There Is Nothing New Under The Sun- Faddism In Exercises And Implements, Part 3.5- The Strand Pull, and I'm Not Talking About Picking Up Chicks On A German Beach

It occurred to me that in my haste to get out the longest thing I'd yet written for the site that I had overlooked one extremely popular, yet almost completely ignored historical implements- the strand.  Known to most of us by the 20th Century name "chest expander", it’s likely that few of you have ever seen a chest expander outside of the brief and ridiculous bit in Pumping Iron in which Arnold used one while one of those where-the-fuck-did-those-bodies-go 1970's hot bikini-clad broad sat atop his shoulders, likely so fucking wet they had to velcro her vag to the back of Arnold's neck for the shoot..  The strand/band/chest expander, however, dates back to early antiquity and has been used by nearly every one of the epic, bloodthirsty badasses that predated the firearm, likely every person deemed a strongman since the late Paleolithic, in addition to sundry other random people throughout the ages to build strength on the go, without the necessity of bulky training implements, and without the need for a specialized locale like a gym for training.

Strand pulling, in fact, may be as old as archery itself.  Archers have long been known for the strength of their grip, shoulders, arms, and back, and may well have used bows strung with higher tension to build up their strength for the use of their regular bows.  It's not inconceivable, were that to in fact be the case, that strength competitions in military encampments may well have centered on drawing these bows, and that such competitions were far more commonplace than even stone lifting in certain areas (particularly the steppes of Central Asia).  

If you've not yet sussed out the meaning of the term "strand pulling", allow me to elucidate- strand pulling, also known as chest expansion or currently as "band work", is any exercise that's done using rubber tubing, flat rubber bands, steel springs, or bowstrings with the intent of building or proving one's strength.  Obviously, one can moderate the resistance in this method of exercise in two ways- one by the altering the thickness/resistance provided by the implement at the outset, and then by increasing of decreasing the the distance over which the implement is stretched.  Though most of us in the modern era think of bands as simply being a warmup, prehab/rehab implement, a method of adding resistance to a lift, or (as much as it pains me to mention something as retarded as reverse band work, here goes) reducing resistance, it was actually a means to an end unto itself in bygone eras.  Strand pulling enjoyed as much or more popularity than did actual weightlifting in different places at different times, and has steadfastly remained a part of resistance training since the concept of organized resistance training was formulated.

To give you an idea of exactly why this activity might have been popular, one really needs only to look at the draw weights of various bows throughout history and physical descriptions of the archers who used those bows.  In ancient China and Greece, archers were some of the most feared warriors, and were often just as vicious in close combat as they were from a distance due to the incredible strength of their left arms.  Guys like the Greek face-wrecker Hippolytus, bloodthirsty Chinese enforcer Taishi Ci, and Korean death-dealer King Dongmyeong were all described as freakishly strong, and all of the nomadic equestrian archers of the Central Asian steppes, from the gigantic and heavily muscled Scythians to the shorter, Neaderthal-esque Huns were all described as incredibly muscular and strong.  It should come as no surprise that they were so heavily muscled, as they were basically lifting constantly- the draw weights on their bows were massive, and they were incessantly firing arrows.  To give you an idea of the volume they were getting in, modern speed archers can fire an arrow every 1.7 seconds or so, which means that in battle or on a hunt, they could get in 80 reps (the number of arrows carried by Mongol archers) in less than three minutes if need be.  That’s a hell of a lot of weight moved, given the draw weight on a Mongol bow was 166 lbs.  In less than three minutes, then, a Mongol could move 13,280 lbs- that’s two tons a minute, for those of you keeping track.  For the sake of comparison, here are a few examples of draw weights on the bows of someone of history’s most feared archers, and a bit of insight into why modern Olympic archers look like they just stumbled out of the Mukden prisoner of war camp in 1945:  

• English longbow= avg. 70-80 lbs. (though reported up to 200 lbs.)
• Scythian bow= avg. 120 lbs.
• Old Mongol bow= avg. 166 lbs. 
• Roman warbow= avg. 110 lbs.
• Modern Olympic bow= 48 lbs. (men); 38 lbs. (women)

Fred Rollon might not have been strong, but the dude looked damn good being weak.

While there's not really much in the way of a historiographical account of strand pulling between antiquity and modernity, it's highly unlikely that strand pulling fell entirely out of the social consciousness only to return more popular than songs about getting hammered and "going crazy up in da club" appear to be now amongst vapid, scantily clad, gold-digging purveyors of blue balls are now.  Yeah, strand pulling in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century was more popular than penicillin cocktails in Vegas brothels.  Guys of whom you've probably heard- bizarrely ripped yet not strong Golden Age bodybuilder Fred Rollon, epic strongman bodybuilders Eugen Sandow, Monohar Aich, Reg Park, and Edward Aston, Golden Age strength coach and guru Professor Atilla, pint-sized Super Jew strongman The Mighty Atom, vaunted promoter and accomplished strongman Tromp Von Diggeln, legendary strongman Thomas Inch, and Baddest Motherfuckers John Grimek, Hermann Goerner, and Steve Stanko all regularly used strand pulling in their training routines, and Sandow espoused them so strongly that he caused strand pulling to eclipse Indian club use in the country for which the clubs are eponymous (Anderson; Chapman 160).

Porn stache not included.

Though there's no clear indication of when the modern "chest expander" was invented, we do know that it was already considered a scourge in Ireland in 1857, as the Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science claimed the modern chest expander was invented and patented by Henry Cost, but does not provide the year it was invented (188).  Hilariously, the drunken Irishmen involved in the publication of that "medical journal" insisted that the chest expander heralded a return to the physical culture attitudes of the Greeks and Romans that would bring about the resurgence of the "debauchery and depravity which ended in the overthrow of their States"(187).  As no one in history has ever taken an Irishman's advice on anything, the world carried on using the chest expander without permission from people whose principal preoccupations lie more in whiskey and wife beating.  The chest expander, meanwhile, had been used at least since 1851 as a medical device for rehabilitation, and was used in schools like the Philanthopium for physical education in Germany.  By the end of the 19th century, strand pulling was commonly employed in gyms and homes for strength training by laypersons and lifters alike, especially after the rubber version was released in 1857.

In the 1990's, Dolph Lundgren's motto was "Yo, bro- do you even Bowflex?"

Another use of band/strands/chest expanders built upon Watson's Health Lift idea, and utilized bands rather than wands in a sort of proto-Bowflex apparatus.  Like the Bowflex, the bands were adjustable and could be utilized for either strength endurance, hypertrophy, or strength building.  The Mid-19th Century version of the Bowflex, Barnett's Health Lift, was likely capable of providing far more resistance over a much smaller range of motion than the modern Bowflex, proving once again that 20th Century Americans are lazy piles of shit who've stolen any number of great ideas from bygone times and fucked them up beyond all recognition (Todd). 

It's likely that most of you are still thinking to yourselves, "that's a lovely history of something about which I give exactly zero fucks and will use on the seventh of never."  I can understand that sort of skepticism, because when I began writing this, I thought the same thing.  Then I stopped and realized that I've used band pushdowns religiously over the last couple of years, regularly use band curls and overhead presses at home as a volume supplement to my program (usually while watching Crank, Crank 2, or The Raid: Redemption), and love the tits off crazybell bench presses.  Arm wrestlers routinely employ band work to build tendon and ligament strength for competition, mixed martial artists like Sean Sherk use them to increase punching power and the strength of their shots, and chest expanders have even been used by strongmen to prove their strength.  Thomas Inch, for instance, had a special chest expander created for use in strength exhibitions- he'd pull a 40 strand chest expander after six people from the audience had tested it, and while hanging a 56 lb. kettlebell from each pinky finger (Gentle).

If this dude said it works, it probably fucking does.

Perhaps the greatest endorsement strand pulling could get, however, is that of Arnold Schwarzennegger's idol, Reg Park.  Park penned an entire treatise on the value of strand pulling, which was being called "cable training" at the time, and which Park considered nearly invaluable for bringing "your biceps, deltoids, trapezius, pectorials and latissimus into the size and shape that you want them to be"(Park).  According to Park, cables were part of the golden trifecta of training implements, which along with dumbbells and barbells would produce the "finest and strongest physique that a bodybuilder can wish for", citing six early-to-mid-20th Century lifters as proof of this unassailable fact.  Park's depictions of the exercises are only marginally better than Alabama's ghetto hood rat artist's depiction of a leprechaun that allegedly plagued the "fine people" of Mobile's shittiest ghettos for a month, but shed some light on those exercises Park valued most and why.  What follows is a mere sampling of the over 30 exercises one can do for upper body, but are those which Park found most valuable for building the idea physique.

• Front Band Pull-aparts- great for strengthening the upper back and traps, in addition to giving one's physique a wider appearance.
• Overhead Band Pull-aparts- strengthen the lats and help one's v-taper.
• Overhead to Front Pull-aparts- pulling the bands apart overhead until the bands were positioned in front of the lifter's chest work both the lats, rear delts, and rhomboids.
• Front Band Pull-aparts- Same as the overhead movement, but with your arms extended to the front, parallel to the ground.
• Behind-the-back Band Push-aparts- With the bands behind your back, start with your hands at your shoulders and push straight out, with your hands parallel to the floor for back and shoulder development.
• Unilateral Tricep Extensions- Your typical french press/single arm overhead tricep extension.  Hold one end of the band with your arm straight at your waist, and then extend your other hand straight overhead in a typical tricep extension.
• Unilateral Overhead Press- With one arm held straight by your side and hand at your waist, press the other arm out overhead from the shoulder for a "broad as a barn appearance."
• Archer's Draw- This movement exactly replicated the motion of drawing a bow, and thus is great for building the shoulders, traps, lats, and biceps on the pulling arm and the tricep and shoulder on the extended arm.
• Lateral Raise- This should be pretty self-explanatory.  If you can't figure out how to do a lateral raise with a band, you might want to consider suicide as your best option.
• Bicep Curl- Holding one end of the band underfoot, bust out some curls for the girls.
• Reverse Curl- Same deal, but with your grip flipped for forearm and brachialis work.
• Front Cable Row- Interestingly, one would think that this movement would be for the back, but it's actually to hit the tricep on your extended arm.  Holding your left arm parallel to the ground and fully extended in front of you, pull the other end of the band as far back as possible with your right arm.

Still unconvinced?  Allow me to give you a few more reasons why strand/band pulling is worth incorporating into your training.  First, it's possible to do either straight strength work or muscular endurance work with bands, and either can lead to hypertrophy when combined with enough meat.  Though we usually think of it in terms of its utility for rehab and physical therapy work, it's actually pretty useful in general strength training, if for no other reason than it promotes joint health and strengthens and thickens your ligaments and tendons, but the altered force curve of bands also provides a completely different feel to the weights.  Furthermore, the fact that you're not fighting gravity means you have to use far more stabilizers to control the weight (as bands can pull in a variety of directions at once), and you have far more options in terms of angles of resistance, which means you can work weak points and completely ignored angles of resistance that could mean the difference between a PR and a plateau, or an injury and serious strength.  Sticking points change and disappear when using bands, and you can drastically increase your force production with the inclusion of band tension to any movement.

All that shit, while great, ignores probably the best feature of bands- they're completely portable.  When traveling, nothing can beat bands, as they're lightweight, compact, and you can use them while sitting on the shitter on an airplane if you really wanted.  Combine that portability and ease of access with the fact that you can use bands to do just about anything, including squats, and you've got a pretty strong reasoning for never missing a workout, because the fact that you can't drag your ass to the gym while it's open doesn't mean you can't bust out some bands and get your curls on while watching late night TV for fifteen minutes before bed.  Basically, bands are an anti-excuse for skipping workouts, and a pretty fucking good reason why we should all be far more ripped than we are.  

Johnny skipped his workout and got hammered instead.

There has got to be a reason why bands have remained in the lifting zeitgeist since the dawn of resistance training, and the reason I just outlined probably don't do bands/strands/chest expanders justice.  If you think you're too good, too strong, or too advanced for bands, you're a fucking idiot, and if you think you're too much of a novice to handle training with overgrown rubber bands, you should just grab a tack hammer and smash yourself in your stupid, craplousy face with it.  There is literally NO reason why you should avoid bands, and dozens of reason why you might as well pick some up and keep them in your gym bag for that rainy/snowy day you just can't muster up the willpower to hit the gym but know there's going to be a Rocky marathon on USA that day.

Did I mention Reg Park probably looked better at 60 than you do now?  Yeah, get your ass some bands.

Go get some bands, a bullworker, a Bowflex, or something strand pulling related and make that shit work, or I'll send Reg Park's ghost to your house to fuck your girlfriend because you're a dickless bitch.

Sources:
Anderson, Gordon.  Tromp Von Diggeln.  Maxalding.  Web.  6 Feb 2014.  http://www.maxalding.co.uk/Tromp/tromp-biog.htm

Chapman, David.  Sandow the Magnificent.  Champaign: UI Press, 1994.

De Laspee, Henry.  Calisthenics; or the elements of bodily culture.  Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science.  Vol. XXIII.  Feb and May 1857.  Dublin: McGlashan and Gill, 1857.

Gentle, David.  Thomas Inch a Pioneer in the Muscle Game.  David Gentle.  Web.  6 Feb 2014.  http://www.davidgentle.com/articles/legends/inch.htm

Karpowicz, Adam and Stephen Selby.  Scythian bow from Xinjiang.  2010.  Web.  7 Feb 2014.  http://www.atarn.org/chinese/Yanghai/Scythian_bow_ATARN.pdf

Kumar, Vinya.  Monohar Aich : Mr. Universe 1952. Sandowplus.  Web.  6 Feb 2014.  http://www.sandowplus.co.uk/India/Monohar/meeting/meeting.htm

Oestmoen, Per Inge.  The Mongolian Bow.  Cold Siberia.  27 Dec 2002.  Web.  7 Feb 2014.  http://www.coldsiberia.org/monbow.htm

Park, Reg.  The Reg Park system of cable training.  Sandowplus.  Web.  6 Feb 2014.  http://www.sandowplus.co.uk/Competition/Park/Cable/park-cable.htm

Todd, Jan.  Strength is health: George Barker Windship and the first American weight training boom.  Iron Game History.  Sep 1993.  Web.  29 Jan 2014.  https://www.academia.edu/3009405/Strength_is_Health_George_Barker_Windship_and_the_First_American_Weight_Training_Boom

You're STILL Doing Fucking Lateral Raises?

In this blog, I detailed the myriad marvelous means by which one can improve their mental and physical strength with the grand poohbah of upper body lifts- the Behind The Neck Push Press.  Well, fuckers, I've got another exercise for you to try, and it's another one for the fucking record books.

Behold the awesome might of the Partial Overhead Squat.

The form on these will be a bit tricky when you first start.  As you can see in the video, I usually have difficulty finding my mark right out the gate.  The setup, however, generally goes like this- line up the way you would for a squat, making sure that your legs are evenly spaced, slightly wider than shoulder width after you duck under it.  Then, straighten your arms as you squat deeper, locking them out fully, and stand up, pushing your head forward as you do so.  Like most lifts, this isn't fucking brain surgery, and chance of injury is basically nil due to the use of the rack.

Once you find your groove, however, this movement gets fun, and interesting, in a fucking hurry.  Additionally, I find moving the pins from set to set to add an extra level of difficulty, and makes it a bit more fun on days when you just feel like hammering away on a single exercise all day long.

For me, this exercise arose out of doing ancillary work for the BTN push press.  I had been doing BTN lockouts in the rack, and found that as I got tired and the weight was heavy, I'd start doing what amounted to and OH squat lockout.  These were initially tremendously difficult, but I saw massive crossover for all overhead pressing movements, in addition to extra squat work.  Having made this discovery, I started working on this exercise, specifically, one a week.  Since doing so, I've noticed a dramatic increase in my comfort and skill at fully locking out and holding my BTN push presses, and have seen gradual rise in my BTN press overall weights, as well.

Why not just do the full overhead squat?  Frankly, because I don't see the point.  Clearly, I'm not a grunting, Tapout-ensconced, mouthbreathing retard, but I'm not much of a natural athlete, either.  My balance and flexibility suck, and I've always achieved any success in athletics through wild-eyed aggression and general effort, rather than natural skill.  As such, I'm wholly unsuited to something like the OH squat, which is only a hell of an exercise if you're flexible enough, and have the requisite balance to do it.  As I've not neither, and my OH squat weights are so much lower than my front and back squat weights, I've never seen the point in doing them.  It's be like doing one armed bench presses while balancing a spinning teacup on my nose.  Would it be hard?  Hell yes.  Would I ever fucking do it?  Maybe if I were going to consider thinking about doing Hercules curls supersetted with leg extensions and wanted something to occupy my time while doing so.

Should you feel it necessary to attempt full OH squats, have at it.  Personally, I'm going to continue compounding my ridiculous brute strength to no flexibility ratio and leave the full squats to Olympic weightlifters and chicks with awesome asses. 

The Tunnel, Part 2

If there's anything I hate about serials, it's the waiting.  Since I got such insane traffic and positive feedback from the first installment, I suppose there's no sense in making you wait for the second. If nothing else, it will give people something to bitch about until I finish the next stregnth training and or nutrition article.  I'll be getting one more out this week, probably on Weds night or Thursday morning, before I travel to Florida for Raw Unity.  Thus, here's part 2 of the Tunnel (which is easily ten times as fucked up as anything I bet you've ever read) to tide you over until that's done.

Incidentally, when I wrote this bit, I don't think I had ever heard of tentacle rape- I just came up with the most fucked up thing of which I could think and was fucking a chick who loved pegging at the time.

Th-Thump.

A flash of myself completely restrained. Something soft, warm, and wet, moist with something thick and viscous like mucous wrapped around my wrists and ankles, holding me immobile, off the ground. My clothes ripped from my body by an unseen force, and the sensation of unbelievable strength in whatever is holding me aloft and helpless. I open my eyes and see rippling, pink-hued yet greenish tentacles wrapped around my wrists and ankles, dusted their length with tiny sucking mouths overflowing with crystalline, teeth as long and thin as hypodermic needles gripping my flesh. The skin on the tentacles is glossy, and looks and feels like smoked ham dripping with the kind of mucus you blow from your nose when you’ve got a touch of the flu- clear, with a hint of yellow, and a bit frothy.

I am fascinated by the manner of my restraint, as it defies logic.  The room I’m in is pitch black, filled with air as oily and redolent with smoke as a Tibetan monastery, though rather than buttery, it smells more like cow shit mixed with diesel.  Could I touch anything, I'd imagine everything in the room would be slightly greasy from the smoke, but instead I hang suspended, marveling at the horror of my situation.  Though I see no candles, spotlights, or any other light source, for that matter, I am bathed in an intensely bright light from above, a light so intense it feels as though it's burning my skin.  As I try to look upwards to discern the source of heat and light, the tip of a tentacle, perhaps the one holding my forehead and causing me to blink away blood, snakes across my lips as a warning.  I know this to be the case, as I can hear a thousand whispered voices in my head, telling me to

 submit

 relax

 relent.

A tentacle that might branch off from the others, or might just be an independent appendage altogether, snakes up my leg, wrapping itself around my thigh and settling on my rock hard dick, stroking it. Loving it with hundreds of tiny mouths. I feel another creeping up my other leg, and begin to gently part my ass cheeks…

I awake with a start.

Th-Thump.

The ride started out as Bret had described- fucking brutal. There were at least three trails intertwined with each other, small cliffs to jump, and nice solid ground. I had a nice sweat going, cheat heaving as I pumped hard on the pedals to pick up speed before a jump. With my iPod cranked, blasting a mix of death metal and punk into my ears, the feeling of the wind in my face, the smell of the forest around me, and the amazing timing I seemed to have today, I was totally in the zone and shredding the trail like never before. Making me look like a rank amateur, however, was Bret, who was jumping hillocks and pulling tricks like he was in the finals of a Moto X competition. We’d been riding downhill for at least 10 minutes when, in spite of the growling and shrieking of the vocalist on my iPod, I heard one of Bret’s ridiculous imitation rebel yells cutoff mid-scream, and saw him catch a tree branch hard in the face.

I slowed and started picking my way through the trees towards him, calling out his name as I went. Because Bret steadfastly refused to wear a helmet, I grew irritated as I closed on what seemed to have been his last position, as I had no interest in carrying his shattered and unconscious body all the way back up the hill to the truck.  As I neared the sound of his moaning, my irascible reverie was cut short by a rustle and a crack. Looking around, I couldn’t figure out what had made that noise, especially so close to me, so I stopped and took off my headphones to listen more closely- I had no interest in becoming some brown bear's afternoon snack.

That’s when the Earth swallowed me.

Th-Thump.

I don’t remember falling. I don’t remember hitting the ground, either, but a quick glance at my left elbow told me that it did- it was purple and swollen like a softball when I awoke. A quick check told me that since I could bend it without collapsing to the ground in agonizing pain, it likely wasn't broken, and while nothing else seemed to be either, I was going to go through a bottle of Advil before breakfast on Monday if I wanted to get to the office and get any kind of work done.

That is, assuming I made it out of this hole to get to work. It looked like I’d fallen down some kind of abandoned mine shaft- a really, really old one, by the looks of it. I’d only fallen about 20 feet, and from the looks of my bike, landed entirely on the front wheel and pitched over the handlebars, whereupon I placed all of my trust and goodwill into my left arm and used it to break my fall. The front wheel was fucked, bent into a half circle, but the frame of the bike appeared to be remarkably unharmed, in spite of the fact that it'd absorbed the weight of that fall.  That, however, was the least of my worries, as the walls leading up to the landing site were more or less smooth. Were I a world-class climber, fresh and uninjured, I might have been able to scale that wall… but I’m not. Not even close. Thus, I looked around and noticed that the tunnel led downhill, towards some faint glow of light.

Hardly an intrepid explorer, but cognizant of the fact that I had no real prospect of rescue otherwise, I started my trek down the gentle slope into the bowels of the Earth as the most unwilling and unenthusiastic spelunker in human history.  The walls seemed to have a faint blue glow to them, and were damp rock, rough hewn and set without mortar. Initially, I thought perhaps I was headed toward some sort of power generation station, and had fallen into an old access tunnel or mine shaft. As I continued downward, however, I started to wonder if my initial impression was correct.

Th-Thump.

I thought I heard someone calling my name a while ago. I was struggling with the snake-worm-Cambrian nightmares at the time, rolling on the ground, probing the holes in my sides and trying to grab hold of a tail, maybe. There was still a lot of pain at the time, and I wasn't thinking clearly, but I swore I heard Bret calling me.

Th-Thump.

When I saw the first “bug”, I knew I was in deep shit. It was the same size as my neighbors’ Chihuahua. Maybe 4 pounds of black chitin, fangs dripping blood, bits of flesh, and slime, hissing like one of those cockroaches Joe Rogan used to feed to hot broads in bikinis on the television game show Fear Factor. I practically tripped over the thing, cautiously moving toward the clacking sound it made as it ate whatever poor animal happened to fall beneath its jaws. I admit I screamed like a woman when I saw it- it was huge, it was disgusting, and it was obviously carnivorous. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I jumped up and started stomping like I was a Japanese teenager playing the final round on Dance Dance Revolution, doing my damnedest to grind that disgusting nightmare into the ground. My first few stomps took care of its jaws and a couple legs, but I couldn't seem to destroy its body. It was like trying to crush a rock with my foot. I finally gave up, letting it drag its mangled body away while I took off running back the way I came. It might have been a pitiful sight, had it not just attempted to kill me, using its mandibles and two legs to drag itself into the darkness, leaving streaks of purple and green behind it as it oozed its fluids. Had it been an injured puppy or a mangled kitten, I might have felt some remorse, but instead it was a skin-crawlingly disgusting giant insect, and I felt nothing but pride and hate as I sprinted away from its mashed body.

Bada-thump.

 My cock is still rock hard. I haven’t had wood like this since I took Viagra that weekend in Vegas. Insane.

Th-Thump.

Fucking Bret. I should have known that something was up when I noticed how straight the road was. No man would bother to make a road so straight, especially not in this neck of the woods. Do you think random, toothless, unwashed hilljacks are carving absolutely straight, meticulously maintained dirt roads out of the hilly backwoods of West Virginia? I sure as shit don’t. Only Bret could manage to ignore that kind of weirdness… and only Bret could manage to land me in a situation this fucked up.

Once, in a New Age period of my life, I spent a couple of months studying ley lines. They’re a pretty cool idea, and their existence makes a lot of sense. They’re basically a giant electro-magnetic grid that surrounds the Earth, and it’s thought that the nexuses between the lines are places of great power. The pyramids are on one such nexus, as are Stonehenge, most of the super-old churches, some Roman roads, and a variety of other places hippies run off at the mouth about. Apparently, dudes who cleared shit like telegraph lines and logging roads intuitively followed ley lines, and they sometimes found some weird shit along the way. Ancient people seemed to have an instinctive ability to follow these lines and place structures of importance at the vortexes where ley lines cross, and always had wildly straight roads leading to and from these places. No matter what the obstacles in the way, the roads maintained their straightness, drawing the people on them inexorably toward their destination. As I recall, some of the roads had a negative power, though, leading those on them toward heaven- they were called death roads. That’s what led Bret and I here, I guess.

A fucking death road.

Th-Th-Thump.

I cannot see whatever it is controlling the tentacles violating my body. My ass is now full of its gentle power, and I’ve cum more times than I can count, bloody cum dripping off the tentacle simultaneously masturbating me and eating my cock. I can see the tendons and veins of my cock exposed to the open air as the mouths consume them, yet there is no disgust. No pain. Only indescribable pleasure, and satisfaction as I watch the slow destruction of my genitalia. My cock, once so dear to me, is being slowly eroded under the caress of the tentacle’s teeth, and I relish its diminishment, savoring the exquisite sensation of loss that can only come with the sexual removal of one’s dearest possession. The occasional spurt of blood from my groin is almost like an orgasm, and the torrents of blood pouring down my legs are a sacrament to the internal massage I am receiving, my prostate fully stimulated and my sphincter as relaxed as it could possibly be. I am in heaven.

Thudda-Thump.

Bathed in sweat, I sit bolt upright and check frantically my groin and ass- nothing is violating me, and the puddle of my blood in which I sit is undisturbed, though I can hardly say the same for myself after that bizarre daydream.

Th-Thump.

About ten minutes after running across that bug, I began to calm down again. I stayed vigilant, since that bug definitely looked to be carnivorous, but I stopped spazzing. I didn’t feel too badly about my panic after seeing that thing though, since even Chuck Bronson would be unsettled in my situation. The slight luminosity of the tunnel allowed me to take stock of my surroundings, and examine exactly what the fuck was around me. I had run back the way I originally came, and nothing seemed to be out of place- nothing new, no massive bugs crawling out of the walls. Nor was there a sign of whatever that bug might have been eating, but judging by the size of the carcass, it looked to be at least deer-sized. Anyway, heading back that way was stupid, as I still couldn’t climb out of the hole, and I needed to get out of there before dark, or I’d never find the truck. Thus, I turned around, manned up, and started walking downhill again, toward the massive bug, its prey, and the source of the soft vibration I was feeling and hearing.

Ask The Asshole: The Porn Edition

No, I'll not be addressing porn here. What's there to say about porn?  It's fucking awesome.  Instead, this is the porn edition because people keep bitching "there's no porn!"  "WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"  Apparently these fucking crybabies lack the ability to use Bing to find porn (the only reason to use Bing, and in all ways superior to Google for porn searches).  Thus, to shut them up, I've filled this ATA with lots and lots of delicious porn. Additionally, since I'm about to call out one of the least interesting people on the planet, I thought it prudent to layer this post with as much porn as possible to sear the real world into the eyes of the useless tits Percel calls his fans.  Without further adieu, let the games begin!

Not pictured: A good time.

What do you think about the Kevin Ogar/Crossfit controversy?

Frankly, before this was brought to my attention, I didn't really know there was much controversy.  A dude hung onto a snatch he shouldn't have and severed his spine- this was bad luck, a shitty occurrence, and little more.  Anyone who's watch the last couple Olympics has seen a snatch go bad that could have ended much the same way, and Matthias Steiner is perhaps the best example of this.  The snatch is a very high risk movement, and anyone who does it with an appreciable amount of weight has got to know the risks.  Frankly, I would not have thought that 220 lbs could have severed someone's spine, especially when that someone was built as stoutly as Kevin Ogar.

The only "controversy" here lies with two groups of people- Crossfit haters and bitch-made lifters.  Were we to make a Venn Diagram of these two groups, it'd likely be near enough to a single circle as it's not really worth doing- pussies hate Crossfit.  That's not to say you're a pussy if you hate Crossfit, but if you're a bitch made lifter, you definitely hate Crossfit.  You hate Crossfit because you consider yourself a strength athlete and are routinely outlifted on everything by Crossfitters.  You hate Crossfit because you're a fattie and a saddie and Crossfitters fuck more in a post workout beer-and-steak barbecue's afternoon than you do in a year.  You hate Crossfit because Crossfitters have balls and you have none.  Take your pick, or pick all three, but the bitch made certainly have a lot to say about Crossfit.

They probably don't have much to say about this, though, because they're fucking eunuchs.

Take, for example, the link provided by my gentle reader- the author, Jonathan Percel, lives in fear of "bro science" and "bro lifts", which have arguably produced more results than Shieko ever would, and has produced physiques that have gotten far more people laid than 5/3/1 ever will.  In the fantasy land in which this dickless anti-intellectual lives, Crossfit is more dangerous than handguns that fire ebola-coated bullets in the hands of six year old African child soldiers and injuries can certainly be prevented if you just lift like a total bitch.  Oh, and if you live in fucking Candyland:

"When a Olympic Lifter competes, they perform six lifts, three snatches and three clean and jerks, resting plenty between each set" (emphasis mine).  

I remember when I had my first beer.  It didn't hit me as hard as the balls-crazy statement above, because... NO.  Not in the world in which dinosaurs roamed the Earth for millions of years and Amazing Ty has a fuckable peehole.  In that world, the best Olympic lifters often have to follow themselves and are strictly timed on getting back to the bar.  According to IWF rules,"One minute (60 seconds) is allowed to each competitor between the calling of his or her name and the beginning of the attempt. After 30 seconds, a warning signal sounds. When a competitor attempts two lifts in succession, he or she is allowed two minutes (120 seconds) for the succeeding attempt"(5.5.7).  Sure, they can change the weight by a kilo to buy them another minute, but they can only do that twice.  This means that elite lifters could have to complete three attempts in 6 minutes in the clean and jerk, if their competition is sufficiently shitty (i.e. if the mentally challenged Aussie from the "Deadlift Dungeon" happens to show up at the competition with his buddies).  Which he wouldn't, because they don't hold lifting competitions in Candyland- someone might get hurt!  Wah!     

Yeah, a dildo in her peehole.  Respect.

"Combining [the snatch, clean and jerk, and back squat] with a heavy load, the Snatch was being performed at a 3 Rep Max, will not build, or test, strength as the name of the WOD would imply, instead testing muscular endurance and sheer will power and mental fortitude"(emphasis mine).

Congratulations, you've just described THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT OF CROSSFIT- to test muscular endurance, sheer will power, and mental fortitude.  Why does this asshole think it's the favorite training method of spec ops the world around?  Why does he think it's so much fun to watch?  Why don't heavy complexes exist with him in Candyland?  Has he really never heard of the Bear?  Has he really never tried it for a single?  If not, why not?  Oh wait, because he's a bitch made pussy, that's why.

Oh, and this just in:  STRENGTH COMPETITIONS ARE NOT DESIGNED TO BUILD STRENGTH, and a three rep max in fact, by its very nature, TESTS YOUR FUCKING STRENGTH.  No one on Earth is more repetition-averse than myself, and I hardly consider three reps to be a test of my muscular endurance.

I imagine Percel looks somewhat like this.

"To test strength, one would have to allow the muscle to completely repair itself between lifts, ala Olympic or Power lifting."

We've already established this to be a fallacy, but I would like to point out that even in powerlifting, fourth attempts get 3 minutes max of rest time.  I know, because I've taken them.  I took 2 fourth attempts in a meet, in the squat and deadlift, and took both under the normal clock, in spite of the fact I was offered and extra minute.  I feel as though my strength was tested... and I got both attempts.  Did I mention they were both beltless, and they're both "hip dominant movements"?  THE HORROR!  It's a fucking miracle my spine wasn't severed.

Elite athletes hate fucking sluts.  It's science.

In the Candyland down under, elite athletes don't drink, which I've definitely proven to be false (but just in case you've forgotten, check out this link), mediocrity rules, and civility, in all of its boring niceties, appears to reign except wherein actual lifters are involved.  If I've not made myself clear, Jonathan Percel is mildly retarded, wholly uninformed, banal, trite, mealy-mouthed, unjustifiably pompous, spineless, indolent, and irresolute, and although my dog is apparently so stupid she cannot feel cold weather, I'd feel more comfortable querying her for an opinion on Crossfit than I would Percel.  Moreover, the entire argument is moot- given the opportunity to express himself on the matter, I am sure that Ogar would blame himself and bad luck for his paralysis, not the organizers of the OC Throwdown, just as I blame myself for my torn bicep.

In short- shit happens.  Get the fuck over it.

She's over it.

I'm in full-blown competition prep mode and various muscles are twitching constantly.  What's the deal?

This one, frankly, had me more than a little stumped.  The obvious answer, of course, would be potassium/sodium imbalance or a lack of electrolytes. As a general rule, cramping and twitching can be resolved by chugging water and popping potassium pills.  The lifter in question had tried this, and taken Nuun, to no avail. For those of you who are unaware, Nuun is an awesome effervescent electrolyte blend that is great for recomposition after cutting water to make weight.  In any event, either was working.  Looking a little deeper, I discovered the lifter had been pounding water all day long and was running to the bathroom every thirty minutes.  This indicated, to me, that whatever was causing the twitching was being flushed out of their system by the inordinate amount of water they were drinking.  Thus, I started researching and discovered that the culprit was not the usual suspects, but rather magnesium.

My preferred method of rehydration, and a way to get about half of your USRDA of magnesium in one delicious drink (Nelson).

Magnesium plays a role in the contraction and relaxation of the muscles, as well as the production and trasport of energy.  Thus, if you're snapping at everyone and even more aggravated because your eye/bicep/shoulder/pec/whatever is twitching uncontrollably, you might want to think about upping your magnesium intake.  If you want to do it with food, you can simply eat the following:

• Dark chocolate
• Dark leafy greens like spinach or chard
• Mackerel or tuna
• Pumpkin seeds
•  Beans (pretty much any of them)
• Quinoa
• Avacados

Pretty simple, and that and adequate hydration should square you away.

In honor of Scott, I was going to porn some gay bear porn, but figured this would be even better.

Recently, Brian Scott made a video telling everyone to be nice to new gym members and help them.  Thoughts?
That's all super sweet and all, but utterly fucking pointless for a couple of reasons:

1. This isn't a fucking religion, and there's no need to proselytize like it is.
2. They're going to fucking quit anyway.
3. There is absolutely no upside to doing so.

Before I launch into my latest rant, let me say I've no fucking clue who Brian Scott is, other than he's apparently associated with Brandon Lilly and is a beardo, neither of which endears him to me (and no, I've no interest in chiming in on the guy who "doesn't cut even when he's cutting"- I'll leave that to you guys in the comments).  That said, I have no problem Scott personally beyond the fact that he's a hideously misguided weightlifting missionary of some sort.  He looks old enough to know better than to spout this nonsensecial, touchy feely, kumbahyah bullshit.  Before you run to his defense, what follows isn't opinion, my borderline sociopathy showing through, or my general disdain for the average person, whom I have recently begun referring to as "meat".  Nope- it's statistics and psychology.  Did you know the following about gym members?

• Average amount of times a gym membership owner will go to the gym every week: 2
• Average amount of gym membership money that goes to waste from under utilization: $39
• Percent of people with gym memberships that never use them: 67%

More of this might help recidivism.

According to Brian Scott, people quit because they're "not seeing results."  He challenges everyone who has "gotten some results" to grab one of these people and proselytize the weight lifting lifestyle to them.  He could not be more incorrect- two thirds of the new people will quit going to the gym altogether within a couple of months of signing up for the gym because they're lazy motherfuckers.  If you really want to be nice, you can call it "hyperbolic discounting", but at the end of the day, people quit lifting because they are lazy shitbags- not because regular gymgoers are mean, unwelcoming, or have somehow failed in what Scott believes to be our civic duty to help them (Thompson).  

It was my civic duty to post this.

Even if it were were our civic duty to help them, it's really no reason to act any differently than we do now because the only way new gym members will go is if if they're paid (DellaVigna).  Thus, if you really want to help out a newbie at the gym, give him five bucks every time you see him lifting.  

Don't have a spare $15 a week for a stranger?  Neither do I.

Finally, the message in this video ultimately ridiculous is the fact that Scott admits he lifts in his garage, so he's asking everyone to take time out of their day to pointlessly spread the "gospel of the iron" to an unwilling audience when he himself will not be doing so.  If that's not bizarre as shit, I don't know what is.  What I do know, however, is that commercial gyms are specifically designed to entice those lazy shitbags to join gyms, and to dissuade real lifters from doing so (Thompson).  As more and more big box gyms push little, hole-in-the-wall gyms out of existence, other local gyms are having to water down their product and raise prices to remain competitive and retain members.  This makes the gym going experience of real lifters even shittier, and trust me when i say that the gym going experience of 2013 is a fucking atrocity compared to that of 2000, and even less cool than it likely was in 1990.  The reason for this?  Gyms don't want real lifters- they specifically court the lazy sons of bitches Scott wants us to "help."

In short- fuck the newbies.  If they stick with it, good on them.  If they don't, it should neither come as a surprise or reflect on the rest of us in any way- it is simply a function of their weakness of character.

What should I do?  My bitch be trippin'. 

Ditch the bitch.  There are others where she came from.  That, or let her domme you, I guess. No sense in arguing a bunch though.  Why waste a bunch of time arguing with some asshole road when you could be reading, or lifting, or playing Xbox, or doing literally anything other than listening to her utilize circular logic to try to convince you her shitty behavior is your fault?  And if she's pissed because you're being a dick, either stop being a dick or ditch her because you clearly don't like her enough to be a decent human being.

I have no idea why anyone would approach me for relationship advice, but for some reason a lot of you do.  I basically treat life like I'm a modern day Peter Pan and practically live in a yurt, most chicks like me marginally more than full blown AIDS, and I have all of the sensitivity of someone with low grade autism- I could not possibly provide less insight into how you could pull chicks, keep chicks, or repair damaged relationships.  You should pretty much approach EVERYONE for relationship advice before you approach me.  You want advice on how to give chicks multiple orgasms and make them drunk dial you in the middle of the night for years after breaking up with you, begging for your cock?  That I can do.  Relationship advice, however, is not my forte.

This might be hard to walk away from.

I AM THE KING OF ALL ASSHOLES.  

Sources:

DellaVigna, Stefano and Ulrike Malmendier.  Paying Not to Go to the Gym.  15 Apr 2005.  Web.  1 Feb 2014.  http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~sdellavi/wp/gymemp05-04-20.pdf

Gym Membership Statistics.  Statistic Brain.  18 Apr 2012.  Web.  20 Jan 2014.  http://www.statisticbrain.com/gym-membership-statistics/

Nelson CF, Burns WE.  The calcium and magnesium content of normal urine.  J. Biol. Chem. 1916, 28:237-240.

Thompson, Derek.  This Is Why You Don't Go to the Gym.  13 Jan 2012.  Web.  30 Jan 2014.  http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/this-is-why-you-dont-go-to-the-gym/251332/

Time, Time For Some Time For Some Fiction: The Tunnel, Part 1

I've had numerous requests from a variety of people who know I occasionally dabble in fiction to post some.  As such, I figured I might as well.  I'll be serializing a story that's still in progress but tops out at over 15 pages.  If you don't want to read it, don't- I could give two sweet fucks.  If you feel like reading it, have at it.  If you bitch, you'll only make yourselves look like assholes, because once more you're whining to a person who doesn't know or give two fucks about you in a public forum filled with people who likely hate the whiners even more than I.  That said, here's part one of my Lovecraftian splatterpunk short- The Tunnel.

THE TUNNEL, PART 1

God has abandoned me.

Th-Thump.

My heartbeat is my only companion.

Th-Thump.

That, and the mass of roiling, armor-plated eel-like insects I’m pretty sure are eating my guts right now. I can feel them move, occasionally, but there’s no pain. The pain, which was so intense it felt like I’d been raped with a Roto-rooter going full blast, stopped a few minutes ago. Now the slight clicking sounds of their jaws in my guts and the feeling as their chitinous bodies scrape past my ribs or spine or pelvis are my only companions. That, and my heartbeat.

Th-Thump.

Given the fact that I’m sitting in a pool of blood that’s larger than my torso and seems to have bits of me floating on its surface, I don’t imagine my heart will be my sole source of comfort for long. I wonder how many pints are in the pool of blood I’m sitting in and if the demonic pincer-faced creatures that seem intent on exiting my abdomen through my bellybutton drink blood or just eat guts.   

“Which organ tasted the best?”, I wondered idly.  “Did those fucking things even have tongues?”  I assumed I would find out eventually, but for now the things inside me are too disgusting to contemplate.  I don’t want to throw up again. 

The last time I puked, I got none of what you’d expect- I produced a gout of blood, some yellowish-clear liquid that appeared to be pus, and then started choking as the thing I tried to puke up fought its evil way back into my stomach.

Th-Thump.

Christ, I wish I’d just die already.

Th-Thump.

I guess God’s domain doesn't extend this far underground. This must be the old stomping grounds of Lovecraft’s Old Ones, or Behemoth and Leviathan from the Bible, or maybe the land Beast in Revelations. Whatever this is, it sucks.

Th-Thump.

I didn't get here by being curious. Lovecraft couldn't have imagined the inanity that led to my arrival in this ancient underground city, and I’m an unlikely candidate for unleashing the Apocalypse. I’m a regular American guy, a guy who loves sports and naked chicks, and getting shitfaced on the weekends.  I work a boring nine to five job in a boring office with boring people.  I return home every night to an empty house, throw my shit on the floor, change into shorts, and do whatever the fuck I want.  The consummate bachelor.  Living the dream, as it were. At least until these fucking things got into my guts and a huge monster that would have made the worst shit in HR Geiger’s paintings look like characters in the opening credits to the Care Bears cartoon practically ripped me in half.

Th-Thump.

Perhaps the most unsettling thing about this entire experience is the fact that I have a raging hardon right now. The moment the pain went away, I got hard. Viagra hard.  The kind of hardon where your dick goes kind of numb and cumming’s almost impossible, and after an hour you’re considering slamming your cock in the nightstand drawer to settle it down, but you don’t because you’ll break your fucking nightstand.  It’s totally nonsensical, but having priapism as I am slowly devoured from within is about par for the course today.  

Th-Thump.

Like all little boys, I loved dinosaurs as a kid. I’d spend every afternoon looking through books about dinos, absorbing everything, memorizing their names, and imagining living with them. The one era I hated, though, was the Cambrian. The animals in the Cambrian were too weird even for me, and I loved weird shit. It was in that epoch that I discovered an animal that made me close the book on the Cambrian and eventually dinosaurs in general. It was disgusting- segmented like a millipede, only with these weird fins covering claw-tipped legs running all down its body. Its head was ringed by five eyes, which was creepy enough for me, because asymmetricality is something you don’t often see in nature, but it got worse- the head ended in a snake-like trunk, like a lowercase letter “e”. A lump of eyes perched atop a skull, but instead of a mouth on the underside of the skull, there was a long sinuous neck ending with a with a mouth that looked like a to-scale version of the monster plant in Little Shop of Horrors, crowded impossibly with thousands of needle-like teeth. This is the kind of animal that proves that Mother Nature makes shit so grotesque even Unit 731's most deranged doctors couldn't match what's commonly found at the bottom of the ocean.  Anyway, I’m pretty sure that’s what rattled after me, filling the tunnel with a clacking sound like a roomful of crazed typists, faster than any snake I've ever seen, and bored their way into my stomach. 

I caught a couple of them before they got in me, and stomped them into a grey green mush. 

One of them bit off my left pinkie and swallowed it whole as it sailed through the air. When I stomped it, it exploded, and I saw my severed pinkie pop out of its pulped body and arc through the air in slow motion as the quicker ones burrowed right into my belly button.  I can see my pinkie now. I couldn't get it at first, because it hurt so badly, with those things inside me, eating. It doesn't hurt so much anymore, except for the occasional stitch in my side, but I’m scared to move. It might start hurting again. I want to jerk off, too, to get rid of this hardon.  One last orgasm’s not too much for me to ask for, it is?  Maybe it is- I’m too scared of what will come out of my dick if I do. What if one of those things slithered out of my cock head? What if I shot nothing but blood? I think I’ll just lay here with my hardon.

Th-Thump.

Opabinia. That’s what they were called. But they only lived in the ocean. And they’re extinct. Supposed to be extinct, anyway.

Jesus, my dick is hard.

Th-Thump.

This is all Bret’s fault. Fucking guy was on me for weeks to try this new trail in the Appalachians. I had bought a mountain bike the previous summer, and had been reasonably diligent about taking it out, mostly just to get away from work and the city. He always wants to try the next new thing, the more dangerous thing, and I, of course, couldn't back down when he called me out.

“Quit being a fucking pussy, dude. Just grab your fucking bike and let’s go. This trail is supposed to be brutal, and you haven’t had a decent wreck yet.”  Bret would break Jackie Chan’s balls about being a pussy after jumping off the roof of a three story building if there was a five story building next to it off of which Chan could have leaped.  “While we’re at it, we can grab a drink in some hilljack bar, maybe bang some random farmer’s daughter, and be back in time for church on Sunday.”

Yet another ball-busting tactic. Bret knew that I never go to church. Shit, Bret knew I’d avoid church at all costs. That did not, however, stop him from making out like I was a card-carrying member of the LDS if I told him I wanted to get some sleep on the weekend, rather than hitting every titty bar in the tri-state area.  Knowing the futility of fighting him when he was just going to wear me down in the end with constant impugnations of my manhood, I conceded.

“Alright man. I give. Let’s go.”  Pausing to consider that I’d once more caved to Bret’s heavy-handed verbal tactics, I decided to add a “fucker,” for good measure.  Never hurts to have the last word.

Th-Thump.

We loaded our bikes into the back of his mud-drenched XTerra (he bought into the “extreme sports” billing Nissan gave it, only to find he overpaid for an underpowered SUV) and tore out of my driveway, headed to whatever destination he had in mind. About ten minutes into the drive I fell asleep, not knowing where we were headed, and not really interested. I awoke as the drive turned bumpy, to find us trundling along some backwoods dirt road in the middle of the mountains.

“Dude, is this West Virginia? Where in the hell are we?”  As I asked the question, I looked around at our surroundings- there was no sign of human habitation anywhere. No power lines, no houses, no signs, no empty beer cans heaved out of the back of beat-up local pickups… nothing.

“Yeah, bro. We’re on an old logging road. I heard about this trail from some friends at the rock gym. It’s gonna be brutal! This fucking thing isn't’t even on the map!”

While he spoke, I noticed the utter straightness of the road, in spite of natural obstacles like steep hills. Bret clearly didn't notice, as he was having the time of his life, roaring off hillocks and plunging through the occasional creek. I didn't mention it at the time, because holding onto the dashboard and not putting my face through the windshield was first amongst my priorities.

Th-Thump.

They’re moving in me. I can actually see them under my skin when I lift up my shirt. The bleeding seems to have stopped, which is good, and it looks like I've got three of them in me, judging by the scabbed-over spots where they burrowed into my sides. They weren't very big, only a couple of inches long, but they were fast. I barely had time to react before the first ones were on me, my natural instinct being to basically dance in place, trying to stomp them before they could get to me. There were so many, though. I couldn't get them all, especially when I was missing a finger, shit-scared, and completely disgusted.  As much as I wanted to defend myself, I didn't want to touch their long, hard-shelled bodies and couldn't help but flinch from the sight of their godawful snake heads.