A Place For My Thoughts On Lifting Y'All
This month I started doing videos I called the “Persistence & Tenacity Podcast?” speaking but not on camera, something more easily done for me logistically at the “office” (aka my car).
Talking About Dips :
Inspired by a grand workout as I drove home, a high tech recording from the parking lot with superb quality editing.
Muscular Bulk Isn’t Hard To Come By :
I had a bunch of posts which I wanted to voice over. I started here.
Only two this month.
Persistence & Tenacity
How could you get everyone to do 50+ sets, all for high reps, full body (or nearly so) workouts daily?
It’s an interesting question, one with the potential to make old school bodybuilders out of the general population.
Old school bodybuilders were doing that, and now the only people really getting that kind of volume are outside the the gym working as laborers.
Laborers who also go to the gym are guaranteed to be physical specimens.
Eventually lean while muscled to the degree their genetics naturally guide them towards while being stronger than everyone you know.
I intend to always work labor to a degree, the high level of physicality is highly beneficial, spilling over into many areas of life, not just the physical.
I see myself being rich, and keeping woodlands solely to use as my own personal lumberjacking arena. Selling the cords of firewood as an afterthought.
I see myself as owner of a moving company, part of a diverse portfolio, and pulling occasional shifts (say Saturdays) as a laborer (probably undercover boss style).
Neither is for the money, they’re for the activity.
Outside of occupational labor where do you get such high levels of physicality?
It’s not in the gym, or is it?
I’ve come up with an answer…
For years I’ve joked as an eccentric rich man I’ll pay people as training partners. Want an on time guy… who’s going to follow your split, especially if it’s chaotic and whimsical like mine?
Make him an employee, and when monied enough have him live on the premises 24/7 (or even better nextdoor), like a training camp. On call 24/7. “Wake up, let’s go powerclean! 215am, time to start the day!”
But this isn’t the idea sparking this article, this is :
•Be a personal trainer.
•Work in with all your clients.
Fill your day with 8-12 hours of clients Monday through Saturday, and match every one set for set.
Train them with your philosophies, and be happier than a rather rotund german child circa 1880 with free reign in a candy store as you’re now getting paid to workout all day long while helping to build superior physical specimens.
While you’re at it eat lots of red meat, dairy, and the carbs you stomach best.
(Likely based on ethnicity, Irish eat potatoes, Asians eat rice. You can eat corn too. I say to limit wheat intake, I’ll have 1 pack of ramen each day as the carb base under my burger.)
You can do your high reps in a number of manners, light weight slow and controlled, medium weight at normal speed, as heavy as possible at the rep range, as many reps as possible, one set, multiple sets, it’s all good, use them all, I didn’t even list them all.
I read this years ago. I can’t find it for the life of me, so I’m summarizing and throwing it up :
Egypt a long time ago was a premier weightlifting nation.
Someone, American or European visited the Cairo training facilities and was invited along on an “off day” to see the non gym work.
The team packed up plates and bent barbells, traveled to a field of sand with dimensions the size of a soccer field…
Here a timer was set and during it you snatched the bar, throwing it backwards, literally throwing/releasing the bar, walked up to it, and kept doing it. Down and back. Simple…but for an hour plus.
The author realized two keys to the at the time Egyptian world records :
1. They trained to throw the bar fully.
2. They did a hell of a lot of work on the “off” days, making the gym training easy.
The first throws were max power as they were fresh and not braking it’s speed at all via snatch throws.
By continuing a reserve of power endurance was built along with a hell of a lot of work capacity.
I can see great value to this method.
While you may not be able to use a barbell, you could emulate the highland games weight for height, you could go to the beach or find a sandlot or abandoned grass field, a med ball could work, as could some form of sandbag. Rocks will do, a kettlebell, shot, even an old tire.
There’s a lot of ways this can be used.
1/9/20
I ran into a dude that I hadn’t seen in 5 years, from way back at the old commercial gym, at pf today.
He’d muscled up in the interim, and was saying that he’d actually lost some gains having been into heavy lifting for a time.
He was talking about feeling limited by the 75s when doing chest.
I just wrote about this, cosmic coincidence, getting to share this in real life.
(A coworker had also randomly went to pf with an old buddy the day before as well.)
I shared with him one of the things I did to make pf more challenging…
“Have you ever done one arm presses?”
“No.”
“Okay then, try this. Take an adjustable bench, and a dumbbell, do the first set standing, the next set at the highest incline, then each set drop a notch with the last set flat. Repeat on the other side.”
“Sounds good, sounds like it will allow me to get more out of the 75s”
You could extend that even more going to floor press at the end.
I’ve enjoyed on flat bench taking a bell (usually the 50lb) and with one arm going many angles not on the raised bench plane, but on the horizon in relation to the shoulder.
The “gironda one arm dumbbell bench” is a blast, something I feel would’ve been useful when I was putting the shot back in high school.
There’s always a way to get more out of what’s available.
Persistence & Tenacity
Archive :
Date withheld
400 pushups is a reasonable amount, yet can be done easily enough in a short period of time.
While one can do this solitary, a buddy with you allows the I go you go format.
Its way more fun that way. You try to pushup your buddy into the ground.
There’s the 1-20-1 pyramid format, or you could go 20×20.
Either or, and to make it full body I’ve done the same 1-20-1 pyramid back to back with both pushups and hindu squats, because I can.
On the note of hindu squats, I had a period where I always did 100 reps every day regardless of what other activities I’d done. This helped my ability to recover day to day tremendously.
(Also 2015 in LA I was matching the 1000 weekly pushups with hindu squats…I got strong, an animalistic athletic strong. The two aforementioned movements, headstands, and handstands under the midday sun on a small patch of grass.)
By myself presently I’m doing 100+ pushups every day. It’s mad easy to achieve. Naturally I’m dropping about 8x a day throughout the day, usually about 30 reps a set. While it builds you up, mentally you don’t even notice doing it. Volume isn’t hard to get in.
Back when American weightlifting was competitive their numbers were not far from the best numbers today, and were done on less whippy bars, without bumper plates.
They had to be strong, and just like today…they didn’t come up in a Soviet or ChiCom style athletic system.
Schemansky worked jobs and trained after work.
They were true amatuers.
A truly strong amateur wouldn’t need Bulgarian type hours in the gym.
Brutally strong with good enough technique used to work. It still can. It still does.
Strong pressing, despite the press not having been competed in since 1972 could be the strength that American weightlifting needs.
Brutal strength in a system that works for you, not attempting to simulate another country’s system.
Who was America’s last weightlifting medalist? Martinez?
(A guy who’s form was atrocious, backed by brutal strength. And yes I know, there were no Soviets there.)
You’re not going to get strong dropping life for weightlifting, our entire history of world class weightlifters all were working jobs, training around them, including the York Barbell lifters.
What if…you mentally viewed yourself as capable…and in the perfect circumstances already.
(Not wishing to be at an otc simulating Bulgaria.)
When I was at barbell gyms I’d learned that stomping before unracking a heavy squat gives some more “oomph” to the rep, it primes the nervous system allowing for a little more power output.
I was working on handstand pushups, doing sets of ten partial reps as I’d failed to do a head to floor rep on the first attempt.
I’ll talk about this principle another time, but I decided to put on a show as there was a chick with an awesome ass near me…girl powered, and the day before did better on sets smashing my palm into the floor two to three times before kicking over, the same practice as stomping before a squat.
That palm smashing allowed a good rep, head to floor.
Little tricks that allow for better performance.
1/18/20
I’m talking with a new coworker, a tall middleweight, he’s also into the gym, and also used to wrestle. We’re talking about physical strength as we empty out a bedroom.
At work there’s a pair of brothers. 29yo and 25yo, their frames/bone structure are very similar, but there’s a 40lb difference, 150-155lbs vs about 195lbs at ~5’8″.
Both have freakish strength at work. The build difference is in that the older brother has been going to the gym alongside labor all along. The younger brother at 150/155 is the strongest dude you will ever find at picking up and carrying weird shit.
See both brothers have been movers since being wee lads. Moving labor is basically walking with the upper body, the back/biceps/forearms, being in some state of isometric contraction.
Long enough shifts, and long enough hours and you’re hitting 1000x more time under tension than any gym lifting.
It builds freakish strength. It’s isometrics. Isometrics build freakish strength.
Talking with the new coworker I was saying how certain shifts have me wishing that I’d done this work before I wrestled. Certain positions, sustained, will build killer mat strength.
You can just feel the right items carried translating over to the pudgy ref warning you not to injure your opponent with violent snapdowns.
Gym training for me hadn’t carried over to the mat so much, nor does it carry over to the job much aside from the big ass items (pianos, gunsafes, safes) which equate more closely to gym style max lifts, at least in the strongman sense since we still have that isometric hold, then carry component.
Big dudes won’t move as quickly with small items. Small dudes may not be able to pick the giant items.
The dude hadn’t known the term isometrics by name, but you saw the light bulb turn on over his head after I’d defined it some, and said “isometrics are where you build freakish strength, that doesn’t necessarily show” (on the build).
A plastic tote I carried to the truck, with my left t-rex arm barely grasping the far end pumped my back analogous to how it felt when attempting a snapdown on my resisting practice partner who saw it coming. Wrestling daily with someone, we both knew what the other would do. Other schools? Nah, they didn’t see what other coaches thought was primarily a judoka or greco guy coming.
Do a bunch of isometrics. The real world strength it builds gets you to a freakish level.
Simulating a deadlift with isometrics was the most effective training I ever did.
My total went up without any lifting.
And work as a mover has only done good things physically.
The majority of gains is mental.
Therefore a good deal of gains is a lack of bad mental stress, just as positive thoughts play huge roles.
The mind is key, so much so that it’s nearly unbelievable.
Your mental space, what you tell yourself, and what you hold to be true are far more anabolic than any diet scheme, training program, or even anabolic steroid.
Stressing a lack of gains causes a negative feedback loop where you don’t make gains. That’s the problem for 99% online and at gyms identifying as lifters. They’re stressing shit that they don’t need to be stressing. Book knowledge will tell them to, reality is they don’t need to be one bit.
Take gains for a given. In the opposite way, positive feedback loop, and it’s so.
You can think your way to every helpful, healthy, positive chemical release…from a dopamine dump to testosterone production into overdrive.
Don’t underestimate thinking well!
You’ll get this concept when you get it. Work takes as long as it takes, your preparation period is/was as long as it need be.
Feed yourself thoughts of what you can do, where you are, with what you have.
I’m strong as fuck, and as far as equipment I don’t need nothing.
I don’t need a barbell, I’ve got a dip bar, and a piece of wall to kick over against. And I don’t need even that.
Zero equipment, I’ll make more gains than everyone.
Any equipment more than zero is just extra credit opportunity.
The gains lay in your head. It’s never been any different.
Think well.
Gains are ripe for the taking.
Persistence & Tenacity
I’ve been having a lot of these lately.
In the dream I had just gotten a job at a grocery store which seemed to be staffed fully with girls I either knew from high school or recognize from the gym…me obviously as an exception to this.
(It was both horrible and awesome to be the only man on staff.)
It was near the end of shift, near closing, and in boredom and to piss off the “manager” (a chick I was friendly with 6-9th grade, a softball player) I started doing pullups, knees bent, off the overhang where they keep the broccoli and shit that inexplicably is watered though already picked and therefore dead, without the need of watering.
10 in “huh, I didn’t expect this”
20 in “is this reality”, scratch the realization that this may be a lucid dream, and I go wide grip to…
30 in I’m getting screamed at for being in the way of a customer (and for doing pullups off the overhang) I hand walk down the overhang to the cheese section. Getting out of the way, but disregarding being told to get down (lucid dream, I have control at this point). 30-40 I go super narrow grip, hands touching.
40 in, out of the kindness of my heart I hand walk out of the way of the cheese for a little old lady buying the exact cheese I stuff into the center of my burgers…a purchase I approve of. I go 40-50 wide grip. I drop at 50 dumbfounded that I’d just done 50 pullups, in the dream seeming to know I’m in a dream, and thinking “50 pullups it can be achieved”.
“You’ve finally stopped exercising, go take out the trash (a giant drum of meat scraps and liquid fat)”
I’d already done this. The shift was ended having a three way with some tattooed gym chick and some chick I recognize but can’t place.
After I’d gotten off, I got off.
(As I was in a lucid dream I wrote the three way in out of nowhere. It surprises me that it was with 6.5s, not 8s.)
Not mentioned are the parts of the dream where I was stabbed at a swimming pool while carrying a kayak (in the following fight the dude was clearly in a psychotic break, and seemingly would not die), riding a recommissioned school bus through rural Ohio driven by the guy in that viral sinkhole video, possibly being the deer being hunted through a marsh…a marsh with vampires, moving into the cheapest apartment in Memphis TN projects, and all the other weirdness that entailed that dream (more accurately the night’s dreams, as some were before and some after waking up to piss) other than the workout part.