From the archive :
9/20/17 “Notes From Bill Kazmier Interview : Brute Strength Among Other Things”
I was listening to Kaz be interviewed by Josh Bryant, and a few things struck me.
On Event Practice And Brute Strength :
“When you’re strong enough you don’t need to prepare for any event”
The results of just training.
On Intensity :
Hard labor as a base.
Training til he uncontrollably shakes.
Moving reps fast, and taking little rest.
Piston reps on squat. No spot, outside the rack, do or die, stopping shy of lockout, piston style like bodybuilders often do.
On Eating :
Killing buffets, not eating in the proper windows, but massive amounts of protein. Straight up chicken genocide.
On Healing/Recovery/Meditation/Prayer :
He described running through entire workouts the night before.
Visualizing an army of doctors checking his body every night, healing him at warp speed, starting at toes, and ending with his head (very similar to my healing fire visualization, same concept different imagery), while breathing in with the good out with the bad.
Visualizing his body as hydrolics, purposefully trying to move weights as powerfully as possible.
Praying “God make me the best, and I will do your work”
On Layoffs :
Went from 280 to 210lbs, 6 months in Mexico, bench went from 5×5 @ 315 to 3×5 @315. My experience says you don’t lose strength, his is in agreement.
-J
(Since this is from the archives and I didn’t link in the writing two years ago it’s these two video interviews :
Part 1 :
Part 2 :
The Gaspari channel interview is a combined and shortened version of the two from Josh Bryant’s channel.)
Lately I’ve been breaking my volume of chin ups throughout the session.
I’ll do between 20 and 50 total reps, go hit shoulders, wrist curls, and then go back to hit another 20-50.
It’s a doble session, so I am getting more quality chins in, but here’s where the real value lays ;
Doing some challenging wrist curls before you do all your chins makes it far more useful for grip.
Chins aren’t terribly hard for grip, nor are the wrist curls, but by going back to back the level of difficulty goes way up. You’re now doing chins with prepumped forearms.
The combination puts beef on the wrist flexors, it’ll add some meat to your forearm measurement.
Outside of manual labor, and ridiculous amounts of axle pulling, this is the one of the best things I’ve found for the hands.
And another discovery ; one can take a handle usually used for cable flys or one arm rows, move the plastic to straighten the rope, choke up on it, and with the inspiration of either arm wrestling or sledgehammer levering use cables at the gym to train every angle of wrist levering possible.
Forearm work is both serious business, and highly enjoyable.
If you came to me wanting to get bigger, I could help you on that path.
What equipment you do or do not have access to wouldn’t matter in the slightest.
Without any equipment I’d have you doing massive quantities of calisthenics, particularly pushups and squats, and eating like a heavyweight.
Every extra piece of equipment simply makes the process more variable.
Without that equipment you’d be getting jacked as fuck like a pehlwani.
The growth = volume + food.
Where so many go wrong in the gym is trying to build atop of a lacking base.
Every beginner, especially a rank “I’ve never been physical but played nintendo” beginner type needs to be being physical with volume at least six days a week.
Of those minimum six weekly workouts, at least half are high rep calisthenics.
The barbell?
Touching a barbell for low reps is a privilege earned by getting good at high reps particularly with bodyweight first.
i.e. :
If you’re benching an empty bar with cringe worthy form you need to be doing things more basic and your trainer needs to be fired immediately.
I look back over the years and realize I’m always at my physical best be it at 185lbs or 265lbs when my training is high volume, high rep calisthenics with everything else as a cherry on top.
As a beginner to weights I squatted 7 or 8 x 300 weighing around 175 of off high rep walking lunges. This was my best pound for pound squat set ever around the 8rm rep range.
My strength always goes up the better I am at high rep calisthenics.
My pressing always moves up. Why? Because I do my pushups religiously.
Between all the chins and bridging I say olys and deadlifting ability is just a matter of specialization.
And honestly…
Anything I can do physically so can you.
If I have gifted genetics it’s not on the physical front…it’s on…
I sit with my back against the wall,
make a playlist of Wes Watson video(s) to listen, and set my phone down.
Having known for years that the brain is most open to ideas during/after physical exertion I’ve taken to meditating at the gym before showering up.
(The brain being most open to ideas during, and after physical exertion is the #1 reason every gym’s speaker system is garbage, as a “hardcore” gym blares suicidal bullshit, while commercial gyms blare effeminate shit. Blast strength into your head! Whether your own mantras in your own voice self recorded, powerful words, or powerful music.)
With most or all of the workout complete I do this, sitting mostly still for anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes, then before showering up doing my pushups, and maybe some more situps.
The purpose?
To listen, and check in.
I’ll get out of criss cross if my foot falls asleep, or I get stiff/uncomfortable, so far I’m not rigid about being perfectly still. And as I said 30 minutes or so later then I may stretch a bit and it’s into pushups.
This tends to amp me up though in a quiet way, I’ll often do more than the minimum amount of pushups with the practice.
I don’t really count pushup reps, I am counting as I do pushup reps, but it’s mainly a count of mantra repetitions.
I have a series of 15 mantras and another series of 4 mantras. A pushup set is minimally 19 or 23 reps (15+4 or 15+4+4 series) but often doubled to 38 or 46.
I’ve done mantra pushups for a while. I was doing them in SoCal last fall, and am fairly certain I’d been doing them for 1-3 months prior. It’s easily been 15-18 months, and while they’re not 100% of my pushups, they are the majority, often enough the large majority.
With physical exercise you can intertwine mental exercise, and spiritual growth.
As I age I’ve realized that a good deal of my increased size and strength is a natural progression of consistency over the years, and growing in age.
True physicality comes from year after year of physical work. This is how you come upon the concept of “man strength”.
My strength was less at 17 than 21, less at 21 than presently at 25, and I feel confident in saying less at 25 than as I age further. I see the same potential with increases in size.
I’ve seen enough to feel max strength increases well into middle age, likely beyond.
Work capacity, and volume however are more advantageous in and to youth.
This is youth’s advantage, single efforts being the advantage of increased physical maturity.
The work capacity and volume are easier for youth, it’s easier to build up high while younger.
A youth spent building a high volume and giant work capacity of physicality builds the strength base for high levels of brute strength in maturity.
This is the natural progression in human physicality.
Men are stronger than boys, men too are stronger than teens.
It’s the freaks that have extreme strength levels as youth, and they too will generally stagnate in max strength for years until the same maturation principle kicks in.
These realizations allow me to not worry over training details in the present. I know as long as I am physical that my strength will be higher years down the road.
Powerlifting is truly a sport for middle aged men. The advantageous base built for it by a youth of sports/athletics, a bodybuilding regime, and/or hard labor.
That lack of volume base is why it sickens me to see nintendo playing, never sport playing, middle aged rank beginners going straight to a soft accepting version of powerlifting.
They’re not going to develop meaningful levels of max strength without a base.
Base Building! First!
Higher reps and/or higher volume is building that base.
These concepts are why strongman and weightlifters most often are stronger than powerlifters. Huge base.
Heed my words, build a base first, and then years into the thing specialize in max strength. This is natural progression.
If everyone trusted their instincts as far as food choices are concerned, everyone would be healthy and well built.
I eat whatever I crave, and very little that I don’t.
Grocery shopping is something I do quite often, daily even, I buy small amounts of what I’m craving, and then go back for food a day or two later. There’s no telling if the craving will last for a day or weeks.
As long as it’s wholesome food eat it. I don’t worry about the number of calories, or the numbers of each macro. I just eat. 80% of the time or more it’s quality stuff. However even the “dirty” stuff, pizza, mozzarella sticks has nutritional value. There is no food stuff that I fear.
A mixed macro diet of wholesome ingredients, taking advantage of what is on God’s green earth is the way to eat.
There’s a cornucopia available…make use of it. No one is stopping you. We live in a historically unprecedented time where all that is good is readily available and affordable.
Your body will tell you what and how much it needs.
Dark chocolate and american cheese? So be it.
A bowl of pinto beans mixed with mac and cheese? Just fine.
Sausage and potato pan fried? Have at it.
Heavy cream instead of milk in your shake? Go ahead.
Ground beef, made into a pattie, barely cooked, mostly raw? Tasty.
Grape juice, to the tune of a half gallon daily? Yep.
Supplements, but without much consistency? Sure.
When I trust my instincts, eating wholly as I please I always grow bigger and stronger effortlessly.
Everything I want to eat, and nothing that I don’t. HOMEGROWN!
Eat the wholesome foods your body craves. Doing so creates a highly anabolic atmosphere.
Wes Watson is putting some great content out on YouTube.
I found this video’s advice to be solid :
So solid that I’d link and share my related thoughts.
This is pretty much the same statement I’ve made about refusing injury, refusing to get sore, etc in conversations face to face related to the gym.
Physical issues are a manifestation of mental weakness, idiocy, et al.
Not my opinion, it’s fact.
I do believe sicknesses mean you fucked up, and to a degree I view shit like cancer as punishment.
Breathe that shit away, choose not to have it. Wim Hof.
It’s simple, a mix of mindset and instinctively in tune with yourself.
Lethargy, low testosterone, low energy bullshit is a choice.
99.9% never push themselves far enough physically to learn how much brutish animalistic endurance they possess. They’re too busy worrying about overtraining to fucking push work capacity up to meaningful levels. Generally the dudes with the ability to work 12+ hour days back to back to back are not solely gym bros or laborers. Combine both, regardless of what you try to say the gym isn’t all that masculine of an environment, labor can be. Combine the two for the benefits of both. A gym dude will know how to make labor sustainable, which mostly boils down to a small amount of muscular balancing work, eating well, and not smoking weed+cigs/drinking/injecting h like a sizeable number of your freakishly strong but in pain coworkers.
I’ve never got hurt in the gym since I refuse to acknowledge the possibility. You may have that possibility, but I don’t. You might get hurt, but I won’t. I’m not weak like that. I don’t participate in that shit.
“I’m not weak like that. I don’t participate in that shit.” – this is roughly my quote said in 2016 to my lifting partner in his car, also roughly said in the video
If I start to think that my “recovery” is slowing down, I make that part of my brain shut up, and reavow to build so much work capacity that I’ll have athletic teen levels of recovery well into old age.
Though used before on the site, Barney’s philosophy is relevant to this one too.
I can handle infinite volume when I’m mentally into it. This can be enjoyment, anger, spite, a combination. Any mind state that has me willing to do it.
I find it ridiculous when people come up with 1001 excuses to physically suck. Nearly 100% of the time it annoys me to hear, only once, the exception to the rule as it were, this dude I nicknamed “weaksauce”, his weakness, high pitched voice, personality, and general appearance I found so amusingly comical I found it in me to enjoy interactions with him. I got to see the opposite mentality in it’s full lack of glory. His well built coworker that could only talk of possible injuries? I got sick it hearing his “gonna get hurt” bullshit.
You don’t need deadlifts, blasphemous words I know, but the truth nonetheless.
I’ve seen many a fret online over “how can I train my lower back with calisthenics, without deadlifts”, there seems to be a false opinion that the bridge isn’t enough for a strong lower back.
This belief couldn’t be more wrong.
The bridge is going to work your spinal erectors from top to bottom and back.
(I don’t know the numbering of the vertebrae off the top of my head, otherwise I’d have stated it that way.)
It’s of note that the best backs are developed with many many pullups.
Likely due to the fact pullups are a primal evolutionary exercise, they just build you better than similar.
You can use any grip you want, or as many as possible, just make sure you do them in high volume.
The chins need to be done 50 reps a few times a week at a bare minimum. Under this level you’re not going to see the high level of results you’re shooting for. Over this level? Go as high as you want to go.
I’ve learned how well high volume calisthenics will work for you, as recently as my dip odyssey.
Bridge for minutes weekly, really get in that time under tension, and do hundreds of chin ups.
The two combined will be all the back work you’d ever need.
