Month: October 2020

The first piece of specific home gym equipment you get is a barbell.

This can be in the form of a cheapo one that will eventually bend as part of a 300lb weight set, or it can be a standalone purchase.

If you start at the 300lb weight set, put in the work required to bend that bar before buying it’s sturdier replacement.

I lifted on a bent bar at home for quite some time. It made the school weight room nicer. It wasn’t until graduating I bought the good inexpensive bar.

Buying generic but sturdy is the way to go, whether it’s a stand alone purchase or to replace the bent/sure to bend cheapo bar from the weight set.

I don’t see a squat rack as being terribly high a priority.

Starting every lift from the floor will last you forever when you’re willing to milk the available movements.

With just a barbell high rep military presses, and high rep overhead squats to infinity.

Treat the clean and overhead like girevoy but with a barbell.

You can go full body and get strong with just high reps and that 45lb bar.

I’ve been pleased by how well reverse curls, military presses, and overhead squats – all for high reps, with just the bar has served me.

Never forget one arm snatches

and one arm barbell press variations.

I’d purchase a good weight kettlebell, something not light, not heavy, just right before purchasing a rack.

Swing gpp in my eyes takes priority to the possibility of partial front squats.

Matt pulls are more important than rack pulls if you care about the deadlift.

The kettlebell takes priority to the rack for a few reasons :

•Kettlebell wins the logistics, it can go everywhere, easy to pick up and use, the rack doesn’t travel, and may not fit in your living space, you may not even have an outdoors in which to put it.

•Kettlebell wins in cost, as the rack isn’t just purchasing the rack. It’s purchasing the rack, more plates, likely a heavy duty stiff bar (the Donnie Thompson 1000lb+ in comp bar) so you can really load up partial front squats, and shrugs – the two main reasons to use a rack.

The best way to press em, you can flip them too.

Notice I haven’t said “oh, oh, oh, go get a nice eleiko oly bar” with drool dripping out the sides of my mouth.

The first priority inexpensive but sturdy barbell covers EVERY barbell lift until you’re loading up partial front squats in a rack.

I do like axles though. That’s in my eyes near the top of equipment.

Because you can do this

and this

and this

For a home gym – no bumper plates – be a man, control thy eccentric. Cleans from the dead hang more rugged make than from the floor. Note : the dead hang is paused at the hang, not lowered and loaded.
This approach served me very well at the SoCal bodybuilding gym.

Tires are free, get an absurd one if you have the logistics. The weight must be meaningful, and remember specificity moves fast here, something that is heavier than a 1rm can become 30 flips by the end of summer.

Big stones can be lifted from the outdoors, otherwise a size ridiculous sandbag made using :

•a size ridiculous sea bag
•contractor clean up bags
•duct tape
•sand

Bodyweight is free. I’m sure there’s somewhere you can kick over against, somewhere you can hang from.

I could get an inexpensive lat pulldown before the rack too.

They’re pretty affordable, the plates from the 300lb weight set will do, and I like doing lat pulldowns.

I can feel the muscles work with them, pullups I mostly muscle through.

As far as dumbbells, maybe you get plate loaded ones, a few pairs of regular hex bells with big jumps between, and once you pass around 75s, maybe 100s, you switch to singles if at all, or go homemade kroc row style with pipe and 10lb standard plates.

Lots of strongman implements would be nice to have, but you’re already doing olys, overhead and one arm barbell carries will cover a lot, and as far as conditioning buy a jump rope.

Burpees, sprints, and rolls are free.

Ab wheels are $10. Get one. Just eat a few pounds of chicken instead of beef to get the funds.

A powerwheel, the kind you strap to your shoes would be nice, but isn’t necessary.

Improvised stuff can be great. I’ve gotten good forearm pumps goofing around with a wok, and you may already have a sledgehammer to lever.

One light band, elitefts or similar, opens up a lot of options.

An isometric device like on rosstraining covers a lot of ground.

Isometrics can make a lot of lifting unnecessary. They give freakish results.

Tanning? Holding a planet fitness membership is cheap. I’m serious. In the cold months I use the tanning that I otherwise don’t in warm months. This is very far from a requirement.

Any old bicycle shall do, no need to get fancy if all you’re doing with it is street riding.

Pushups and biking was my lockdown split nearly in entirety.

I muscled up during the lockdown.

There’s a lesson there :

Where they’re a will there’s a way.
Make it, whatever it is, work.

You’re always good to go with zero equipment. I am. It’s served me well. Any equipment access past zero is a fun gift, and not a guarantee. Use it when you can, and want to.

Be able to always train with only yourself.

Pushups every day, I’m nearing 4½ years since the last miss.

Persistence & Tenacity

19 years old, my parents had bought me a gym membership (to the local commercial gym aka “the old commercial gym”, or “commercial gym hell” in previous writings) as an early Christmas present.

It was my first time stepping into the locker room, and the first thing I saw was a stereotype I never thought I’d see, something I took to just be an internet joke…

Standing there with his left foot up on the sink’s countertop is a frail scrawny old timer, blow dryer in his right hand, held inches, dangerously close for sanitation purposes to his nutsack.

I never thought I’d see that play out.
Isn’t it just a joke on lifting forums?
And it was on day 1 at the place.

Oddly enough it’s the only time I’ve seen that stereotype play out.

About 18 months going there, I never saw it a second time, nor have I at any other gym.

I read something whining about the soy in everything, and how bad plastics are for you.

Now, my mom fell for that soy malarkey being a new mother in 90s SoCal suburbia, and for a while I worried about what potential harm that had/has caused me.

You know what?
It is what it is, it’s not a mistake I’ll make with my kids, and whatever effect it’s had on me I couldn’t care less – mentally it doesn’t effect me.

I’ve come to feel that all is preordained/predestined by God, so worry is entirely unnecessary. Here’s something I’ve realized to be entirely self evident…

Worry is low testosterone!

My testosterone is much higher not being fearful of the poisons in the environment, not caring about small details such as grass fed, organic, or whether or not it’s filled with rbst, not caring if my water bottle got heated up in the car, whether part of it is soy, etc.

You cause yourself more harm worrying about the plastics in everything, the soy in every food product, and the estrogenic hormones in the water supply than they themselves will when they get in you from whatever amount they’re present in the food/water/environment does.

I was in the best shape of my life refilling the same plastic bottles for months, and chilling them full of vegas tap water.

Many cringed upon realizing that I drank city tap exclusively. Me? I thought “water is included in the rent”, saw no need to add gallons of water to my grocery bill, and just kept refilling, putting the bottles in the fridge to chill.

Be honest here, do you know any truly robust man eating from whole foods and it’s equivalents?

It’s funny to walk around Cali observing the comedy that is humanity.

It’s the fact that the people worrying about health, spending shitloads of cash on food are managing in practice to only be sterile, which in my eyes is the effect most rationally feared from the soy/plastics/hormones in the water ooga booga boogeyman that they’re hoping to dodge via overpriced organic shit…while the virility, the reproduction, is found shopping at walmart or food 4 less for quite possibly less than a tenth of the cost per person.

It’s damn funny to buy 10lbs of chicken, and a gallon of milk for less than the cost of their tuna steak dinner. I’ve done so, but I bought at food 4 less while they had stopped at whole foods.

Another thing : the human body is so resilient that junkies can have kids. If an anorexic junkie can give birth to a healthy child I think it’s safe to assume you don’t need to sweat the toxins in the environment very much.

Those people are literally injecting the poison straight into their veins…
And they still have kids!

You’re likely safe to not care whether your dead cow was pumped up on mooroids, or whether your plastic bottles are leaching estrogen into your fluids.

All the while George Carlin laughs.

-J

From The Archives :
10/19/18 – inspired by observation in the “wilds” of the SoCal Bodybuilding Gym

If a high testosterone female can get jacked, what is the low testosterone male’s excuse?
The levels are similar!

By the numbers, the levels are similar, I’m dead serious. To me this implies that EVERY male has the potential to be a big strong motherfucker.

Potential is mental. The physical side is already taken care of, as your testosterone, ample testosterone, all that’s required is already there.

-J

There is only one important rule to follow throughout your career of gym training…

Consistency & Effort blended into one meaningful thing – INTENSITY

↑ Most don’t have it, hence they suck physically.

With the goofiest of routines, you can be a monster, if, and only if you’re the one true believer, not just willing and able to, but actively attacking that goofy program with mad eyed intensity.

Fuck your program – it’s irrelevant information.

What’s your effort and consistency like?

Putting your heart into the thing is the #1 performance enhancer.

Put your heart into it, mad eyed, for a decade or longer = BOOM! Best Genetics, the biggest and strongest around.

Why?
Cause you had INTENSITY!

The peons swam around in a wishy washy kiddie pool of attempted perfect program, attempted perfect diet, distrust in their instincts, and as I’m coming to conclude more and more – a true desire to stay spinning their wheels, a preference to swim in mediocrity, a desire to suck, as humanity requires a large percentage of suckitutude.

You don’t have to though, it’s by choice!

 

“Bro Science”, Anecdotes, Self Experimentation, & Studies

From The Archives :
11/19/18 Continue reading “Archives : “Bro Science”, Anecdotes, Self Experimentation, & Studies”

I had the whim so I grabbed the barbell, put my barefeet on the grass, and started. Continue reading “10/3/20 : High Rep Overhead Squats = Thinking Outside The Box”