Dieting And Training On A Slave Budget, Part I

Only the insane and pathological liars will say that the world's economies are anything but a shitshow at the moment.  Unless you're a one percenter, you're likely poor, thinking about being poor, or being effectively poor scraping by on a good salary with a non-shit standard of living.  Whatever your situation, there will likely come a time when you need to tighten your belt a bit, slash your expenses, and live on a pauper's budget for a while.  Though some would insist that this could only result in a complete and total loss of strength and muscle mass, history once again rears up to slap us in our collective face with its massive throbbing cock and delivers a message quite to the contrary.

Though it might seem counter to my opening statement, we live in a time of unparalleled prosperity and material abundance.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the foodstuffs industry, where output greatly exceeds demand in an effort to entice us to purchase more at lower cost.  Thus, even at a comparatively tragic standard of living as compared to the wealthiest among us, we're still sitting prettier than Cherry Torn's vagina after a 12 hour gangbang than the developing world and the majority of the people who preceded us.  That, then, should mean we are in the perfect position to thrive even on a very meager budget, as our level of access to relatively inexpensive food is unparalleled.

FACT: Drinking discharged milk enemas confers a 49% greater rise in testosterone than just drinking milk from a glass.

Consider the following- a study conducted at the University of Leeds showed fairly definitively that "we would struggle to find enough people at that level of fitness today to power [Greek triremes] at [the speeds estimated they traveled]” (Leeds).  That's incredible, given the fact that Greek oarsmen were hardly elite athletes- instead, they were poor people who thought that the best way to elevate their game would be to endure one of the most brutal work environments in history.  Fuck Morgan Spurlock and his stupid tv show, because that guy knows nothing whatsoever about how much working life can suck.

A typical workday for a Greek oarsman began at between 2 and 5AM and ended in the early afternoon, during which time the oarsmen rowed essentially constantly in a two stroke on, one stroke off fashion, until they reached their destination.  That, then, is an eight to twelve hour workday involved with at least 2 to four hours of pulling on a 26 foot, 132 lb oar.   Given how much I eat, I'd think those guys must have been slamming back protein shakes and ribeyes the entire rest of the day to stave off death, but that's absolutely not the fact.  According to one source:

"The abysmal living conditions of oarsmen could be made much worse by their diet, the quality of which depended on the extent to which extra provisioning could be provided at ports of call. Without such supplements, a typical breakfast consisted of hard-bread ship's biscuit and beans. The second meal of the day consisted of more biscuit, this time boiled in oil to make bread soup, and perhaps a little cheese. On rare occasions the men might be allowed a little wine. Seldom did they get any meat. The oarsmen's diet supplied 3,000 to 3,500 calories a day. Unfortunately, since the tin can had not yet been invented, biscuit was stored in canvas bags, where it quickly became rotten or infested with weevils. Similarly, there was no way to keep water fresh or sealed against insects. It quickly became foul-tasting and brackish" (Michael's Life).

Tragically, the only people who seem to be concerned with the physical appearance or description of a Greek oarsman or their medieval galley slave descendants are people with what can only be described as an intense BDSM-inspired galley slave fetish, which frankly shocked me more than it otherwise should.  As such, it's difficult to know how these men were built, but given the fact that they could outrow the best elite modern rowers, in spite of massive advances in food, training, and supplementation, it wouldn't take much of a leap of faith to determine that they were built like tanks.  

Medieval rowers fared even worse than the Greeks, as they were slaves.  Not only did they work much longer hours, but their diet was even worse, and they lived chained to a single bench (on which they slept, ate, shit, and worked) until they either died in battle or were freed after a victory.  To fuel their 20 hour workdays, the galley slaves received as their single meal "a piece of baked and stale bread called bizcocho, a stew of broad beans and a ration of water" (Galeotti, Constanla).  Stale barely even covers how bad the bread was, because one account stated that the bread was used to test the teeth of prospective slaves, and that it resembled "wood soaked in vinegar" that only after biting on for some time softened enough that it was recognizable as edible (Galeotti).

Rowing might be better for upper body development than a benchbro routine.

The fact they lived through those conditions is a miracle no less incredible than impressive than magnets, if the Insane Clown Posse could be considered a credible source on magnets.  Not only did they live, but there are reports of freed slaves thriving post-slavery, probably on riding a wave of badassery and with the knowledge they likely could have supported themselves on nothing more than impromptu armwrestling matches in bars after forging their pipes in the fire of twenty hour rowing stretches in the windowless hull of some godawful Spanish galleon.  Thus, we have a couple of examples of people subsisting on inadequate nutrition and violently overtraining in such a way as to give them what according to the University of Leeds as superhuman strength and endurance.  It gets better, though- much better.

Though not slaves, indentured servants, 20 year olds crushed under massive student loan debt, or any other similarly unfree situation, the Egyptian citizens who built the pyramids deserve a bit of examination.  Though one might not think of ancient Egyptian citizens as necessarily titans of strength, but conscripted peasants formed the armies that allowed Egypt to enjoy three thousand years of fucking the rest of the region in the ear, hyena god worship, killer mummy creation, The Rock in a leather loincloth, and what they did best, pyramid building.  The citizens of Egypt, then, had to be bad motherfuckers, but they were not simply bad- they were brutally fucking strong and well conditioned.

They definitely appear to have had some broad-ass shoulders.

Doubt me?  Well, consider this- in just 20 years, Egyptian citizens installed roughly 800 tons of stone block every day, fitting it with a level of precision that only the best modern stonemasons could match.  For those two decades, the brutal little fuckers (the average Egyptian man was 5'2") moved and set 2.3 million limestone and granite blocks weighing up to 80 tons (Great Pyramid).  If that weren't impressive enough, they also built the Valley Temple, a feat modern engineers say we could not duplicate because the cranes that could lift the 200 ton blocks could not operate in the small space the temple occupies.  The Egyptians apparently did it with block and tackle, brute strength, and if the lunatic on the History Channel is to be believed, aliens.  

Given that roughly 800 men were involved just in the moving and fitting of the stone blocks (uphill, mind you) in the pyramid, each man moved roughly a ton of stone a considerable distance per day.  That would require a pretty hefty caloric intake, one would think, but the Egyptians were used to making do on a diet that usually consisted of little more than ten loaves of bread a day and a lot of stout beer, which they often combined to make a sour porridge (Tyldesley, Acharya).  The laborers on the pyramids, however, enjoyed a substantially more robust diet that consisted of a whopping 67 grams of protein, half of which came from a variety of meat sources specially provided for the pyramid laborers and the other half of which came from legumes (Vloet, Jarus, Bukker).  If the protein provided 20% of their calories, those little brown fuckers were only eating 1340 calories a day in the midst of dragging a ton of stone a day up a 120' slope, and if it only comprised 10% of their calories they were still only getting 2600 a day, a number so low for the effort expended that the idea that they ate considerably more and better than their fellow countrymen makes me think we ought to desecrate the remains of every mummy on the planet, because the pharaohs were dicks.

If the pharaohs were dicks, though, they can't hold a candle to the epically turgid phalluses that are modern private prison management corporations, who feed prison inmates shit that resembles actual food about as much as Paris Hilton resembles an intelligent human being.  Though prison diets vary from state to state, "Typical meal items include three to four ounces of meat, a half cup serving of vegetables, three-quarters of a cup of starch, three-quarters of a cup of salad with dressing, a bread item, a beverage and a dessert. A typical evening's fare may consist of a portion of baked, breaded chicken breast, rice pilaf, carrots, a salad, a dinner roll with butter, Iced tea, and pudding or gelatin" (Waite).  Going off of that, inmates are eating roughly 60 grams of protein a day if they're not in isolation (where they are fed a godawful lump of "food" called Nutraloaf), and interestingly enough, 90 grams of protein if they are in isolation.  This diet, which costs only $2.50 a day, still enabled inmates to get jacked enough that Kali Muscle is a name everyone in every gym knows, Jim Williams, one the greatest benchers ever, used prison as a powerlifting training camp, and conservatives got so piss-scared by the size and strength of the felons coming out of prison that they removed weights from most of the gyms (Franklin).

Jim Williams- the only man in history who contest prep plan began with "commit felony".

Given that I've never actually seen the inside of a prison and have no first-hand experience with felons beyond my limited interactions with the people who work at Jiffy Lube when getting my oil changed, I thought I'd ask a guy who did.  The following is Grimmtano's take on inmate dieting and exercise, knowledge he's obtained after working as a cop in a county correctional facility for a few years.

Compared to the dietary standards (lack thereof) of slaves, laborers and other shit covered people of eras past, the modern diet of the average American inmate is a blessing from the gods themselves. But the gods do not give mankind anything without hiding a turd in it and if you are looking for a night of hot kielbasa and biscuits soaked in gravy during lockdown, get ready to jerk off Tyrone after he smuggles it in his ass because it’s not on the menu (Club fed excluded because suck a rich guy’s dick, peasants).  

Martha, keeping it 1%

Now, prison/jail diets vary from state to state and this is not an all encompassing write up on all things handcuffs and sadness.  As for myself, I only have direct experience with the Florida system.  But apart from local colloquialisms and rules of conduct, it’s all the same shit at the end of the day.  Three hots (sometimes two, based on budgets) and a cot are the standard and making both of those as cheap as possible without pissing off too many bleeding hearts gets the brownie points in elections.  There are the occasional allegations of all kinds of unsavory things in food, such as: hair balls, rocks, cardboard, bread ties, worms, human feces(someone didn’t jerk off Tyrone).  From experience, rocks, bugs, and a partial lizard frog thing (it’s Florida, shit happens) are rare but it happens from time to time.  

Cornbread for protein?  Shoot it, son!

 An average setup for a meal would look like this: 

• Roughly 4 ounces of meat...this meat is not some grass-fed cow rump glazed in $6 butter that CrossTitters go mad about either.  Frankly, you’re lucky if it is actual meat and not meat flavored soy.  
• ½ cup veggies
• ¾ of a starch
• Bread
• Juice 
• Cookie, because bitches like cookies

From my personal experience, breakfast is a couple hard boiled eggs, milk, one fruit, switching from grits to oatmeal to cereal.  Lunch and dinner with often follow a similar structure to the above bulleted menu with extra desserts on holidays (because suicide rates do go up in jail during the holiday.  Razorblade insanity.)  Oh, and lest you think that the already mundane entrees are beneath you and decide to pitch a spoiled child fit about it, you can always get a big block of Nutraloaf for a week.  Imagine taking all the food off your tray, blending it all together, cooking it loaf style and serving it back to you with no salt, pepper, or even a toothpick.  You get all the nutrition a human requires but goddamn, it’s not tasty and only the extremely demented actually enjoy eating it.  But those guys wear their own shit on their heads as hats so I’d just buy canteen and move along. 

So,. why bring this up?  They all seem to eat pretty well on paper.  What does this have to do with you?  It has everything to do with your retarded ass!  In modern society, the school system and the prison system are the closest thing, outside of being a stinking, impoverished, tranny hobo, that you are going to get to a restricted diet that is mostly controlled by someone other than yourself.  Even the school system doesn’t stop your fat ass kid from eating food from home and then smashing two trays of pizza and chocolate milk like the shit is going out of business.  Well, maybe in California….they get all health nazi with their shit sometimes.  While there are some well to do inmates that have enough money and pull to get drugs and infinite canteen (think prison 7-11) funds, your average Joe isn’t going to roll like that unless he’s shanking dicks or sucking them.  He is going to have to make due on the blandest, estrogen inducing chow in the smallest portions the kitchen can get away with three times a day and hope his baby momma remembers to stop fucking Tyrone long enough to put money in his account.  Yes, Tyrone gets around a lot.  He’s at your girls house while you read this.  Hell, he fucked you a few times.

Once he gets this money, his canteen orders will be filled with naught but peanut butter, vienna sausages, honey buns and anything else he can eek some half decent macros off.  This is where your average “strength trainee” pops back into this tirade.  If you haven’t surmise where I’m going with this, I’ll lay it out for you.  You spend hundreds of dollars on the best protein powder, BCAA, some asshole’s training PDF where half of it is spent talking about feelings, and at the end of it all, you still look like utter dogshit and your kids are going to piss in your mouth while you sleep for not buying them shoes for school.

These broads have bigger traps than half of you.

An inmate has very few options to train (mostly because they fight a lot so Daddy took the weights away in some places) so they make due with what they have.  Bodyweight exercises, partner routines, making a water bag for lifting, dip/pull bars or bench pressing your bunk mate in his bunk (yea, it looks as gay as it sounds) make up the majority of the lifting that goes down in Florida facilities.  However, it’s not what they do but how often they do it and the vigor at which they do.  The day literally boils down to wake up, eat, go back to sleep, wake up, go to yard workout, sleep, eat, do 500 push ups at the bunk, eat, sleep, repeat.  Pounding back 5 honeybuns a day is usually a recipe for fat over penis syndrome but I can attest to a 45 yr old cocaine addict putting guys 20 years younger to shame on the pull up bar on a diet of peanut butter and honeybuns.  It’s amazing what dietary shenanigans you can get away with when you sleep 13 hours a day and kiss ass in the interim to the next wet dream. 

Lauren D’Marie, because she can get it.  Nuff said.

So, where does this put us?  It puts us squarely in the "shut the fuck up and stop whining, bitch" phase of the article.  Given the examples I've provided, you can build massive stone structures, train heavily for multiple hours a day, set world records in powerlifting, and get into a Geico commercial on a diet most people would consider insufficient to power your average couch potato.  Moreover, eating clean or eating to bulk doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg provided you find something you're willing to eat over and over and do just that- variety might be the spice of life, but it's hardly necessary to power greatness.  

Over the years my go-to poverty food was whole roasted chicken.  Whole roasted chickens cost less than a dollar a pound uncooked, and then I just rubbed them down with butter, salt, pepper, and garlic, then stuffed more of the same into the chicken's ass.  I'd roast a couple of them a day in the oven and snack on them all day.  Total cost was probably on the order of three dollars a day, and I was getting over 3000 calories and over 300 grams of protein a day.  Add a couple of protein shakes to that and for $4-$5 a day you're getting 3500 calories and 400 grams of protein.  Though I now despise it, I ate a hell of a lot of canned chicken back in the day, and canned tuna is practically free, provided you've got no sense of smell, taste buds, or respect for your fellow man.  Chaos and Pain's resident graphic designer and top ranked powerlifter, Sin, bulked from about 90 lbs to 135 over two years by training like a maniac and eating the same, incredibly bland but effective diet of baked chicken and veggies- her secret was simply keeping an eye on what was on sale and only eating seasonal vegetables.  Other guys I know have lived almost exclusively off milk and eggs and peanut butter sandwiches and bulked effectively.  

I've written at very great length about the effectiveness of stews for bulking, and they've been the mainstay of every civilization's diet throughout the history of cooked food.  John McCallum also wrote years ago about his uncle's "Souped-up Soup", which was his method for economically adding a ton of nutrition to his diet.  The soup was made in the following way:

John McCallums's "Souped-up Soup"

1. Don't throw out any parings from food prep.  Get a plastic bag and save all of the vegetable parings, and when the bag gets full, make the soup.
2. Save all of the bones and scraps from your meat food prep.  Store in a plastic bag in the freezer for use in your soup.  Since you're going to want to eat your soupe with every meal, however, McCallum suggests you buy soup bones from the butcher.  At my local supermarket they sell for less than a buck a pound, and every dog I've ever met loves the fuck out of them as a snack, entertainment, and a way to supplement their diet.
3. Use a cleaver or hatchet to chop up the bones finely.
4. Put two quarts of water into a big soup pot.
5. Add a couple of tablespoons of vinegar and a tablespoon of salt.  This is essential to draw out the calcium from the bones and the nutrients from the veggies.  The vingear will boil off, lest you worry.  
6. Boil for four hours.
7. Strain out all of the bits and pieces with a fine strainer.
8. The remaining stock is what you'll use to make the soup, and McCallum claims if you just drank that you'd triple your nutrient intake.
9. Put the stock in a clean pot and chop up the veggies you want- he suggests carrots, celery, onions, potatoes, garlic, and turnips.
10. Simmer the veggies until they start to soften, then add three lbs of chicken wings, short ribs, stewing beef, or any kind of meat you like.  If you want to go cheap, buy what's onsale and use that.
11. Continue simmering until the meat is tender.
12. Take two cups of water and dissolve in as much skim milk powder as will go into solution.  Stir that into the soup.
13. Simmer 5 minutes, then add a pound of ground beef, which will cook almost instantly.

Though he doesn't provide the nutrition count from that, you're looking at a soup that likely contains between 350 and 450 grams of protein that you use simply to supplement your existing meals, not to mention the incredible nutrition coming from the stock- the bones alone add 6.5 grams of protein and 4 grams of fat apiece.  Made with meat that's on sale, I cannot imagine it would cost more than $20 to make, and it would provide you with at least 8 meals or meal supplements.    

Contemporary analysis shows the Vikings ate about as much as Hafthor Bjornsson did.  You might want to get on that soup, bro.  The Vikings definitely did.

So there you have it- you can do a hell of a lot with very little if need be, but it shouldn't be too hard to get a hell of a lot of nutrition with very little money.  Either way, there's no excuse for failing to be awesome- your success relies entirely on how fucking badly you want it.  Our forebearers fucking wanted it, so they tore shit up fueld by nothing but hate, liquor, and bean stew.  We could, and should, be able to outdo them, so hike up your fucking skirt and get after it.

Exactly.

Sources:
Acharya, S and DM Murdock.  Ancient Egyptian mystery solved? Beer as medicine.  Freethought Nation.  19 Sep 2010.  Web.  29 May 2014.  http://freethoughtnation.com/ancient-egyptian-mystery-solved/

Building the great pyramid.  Web.  8 Jun 2014.  http://www.cheops-pyramide.ch/khufu-pyramid/pyramid-workers.html

Bukker, Igor.  Pyramids of Giza built by trade unions of hired workers? Pravda.  6 Apr 2013.  Web.  8 Jun 2014.  http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/04-06-2013/124743-pyramids_giza-0/

Constenla, Tereixa.  The grim life of a galley slave.  El Pais In English.  13 Mar 2012.  Web.  29 May 2014.  http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/03/13/inenglish/1331643336_299952.html

Franklin, Noel.  Working in the Prison System.  Weston A. Price Foundation.  4 Feb 2013.  Web.  29 May 2014.  http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/working-in-the-prison-system/

The Galeotti: Rowing Out Of The Barbary Coast.  Strange History.  25 Sep 2010.  Web.  29 May 2014.  http://www.strangehistory.net/2010/09/25/the-galeotti-rowing-out-of-the-barbary-coast/

Great Pyramid of Giza.  Wikipedia.  Web.  6 Jun 2014.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza

Jarus, Owen.  Giza Secret Revealed: How 10,000 Pyramid Builders Got Fed.  LiveScience.  23 Apr 2013.  Web.  29 May 2014.  http://www.livescience.com/28961-ancient-giza-pyramid-builders-camp-unearthed.html

Michael's Life: Homo da Remo 1401-1406,  Museo Galileo.  Web.  5 Jun 2014.  http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/michaelofrhodes/life_1401_1406.html

Tyldesley, Joyce.  The Private Lives of the Pyramid-builders.  BBC History.  17 Feb 2011.  Web.  29 May 2014.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/pyramid_builders_01.shtml

University of Leeds. "Fitness Has Fallen Since The Days Of Ancient Greece." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 8 February 2007.  www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070208100643.htm

Vloet, Katie.  The Diet of Pyramid Builders.  University of Michigan LSA.  22 Jul 2013.  Web.  29 May 2014.  http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lsa/ci.thedietofpyramidbuilders_ci.detail

Waite, Jennifer.  Prison Food: What Are America's Inmates Eating?  Yahoo Voices.  9 Apr 2009.  Web.  29 May 2014.  http://voices.yahoo.com/prison-food-americas-inmates-eating-2994649.html?cat=51

Zarine.  The Valley Temple.  Ancient Mysteries.  20 Jun 2011.  Web.  6 Jun 2014.  http://www.ancient-mysteries.com/testpart/valleytemp/ValleyTemple/valleytemple.html

Manlet Power!!

Bushwick Bill, what do you do when muthafuckas underestimate your size, man?

No one on Earth could possibly bear the shame of being one of these guys.

Ah, the internet- on the one hand, a boon to humanity by placing an unimaginable amount of information and pornography at one's fingertips, while on the other hand a megaphone for the least intelligent, least well educated, saddest, useless, violently dogmatic, and unimaginative troglodytes by which they can pollute the zeitgeist with their cretinous thoughts.  By far and away the worst cesspools in which these halfwits congregate are messageboards, on which people with absolutely no justification for holding an opinion about anything feel free to spew their idiocy to the detriment of their fellow man, and it was here that the concept of a manlet was born.  Variously described as a man shorter than 6', 5'7", or 5'5", and usually described as weighing under 200 lbs, manlets have become the whipping boys of the chubby internet warriors of lifting messageboards, who assert (wrongly) that anyone of those dimensions could not possibly know what they're talking about in regards to lifting.

Who wouldn't smash the granny out of Bridget the Midget?

Why this phenomenon began is a mystery I highly doubt anyone cares enough to resolve.  It could be the propensity for neophytes obsessed with having ripped abs at a bodyweight that would shame an Olsen twin into eating to ask stupid questions of their equally clueless peers, or perhaps it's the result of rampant outrage by people who are both weak and fat at the audacity one might have to simply be weak rather than fat, or it could simply be the outgrowth of the repeatedly discredited theory of the Napoleonic complex.  Whatever the source of the manlet concept, however, it's high time one of us jacked dwarves climbed atop a stepladder and reasserted the dominance over strength sports we've rightly held for much of human history.

Yeah, Maxick sucked- he only weighed 145!  Nevermind the fact he continentalled 340, bro beans.  He was a manlet.  Doesn't count.

The dominance we've held, you ask?  Pish posh!  Short motherfuckers have never dominated strength sports, have they?  As it happens, yeah, we kind of have- it's just that no one's noticed because you can't see us.  Here's a short list of "manlets" of note:

First of all I laugh...
Mr. Olympias:

1977-1979 Frank Zane 5'7", 185 lbs.  In spite of the fact that he was skinny and only trained for aesthetics (though he did do one proto-powerlifting meet in the 1960s and hit a 425 deadlift, 285 bench press and 155 curl weighing 175), Zane was still capable of hitting 375 for ten on the squat, reps with 220 on seated behind the neck presses, and high rep dips with a couple of plates strapped to his waist.  Certainly these aren't massive strength feats, but they would generally tend to indicate he was far more skilled a lifter than the vast majority of internet message board chumps.

1976, 1981 Franco Columbo 5'3", 185 lbs.  If you don't know who Franco is, you might want to just find a nice place to lay down and die.  Well, read this first, then go die. 

1982 Chris Dickerson 5'5", 189 lbs.  Frankly, I have no idea how strong Dickerson was- there isn't much information online about it.  What I can tell you, however, is that dude trained more on your average Tuesday than most lifters do in a week- according to the anti-broscientists of the interwebs, Dickerson shouldn't have lived past the first Thursday of a training cycle.

1983 Samir Bannout, 5'5", 193 lbs.  Feel free to call Samir Bannout a bitch.  He was a decent oly lifter and rocked insanely strict bent over rows with 315 for sets of 20.  If there's a lifter on the internet who's ever even attempted a set like that with that weight and "calls out manlets" on the regular, I'll eat my fucking laptop

Strongmen:

Maxick 5'3", 147 lbs.  Everyone worth a shit already knows who Maxick is, which virtually gurantees the dipshits on message boards don't.  School those stupid sons of bitches.

Hermann Saxon 5'8", 168 lbs and Kurt Saxon 5'8", 170 lbs.  Though you'd vener know from their bodyweights, these motherfuckers could eat.  Training for hours a day burned a lot of calories, and they ate even more than they lifted, it seemed.  Both of these guys were massively strong, trained and performed with Arthur Saxon, and were accomplish acrobats and wrestlers as well- Hermann could jump forward or backward over a dining table at will.    Who gives a fuck what they weighed?  They were out-drinking, out-eating, out-fucking, and out-lifting everyone else on the planet for years.

Joe "The Mighty Atom" Greenstein 5'4", 140 lbs.  Bizarrely attired and overly hirsute Joe Greenstein is apparently one of the most famous strongmen of the 20th century, though I don't think I've ever heard his name mentioned in any conversation about strongmen.  Nevertheless, this tiny little Jewish immigrant drew huge crowds for his feats of strength, and both survived a gunshot wound to the forehead (his skull didn't even crack) and beat down 18 Nazis simultaneously armed with nothing but a baseball bat and a bellyfull of hate.  Dat Bear Jew rage.

Stumpy Raynes 5'4", 300 lbs.  I wonder how long a keyboard warrior would live after calling Stumpy a "manlet" to his face.  Stumpy competed at 242 in powerlifting (posting a solid 836 squat and 814 deadlift), qualified for the WSM on his first attempt and finished in 10th place in 2001, in spite of the fact he is too short to see over any of the boxes for the stone load, rocks a 363 Log Lift and a 385 Apollon's Axle, and has a pile of bodybuilding medals.  One might say that he didn't do much as a strongman, but his 10th place finish in 2001 is basically on par with Spudd Webb's win at the 1986 NBA Slam Dunk competition, given the massive handicap his height gave him. 

Olympic Weightlifters:

John Grimek 5'8", 195 lbs.  John "The Fucking Manlet" Grimek- Again, if you don't know, you ought to.  
Pyrros Dimas 5'8", 181 lbs.  As a Greek Albanian, one would have expected Dimas to have a long and unremarkable career as an unemployed car thief with a penchant for chugging olive oil.  Instead of going into what seems to be the only lines of work available to Greeks and Albanians, however, Dimas decided to get off his ass and set some records in Olympic weightlifting, collecting three golds and a bronze in four consecutive Olympics

Naim Süleymanoğlu 4'10", 137 lbs.  Chain-smoking Turkish weightlifting juggernaut Süleymanoğlu earned himself the nickname "Pocket Hercules" in his quest to nab three golds in Olympic weightlfting over three Olympics for two different countries.  Tiny, swarth, and covered in that uniquely southern European hair shirt, Süleymanoğlu is a diminutive legend with whom no one can fuck.

Kim Un Guk 5'2", 137 lbs.  North Korea's worth about as much to the world as a hobo's boot used by gay foot fetishist homeless men as a cum receptacle, but Kim Un Guk is an exception to the DPRK's nearly flawless record of making Transnistria seem like a coveted vacation destination.  In the last Olympics, Guk's first, Guk managed to set a world record total while tying the World Record and setting a new Olympic Record in the snatch.

Powerlifters:

Larry Pacifico 5'6" 198 lbs - 242 lbs.  Larry Pacifico, at 5'6" and 198 lbs, is not going to earn any cred on Bodybuilding.com, but that's cool- he's just a manlet to whom Bill Kazmaier referred as a "god" of powerlifting.  One of the greatest lifters ever, Pacifico was an unstoppable beast on the platform and remains a world record holder in the total at 242 lbs... in spite of the horrible tragedy that was his height, apparently.

Ernie Frantz 5'5" 165-220lbs.  The founder of the APF and possessor of one of the best sets of calves in history, Frantz was still pulling 600 in competition at age 70 and squatted 516 at age 74.  To call him a beast simply wouldn't do the man justice- he's more like a demigod.  
   
Other manlets of note:

Danny Padilla, 5'2", 190lbs at his heaviest.  Danny trained 6 days a week with massive volume and extremely short rests.  He's been caught on video squatting 405 for sets of twelve weighing under 190, and benched 450 when he was closer to 180 lbs.  Yeah, sounds like something that motherfucker ought to be ashamed of.  If he sucked any harder he'd likely spend all of his time in his parents' basement talking shit on Bodybuilding.com.

Eddie Robinson, 5'6", 220lbs.  Like Padilla and Platz, Robinson began his career as a powerlifter, and was a fucking good one.  At one point, Robinson held world records in the bench press as a teenager, hitting 575 and 610 on the bench rocking nothing thicker than a t-shirt.  Apparently Robinson hated bodybuilding, but it was the only way for him to get paid to lift, so he set about becoming a staple in Weider mags for ten years... mostly for training like a total psychopath.

Tom Platz, 5'8" 195lbs.  Platz began his career as a powerlifter and won the State Championships in Michigan in powerlifting's hypercompetitive late 1970s scene.  Thereafter, he became well known for his squatting prowess after learning to squat under the great Norbert Schmansky and constantly training legs with olympic weightlifters.  Platz was hugely strong for a sub 200 lifter- during his precontest prep for the 1986 Mr. Olympia, Platz busted out a set of 15 reps with 635 without knee wraps or a suit, and reportedly had a 765 single at one point.  I suppose this means we can just toss out the "no one under 200 lbs knows shit about training" bit, right?

Marvin Eder, 5'7" 190 lbs.  Eder was a strength athlete and bodybuilder at a time when no one really gave much of a shit about either, and he moved more weight than most people could possibly fucking conceive, just because fuck gravity, that's why.  He could do a strict press with 330, bench 515 at a time when bench presses barely existed, and even at 75 years of age was still dipping with 70 lbs chained to his waist.  To call him a monster among men does the man about as much credit as calling internet warriors dickless bitches- there just isn't enough hyperbole on the planet to adequately describe either.
  
As if that weren't a strong enough pedigree, Chris Beardsley did some interesting regressions in an effort to determine if there was a trend in height and weight among bodybuilders.  As you can see, there really isn't much of a strong correlation.  What you can see, however, is that fully half of the Mr. Americas in the 30 years after the invention of the television were under 200 lbs and roughly a quarter of them were also under 5'8".

Then I smack their ass like a goddamned car crash.  So if you wanna try your luck, come on- play pussy gets fucked.

While that should lay to rest any contention that being under 200 lbs or under a given height makes your achievements illegitimate, the endlessly bloviating, inarticulate, hyper-toughguys of the internets will still likely contend that any success "manlets" have had is due to the fact that it is apparently easier for shorter people to put on muscle than taller people- a contention that is as unscientific as it as mind-boggingly illogical.  This isn't fucking Warhammer- it's not as though we dwarves issue forth from the womb in an arterial spray, full beaded, wielding a giant hammer and 17" arms.  Quite to the contrary, most of us held very little muscle naturally and were incredibly slight growing up- the myth that we magically pile on muscle and move massive weights is just that- a fucking myth.

  

Nor does height even play that significant a role in lifting- it's limb length, not height, that truly determines a lifter's potential, and joint size that determines how much muscle one can attain.  Short legs and short arms are critical in barbell sports, as shorter limbs ensure the lifter doesn't have to move the bar as far (Cole).  Beyond that, a variety of other factors play a massive role in strength, and none of them are height related:

• Muscle fiber composition.  The ratio of type I to Type IIa and Type IIb muscle fibers plays a key role in a lifter's strength (Butt).
• Muscle fiber thickness.  The number of muscle fibers appears to have far less to do with one's strength than does the thickness of the muscle fibers (Butt).  
• Muscle length.  The longer a muscle fiber, the stronger it is (Haffajee).
• Joint angle.  The angle of joint flexion constantly changes the force curve generated by the muscle being flexed (Haffajee and Progressive).
• Speed of contraction.  The speed of contraction is going to be, in many way, dependent upon the aforementioned muscle fiber composition (Butt).
• Connective tissue (everything from the site of attachment to tendon and ligament strength and thickness).  The stronger the connective tissue, the greater load a muscle can bear (Butt).

Conversely, shit like testosterone doesn't correlate with height at all, and neither does strength.  How anyone developed an idea to the contrary is beyond me, but it's time to put that retarded baby back in the dumpster where the morons of the internet seem to have discovered it and held it aloft as the savior of every idiotic conversation they'll ever have about lifting.  If anything, shorter guys have to try harder than people of average height to achieve similar gains.  As such, their opinions should actually hold more, rather than less weight.

Joanna Angel, fully awesome and not a fucking hair over 4'11".

While we're on the subject of opinions that should hold no weight, we might as well address the tired old argument about range of motion.  This failure pile of shitty logic usually comes wrapped in more whining about "fairness" than you'd generally see on a social justice website, and is often accompanied by even less pride than the social justice warriors manage to conjure on the best of days.  Let us just put this baby to bed- having a greater range of motion is an advantage, not a disadvantage.  Greater range of motion leads to greater strength gains and more hypertrophy than short ranges of motion, which means that taller lifters actually enjoy a very distinct natural advantage over their diminutive compatriots (Pinto, Beardsley).  Once more, it's the shorter lifters who have to work harder for the same level of gains as larger lifters, meaning they just might know more about getting strong and jacked than the skinny dipshits looming over the keyboards of their parents computers spewing ill-considered, poorly constructed diatribes about their superiority.  

Simple, right?  Shame the fucking tards of the world's message boards haven't gotten the message I've attempted to impart, but at the very least I can send you forth to battle these simpletons armed with the requisite knowledge to crush them utterly.  

Sources:
Baechle, T.R. & R.W. Earle,  Ed.. Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning. Champaign: Human Kinetics Publishers, 1994. 

Beardsley, Chris.  How does ROM affect gains in muscular size?  Strength and Conditioning Research.  11 Nov 2013.  Web.  1 Jun 2014.  http://www.strengthandconditioningresearch.com/2013/11/11/rom-hypertrophy/

Butt, Casey.  Muscle Growth Part 1: The Science Behind Why, And How, Does A Muscle Grow And Get Stronger?  Simply Shredded.  Web.  1 Jun 2014.   http://www.simplyshredded.com/muscle-growth-part-1-the-science-behind-why-and-how-does-a-muscle-grow-and-get-stronger.html

Cole, Adam.  Olympic Bodies: They Just Don't Make Them Like They Used To.  NPR.  9 Aug 2012.  Web.  1 Jun 2014.  http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/08/09/158448224/olympic-bodies-they-just-dont-make-them-like-they-used-to

Haffajee D, Moritz U, Svantes G.  Isometric knee extension as a function of joint angle, muscle length and motor unit activity.  Acta orthop. Scandinav. 1972;43:138-147.

The Legend of Frank Zane: An Interview With The Man Who Achieved Physical Perfection.  Simply Shredded, reprinted from Flex Magazine.  Web.  1 Jun 2014.  http://www.simplyshredded.com/the-legend-of-zane-an-interview.html

Pinto RS, Gomes N, Radaelli R, Botton CE, Brown LE, Bottaro M.  Effect of range of motion on muscle strength and thickness.  J Strength Cond Res. 2012 Aug;26(8):2140-5.

Progressive Sporting Systems.  Biomechanical Strenngth. Bodybuilding.com.  14 Sep 2004.  Web.  1 Jun 2014.