Month: September 2019

I’ve read before of a lightweight Irishman in the 1940s or 1950s who was tremendously strong.

Aside from Popeye forearms he didn’t look like much. Tall for his weight, skinny, didn’t look ripped either, a normal built light bloke.

He had a long period, the better part of a year, where all he did was train, eat, and sleep as he was capable through some life circumstance to live without an income.

(Training with the inheritance left by his mother? A flat and some cash. My recollection is hazy here. He may have moved onto his mother’s couch and spent his inheritance from another.)

He did little aside from pressing and pulling if my memory serves.
I can’t recall reading anything of him squatting, just the clean & press, bench, deadlift, and rack pull + axle stuff.

He’d alternate press day and pull days and do 100 singles. Yes you read that right, 100 singles, and they’d be in the 90% area of his 1rm.

It didn’t sound like he warmed up. Straight into heavy singles. Workouts would often take 4-6 hours, resting minutes between reps, he’d eat lightly before, maybe drink a little milk during, eat one feast immediately following, and then go to sleep.

A good clean and press, a good bench (surprisingly so what with his skinny build and long Bob Peoples length arms), past 3x bw deadlifting, it may have been around 4x bw, and the only picture I’d ever seen of the man was holding a stubby railroad axle, a super fat bar basically rack pull with a mixed grip and again over 3x bodyweight.

It came to an end, he was regularly sleeping 20 hours a day unable to eat and sleep enough combined with the long rest period 100 singles workouts each and every day.

(In what I’d read of him he stated he could really only train the 100 singles with long rests between reps, that he could only eat a meaningful amount after the days training was done, as the weight increased he found himself sleeping more and more, and when sleep was at a 20 hour requirement he didn’t have time to train fully without missing necessary eating or sleeping.)

My understanding is he basically quit lifting when income became necessary again, picking up a factory job to pay newly required rent and continued groceries.

A sad ending maybe, but the anecdote opened my eyes to what the human body is capable of when one truly pushes while basing their life around lifting heavy to the exclusion of all else.

He was sleeping on a living room couch through this, of this detail I am fully certain. I recall him speaking of this being a detail not in favor of his continued recuperation what with living rooms being an often trafficked and noisy area.

I must say he did quite well during this period of sleeping on a couch in someone else’s flat in an urban Irish slum.

Train your way. Make your gains…

-J

The human body is meant for movement. The higher activity you are the more calories you need, and the more effectively you use them.

It’s said the postworkout period is the most anabolic window in which to eat. One such period a day, or less, isn’t very much. If you earn your meal by doing some PT immediately before you eat you will have done a mini session creating an anabolic window with food logistically/readily available. Your body will be amped up, anabolic, and primed for growth all day.

The human body is that of an animal. We are not herbivores, but omnivores most positively influenced by eating fatty protein, dead cow, et al.

Your body needs red meat, instinctively you crave it, you did before the media and medical field told you of it’s evils and you still do.

Follow your instinct. Eat red meat daily.

The simplest dietary thing to implement is drinking raw egg milkshakes.

•3+ eggs
• ice cream for flavor
• milk/heavy cream to fill container

Drink one shake each and every day in place of less effective, more expensive whey.

Raw eggs, and barely cooked beef are what your body most effectively utilizes. Do not overcook!

Test these three things :

1. PT to earn every meal, snack, or liquid calorie.

2. Drink raw eggs daily.

3. Eat some red meat daily.

-J

Persistence & Tenacity

I once watched this strange amalgamation of reality show and documentary about the French Foreign Legion held at what had in a different era been a legion fort in North Africa.

On it a bunch of guys, the “recruits”/contestants were getting to play at the FFL boot camp “experience”
(without truly having “march or die” circumstances) complete with a former legionnaire Corporal-Chef playing the role of drill instructor to them.

This “instructor” made them do a set of 10 pullups before entering the chow hall each and every meal.

(Mocking and PTing those who couldn’t do all the pullups in one set with pushups to the point of puking as an alternative.)

Before you sit and eat do a small amount of PT, this is a great concept sure to amp your body up to more effectively use the calories you are about to consume, as well as provide the opportunity to prioritize a PT movement, or a certain bodypart.

(Frequency of activity to keep the body amped up is a topic for another time.)

I say earn your meals, that without preceding physical activity you don’t get to eat. This alone is a discipline capable of keeping fat asses from existing.

I myself have been doing pushups, generally a set a 25 or more, each and every time I stop and consume calories. Every time I consume calories really adds up, as not only am I doing this before meals, I’m also doing it before such things as drinking a glass of juice.

Note that this is about the only way I pay attention to post workout nutrition.

Persistence & Tenacity

Alternatively titled Pop-Tarts : For Post Workout Survival

(From the archives : written February 2019 about the SoCal experience of Fall 2018, published because I joined that gym a year ago.)

While going to the SoCal bodybuilding gym I often was running on empty. High stress levels, and to be honest my body was not enjoying the high temperatures of Californian year long summer fall when it expects New England in the 40s given the time of year.

I was on empty, and psychologically this either has me training the bare minimum, basically just going as begrudged habit, or the psycho switch flips and I train like a madman.

I trained like a madman there.

Psychologically it was only natural.

No warmups into 10 sets of presses, 10 sets of bent rows, some assistance, and tire flips in the sun was the norm.

I’d be haucking lugies into the trash to keep from puking by the first set of bent rows.

Tire flips in the sun were masochistic. I’d get into the high reps on the days the sun smiled upon my pale Irish self, but some days I’d be leaned over the railing haucking some more lugies, or better yet looking to the sky questioning why I’d pushed the point of wanting to die as I repeatedly dry heaved (a plus to running on empty).

You’ve never “gymed” unless you’ve had the thought “can I drive myself home without dying” seriously cross your mind.

So in self preservation you’d sit there, as shaded as possible, and maybe petting a dog tied up outside the place, for 15, 20, 30 minutes being looked at strangely as you sit there by bodybuilders and fitness chicks sipping nasty aas warm whey as they leave by the gaggle
before you decide the highway ≠ certain death, and proceed to freak out the desk staff by entering and exiting 5x to refill water bottles and drive home…

But wait!

As you’re in SoCal you do what is only rational…you don’t go straight home, but straight to the beach instead as :

Per Regulations :
Section G Subsection 8 :
“You are not truly living in California if you have not at least had beach sand inbetween your toes each and every day, and better still to have been fully submerged in the Pacific. Beach walks are mandated, though it does not truly count as a trip to the beach unless your entire body has been submerged in Pacific waters. Shoes belong in your car, maybe your hands, though not likely as who carries shoes, but most certainly not on your feet. Shirt is required to be in car as men walk shirtless so as to get more testosterone producing Vitamin D. If you’re wearing a shirt there’s a problem. The water is not cold. Go under! – Thus Spake Rationality”

I walked most days, and went in as per regulation the majority of that.
I never took my shirt or shoes down to the beach…regulations.

Now thus far Pop Tarts have not been mentioned, allow me to remedy this.

When you’ve likely had no more than a thin cheese sandwich and maybe a random cookie, trained like a maniac, been tormented by the sun as you flip the tire of everyone else’s nightmares, are required to go to the beach (shirt & shoes stay in car remember) to possibly feel dehydration and sunburn…

It makes sense to have an energy source that can stay with you at all times…

Hark! An amendment to the regulations!

(…Enter Pop Tarts…)

Per Regulations :
Section V Subsection 39 :

“Pop Tarts are to be eaten as an energy source of cheap cost, dubious nutritional value, and utmost seriousness towards survival of J. Tryeth to use good flavors, but wasteth not the nasty ones as both are still of dubious nutritional value, and are of the utmost seriousness towards the survival of J as he goes abouteth his day. Eateth a pack in the gym parking lot while you drinketh 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or more 16.9oz refilled water bottles if death by highway commute to beach seems imminent. If death by highway commute to beach is unlikely through fault of your own, as it’s fact that everyone there cannot drive which is outside of thy power to control, but death by heatstroke, or drowning seems likely drinketh thy last refilled 16.9oz of gym water fountain goodness encased in much worn plastic as ye eateth thy pack of Pop Tarts at beach parking. Understandeth ye? Pop Tarts : Good good sugar & Good cahbs.”

Having shoveled snow at 330am in New England it seemed fitting to reminisce about the weights, sun, & sand, of California.

Persistence & Tenacity

P.S. This article is serious in tone, I am not kidding about the necessity of poptarts to survival.