Month: May 2020

Into Old Age With Power

Riding by in the passenger seat of the pickup, an old timer is mowing his lawn, and it looks like a struggle.

Thin, frail legs, the right leg being stiff, it gets thrown out in a semi circle, no bend with each step, then dragged behind, until repeated.

How many old timers I’ve seen unable to stand effectively under their own power.

If you’re limping when you get up from a commute in a car seat, or when you arise from the television vegetable state…that’s never going to get better on it’s own.

Watching the aging process can be a ____ thing when the examples haven’t taken care of themselves.

It’s one thing if you’re limping from a leg blown off in battle, or sutured in a wreck, but if it’s due to negligence it is entirely preventable.

Limping, difficult and pained gaits, trouble standing, these symptoms never just improve when you hope to maintain.

If you don’t have these things happening to you, it make sense to regularly run the gamut of bodyweight leg exercises so as to never be afflicted.

If you have the symptoms it’s only self harm to struggle with it, but not changing your lifestyle.

You need to actively train to strengthen and loosen some things.

It’s a weak mindset that views this shit in old age as an inevitability.

Though for most it is guaranteed…if they just do what they’re doing.

Never training, being of an unhealthy weight (over/under), living a lifetime on a primarily grain diet, seated far too much – they’ll do it.

You have to swear thosr symptoms are not how you will become, and if you have them not how you will stay.

As a senior citizen, I’d rather exhaust myself daily to maintain normal locomotion, than accept hindered living and the mannerisms of a couch potato.

If standing is difficult, rig up something to sit on, a high stool, and stand from there. Progress lower and lower.

I could see isometrics against a crossbar as being useful here too.

If you drive against an impossible resistance, above that level you’ll never lose the ability to stand from.

But if you trained as a lifelong habit, you’re never going to be at that point.

If you are you can flip a bird to aging and train yourself back to a younger stronger feel.

It’s not a guarantee, I’ve seen some senior citizens quite far from that issue.

I remember this 65ish grandma doing deadlifts with her college age granddaughter. Both tall, granddaughter was big, not fat, but not curvy either, boxy, with muscle and fat, grandma actually had a relatively big bone structure too, but a good waist to hip ratio. They were both fluky strong in my eyes. I saw both pull 315 for low reps and 275 for reps on a regular basis.

That granny could be strong enough to skip this issue old age, if you’re a man what’s your excuse?

Don’t tell me granny as a small business owner is more of a high t go getter than you!

not the same granny, that looks nothing like ye olde commercial gym hell in the background lol

Persistence & Tenacity

10/19/18 SoCal Bodybuilding Gym Story

The only time I’ve meticulously logged after high school ended was fall 2018 at the SoCal bodybuilding gym. This is a snippet of one day in that log.

Archive :
Friday 10/19/18

Deadlift
9×405 mixed grip

A conversation :

“Dude, I’d feel bad making you strip the bar I abandoned”

“Ok, you can take a plate off that side”

He looks at me funny,
“You’re going to hit 405 cold”

1 minute later…I repped because of the audience, I would’ve done a single otherwise, but put on a show for the Paul Carter lookalike and his somewhat alluring mid 30s whole back tattooed blonde.

“I can’t believe you hit 405 for 10 cold”

“9”

“I swore I counted 10”, his girl agrees with him.

“I’m certain it was 9. I stopped having left some in the tank as between reps 10-12 I’d have shit myself.”

They looked at me funny, realized I was serious, (I’d said the whole thing matter of factly, a statement), at which point they apprehensively and slowly backed away. My stomach feeling off had kept me from what felt like a guaranteed 13+ reps which would’ve been a PR, as it stood I believe it was a PR tie.

Every Young Man Should Wrestle

From The Archives :

I’d been bringing my grandma to her chemo appointments ;

In the lobby was a woman, wearing a knit hat, unnecessary for the weather (SoCal)…she was in chemo, probably about 40.

She and the woman she was with were talking about the son of the former, the woman with cancer.

He was a high school freshman, and he’d just signed up to wrestle at the school I would’ve went to (getting bussed in) had we stayed in our last place in Cali.

Rough place to go, at least it was when I was younger, people stressed to my parents to get me out of that district…they did… to New England.

I’ve heard that the district improved since then, and boots on the ground the area seemed low crime, decent enough at present. Got the feeling the area was okay buying groceries for grandma at a bunch of places around, sometimes on foot from the old folks home. (It’s Cali there’s a shit ton of stuff around.)

For perspective the school is real close to the old folks home my grandma was put in. So something like four weekdays and once on the weekend I’d drive by there, plus I’d be running her errands for her at any of 5+ grocery stores within a mile radius.

Back to story :

He’d never wrestled before, had been doing bjj, which may or may not help, and obviously was undersized, going for something like the 112 weight class.

The mom with cancer was stressing HIS possibility of getting hurt.

I could hear the conversation, figured I could improve her day, and alleviate those concerns.

Everyone who has wrestled will talk up the sport whenever possible.

This was an opportunity to do so with a worried parent. I politely interrupted, said that I used to wrestle, answered their questions about the sport, and wished her son good luck.

(Of note they always ask which school you wrestled at, and being in Cali, I didn’t wrestle on that coast. On one of those grocery runs I spotted a tat on short bodybuilder type that marked him as having wrestled at the olympic training center. He too asked, as I always leave that detail out since where I had is 3000 miles away. If you see a dude with the USA Wrestling logo tatted on him, it’s 3/3 in my experience that he has been to the otc.)

3/3 Y’all, that tat has meaning.

We parted ways them smiling, the woman no longer visibly concerned about her son wrestling.

You should know that there is something of a wrestling community. I’d personally jump at the chance to coach for, resurrecting, a local high school’s program.

(And I almost coached middle school when a cousin was going to join up, he quit before the athletic director ran my background check to fully approve me, and I didn’t follow through with doing it. I was 18, and at the time only was only willing to answer to my old team captain who was head coach to help out my cousin.)

One can not wrestle without it building you up.

I think this is why so many who wrestled give back to the sport.

Many men were positively impacted by it, therefore we try to steer as many youth towards it as possible.

(The local high school I’d like to revive, I was steering this strong ass football player that I knew from the gym to do so. Showed him how to bridge. He didn’t end up wrestling, finding pot instead.)

I remember sitting through school while sick, purely so I could go to practice and wrestle at the meet the next day.

Endless running, fasting, live, the one time where making weight required doing layered up burpees under the locker room heat vent during the home stretch before the bus arrived, kicking a door open that day when my opponent flopped, just gave up on the mat having been better than me a year prior.

It’s the realest sport.

Every winter I miss the mat, and I wasn’t even on it that long.

I found the above track right after highschool. Corny but cool.

5/27/20 : Screenshot Commentary

A long while ago I posted Hermann Goerner as “natty” possibility.

I screen grabbed this recently :

I’d take away the “with the right information” if I’d made the graphic myself. There’s information overload in training, you just need to see possibility, and go!

I screengrabbed this, for once thinking “fitness youtube saying the truth”. And as per my usual of screen capping fitness youtube I don’t watch it. I just make assumptions based off of the thumbnail. There’s a rough draft on female vegetarians in the gym based on this.

I know what could go wrong.
O.D., imminent doom by energy drink. There’s a story here in the archives.

Persistence & Tenacity

You’re Never Going To Be Weak If

You’re never going to be weak if you train consistently in some manner.

Even if you are weak at present, that will change quite fast once you’ve started exercising daily.

The manner doesn’t matter much if at all.

Any and all muscular stimuli builds strength.

Even if it’s not what you always do, have a home based calisthenic routine as a fall back that you do at least everyday where you don’t do something else.

I guarantee you, I can build rugged men and nicely built women with zero equipment.

The more tools you have is simply more options for variation.

Without that option though ;

What dude who consistently does pushups everyday isn’t going to have a strong upper body?

What girl who hip thrusts off the couch nightly isn’t going to have developed quite the ass?

You see the principle here?

I can’t help but laugh how strong I am right now lifting just an empty barbell on occasion.

Everything works.

The most dense, lean, veiny athletic quads I’ve ever seen in the gym locker room were on not a dude terribly strong at lifting, he did olys cause he enjoyed them, and his squat was impressively low…a Swede who found he liked ruck marching while in the military, thus started to hike for fun, biked some, and did some olys because he enjoyed them all.

I imagine he could hike and ruck very well. His oly and related barbell numbers were very low, but who cares. Do what you enjoy, it’s for the long haul. Eventually it’ll work, and if you stay consistent well into senior citizen years, you’re not going to be plagued by the pain of weakness that many of the old feel very much.

He and I would lift together and I’d just snatch what he was cleaning, making one oly platform work. We’d get good laughs telling each other stories.

You don’t need to do any one specific thing. Just play around physically, something will bring you enjoyment, so do that all the time. It’s all guaranteed to work.

Persistence & Tenacity

A Man Becoming Simply…Strong

Something simple really :

•Do some pushups
•Stand in victory pose

Boom! That’s all you need right there.

Pushups will build a give a man proper upper body strength.

Victory pose will give him the proper thoughts.

This is about so much more than physical strength.

Light Breathing Overhead Squats & Breathing Presses

When you’ve done as much research on training as me, there’s gonna be a whole lot stored up in your brain.

Stuff you’ve stuck to, stuff you’ve done for short periods, and stuff you’ve yet to try.

Physical fitness is an individual endeavour. No one is going to workout for you, and to be frank, if you’re not willing to do your own programming, writing your own stuff and/or trusting your own instincts for self prescribed programming and/or instinctive spur of the moment training I don’t think you really want to train.

I’ve seen a bunch of big strong people, that for whatever reason, are paying for an internet coach.

My gut always said they’re the ones who if they had to train on their own, no programming from another, no community of powerlifters, without ideal equipment, they’d quit.

I like lifting to be something wholly my own. No programming from another to rely on. It’s mostly solitary, if I had to have training partners I’d miss more sessions than not.

A good training partner has been generally hard to come by, especially when you train high frequency and program whimsically on the fly such as I.

So, whatever training I do is something I come up with or decide to try after hearing about it.

I have a tendency to break programming “rules”. I enjoy doing so. It allows what I do to be my own.

I’ve long known about kettlebells. Girevoy sport is in my eyes better than low rep strength sports, but I’ve never had access to the right kettlebells ie heavy enough in a pair.

I do have a barbell, so I just lifted the philosophy from one implement to another.

I do high reps on barbell movements that are “supposed” to be low rep only.

Which gets me to the point.
All of the barbell work I’m doing right now is high rep presses and high rep overhead squats, basically every set with the empty barbell.

As I said in the post on posture from overhead squats it’s strengthening good posture, and I’ve also realized that the two are leading to a chest expansion effect.

Having pieced that together it dawned on me the other day that I could treat my empty barbell work like “breathing squats” to purposefully heighten this effect.

Let the neighborhood hear my booming breaths. It’s better to embrace my natural loudness.

Let the neighborhood hear my breathing.

Though since it’s so light just take the multiple deep breaths maybe every 10th rep, or as needed instead of between every rep.

Light weights can be used for very big effects.

Sleep With Your Cellphone Outside Of The Bedroom

Not only does late night usage of flashing screens disrupt your potential sleep patterns, you don’t need to be online at night, here’s something I’ve noticed for awhile :

The cellphone, even off, in near proximity to me as I’m in bed affects how deep I sleep, and what I dream of.

I’ve noticed I sleep better and dream better dreams the further my cellphone is from me.

Having started putting my phone down for the night in a completely different room has been even better than the opposite corner of my bedroom.

When the phone is outside the bedroom, I sleep even deeper, and have even better dreams.

The further the phone, the higher the frequency of lucid dreams, and the lower the frequency of nightmares.

With the phone near by it’s often nightmares, and I wake up often throughout the night.

I’ve even had a nightmare where I felt that I was half awake, and looking at my phone on my desk saw an eery blue dragon coming out of the screen, dancing side to side to an ominous tune that too was coming from my phone in the haze of a little misty cloud of particles. Yet, my phone was on airplane mode and off. That had felt real.

Something about the radiation of our cell phones I pick up on and am disturbed by at night.

It’s better off nowhere near my bed.

Power Snatch & Overhead Squats For Alpha Male Posture

Alpha posture is all about taking up space.

Regularly standing in a variant of victory pose is an extremely effective way to train yourself to stand as a man should.

Good Posture = Good Life

I enjoy weightlifting, oly.
With a pair of work boots as blue collar lifting shoes, self taught, and with a 300lb weight set (though I’d also invest in a higher quality though affordable bar), it’s a very accessible way to lift, and very likely will last you a long time to max out on.

Most humans will find 300lbs to be something that takes a long while to get from the ground to overhead.

However ; light high rep weightlifting has it’s place.

This is basically what girevoy sport/kettlebell competition is – light high rep weightlifting.

You can do olys for reps if you want to.

I’ve done periods of naught but high rep light overhead squats, the practice of which had strong carryover to everything.

It’s why I say it’s aokay to high rep weightlift.

You end up freakishly all around, with very high power-endurance, and strength-endurance.

Now compare the victory pose to the top of a snatch or overhead squat.

It’s a very similar posture. Upright and expansive.

The power snatch and the overhead squat are quite easy to self teach.

With a 300lb weight set they’re very accessible.

It clicked to me that in that top position to support the bar the upper body must be expanded, you’re strengthening your upper body in that expanded taking up space alpha position.

Strengthening a posture will make it come more naturally to you. When something is strong it’s more likely to be your default settings.

You’re doing this for upper body posture while training legs to boot.

The overhead squat, the top of a snatch, is training your alpha male posture.

Persistence & Tenacity