic targeted toward people looking for a viable replacement for the gap left in the fat burner market after the withdrawal of DMAA.  You guys know I love research, and I've researched the balls off Inferno-everything in it has been clinically proven to improve fat metabolism, increase the absorption of nutrients, or serve as an appetite suppressant, mood enhancer, or cognitive/memory enhancer.  Though I have no idea why other supplement companies have never read Dan Duchaine's shit, they haven't, so I'm the only one to include naringinen (grapefruit fruit extract) to increase and enhance the stimulatory effects of caffeine, hordenine, synephrine, and yohimbe.  It'll have you sweating balls and climbing the walls while the fat melts off.

So, that's what we've got rocking over at www.chaosandpain.com, in case you're screaming for another article and wondering what I could be possibly doing with my time other than entertaining you.  After the next Fads article, I've got a fourth lined up, an article mocking the fact that 99% of paleo dieters are doing it wrong, the hormone blog, and a couple of other partially begun articles.  They'll be coming fast and furious, so if there's something you want in particular, let me know.

SOURCES:
1.  Kimura  I, et al. Positive chronotropic and inotropic effects of higenamine and its enhancing action on the aconitine- induced tachyarrhythmia  in isolated murine atria. Jpn J Pharmacol. (1994)
2.  Frank M, et al. Hordenine: pharmacology, pharmacokinetics and behavioural effects in the horse. Equine Vet J. (1990)
3.  Ostrovskaia RU, Gudasheva TA, Voronina TA, Seredenin SB.  The original novel nootropic and neuroprotective agent noopept.  Eksp Klin Farmakol.  (2002)
4.  Pawar RS, Grundel E, Fardin-Kia AR, Rader JI.  Determination of selected biogenic amines in Acacia rigidula plant materials and dietary supplements using LC-MS/MS methods.  J Pharm Biomed Anal. (2014)
5.  Pérez-Guisado J, Jakeman PM.  Citrulline malate enhances athletic anaerobic performance and relieves muscle soreness.  J Strength Cond Res. (2010)
6.  Elam RP, Hardin DH, Sutton RA, Hagen L.  Effects of arginine and ornithine on strength, lean body mass and urinary hydroxyproline in adult males.  J Sports Med Phys Fitness. (1989)
7.  McConell GK, Huynh NN, Lee-Young RS, Canny BJ, Wadley GD.  L-Arginine infusion increases glucose clearance during prolonged exercise in humans.  Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. (2006)

8.  Frank M, et al. Hordenine: pharmacology, pharmacokinetics and behavioural effects in the horse. Equine Vet J. (1990)
9.  Pase MP, et al. Cocoa polyphenols enhance positive mood states but not cognitive performance: a randomized, placebo-controlled trial. J Psychopharmacol. (2013)
10.  Desideri G, et al. Benefits in cognitive function, blood pressure, and insulin resistance through cocoa flavanol consumption in elderly subjects with mild cognitive impairment: the Cocoa, Cognition, and Aging (CoCoA) study. Hypertension. (2012)

There Is Nothing New Under The Sun- Faddism In Exercises And Implements, Part 2

Before I get cracking on the next installment of what I should hope is proving to be a thoroughly elucidative series on the cyclical nature of training fads, there is an issue with the previous installment's accuracy.  While I am well-known for possessing Shakyamuni Buddha-esqe omniscience, I do occasionally fall prey to the myriad myths and mistruths about certain subjects.  One such folly was my belief in the myths regarding the Middle Ages as a shitfest rivaling modern Sudan in its suicide-inspiring suckitude, which as it turns out is pretty much entirely untrue.  Medieval peasants got more time off than the average American wage slave, people fucked plenty (and possibly more than most of us), knights were not the hyper-noble bronies we generally think of them as having been, but were rather homicidal fucktards who would be much more drawn to reddit/r/horseclop than My Little Pony, Europeans were more obsessed with bathing than gay men in San Frascisco, and the diets of most people in Europe were not as bereft of meat as one might be led to believe (Kolenberg).

For allegedly half-starved backwoods tribesmen, these Scots are pretty fucking swole.

Given these facts, it should come as no surprise that the medieval era boasted some thoroughly jacked dudes.  The Vikings, who apparently all filed their teeth to look more fearsome (Lovgren), ate a diet incredibly heavy in meats.  Even their slaves ate an incredibly protein-rich diet, though their consisted mostly of fish (Kildahl).  Between those facts and the fact that the Vikings were, according to archaeologists, "unusually large... [and] an examination of the muscle-attachment areas of their bones revealed extremely robust physiques", the idea that the people of the Medieval era were sickly, weak, and scrawny can probably be laid to rest.  As the picture above shows, the Scots regularly competed in the hammer throw and were renown for their brute strength as well, so it's unlikely that the depictions in Mercurialis's book were mere fantasy- dudes in the Middle Ages may well have been in better shape than your average gym rat, and they almost certainly fucked more and had more time off work (try eight weeks of vacation a year on for size).

Sand Bag Training- A Hell of a Lot Older than You'd Think
Prior to perhaps 2002, I was unaware that sandbag training was even a thing that people outside of war-torn nations or military bases did.  It was, to me, the way poor people would lift if they happened to see a yellowed newspaper article with Arnold in it- the way Oliver Twist would have lifted if Dickens decided to actually write a Death Wish-style revenge novel rather than the wordy dogshit he churned out as a matter of course.  Having learned of it from the book Dinosaur Training, however, I proceeded to purchase a duffel bag and fill it with sand.  I messed around with it for a couple of months and lost interest when it seemed that cleaning up the mess of playing with the sandbag outweighed its benefits.  I've periodically returned to sandbag training over the years for a change of pace, but never realize the incredible pedigree of the implement.  Had I, I might have kept it as a regular accessory lift rather than relegating it to the "fuck it, I'm bored as shit, don't feel like training, and might want to wear a one piece jumpsuit with a stereotypical Mexican first name on it for half of the day while I clean up the disaster that sandbag training seems to create" pantheon of implements and exercises.

As it happens, sandbag training might in fact be the oldest implement utilized in codified training programs, as the ancient Egyptians performed most weight lifting training with sand bags (Booth 147).  The utility of this training could not be understated for martial combatants, as it requires the use of an incredible amount of stabilizing muscles, allows for rotational training, and does not allow one to develop a "groove" for a given lift (Henkin "Sandbags").  Basically, it's a must have implement for anyone who plans on filming hardcore porn on a small boat in a storm tossed sea.  According to avowed sandbag expert Josh Henkin, the "use of heavy sandbags and their large circumference forces the lifter to do his lifting with a round back instead of the traditional straight back lifting with a barbell. It is this type of lifting that truly develops a strong back. It develops the back and side muscles in movements that are identical to the lifting and pulling movements of wrestling”(Henkin "Rise").

It seems, according to the literature, that sandbag training fell out of favor for some time, replaced by the use of either dumbbells or metal or stone tablets, but it pops back into the public eye again in the late 18th century.  Interestingly, this seems to be the case with most of the implements and exercises- they enjoy a brief moment in the sun, and then are discarded for the exercise du jour... not unlike what we've seen in current training with the back squat and the bench press.

Sandbags sprang back into public view in the late 18th century when schoolmaster Johann Jacob Du Toit had his young students at the German secondary school the Philanthropinium hold sandbags out to the sides of their bodies while he walked among them and counted the time as their arms fell (presumably while they cursed his existence and prayed for death).  While it didn't remain in vogue, that is seen as one of the seminal movements in strength training due to the fact that it brought back an implement that had faded in and out of favor back into the mainstream and kept it there for the 5 or so years Du Toit was in charge of the school's phys ed.

Later, turn of the century strongman Arthur Saxon and his strongman troupe would crush all comers lifting a flour sack of varying weights (and often loaded with a couple of blocks of iron to make the sack even harder to lift).  This was one of their main show feats, and a lift they practiced religiously in the gym.  According to Saxon's rivals, his success in the lift relied on the Andre the Giant size hands he boasted, in addition to the fact that Saxon's grip strength was apparently unparalleled.  According to Kurt Saxon, here is how the lift went down:

"We had a standing challenge and offered four hundred dollars reward to anyone who could lift our sack of flour the way we did, as illustrated by my brother’s drawings. The first step is to grab hold of the sack as shown and bring it to the knees. The second stage finds the sack at shoulder height, and from there it was turned and supported on one shoulder. The heaviest sack with which we performed this feat was loaded to 424 lbs. and was packed as tight as stone, with nothing to grip, no slack sacking or corner ears, really more like an unwieldy ponderous ball. No one ever succeeded in hoisting it the way we did. One of us lifted it to the shoulder in just 4 seconds! When performing this feat as part of the act we always finished by carrying it off stage. All three of us succeeded in mastering this lift. It was often comical to see the expressions on the faces of large powerful men who failed with our huge sack after seeing Hermann and myself perform the lift, because both of us were small by comparison in size, and we often looked like boys alongside these enormous men.

Hermann, Kurt, and Arthur Saxon.  OG Harder Than You Crew.

Never as part of our show, but merely as exercise, we used to jerk the sack overhead after moving it from one shoulder to a position across the back of the neck. However, none of us ever succeeded in doing this with the full 424 lbs. in the sack. Jerking such a sack was one of our favorite exercises. At times we would do as many as 30 repetitions with a heavy sack just to keep in form and to improve our lifting ability with it" (Saxon).

Sandbag lifting again fell out of favor until the modern era, where it's been revived mostly by Dragon Door's writers and coach Zach Evan Esh.  While it will never enjoy the ultimate status sandbag lifting had under the watchful eye of the Egyptian gods, it's unlikely that sandbag lifting will ever be dropped entirely from the mind of the lifting public again.

Weaver Stick
One of the oddest implements that enjoyed a lengthy period of popularity but is likely currently never used outside of a Diesel Crew training facility or a USAWA meet is the Weaver Stick.  Various mentions of it are salted throughout treatises on 19th Century weight lifting, which I find fairly curious because the only time I'd seen anything like it was in the movie The 36 Chambers of Shaolin, wherein one of the tests Gordon Liu had to pass was to ring a bell all day long with a weight attached to a long pole.  It looked hard as shit in the movie and briefly inspired me to train grip, but grip training is boring as all hell and I quickly abandoned it for anything else at all.

The Weaver Stick, however, seems to be a slightly different animal, and while I doubt it will ever enjoy a true resurgence in popularity, it probably should.  Though it predated the person for whom it was named by at the very least 100 years, the Weaver stick, as it came to be called, is nothing more than a long stick with a bit of twine hung from its end with a weight attached.  According to the USAWA, it's specifically a wooden broomstick with a handle 5 ½ inches in length, a 1/2 inch marking designating the end of the handle, and another 36 inches of nice hard shaft to make a tumescent pole 42" glorious inches in length.  At the end, a cord of any length may be attached, to which weights are then attached.  To do the actual lift, the lifter must, with a completely straight arm held tightly to the side, lift the pole off the platform and hold it parallel to the ground, motionless.  This lift can be done from the front of the back, and the records in the lift are as follows:

Forward Lift, right hand – Paul Von Boeckmann, 10¾ lbs.
Forward Lift, left hand – John Grimek, 10 pounds.
Backward Lift, right hand – John Protasel, 12½ lbs.
Backward Lift, left hand – John Grimek, 11 ½lbs. (Weaver)

If you think this lift is completely preposterous, consider the following- using a similar pole, Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, grew to match the size and weight of his heavenly staff (dat hypertrophy), then used to to beat the brakes off everything the other gods in heaven could throw at him, eventually kicking the fuck out of the entire pantheon of Chinese gods single handedly.  If a Chinese stone monkey born from an egg can pack on fucking mass lifting a stick, it stands to reason you could too.

This lift, though it lacked a real name, actually became popular in the same school system that repopularized sandbag training, the Philanthropic schools.  One of them had its physical training program run for over 50 years by Johann Friedrich GutsMuths (1759-1839), who came to his position in 1786.  By 1794, Gutsmuths had kids doing the sort of awesome recreational activities that will be allowed in modern school right about the time they allow kids to carry loaded pistols in school and drink liquor in class- "rope climbing, throwing the discus or quoits, climbing poles, jumping over a rope, and 'lifting a weight hung on a rod and moved toward or from the hands according to the strength of the individual'”(Todd).

“We are weak because it does not occur to us that we could be strong if we would.”

- Johann Friedrich GutsMuths

From institutionalized implementation of the lift, strongmen in Europe began experimenting with similar movements, noting that it was damn near impossible for the strongest of them to move a comparatively tiny weight.  When John Grimek's only hitting 11 lbs on a lift, you know the majority of us are looking at 3-5 lbs at best.  Strangely, Weaver himself noted that neither wrist strength nor overall strength appeared to be a good indicator of who would be good at the lift.  According to Weaver,

"Steve Gob, who can lift extraordinary weights in the flat-footed squat, was unable to lift 5 lbs. on the Weaver Stick. More remarkable yet, Warren Lincoln Travis, who was not only exceptional in Back Lifting with a platform but who also possessed great ability in feats of grip strength, was unable to lift more than 4½ lbs. on the Weaver Stick. Lou Leonard, wrestling instructor at Bothner’s Gymnasium, could not budge 3 lbs. One fascinating thing about this lift is that you never can tell in advance whether any particular person is going to be wonderful at it or very poor. Testing people is full of surprises. Tony Sansone, for instance, lifted more with his right hand than did the mighty Henry Steinborn, famous weight-lifting champion of the Alan Calvert era"(Weaver).

Looking for all the world like the least masculine physique competitor in history, Tony Sansone would make you his punk bitch at the Weaver Stick.

Nevertheless, this became the sort of "The Aristocrats" of strongman, whereby turn of the century strongmen would test their strength against one another informally by lifting a broom by the handle horizontally from the floor with a light weight placed on the straw of the broom. Later, the dude who still holds the record above, Paul Von Boeckman, decided a better test of comparative strength would be to standardize the lift to the format the USAWA is still using today.  Will it become an overnight sensation again?  Highly doubtful, unless a lot of us get very, very bored.  Nevertheless, it's one more example of old shit becoming new again.

Up next- Indian Club Bells, Kettlebells, and the mighty progenitor of the deadlift, which was hilariously referred to as the "health lift" (my left bicep calls bullshit).

Sources:
Booth, Charlotte.  The Ancient Egyptians for Dummies.  West Sussex: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., 2007.

Henkin, Josh.  The rise of sandbag training.  Mahler's Aggressive Strength.  Web.  10 Jan 2013.  http://www.mikemahler.com/online-library/articles/sandbag-training/rise-of-sandbag-training.html

Henkin, Josh. Sandbags: an expert's opinion.  Altrincham Martial Arts Club.  3 Jan 2012.  Web.  10 Jan 2014.  http://altrinchamclub.blogspot.com/2012/01/sandbags-experts-opinion-by-josh-henkin.html

Keys, David.  A viking mystery.  Smithsonian.  Oct 2010.  Web.  13 Jan 2014.  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-viking-mystery-59648019/#ixzz2qMhAKPAX

Kildahl, Mari.  Isotope analysis reveals diet of beheaded Viking slaves.  Archaeology News Network.  5 Dec 2013.  Web.  13 Jan 2014.  http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2013/12/isotope-analysis-reveals-diet-of.html#.UtUFlvRDuSo

Kolenberg, Steve.  6 Ridiculous Myths About the Middle Ages Everyone Believes.  Cracked.  13 Jan 2013.  Web.  13 Jan 2014.  http://www.cracked.com/article_20186_6-ridiculous-myths-about-middle-ages-everyone-believes_p2.html#ixzz2qMXcHDo8

Lovgren, Stefan.  Vikings Filed Their Teeth, Skeleton Study Shows.  National Geographic News.  3 Feb 2006.  Web.  14 Jan 2014.  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/02/0203_060203_viking_teeth.html

Saxon, Kurt.  Saxon remembers. The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban. 18 Nov 2008.  Web.  13 Jan 2013.  http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2008/11/saxon-remembers-kurt-saxon.html

Todd, Jan.  The classical ideal and its mpact on the search for suitable exercise: 1774-1830.  Iron Game History.  Nov 1992.  Web.  14 Jan 2014.  https://www.academia.edu/3009398/The_Classical_Ideal_and_Its_Impact_on_the_Search_for_Suitable_Exercise_1774-1830

Weaver, George, R.  The weaver stick.  The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban.  9 Aug 2009.  Web.  14 Jan 2014.  http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2009/08/weaver-stick-george-r-weaver.html  

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/