Destroy Everything! Destroy Everything! Destroy Everything! Destroy Everything!

DISCLAIMER:  You demanded it, so you're getting it.  Behold a heavily edited version of my original rant against strength coaches.  I doubt this will make sense to anyone, but worst case you'll laugh your ass off because I am obviously mentally unbalanced.

In spite of displaying more conceit than you'd likely see out of college sorority girl who's spent more money on plastic surgery in a year than most people spend on their first home, I required a small amount of external motivation to achieve the proper mindset to pull 606 and 672 easily as hell.  That motivation didn't come from a person or a chemical, but rather in the form of the song containing the lyrics I've got in the first image in this article.  That song, which has facilitated every PR since RUM, it is the hardest, angriest, most hateful, bile-spitting, life-destroying, soul-crushing, death-defying, fetus-aborting, friendship-ruining, life-affirming fucking song in the history of written music.  

Beethoven would have wept at the brutal simplicity of this song, and at the cutting edge of its message.  This song, Posi Holocaust, is my life's anthem... it defines me in ways I could not with my own words.  As ridiculous as this might sound, this song resonates so hard with me I will not listen to it unless I am attempting a max single because it fills me with so much rage and bile I can't be around the Normies who populate the everyday world.

Onto the subject at hand- the thing that's been burning a fucking hole in my gut like I swallowed a mouthful of magma with the belief I could channel the power of a volcano if I did so.  I've not, as I realize I needn't injest toxic and fatally hot magma to erupt like Mt. Vesuvius and lay waste to everything in my path.  What lies in my path, then, are strength coaches.  Yes, strength coaches- innocuous, banal, seemingly irrelevant people of whom there is such a surfeit on the internet that naming them hardly seems necessary and would take more time than makes sense.  Lest you wonder, I hardly consider myself a coach.  I'm more of a consultant.  I identify problems, provide solutions, give a lifters a direction and shove him that way.  Just as I do not fancy myself a coach, I do not believe I am responsible for the results gained from the programs I provide or the fixes I relate, any more than a mechanic takes credit for the fact that a nearly new AMG Merc  smokes a BMW M3  off the line.  I simply facilitate, and take no responsibility for the results- the results lie solely in the hands of the people for whom I provide guidance.

Your average "strength coach" in build and utility.

Of late, I've seen any number of coaches taking credit for the actions of the lifters in their stable.  I'm not talking about guys like Glenn Pendlay, who've earned the right but would sooner take credit for the invention of the internet than Tom Sroka's overhead press numbers, but guys few people know about and whom the world ultimately would not care if they immediately ceased to be.  They like to claim responsibility for the feats of the lifters "under" them, in spite of the fact that the lifter is the person who did all the fucking work.  This, I feel, is part of a greater phenomena whereby people believe that if they talk about something enough, they have done it.  That mentality, however pervasive, insidious, disgusting, pathetic, worthless, shameful, and ignoble as it may be, needs to be rectified with nothing less than a hefty dose of cyanide and probably better with a neutron bomb.

You picked the weights for a lifter who broke a world record?  Congratulations.  You're a good fucking guesser.  You did NOTHING.  NOTHING AT ALL.  Not only are you so fucking worthless your parents likely weep themselves to sleep at night with the knowledge they produced a pompous dipshit who'd be better off beating himself to death with a claw hammer than offering other people advice, but you're detracting from the efforts of a lifter far better than you.  FAR.  BETTER.  THAN. YOU.

I live alone.  I train alone.  I'll win the title alone.

If you don't recognize that quote, it doesn't surprise me at all.  It's Clubber Lang from Rocky III declaring he needs no one.  No matter how much you think to the fucking contrary, your lifters need you that much.  The best you can do is point out shit they're doing wrong- you're not responsible for their success.  Fuck me running, you're more responsible for the stranger's cum running down the inside of your girl's thigh than you are for your "lifters" success.  That's right- if you're so delusional you're taking credit for the lifts of your "lifters", I've likely cum on her cervix while you were in the bathroom at a meet.  If I didn't, someone else did, because we can smell weakness and you smell fucking weak.  We're not talking about my "share and share alike" ,mentality with my girls, either- we're talking about a chick who fucks the nearest male the second you turn your back because you're a shit-talking pussy who deserves to lose his girl to a better man.  

If you are a coach and you're going to absurdly claim responsibility for your lifters' success, guess what, fuckface?  YOU'RE ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR FAILURES.  They didn't listen?  Fuck you, you should have yelled louder.  They had a bad day?  Fuck you, you're there to make it better.  They missed weight?  Fuck you, you're a dogshit coach and should down yourself in a seedy porn shop's toilet.  And sweet Jesus, if you are a coach who either hamstrings your lifters' progress by instilling them with the idea that they're less than they are, or YOU SUGGEST THEY SKIP AN ATTEMPT IN A MEET AND THEY'RE NOT GRAVELY INJURED, do us all a fucking favor and jump in front of a bus.  A bus covered with AIDS.  And cholera.  Preferably one with a spiked cowcatcher on the front just to insure that you'll be maimed badly and die a slow fucking death in a shitty third world hospital or something. The next bitch who tells me that they skipped a fucking attempt at a meet and wasn't crippled with injury or illness is going to swallow a mouthful of his fucking teeth.  If you're going to be that weak, dickless, spineless, and pathetic, keep that shit the fuck out of my corner- I don't need any fucking has been's or never-gonna-be's fucking with my mojo.

Witches be crazy.

This is a sport of people who are so insecure, and so bitch-made, they can't take responsibility for a fucking thing themselves.  If they lose, they claim it was witchcraft, the other guy's gear, their coach's falult, their parents didn't love them, they are a compulsive masturbator because their parents didn't love them enough/too much/too helicoptery.  As such, I can't really blame the coaches too fucking much because they're really just a symptom of a greater problem.

"Force and might makes right. Perhaps things shouldn’t be that way but that's the way they are. I learned to look with suspicion and hatred on everybody. As the years went on that idea persisted in my mind above all others. I figured that if I was strong enough and clever enough to impose my will on others, I was right. I still believe that to this day."

- Carl Panzram

It's not just coaches who spew their vile weakness all over the fucking internet and the platform. Practically every Facebook status update I read is a paean to being a pathetic bitch.  Feel like airing your dirty laundry and your emotions on the fucking internet?  DON'T.  No one gives a flying fuck.  If anyone did care, you'd likely be able to   And for those of you who will claim they do, you're the bitch-made pussies spouting that passive aggressive bullshit in the first fucking place.  Oh, and don't even get me started on the clever little not-so-cryptic, look-at-me-and-feel-sorry bullshit, weak sauce status updates begging for attention and a faux-Mongol horde of white knights to roll in and gently stroke your inner child's engorged clitorises when you post something like: 

• "Ever have one of those day where everything bothers you from the minute you awake?  Today's one of those days."  
• "I'm done tired of the fights n the bs of u keepin secrets I dont wanna hurt n e more I hope you find happiness Ima stay bein single u can go do u n ima do me its betta dis way 4 both of us u kno its tru" [Sic. To the whole fucking thing and I hope they see me making fun of them and open up some veins.  Remember, it's down the road, not across the street, you fucking waterhead.]
• "It's so easy to make me happy and yet it's not... ponder that one for a moment."

I read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day when I was a little kid too, and you know what the moral of the fucking book is?  SUCK IT THE FUCK UP, BITCH. 

Unmerciful.  Callous.  Relentless.

It's mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality.

Our entire fucking sport, and the internet at large, is crowded with pompous bitches who think their opinion is worth hearing, in spite of the fact that they're too stupid to clearly articulate their thoughts, it's highly likely that their parents don't even fucking like them, they've never had an original idea in their lives, and they're too poorly educated to provide a logical basis for the bullshit they smear all over the internet like a four year old retard fingerpainting on the wall with their own feces.  Special snowflake syndrome is so fucking out of hand at this point that everyone thinks they deserve some sort of award for showing up, even when they've participated half-assedly in a sport they should have never even recognized as such.  Who the fuck wants to sit through 45 minutes of handing out an goddamn trophy to every participant?  Fuck- I usually skip those things and head to the bar.  I'll pick up my cash later and you can keep the dumbass trophy.  Oh, forgive me- I'm being disrespectful to the sport again.  I might slam a bar like a fucking boss and upset someone's inner infant.     

LIKE.  A.  BOSS.

I am the best, and I live alone, I train alone, and I will continue to win titles, alone.  I need no one and require no help from anyone.  When I first started competing, I didn't even wear a belt, just to prove I literally needed nothing to dominate my competition.  No handlers, no advice, no support structure, no belt, nothing.  All I need is me, and to be fucking consistent and fucking brutal.  I'm not fucking magical.  No sorcerers were involved in the production of my program.  Not because I have the best training scheme ever invented- but because I do what I want, when I want, and don't fucking listen to nonsense to the contrary.  Nor am I alone in this.  Most people need a coach like they need a hole in the head, and they need a "program" like they need an asshole on their elbow.  Instead, what they need is to nut the fuck up, quit bitching on Facebook, and lift some heavy goddamn weights until they shit blood and weep five times distilled vodka, sweat 500 mg/cc testosterone and piss growth hormone.

All those I rely on: NO ONE

Those things I depend on: NOTHING

My survival lies in my own strength

It’s power through control

Control through strength

Strength through hate

Hate through fear

Fear through displays of power

Nut the fuck up.  Or don't.  I honestly don't give a shit.  I will just continue to sit up on high and cast down my judgements like thunderbolts from the heavens.  If you're going to pretend to halfway give a shit, try to be as awesome as the picture above.

How Do You Make A Hormone? Don't Pay Her. #1

For the most part, estrogen sucks.  Whether it's because it's the cause of an argument in the sofa section of Ikea over one's appreciation for Swedish meatballs or because it cuases people to hold more bodyfat and feels, it's a pain in the ass.  Worse yet- estrogen seems to be the cause behind a lot of bad workouts for women in the gym and a lot of shitty experiences at meets.  Lots of research has gone into the subject in an attempt to determine what exactly is at the root of women's periodic issues on the platform, and the results of those studies are as interesting as they are contradictory... much like the best kind of women.

The good news is, however, that this condition is, in fact, manageable through diet, training, herbal regimens, and exogenous testosterone.  

[Because I lack a vagina and might just be talking out of my ass after reading a bunch of science, I enlisted the help of Nuprin to give a female perspective.  Thus, she'll be interjecting periodically.]  

Nuprin: In my experience, swinging wildly between suicidal and super happy is no picnic. But consistent lifting and regular eating has managed to not only quell my mood swings, but also regulate my cycle (cool, huh?).

Ladies, if you're still with us and have not ragequit the article to whip up a batch of anthrax to send my way, allow me to explain: there are three ways in which estrogen seems to fuck with female lifters- estrogen/testosterone imbalances, estrogen-cocktail birth control, and menstruation.  I'm not going to tell you guys that  have all of the answers, but as this shit is rarely, if ever, discussed, it seems it bears some discussion here, both because it will keep more of my friends from getting stabbed and because I'm fairly certain chicks are sick to death for being dominated by their endocrine systems.

It would be far too simple to state that estrogen is "the Debbil" and that women should just all start jacking test to solve all of life's problems.  While exogenous testosterone has been and continues to be used to treat everything from depression to low libido/sexual dysfunction to impaired cognitive function to impaired cardiovascular function to poor body composition (Davis, Davis), I'm not going to suggest that women start popping Anavar like Tic-Tacs every time they catch a case of the nutties (though I know of more than one chick who does to fairly good result).  Maintaining higher test levels is essential to dominating on the platform and the bedroom, and we'll address how to do so in a bit, but the bigger issue fucking up females when they hit the gym isn't so much testosterone deficiency as "estrogen dominance".

Femdom does not count as "estrogen dominance".

Though it's something of a hotly contested condition, doctors who have identified issues of estrogen dominance have found a massive imbalance in estrogen versus progesterone and testosterone.  When such an imbalance occurs, it leads to a massive range of unfun bullshit with which chicks are familiar, ranging from "an increase in PMS symptoms, uterine fibroids, and endometriosis, as well as symptoms including allergies, decreased libido, fatigue, fibrocystic breasts, headaches, infertility, irritability, to fat gain around the abdomen and on the top of the thighs" (Lucille).

While I've never had the grave misfortune to experience the Santa Claus-sized bag of hellish nonsense that is menstruation, estrogen dominance seems to provide year-round enjoyment of PMS without any of the wild-eyed horniness, bleeding, or eventual relief of a period.  As we all know, if a man is going to dance with a demon, he should end up with his red wings at some point, and estrogen dominance seems to spit squarely in the eye of that concept and simply turn everyone's life into a non-stop Shark Week with no reprieve.

Luckily, there is a way to treat this issue- simply raise your test levels like you're a member of the Esoteric Order of Dagon trying to raise Cthulu from the depths of the ocean.  There are a variety of ways to do this and they have varying levels of success.  Perhaps the easiest way to do this is to train your ass off and eat a meat and fat-rich diet, as cholesterol is a precursor to testosterone.  That, however, probably has the mildest effect.  Next up, you could try taking a variety of vitamins/minerals and prohormones aimed at raising testosterone levels and balancing estrogen and progesterone levels.  For this, I would recommend a combination of DHEA, ZMA, and vitamin C every day in the following dosages:

DHEA-  50mg-100mg (this dosage has been shown to dramatically raise test levels in women and alleviate or eliminate depression)
ZMA- something with at least 30mg of zinc.  ZMA is a great sleep aid, and zinc in particular raises libido and test in women (Poliquin).  Magnesium has also been shown to raise the testosterone levels of athletes (Cinar), and B6 seems to work synergistically with the aforementioned two (Simpson).
Vitamin C- 1.5g  Vitamin C helps reduce the enzyme that converts testosterone to estrogen in women, which is crucial if you're going to kill the estrogenic demon residing in your endocrine system (Simpson).

Another route, of course, is the "prohormone" (read: designer steroid) route, or just straight up steroids.  I've know a number of chicks who have done this with courses of action ranging from insane recklessness to ridiculous overcautiousness and have yet to see them anything but happier as a result, with none of the masculinizing side effects.  That's not to say I am recommending it, but Anavar or Winstrol would not be the worst course of action to take, either.  For those of you who think I am insane/irresponsible/an asshole (I concede to that), doctors have been prescribing anything from oral to topical to injectible testosterone to women to treat hypoactive libido and depression since the late 1930s (Abdallah, Dyett).  

20 mg of var a day will not turn you into this, honestly.

The next bit of Downton Abbey-style estrogen-induced horror is the effect of birth control on strength in women.  This is honestly something I had never considered, because being a remarkably self-centered man, I just thought it was something women did to avoid making sex about as much fun as showering with your socks on by including a hazmat suit for my cock.  When the issue was raised, however, it seemed to make a great deal of sense- no lifter is jacking estrogen to get their squat PR up.  As it happens, birth control does appear to have a profoundly negative effect on muscular strength.  This does not appear to be necessarily due to the fact that they're supplemental estrogen, however, but because most birth control pills contain antiandrogens to suppress test levels as the estrogen rises.  This creates a situation much like what I described above, and one study showed that the inclusion of the antiandrogens (most notably cyproterone-acetate) was roughly as useful for gaining fat free mass and strength as a diet of naught but mayonnaise while doing yoga twice a week (Ruzić).  

I blame this shitfest of a show completely on estrogen.  This show is so boring I wanted to drown myself in a dive bar urinal in the 10 seconds it took me to find this picture.  It's so boring that it actually makes me reconsider my stance on the Golden Girls.  It's so boring that I... fuck.  The show's too fucking boring to joke about.  Someone firebomb the BBC.

Other studies have shown that irrespective of the inclusion of antiandrogens, birth control doubles the recovery time women must endure between heavy weight training sessions (Savage), though it has no effect on recovery from endurance training (Thompson).  As if that were not enough, here is the coup de grace for worthwhile vaginal sex with serious lifters- birth control, no matter it's formulation, decreases free testosterone levels in women taking it by an average of 61%.  That means you're 61% worse at assimilating protein, creating fat-free mass, staying lean, and being an aggressive, world dominating, bad ass motherfucker.  Not only that, but as birth control reduces women's libidos and impairs their ability to orgasm, they're not even getting the testosterone boost or the dopamine and serotonin dump that comes with orgasm, they're even more likely to be frazzled, pissed off, and unready to train (Women's Health).

Hot until you realize that's your blood because you told her to "get her fucking head in the game" after she missed a lift.

Thus, not only does birth control virtually guarantee that chicks who take it are going to spend an extra 15 minutes a day picking out their workout attire because everything makes them look fat, but when they finally drag their asses into the gym they'll have less energy, and their pre-PR psyche-up will blow dogshit, no matter how hard their lifting partners try to pump them the fuck up, because they lack the necessary testosterone to harness the beautiful, white hot aggression that comes with high levels of testosterone.  

The great irony here is that vaginas are basically humongous vacuum-style testosterone receptors, and having a guy hose down their cervix with cum actually raises their testosterone levels significantly, which is part of the reason doing so is so pleasant for everyone involved.  Tragically, the only thing worse for your gainz are babies, so you really have to weigh your options before hopping on the good foot to do the bad thing.

Nuprin: A stack of B12 and Iron has almost always gotten me OK enough to train, along with plenty of water. 

Now that we've covered all that, all we have left is the dreaded shark week, which is pretty much a horrible time for everyone involved and for broads in particular.  Nuprin and I will make sure we arm you will of the knowledge we can in regards to managing and mastering training during shark week and why one should never, ever compete during shark week, if for no other reason than to keep you from resigning yourself or your girl to the red tent.  

Sources:
Abdallah RT, Simon JA.  Testosterone therapy in women: its role in the management of hypoactive sexual desire disorder.  Int J Impot Res. 2007 Sep-Oct;19(5):458-63. Epub 2007 Jun 21.

Barnhart KT, Freeman E, Grisso JA, Rader DJ, Sammel M, Kapoor S, Nestler JE.  The effect of dehydroepiandrosterone supplementation to symptomatic perimenopausal women on serum endocrine profiles, lipid parameters, and health-related quality of life.  J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1999 Nov;84(11):3896-902.

Cinar V, Polat Y, Baltaci AK, Mogulkoc R.  Effects of magnesium supplementation on testosterone levels of athletes and sedentary subjects at rest and after exhaustion.  Biol Trace Elem Res. 2011 Apr;140(1):18-23.

Davis SR, Davidson SL. Current perspectives on testosterone therapy in women. Menopausal Medicine. 2012;20:S1.

Davis SR, Tran J.  Testosterone influences libido and well being in women.  Trends Endocrinol Metab. 2001 Jan-Feb;12(1):33-7.

Dyett, Linda.  Should Women Consider Taking Testosterone?  Huffington Post.  30 Jul 2013.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/30/testosterone-women-hormone-therapy_n_3634847.html

5 suprising effects of the pill.  Women's Health.  Web.  30 Oct 2013.  http://healthyliving.msn.com/health-wellness/women/5-surprising-effects-of-the-pill-1#3 

Lucille, Holly.  Estrogen Dominance: Too Much of a Good Thing Can Certainly Be BAD!American Association of Naturopathic Physicians.  Web.  29 Oct 2013.  http://www.naturopathic.org/content.asp?admin=Y&contentid=401

Poliquin, Charles.  Top Ten Benefits of Zinc.  9 Feb 2012.  Web.  30 Oct 2013.  http://www.poliquingroup.com/ArticlesMultimedia/Articles/Article/812/Top_Ten_Benefits_of_Zinc.aspx

Ruzić L, Matković BR, Leko G.  Antiandrogens in hormonal contraception limit muscle strength gain in strength training: comparison study.  Croat Med J. 2003 Feb;44(1):65-8.

Savage KJ, Clarkson PM.  Oral contraceptive use and exercise-induced muscle damage and recovery.  Contraception. 2002 Jul;66(1):67-71.

Simpson, Jamie.  How to increase testosterone levels naturally in women.  Livestrong.  18 Aug 2009.  Web.  30 Oct 2013.  http://www.livestrong.com/article/21635-increase-testosterone-levels-naturally-women/

Thompson HS, Hyatt JP, De Souza MJ, Clarkson PM.  The effects of oral contraceptives on delayed onset muscle soreness following exercise.  Contraception. 1997 Aug;56(2):59-65.

Van Honk J, Tuiten A, Hermans E, Putman P, Koppeschaar H, Thijssen J, Verbaten R, van Doornen L.  A single administration of testosterone induces cardiac accelerative responses to angry faces in healthy young women.  Behav Neurosci. 2001 Feb;115(1):238-42.

Zimmerman Y, Eijkemans MJ, Coelingh Bennink HJ, Blankenstein MA, Fauser BC.  The effect of combined oral contraception on testosterone levels in healthy women: a systematic review and meta-analysis.  Hum Reprod Update. 2013 Sep 29. [Epub ahead of print]

Apparently, Vilhjalmur Stefansson Wasn't The Only One Who Could Keto Diet For A Full Year

Clearly, no one who's familiar with this blog could possibly be unfamiliar with the ketogenic diet, about which I've written extensively.  Though I've detailed it in all of its myriad forms and outlined my personal methods for its use in the Apex Predator Diet series, I've neither tried nor considered doing a traditional ketogenic diet.  My reasons for this are mostly logical and partly just a concession to the fact that eating nothing but meat gets fucking boring after a while, but in the end I'd never found enough evidence compelling enough to get me to consider trying a TKD any moreso than I would start taking TKD lessons at the local karate dojo in an effort to learn "self-defense".  That is, until now.  Meet Jamie Caporosso, a psychotic who gave up pizza for an entire year just because fuck pizza.  I'd been waiting for his follow up reply to post this badboy, but I'm awaiting input from a collaborator on another blog series and so I figured I'd just ppost this bitch so we can debate the shit amongst ourselves.

While I know a little about you from checking out your website, would you mind filling in my readers on who you are, critical stats, favorite porn star, and whatever else you think is pertinent?

My name is Jamie Caporosso, I have been a competitive Drug Free powerlifter for over 20 years. I have lifted both equipped and RAW. I have ranked pretty high equipped back in the day when Powerlifting USA used to post the top 100. I have also dabbled in some strongman competitions and recently started adding in CrossFit for conditioning. I have a BS in Clinical Laboratory Science, minor in biology from the University of Michigan. I run the blog Paleo for Power with my training partner Darilyn Doddy. Porn Star? I used to really like Chasey Lane back in the day. No real favorites now.

I had only heard of Chasey Lain from the Bloodhound Gang song "Ballad of Chasey Lain", but I'll go ahead and approve this message.  So, from what I gather from your site, you're at least somewhat affiliated with Crossfit, and one would assume from the name of your site you at least started out as a paleo diet advocate.  Upon closer inspection, it looks like you're a powerlifter who keto diets.  Did you start out going one way and switch midstream?

Yeah, As a matter of fact I am opening a Crossfit gym, PFPCrossfit, with my training partner Darilyn Doddy. I used to make fun of it. Then I tried it. I loved it. I found a bunch of new ways to push my self... not just get stronger. Now I had speed, flexibility, endurance, coordination, agility etc.

I started out with just standard paleo. Now I practice what I call keto-paleo, (book coming next year). I was actually very anti-paleo in the beginning as I was programmed by some very good marketing as well as being misinformed. I’ll try and Cliff's Notes this for you as to how I got started with paleo. It was around the time my daughter was born (She’ll be 6 Oct 26th, 2013).  I was taking a long hard look at my mortality. I wanted to be strong and healthy. In a yearly physical with my doctor, he looked at me and said you know there is a direct correlation between belly fat and heart disease. I was like "what?" He knew I was a big strong powerlifter. Why would he say that? I was really close to 250 lbs at 5'11".  Well, I made a decision to drop some weight. I started looking at bodybuilder diets. It made sense to me. That’s what they do. Lose fat. Why not utilize their knowledge?

They seem to know a thing or two about being lean.

In a conversation with a friend of mine he said that it sounded like my real goal was not only weight loss but more interested in optimal health. Yeah, OK, I am. If you want to perform at your best you should be as healthy as you can possibly be. Turned me on to a book called Neanderthin. As far as I know the first published book on the idea of a paleo diet or as I like to say now, “A Natural Human Diet” After that I read and read and read. Until one day I decided to lean into it. Weight continued to drop off but more importantly the healthy kicked in. My asthma went away, my arthritis went away, my blood work turned completely around and I got stronger.

Now for switching to keto was a byproduct of researching and realizing the biology these bodybuilders were doing to get lean. Didn’t make sense that they eat a huge ass sweet potato/or oats with a huge glycemic load (not glycemic index, they are different things) then spend two hours on a step mill to burn through the sugar to get to the fat burning. Then a post workout carb load??? With a slow digesting Carbohydrate? Why not a fasted one? So you can get your sugar and get your insulin back down instead of dragging it out for hours.

It just made more sense to go into nutritional ketosis, then use paleo criteria to avoid all the anti-nutrients, especially with the performance increase I read about in Phinney's book. I have a few posts on this on my blog. I could type all damn day on the subject. One of our most popular posts is “Stop Carb Loading! There's a better way!” I recommend that to everyone interested in nutritional ketosis.

I'm assuming Pauline Nordin has read Neanderthin.  Maybe not.  Thong.

You and I are pretty much the only two people on the planet who have actually read Neanderthin.  As I understand it, it's been out of print forever, but I would contend that it is pretty much THE seminal paleo book.  If you combine that with Cordain's academic work, every bit of information you need to know about why paleo dieting is the balls is right at your fingertips.  Unfortunately, most people (ATTENTION REDDITORS) either make up their own version of a paleo diet or read the watered down, for housewives only version.  It's not the original paleo book, by the way- a much shittier book preceded it, though the name escapes me at the moment.   Back to paleo, what would you say are the two or three must have paleo books?  Down to the meat, sans potatoes- you've been in ketosis for half a year, correct?  Take us through why you decided to try this, and why you're doing a traditional ketogenic diet in lieu of a cyclical ketogenic diet or a targeted ketogenic diet.  

I read a book by Dr. Stephen Phinney and Jeff Volek called. The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance. The book made a lot of sense to me. He mostly worked with endurance athlete but the biology seemed to be very applicable for strength training. He research has shown that unless you get a full 4-6 weeks of nutritional ketosis you truly don’t get keto adapted. You won’t reach the full benefit. He says it’s like kinda going to Hawaii but stopping partway- you end up drowning in the Pacific.

Not pictured:  an "athlete" with the same dietary requirements I have.

Seems like a bit more of a ketogenic dieting book than a paleo diet book, but that works.  I've posted four or five useful paleo books in the past, so that's just another to drop on top of the "to read" pile.  I didn't realize Phinney had written a book- I think every decent keto study I've ever cited had him as an author though.  I'll have to snag it when I grab this ridiculous Strength of Samson book I've been meaning to review.   Back to your comments, though, there are quite a few authors (all of them, I think) that contend that once one's adapted to a ketogenic diet, they enter ketosis far more quickly than 4-6 weeks.  This is why they always recommend an initial two weeks to a month of keto dieting and then keto runs of about a week.  I'm assuming Phinney's basing his recommendation on his work with testing cyclists on a ketogenic diet, but that seems to be too small a sample size to really base an entire dietary theory upon.  In any event, what does your typical macro breakdown look like?  I've seen the macros of your partner and they seem very low on protein and very high on fats.

Lots of fat, moderate protein, and low carbohydrates.  I’m usually around 165 grams of protein, 275g from fat, 20g from carbs.

If this fucking guy needs 35% protein, I damn sure do.

Jesus fuck, your macros in no way resemble my own.  165 g of protein?  Why so little?  Expand on how you arrived at this nutrient profile, if you would.  If you're curious about my horror at this, the basic way I structure my diet is double my bodyweight in grams of protein, then halve that for fat and keep my carbs under 30g a day.  That ends up not matching my total caloric intake exactly, but that's how I do it as a general rule.  In practice, I generally am 220-300g fat, 374-434 protein, and 20g of carbs or less which puts me at around 55% fat, 40% protein, and 5% fat.  You're rocking more like 20% protein, 75% fat, and 5% carbs with what appears to be tragically low levels of calories.  [Ed- he didn't respond to this, so I'll just fill you in on my thoughts here].  I'm not terribly clear on why this would be, because the highest fat diets in the paleo world are those of the Inuit, and even they eat at least 35% protein.  As such, that seems quizzically low.  

Nevertheless, I personally have not experimented with a traditional ketogenic diet much, save for a couple of months in college.  Instead, I've been following a cyclical ketogenic diet for the majority of the last 5 years, with brief breaks for sanity's sake.  How in the hell are you managing the tedium of a traditional ketogenic diet?  Aren't you bored fucking stiff with it? Additionally, I find that if I stay ketogenic too long that either my appetite disappears or it becomes unmanageable.  Have you encountered that at all?

 Eh, once you get over the fact that food is fuel and not entertainment it’s pretty easy. As soon as I hit that 6 week mark I feel like Superman. Energy high, recovery is fast, and I lean out quickly. Basically, I look and feel like an action figure.  When I hit that 6 month mark, all of my enzymes are supposed to be in full force and that’s when I noticed a big difference. I do plan on going off it in October as it's my birthday and we are taking a family trip to Disney. From now on though, I really think I’ll stay in ketosis from Jan 1st-Oct 31st just for the health and performance reasons. Halloween is my birthday and I'll probably just stay standard paleo until the holidays are over for convenience's sake.

So, there you have it- it is possible to keto diet for insanely long stretches without dying or losing all of your gainz.  In July, Jamie hit a PR bench at age forty, 25 weeks into his ketogenic experiment, and seemed to thrive off the diet.  I have my issues with the structure of his diet, but if nothing else this shows that there is more than one way to skin every cat.  If you want to get into contact with Jamie Caporosso, grab some keto/paleo recipes, or get step by step instructions on how to build shit like plyoboxes, check out his site Paleo for Power.

Crazier Than A Bag Of Fucking Angel Dust

"Crazier than that?" you say?  Ok, maybe not crazier than that, but still pretty fucking crazy.

Some months ago I realized that my bench press should be, though did not seem to be, the easiest of my lifts to improve in a hurry.  For the life of me, I could not figure out why I sucked at the bench- just that I did.  Part of my problem, it seemed, was the fact that I despise benching, and when I do multiple heavy sessions of bench every week the tendinitis in my elbows flares up and anything I do pressing-wise sucks for a while.  Additionally, it seemed that every single failure on bench press occurred in the bottom quarter of the lift, as is the case with most raw lifters.  It's rare you see a person fail at the lockout of the bench press, unless that person has pointedly neglected training their arms.  If that's the case, the prescription for fixing their bench should be handing someone nearby a tack hammer and having them beat the shitty bench with it about the face, neck, and head until they cease respiration, because they're too stupid to deserve to live.

An aside:  There seems to be a never-ending spate of people decrying "vanity" lifts as useless.  THIS JUST IN: Almost any time you lift a weight, it's useful.  The guys who focus on vanity lifts definitely out bench the pussies talking shit in the corner while "skwatting ATG, bro" with 135 lbs. like they're some sort of mythical gods of the weight room.  I'm not suggesting you should start squatting on a bosu ball, but for fuck's sake think before you start preaching bullshit on the internet like you're a modern day weightlifting Socrates.  I'm looking at you, endless stream of pussies decrying people curling in the squat rack in spite of the fact that half of you would fold up like wet origami under the bar if you tried to squat the weight being curled.

As I'm doing this wildly uncommon bit of introspection, one thing stood out at me- I needed to bench more.  Because I hate benching so much, however, and invariably end up doing naught but singles without a spotter, which simply exacerbates my elbow tendinitis and makes overhead pressing painful, I decided reps were the answer.  "But", I thought to myself, "I fucking despise doing reps.  Like, more than Hitler hated the Jews.  More than Pol Pot hated people who could read.  More than Stalin hated people without mustaches.  More than the Westboro Baptist church hates logic, dignity, and self-respect."  That left me in a bit of a pickle- either I was going to have to do something I hated with the passion of Lindsay Lohan's infested, fiery crotch, or I was going to have to find a different route.

Then, it occurred to me- I should do the dumbest fucking thing of which I could think for the bench.  Something so incomprehensible and inexplicable that I couldn't help being amused by it.  I started doing neutral grip barbell floor presses with chains.  Those were great, and helped with my explosion from around my sticking point, but I felt like I could get crazier.  I looked over at the bench and thought, what about a fat bar with chains?  I tried that, and enjoyed it- the fat bar kept my bar path perfect, because if you get your bar path wrong with a fat bar, that shit is going to roll out of your hands and either crush your pelvis or smash your face into a bloody pulp.  That got me driving the bar hard up in a straight line, rather than back toward the rack as I usually did.  Chains, however, are a tool for geared lifters with bulletproof bench shirts and less muscle than you'd see on your average twink.  They're not useful for raw lifters other than a monotony breaker, or in the event they feel like emulating Branch Warren and using them for dips (which I think is about as fucking retarded as the sound of deaf people arguing, but to each their own).



Thus, I looked for something else, and what I came up with was something I didn't know had been done before, but as it happens, there really is nothing new under the sun.  In an effort to make the bench press as absurd as possible and put the maximum amount of stress of my weak point (which is most raw lifters' weak point), I hung kettlebells off of the fat bar with resistance bands.  Frankly, I thought it was hilarious enough to continue doing, and then was informed that this idiocy actually has a name- Crazybells.

When I came to that realization, it occurred to me that this method of training was pure fucking genius.  Physiologically, bands adjust the force curve to make the lift much harder than it would normally be, plus they stress the dogshit out of your ligaments, tendons, and the entire cast of supporting muscles.  Basically, it'd be as if Mike Tyson had decided to take up Crossfit at the peak of his career and had his entire entourage take up MMA, forced overeating, steroids, and powerlifting, all in an effort to roll up a whole nation's army in a street fight.   The ability to handle much greater loads with far greater stability when you're using crazybells occurs because the load is increased to Oprah-in-winter-bulking-phase levels in the bottom position (where you leverages are the poorest), and decreased where you leverages are the best because of the rebound of the bands and bells from your drive skyward, even though the instability of the lift is vastly increased at the top so you end up looking like someone with Parkinson's trying to balance a clay pot on your hands in the middle of a hurricane.  In the end, your muscular activation is greatly increased throughout the lift (Kohler), but the potential for injury is reduced because the load is most unstable at your strongest point.

Adding to all of that massive goodness is my inclusion of the fat bar, which adds a lot of muscular tension in addition to training you to use the most efficient bar path.  The muscular tension addition occurs because of something Pavel Tsatsouline refers to as "irradiation":

"It seems preposterous to a bodybuilder that clenching your cheeks and bracing your abs will strengthen your grip, but that's the way your body works. What I teach is just the opposite of isolation. Isolation is impossible anyway. There is something called irradiation.

Whenever you intelligently contract other muscles — your glutes, your abs, your diaphragm, and if you're working the upper body, your grip — you automatically increase the intensity of the contraction of the target muscles" (Shugart)

The Exercise Itself
This isn't fucking brain surgery, people.  You loop the band through the kettle bell handle (and you can sub 25 lb plates if you don't have kettlebells), slide that fucker on the inside of the bar, and then put your plate weights on the outside if you're not suffering from brain damage or some mental disorder that causes you to spend an inordinate amount of time doing shit that's not lifting while they're in the gym.  Loading and unloading the bands every time you want to change plate weight is stupid.  From there, it's touch and go bench.  Do not pause.  If you pause, you obviate the entire point of the movement because you're not taking advantage of the extra weight provided by the stretch at the bottom.  Here's a video showing you Talia's first attempt at crazybells (which she now loves) and a couple of my heavier sets.  I think I ended up with about 325 in bar and kettlebell weight for three, which is maybe 25 lbs less than I could do at that point with a dead weight bar, to give you an idea of the loading protocols.



The way I structure my benching using these is thusly- I have one ultra-heavy day and one goofy day.

Ultra Heavy Day
Work up to a weight I can double for at least 5 sets, then carry on with singles until I have to dump the weight in the catches.  This means I'm benching for about an hour with 30-90 second rests.

Goofy Day
5-10 sets of 3-5 reps with as much weight as I can handle for 3-5 reps.  I stick with 30-90 second rests and just go until I can't.  Afterwards, I do a bunch of face pulls and rope pushdowns.

The key, as you can see in the video, is to fucking EXPLODE out of the bottom.  This is going to get rid of that nasty stall nearly everyone has at the bottom of their heavy benches.  Stick with these and they will bear fruit like no assistance work you've ever seen, ridiculous-looking  or otherwise.  I would imagine it bears saying, as I know that some of you are going to bemoan your lack of a fat bar, that you can get Fat Gripz.  You won't have the benefit of using a non-rotating dead bar, but you will get the irradiation effect.  Thus, they're worth the $35.

Now, quit your' bitching about your shitty bench and start benching like a goofball to get that shit poppin'.

Did someone order the thickness entree?

Source:
Kohler JM, Flanagan SP, Whiting WC.  Muscle activation patterns while lifting stable and unstable loads on stable and unstable surfaces.  J Strength Cond Res. 2010 Feb;24(2):313-21.

Shugart, Chris.  The Evil Russian Speaks: Part 1.  An Interview with Pavel Tsatsouline.  T-Nation.  5 Apr 2001.  Web.  22 Oct 2013.  http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_interviews/the_evil_russian_speaks_part_1

CHAOS AND PAIN's SUPPLEMENTS FINALLY LAUNCH!

After nearly a year of testing, groundwork, begging for money, getting fucked over by overzealous Christian printing companies, and fighting with every private label supplement manufacturer on the planet about dosing and ingredients, the products have finally see the light of day.  For those of you who've wanted to check out the blog at work and couldn't, I'll be reposting my shit, PG-13 style, on that site, and we'll have contributions from other authors as well.  Alex Viada (the guy who eviscerated Kiefer), Sin Leung, Talia Vandoren, Wayne Banks (my business partner), and Grimmtano (a buddy of mine who's pretty fucking funny) will all be posting shit there for your reading pleasure, and we'll be adding authors as we grow.  Right now, we've got our fat burner Cannibal Inferno on sale, plus all new shirt designs.  Cannibal Ferox, our brutal new preworkout, drops in two weeks.  

Click the images to check that shit out!