Month: January 2020

The cashier views me as a regular, I go often enough, and comments on my purchase.

“Right now I’m living on almost naught but red meat and grape juice.”

I’ve eaten a decent amount of ground beef and drank a whole lot of grape juice these past few months.

Animal fats and fruit sugar :

At 21 visiting family who had collected about 300lbs of apples from their yard, while feeding myself on chicken leg quarter, milk, tuna, and ramen they told me apples were fair game.

Meal one was tuna and ramen with milk, generally around 8am.

Meal two was chicken leg quarter and ramen with milk generally between 4pm and 9pm.

Around lunch time I’d eat a 2 or 3 apples, maybe a glass of milk, and possibly a protein bar in a flavor my uncle had bought in bulk, gotten sick of, and given the last dozen or so of to me.

Maybe 2 dinners a week I ate with my aunt and uncle, and rarely I’d spend a few bucks to throw some deli meat on the cheapest bread available while out.

I realized during this period that I functioned really well with fatty cuts of meat as the base with simple sugar from fruit as an energy source, eating grain in more of a supplementary capacity/in addition to role.

Years later I’m on the same principle with ground beef, grape juice, chicken thigh, and dairy.

I don’t think keto is how we are supposed to eat, nor do I think vegetarianism is, I’m not suggesting eating the standard american diet either.

I like approach eating with a more masculine lense than the gym, and clearly was strongly influenced by the biblical outlook on eating.

“Land of milk and honey” is clearly implying an abundance of good things.

I take this to be clean eating. I don’t vilify any natural foods.

My opinion is that God wants his children to participate in, and take advantage of the cornucopia he has made available.

Restrictive ways can have use, but healthiest and most sustainable is to have a mixed diet.

I have realized such things as grain being the food of slaves, cowards, women, and the womanly.

That’s not to say it’s without use.

You will grow larger eating grain in supplement to your meat. Heavy on meat and dairy, grain supplementary.

Media fear mongering on fat, cholesterol, meat is intended to keep you weak and unhealthy.

Anything pushed by the media I know is sickness, and therefore I go the opposite way.

I’ll eat as much meat, eggs, and full fat dairy as my body craves.

Likewise sugar implied to be unhealthy for you, I disregard.
I find that natural sugar from fruit, maple syrup, and honey is fine for the body, it’s the combination of processed man made vegetable “fats” and processed sugar that’s bad.

Natural fat?
Natural sugar?

Healthy sources, part of a mixed diet.

High fructose corn syrup? Vegetable oil? Not really.

Red meat and fruit sugar are both quite unprocessed. It doesn’t get better than that.

Persistence & Tenacity

I’d hangglided into what seemed like a costco or a walmart, probably walmart, an open roof garden section.

Rogue (well an unspecified analgulous company) was hosting an event in a front room, and the parking lot.

Events, open to the public, it was team entrys. The event being held over a few weekends.

I got there late. I entered by myself, not eligible for team prizes, but having just witnessed a clusterfuck of a team doing terribly on a push/pull/sled drag for laps event with what looked like an oversize red metallic fireman’s battering ram I went in anyway.

They told me I was ineligible for prizes, but any event records I set would stand.

Working as a mover, having moved pianos with less effort and with less guys than the clusterfuck performance I’d just witnessed I do that event…and solo smash the record of laps. The team members had been getting in each others way acting as brakes to the guys on the opposite side of the implement.

1 record to me.

Next log press, with this weird felt like soft material. A new equipment breakthrough! Bumper plates…but more like a beanbag. Only one per team could step up for this, and most barely got, or failed the opener which was about 120…lbs not kg.

I smoked it, weird balanced 135-150 stepping forward around lockout, got a good lift call anyway, then loaded it with all the plates they’d brought.

They called it 200 or 205. I cleaned it and smoked it perfectly strict, so fast it looked like a jerk.

The events host company big wig was angry at this. He stressed that the event is a 1rm event so that’s the record.

Trash talking him back I told him “what is this a mail order 165lb weight set, I could rep this all day, 1 rep event my ass”.

(I hadn’t even used a continental or a jerk, have maxed their equipment super strict.)

I recleaned it, and preceded to rep it overhead all day. 10 reps making eye contact with that big wig, debating whether to start cleaning in addition to the presses (1c+many p vs c+p+c+p indefinitely). I stayed pressing, then started the show, like a York exhibition, or the time a weightlifter stork posed his medal winning jerk.

I balance on each leg one at a time for a rep, hit an overhead squat, then an overhead left leg pistol squat. I go for a stroll pressing each step, stop at the other side of the area and started repping again.

Soon an insane dude that thought he was an orangutan was singing a song and I joined him in it (I’d have written the lyrics if I still recalled them, it was a Robin Hood like folk ballad mocking the bigwigs weakness), then offering him the bar to press for a few reps, which he did also going off the record scale, then I started pressing again.

The big wig in the booth was dumbfounded, his event was very different than he’d anticipated.

Amusing dream. A lot of pizza was eaten throughout it. It’s possible I was a teenage mutant ninja turtle without realizing it.

From the archive :
~Late 2018/Early 2019

I’m gonna tell a story, I’ll go back almost 3 years, my buddy and I were driving into the gym, talking training as per usual.

Though I’ve seen Pavel write about not needing warm ups, other than myself, I’ve never seen it in the gym in real life. Everyone has falsely bought into the warm up myth.

Somehow a minute or two from the parking lot he made a statement along the lines of “you can’t hit a good percentage of your max cold”.

I took it as a challenge, we’d been talking of how I’ll never be injured in the weight room, cause I simply don’t believe in the possibility, and I told him I’d hit 90%+ 1rm on the three powerlifts no warm ups back to back to back.

What I Hit Cold/1rm
Squat : 405/455
Bench : 285-295? axle/315
Deadlift : 495/495-515

The squat was outside the rack.
The bench was axle, I’m hazy on the weight. The pull was 5 plates, I remember having made my point going “what day is it again”, “shoulders”, and joining him.

My warm up is taking a shit, no joke. Life has me good to go, and truly I don’t believe in the possibility of getting hurt in the weight room.

1 :

Don’t suck. If you don’t mentally suck your self talk will keep you safe. Don’t consider injury as a possibility. Don’t be a mental weakling who falls into belief in overtraining, shit recovery, possessing a religious belief in being injury prone.

2 :

Don’t be stupid. I liken the body’s warning as a red alert siren going off on my head. When I see/hear the alarm I STOP. I’ve quit some deadlifts over the years due to this, some that even looked good to observers. In the end your health is on you, don’t be stupid.

3 :

A story I tell so people can mentally write me off as having freakish genetics, because people really need this as an excuse :

On my grandma’s 64th birthday my father asked her if she can still do splits…

She looked at him went “one minute, let me see”, did that stretch where you grab the foot behind you, right, left, boom, bam, held onto either a chair or the table, down she went into front-back splits. “Yeah, I can still do the splits”.
From question to physical proof to standing, under 15 seconds.

(Related : An older cousin? of her’s who I’d assume was Army Airborne in WW2 taught my grandma and her siblings how to safely jump off of progressively higher parts of the house as well. While this may sound crazy my grandpa (her eventual husband) and great uncle would go into the woods with an axe and treat trees as their personal carnival ride, one climbing, the other hacking, taking turns riding the chopped tree down. So maybe the risky height stuff in youth was normal for the time period. Only once did my great uncle freak out thinking my grandfather dead, who awoke confused as to why his older brother was pacing and ranting.)

I simply don’t believe in the possibility of injury. It’s the superior mindset to bring to the table. I guess a childhood of sports, having a laborer father, and an apparent PT stud Grandma (plus death defying Grandpa) seeped it into my brain.

Someday I’ll be able to hit Bulgarian again, and the progress will be insane…ly good.

I don’t have a gym right now. I’m barely training. Half of my meals are technically vegetarian.
I’m still writing here, and still doing my pushups. Fuck the gym industry, I’m not dead yet.

I have the best genetics.

Persistence & Tenacity

Muscular bulk isn’t hard to come by.

A long period of force feeding and consistent training will take an ectomorph to endomorph and then from there to mesomorph.

If bodyweight was hard to gain there wouldn’t be so much blubber in sight every time you go to a damn walmart.

Where somatotyping is wrong is the general thought that type can’t change via stimuli or lifestyle. It can, and hybrid types do exist.

The difference between 300lbs of fat fuck and 275lbs of lineman/linebacker hybrid is training, protein intake, and actual nutrition in the calories.

It’s not hard to be big. You get to eat copious quantities of foods you crave, then down some dirty sugar calories to keep the caloric intake high.

Fat fucks manage to weigh scale = fatass. You’re telling me with training and eating big with actual nutritious calories you can’t get to similar poundages?

Look to sumo.
Look to sumo.
Look to sumo.

I say this all the time. Two giant feedings a day, some muscular usage…you’ll be big and strong.

To the so called “hardgainer” ; get out of your head and just do the work. Do the work, the required consistency is a process of years. Train for 5 years, big calories, lots of volume you’re gonna carry loads of muscle on your frame. Train for 10 years, big calories, even more so.

16 year old me wouldn’t believe it, the process isn’t truly difficult.

Persistence & Tenacity

It took me a few hours upon waking to realize this hadn’t happened, it felt real.

I was at the gym, and a couple people didn’t believe I could do handstand pushups.

Standing around was this dude into calisthenics, and a few chicks. Someone I don’t know had to have made the “he can’t ___” comment.

I walked over to the wall kicked over and hit it.

1,2,3,4,5 “I’m at a PR, this is easy I’m hitting 10”

…10,11,12 I realize I’ve got a lot more in me.

20…25 in, I’m almost not believing this myself. “From 4 to 25 like that? The hell?”

Between 25 and 35 I almost lost balance nearly falling seeing the look of disbelief on this tall blonde watching with her looking upside down (as I’m inverted).

I start to get nauseous tasting acid burps of what I’d guess was pepperoni pizza as I’m still upside down.

36-38 my range of motion is a little shy.

I hit 50 basically doing singles from 35 onward. There’s peanut gallery about a few “no rep” reps.

The peanut gallery is still squawking. That tall blonde is still upside down which I find hilarious looking up at my own crotch and the funny look on her upside down face in the same line of sight.

I mentally decide to go ham, fuck range of motion, and get to 75, 80 real quick. I continue repping.

Soon I get bored, drop down, stand up, brush off my hands, make eye contact and nod saying “What’s up! How’d you like that for range of motion”.

I walk away giggling inwardly to myself about the show I’d just put on, and wondering what the hell I’d done that allowed me to not only do good handstand pushups, but good handstand pushups for around triple digit reps, with easily 75+ being done strict.

In that dream universe I’m scary ass strong. Thing is though, every gym dream I’ve had is within the realm of possibility. They’re often not nightmare, but darker, and tend to hype me up.

Triple digit calisthenic reps in a set are possible. Not only have I done it with pushups, but I’ve done it with dips as well.

Persistence & Tenacity

The other day I went to the gym without headphones…purposefully.

You know what?

I preferred it.

It’s one less thing to charge, keep track of, no sweat pool around my ears, but these aren’t the real benefit.

It had been awhile since I’ve done this. I decided I wasn’t going to be bothered by the pop radio, and wasn’t. Mostly I didn’t even notice it missing. A few times my ears peaked up, and I found myself enjoying “california girls” reminiscing. Almost in disbelief that I was enjoying working out in planet fitness to Katy Perry.

My neighbor was in disbelief that I go to pf. A buddy had thought I was pulling his leg, only to months later see my card and realize that I had been serious.

I left my phone in the locker, just as I’d done at the SoCal bodybuilding gym. The gym is better this way.

Without the phones watch functions I don’t know exactly how long my wrestler’s bridge holds were. It’s freeing in a way, to not have exacts in your workouts. To lose count and just go.

Our society is very lonesome, aside from cashiers/front desk/etc people don’t interact much in public, it’s depressing really – as opposed to what my grandfather and my impression of his generation did. Everywhere I went with him he always would have friendly conversations with those around him.

I did notice a lot of surprised looks, I figured these to be surprise at my being without headphones…the only one without headphones.

Naturally I was a bit more outgoing as I had no artificial barrier over my ears taking my attention away from the world in which I’m living.

I’m not even going to frame going to the gym without headphones as a challenge. Going without headphones is natural, you don’t pop out of the womb with earbuds in. I’m going to go this for awhile. It’s better to live in the world without distraction.

Persistence & Tenacity

What people don’t realize when in that “hardcore lifter” mindset is how destructive it can be.

You should never be injuring yourself with weight training.
If a joint is buggy don’t aggravate it more. Let it heal, no lift is worth otherwise.

I had wanted to say I did horse stance every day this year, but January 15th my knee was buggy, and knowing that horse stance can on a low level contribute to this I switched it up to a different static that still hits the legs, but doesn’t bug my knee.

(Wrestlers bridges if you were wondering. They are full body. I’ll still be contracting my legs/glutes in static postures daily, just not horse stance every day. Warrior pose always feels good.)

Just like in November 2017 I stopped hindu squats daily and switched it to the broad category of leg/glute, keeping the streak alive mostly with a muscularly engaged warrior pose.

Weight training as intended is something to build yourself up with. A little known historical fact ; 3×10 was invented to rehabilitate injured WW2 veterans, burn victims as I recall.

You should never be breaking yourself down in the weight room.

Help, not a hindrance to your life.
The opposite? You’re better off not lifting.

If something bugs a joint…don’t do it OBVIOUSLY. Always train effectively which means injury free.

You want longevity.

Don’t do stupid shit that hurts you, instead be the guy 50+ still training…cause he built strength without injuring himself.

Longevity > “Hardcore”

This view is the truly hardcore of the two. Unnecessary physical pain/hurt/injury/etc is stupidity, nothing more, nothing less.

Use common sense.

Persistence & Tenacity

Every choice you make, every action you take is the first step in forming habits.

My preference is to train asap daily, immediately after work when I have a shift, within an hour or two of waking on days when I don’t.

I like training after a day of effort, I like training fasted on days off, it’s just how I roll.

I’ve never been one to try and coddle the circumstances leading to the gym. I’ve found less is more preworkout, no food, no stimulants, even kinda fatigued/tired. Just hyped up on life.

Water only. Hydration matters, though the occasional training thirsty recalls a primal power that most never experience.

My preference is to train asap daily, immediately after work when I have a shift, within an hour or two of waking on days when I don’t.

It’s not trying to get it done in the sense most think, I legitimately love my gym time, it’s simply keeping the habit strong.

I’ve had a friend from the gym tell me my lifting is addictive behavior.
In the same thought he said that it’s not necessarily a bad addiction to have.

It goes back to the formation of habits.

Aside from a day off when I’m truly tired (it can happen is when you’re working labor with a part time jobs worth of gym hours on top of it), when I take a day off that little voice of bitch ass weakness is there saying such malarkey as “I’m too tired”, “I feel low energy”, “take another day off”, etc.

The only time I’m not high frequency was during a real dark mentally burnt out and depressed period, and even then I’m usually still high frequency.

There were many times the gym was my only enjoyment of the day (which is no way to live meatheads), with lowness coming back while showering up.

So it boils down to this ; I’m gonna train regardless.

It gives me something positive every single day.

Usually done in the kitchen, I’m on my face, my pushups are getting done daily.

You need good positive habits. This is what I was preaching to my buddy in Cali as we walked that night summer 2012 advising him to start nightly pushups to create a victory for himself daily.

I pray he’s still pushing himself up when the worlds got him down.

I know the daily habit has helped me.

Form for yourself good habits.
That’s why I train 365, that’s why I train daily.

Weakness is everywhere ; as men we can’t be part of it.

Until tomorrow,

Persistence & Tenacity

From The Archive :
6/3/18

High rep side bends, I have the ability to do them heavier and for higher reps than most, doing so in a nonchalant manner.

Now the question of what came first comes here:

Did I have mad oblique strength from the occasional ab work, or from the beltless compound lifts?

I lean towards it coming from the compounds, but really the side effect of hypertrophying up my core does come from both.

The thickness of my core is what causes the crazy strength and stability and the thickness is caused by my beltless compounds, partials, overhead work, and the aforementioned high rep heavy side bends.

Farmers Handles : “Can I hit 95lb x 25 a side”, yep.

One of the first times I loaded them up was with a former D1 linebacker lifting partner. He topped out at around a 75 dumbbell and was flabbergasted that I matched him in reps every set using the 100.

“Man, aren’t you going to start lighter? There’s no way you can use the 100.”

6×10-15 later he had this shocked look on his face.

By never using a belt and not caring for aesthetics ie a waifish waist I inadvertently got my core very thick and very strong.

Incidentally I found I can do ugly standing ab wheel rollouts now, inspired to try having seen some likely hockey player (aside : I later found out he plays professional hockey in Europe) do 4 or 5 sets of 3 a few days ago. Inspired to try via seeing someone either do them or fail to do them being the manner I found out I can do one arm pushups one night after my buddy has a visible light bulb go off over his head and preceded to bang his nose off the floor.

Commercial gym, ~5 years back, there was this guy who did nothing but yoga, slow deep dips, and a super slow clean and press with the empty barbell touching it to his feet at the bottom, and easily taking 30-45 seconds to lock out the press before reversing at similar speed.

Fast forward about 3½ years…

I was hanging out with my buddy, we were in the back yard, and instead of going to the gym like my usual, I broke out the barbell and we pulled in the yard.

I was doing super slow reps with 225, going as “fast” as 10 seconds up, 10 seconds down to as slow as 30/30. He didn’t buy that I was honestly putting in effort, he thought I hamming it up, until we dropped the weight and had him attempt.

Fast forward a few years…

Time : Recently

I’m laughing at myself. Doing dumbbell deadlifts with a pair of 35s, I can’t help but laugh noticing the college age chick near me is pressing 25s, and thinking how about a week ago I saw this super petite college chick wearing straps for her dumbbell deadlifts with either the 30s or 35s.

I’ve regressed to using girl weights, something I remember joking about in person to a fit asian all those years back (place of the first anecdote as I was on the down half of a pyramid on cable rows) , but in reality…I’ve progressed.

If you can’t go heavy an easy way to increase the difficulty is slow it down, slow your rep speed down.

The dumbbell deadlifts, technically rdls, with 35s the other day were mostly sets of 20, and the negative I was countng 1-10 (probably 6-8 seconds) from lockout back to knee, before violently thrusting to lockout, some of the time with a pause at the bottom.

Making reps super slow gets it to a place kinda analgulous to static postures.

Usually only a more advanced trainer has a solid mind-muscle connection, but super slow reps are going to be like isometrics in teaching you how to fire the musculature pronto.

While moving it is on the isometric scale of physical effort.

My training at current between the combination of super high reps, normal high reps (10-20 per set), slow reps, and high volume is resulting in lots of time under tension.

Time under tension is the truest key to physical strength.

I can see the Sandow recommendation of light bells being done on the assumption that you’re going to go all out with them between reps past 100 and speed slowed down.

I see myself muscling up right now with the super high reps and the super slow rep speeds (both, and/or, it depends on the exercise). I have this hilarious vision of being the strongest presser you know just boggling people’s minds getting lots out of the 10lb or 15lb dumbbells for one arm military pressing as the small fit chicks are pressing the 25s.

You can get a lot out of a little.

Relatedly dig into anecdotes of how top bodybuilders truly train…you’ll find a lot of screaming with ridiculous intensity, and…tiny weights.

It’s more the rule than the exception.

Food for thought.

Train hard. Eat well.

You’ll be good.

Persistence & Tenacity