A Place For My Thoughts On Lifting Y'All
Hershel Walker became built doing massive calisthenic volume and running lots of sprints.
He didn’t touch a weight until college.
When you honestly put effort, your heart and soul, into calisthenics you’ll never need weights.
Calisthenics – lots of them.
Good Food – lots of it.
You’ll be built phenomenally with great abilities.
No weights is no hindrance.
Do your calisthenics.
They bring you as far as you’re willing to take them.
Persistence & Tenacity
Having eaten a small amount of pasta, I spent the rest of the day gassy.
It’s strange, certain shapes of pasta affect me differently than others, some I stomach fine, and others I do not.
Ramen, the least expensive noodle, is fine. Some pasta is fine. Some pasta is not.
When it comes to diet trust your gut.
If something doesn’t sit right, listen to your gut, don’t eat it.
Going to school my stomach was always off.
Why? Because cooked oats, despite being considered a top choice for breakfast, don’t sit well with me in the morning.
I find they’re best used raw, fried into eggs which becomes a fried oat & egg pancake, or as an ingredient in egg shakes.
Your body knows itself better then your brain thinks.
You crave what is necessary when it is necessary.
Your body tells you when and what you need to eat. And it lets you know when it disagrees with your choices.
Digestion is improved when you follow your gut.
Do not listen to conditioned belief, listen to your gut.
Heavy is not the way to eat in the morning.
Fasting provides whole day energy.
Don’t eat before bed?
Ha! Feast before bed!
Follow your instincts. Trust your gut.
Persistence & Tenacity
Every day spend at least an hour outside.
Disregard the weather, and just do it.
Your ancestors spent far longer hours outdoors in far worse weather while being far more physical. You can handle an hour a day.
I recall reading an anecdote of fur trappers overwintering in a cabin.
Their leader insisted the whole troop walk two miles twice a day every day whether it was clear or a blizzard.
They had beaten a ¼ mile or ⅓ mile path around their cabin. They walked it.
There was no cabin fever, and the men maintained robust health.
You can handle sitting outside for lunch hour minimally.
Though I type this after having sat reading outside while enjoying the fresh winter air, I always got a kick out of in Cali visiting the beach and seeing men in suits strolling barefoot along during lunch hour.
The tall thin hippie girl doing sun salutations, the barefoot lawyers going for walks, myself doing pushups then sprinting into the surf…
It’s California – endless summer, though those are “winter” recollections.
In New England I’ve been known by neighbors to be out shoveling snow in shorts, boots, skull cap, and gloves.
I’d blow coworkers mind working outside near 0° F in a tshirt, pants, gloves, and hat.
The human body can handle wearing little in most weather, especially considering you’ll be inside soon enough.
Spend an hour a day outside, you’ll be better for it.
Fresh air cures all.
Everyone I know in Cali misses out on shoveling snow.
Growing up doing that is better than sitting inside Cali suburbs with an Xbox.
Dad, thank you.
Immediately before bed I’m eating.
Cheese and crackers, sometimes with peanut butter, sometimes with a little meat, and drinking milk with it.
It’s funny off the top of my head the word escapes me.
Like Sherlock Holmes and unnecessary details, at the moment I’m not coming up with it.
“Watson what care I whether the earth revolves around the sun or the sun round the earth – it does not help me in my work!”
(The one time Watson got to go “why it’s elementary my dear Sherlock”.)
The further I get into bodybuilding the more this applies to minutia.
The slow releasing dairy protein, starts with a c.
At 16 I could tell you the exact details, at 26 I realize it doesn’t matter.
Whey is said to be fast digesting, this is slow digesting.
It’s what the protein in cheese is, and it makes up a good percentage of the protein in milk.
Before bed? I figure slow digesting is perfect.
Casein, that’s what it is!
(I looked it up.)
I can reason out what I’m instinctively craving.
The night hours are when my body is building up.
Feeding it good stuff is the thing to do.
I fall asleep easier, sleep deep, and take a shit upon waking.
The before bed meal has been working well for me.
I’m recomping, and getting stronger.
Conventional knowledge says don’t eat before bed. I find it to the best time to eat, especially when it’s the right foods.
Eat cheese and crackers before bed with a few tall glasses of milk.
Good to go.
Casein before bed.
Don’t program calisthenics, play, and practice instead.
I trained with a buddy and his friend, a 2½ to 3½ hour calisthenic fest.
Before they arrived I was supersetting freestanding handstand practice, and sets of 10 pushups.
Freestanding handstand ability is (re)learned fast.
The holds are getting more frequent, and more consistent at a handful of seconds.
Once they arrived ; first it was a brief amount of 2 pump burpees with 2 bw squat chasers.
We spent a good deal of time doing weighted pushups, and weighted pushup position planks.
My standard weight was my 160lb buddy, though I did one set with his 145lb friend.
I went for four weighted pushups with the 160lber standing on my upper back as the first weighted thing, getting a triple again.
Two days in a row of tripling him standing on my back for weighted pushups.
Without much rest I doubled the 145lber, deciding with that “enough of weighted pushups” for me, onto…
160lb live weight/human weighted pushup position planks – throughout the time I did five :45 sets.
A set of 35 dips to beat their counts in the 20-30 range, and told the story where at 22yo 235lbs I out dipped a 28yo 135lber, in addition to how at 20/21 on an improvised v angle did over 100 dips.
Then there were some weighted dips for me, and them both.
I got up to 1 rep at +135, failed a single at +180, and soon after doubled +130.
While during the dips they two did pullups and weighted pullups, I wasn’t in the mood.
I haven’t done dips much for a long while, and these aren’t far from summer/fall 2019’s PRs.
I did 5 x +135 in 2019, a double a couple hours of volume in isn’t far off.
As they were getting ready to leave I went back to the freestanding handstand practice superset with 10 (or more) pushups.
Got three sets of mantra reps in there.
Probably an extra half hour of that after they left.
The 145lber near them leaving asked me if I just do calisthenics.
I told him that I will lift when I have access to and the mood to use weights, told him my pushup daily philosophy, and can easily be thought to be calisthenics only because it can appear that way.
It’s not purposeful, calisthenic only just happens, and weights may still end up thrown in.
You never lose access to calisthenics. They’re with you everyday, everywhere.
You can find a tree or something to chin from.
Pushups, bw squats, burpees, all done anywhere with very little floor space.
100yd lunging (swamp lunges) can be done anywhere with reasonable space to do so.
A section of wall for handstand work, and wall sits.
I don’t see any purpose in programming calisthenics.
Lots of pushups gave me the ability to hit some solid weighted pushups without much specifity.
Ditto to dips and weighted dips.
A skill like handstands requires practice, and practice is something you just do.
With calisthenics you play, and you practice.
Volume will get you far.
It’s calisthenics, do some daily.
No need to program.
Playing around you find abilities volume gave you, then you can continue the volume just a little heavier to continue to build the high end strength.
A bit of increasing my wall handstand pushups saw me able to human flag.
I discovered that I could do one arm pushups in a hotel room after my buddy hit his face on the floor attempting.
You get strong off of high reps.
High reps feed into moderate reps which feed into low reps.
Going just a plate or two (45 or 90lb) on the weighted pushups and dips for moderate reps and high volume pushes the low rep ability up.
A human is very simple for adding weight to the pushups and pushup position planks.
It’s more visually striking than plates.
I’ll get video of girl(s), even heavier guys as the live weight for the two exercises.
The weighted pushup position planks carry over to standing ab wheel.
I may try one soon.
Weighted pushup position planks are the best ab exercise I’ve found.
Not only is it abs, it is serious full body stimulus.
The value of planks is when the core shakes working hard as fatigue sets in.
Adding weight makes it more of an ab thickening strength stimuli, while saving a lot of time.
With forearms down it’s easy to cheat.
Pushup position is superior.
It’s becoming my favorite exercise.
Though I need to be doing more wrestler’s bridge work!
I contemplate how to make a video of weighted pushup position planks even more visually striking.
There are certain things you don’t discuss at the gym.
These things are :
•Injury
•Hurt
•Pain
•Soreness
•Tiredness
•Hunger
•Limits
You keep your mind and mouth clear of these things and suddenly you’re superhuman.
You’re indestructible.
Persistence & Tenacity
You train long enough and it all starts to come together.
It’s just effort over the years, the exact details don’t matter.
You don’t need to follow a program past a minimally detailed guideline.
I keep it as simple in mind as
“train well, eat well, serious play”.
It’s better to use less thinking than more in most cases.
Step 1 : Go do.
Step 2 : Do not ask.
Step 3 : Do not contemplate long.
Step 4 : Go do.
The guys that get into the gym and weren’t playing linebacker in high school football tend to be the types who think far too much.
To a comical degree you can coax them into being in the moment tapped into doing the work, and when the set is over blow their mind with how much more they did than what they thought they were capable of.
The perpetual never get bigger crowd simply need to discover the joy of bacon cheeseburgers, whole milk, raw eggs with ice cream, and actually eat.
If they actually ate they’d get to the size they want.
They can’t put down a plate with a piddly amount on it where pigeons would do their best oliver impersonation asking for more, and expect to get bigger.
Dudes with naturally fast metabolisms?
Man do they have the bodybuilder genetics!
They’re crippling themselves thinking they’re a hardgainer, when once they truly eat will get bigger yet put on nary an ounce of fat.
They can eat 7000 calories a day and stay lean!
Positive Interpretation Of Your Genetics :
It’s all just the perspective, whether positive or negative, that affects how the circumstances work for you.
The dude prone to being muscular easily stays muscular.
The wiry dude is never going to put on fat.
The big fat guy bulks so easily, his lean body mass alone easily passes the muscular guys total bodyweight.
Think offensive lineman vs linebacker.
The skinny fat dude has the gift of circumstance to joyfully overcome!
The “worst” genetics is offered the most epic path out of the somatotypes in his path to getting built.
Wherever you are, getting where you want to be takes as long as it takes.
Maybe you’re not the dude at 6′ 220 with abs at 15.
Regardless, train though.
As long as it’s done with heart 5 years will see you able to hang with d1 football players as training partners.
Whether football players or ifbb bodybuilders – training around them makes you realize fast that… THEY’RE ALL HUMAN!
So few do anything of note that it’s not that far from the bottom 10% to the top 10%.
Get off the couch. That allows your physical potential to thrive.
We’re supposed to be 99% the same DNA as monkeys, so amongst humans the genetic potentials are not all that different.
Genetic potential between you and you and you and you is extremely close!
A talk on the similarities of monkey, chimpanzee, and human DNA, how close human DNA is between people, and the proper interpretation of your genetic potential with a big point for endomorphs and ectomorphs. Shout out to the big fat dudes, and the skinny fat on how far you can go.
With special guest Ronnie Coleman off camera.
“Yeah buddy yep yep yep light weight.”
That dude never quiets down.
When you run a Google search it says that rheasus monkeys and humans share 93% of the same DNA.
When you compare humans and chimpanzees it goes up to 99%.
A university study ; that says that the average difference between two humans is one tenth of one percent.
1/1000 is on average all that varies between a human and another human.
This tells me that DNA is so so common that great genetics are inside me, and inside you.
How you have such a huge variance with such a tiny true DNA variance – that’s gene expression.
And putting it in a sentence gene expression is solely based on the actions you take.
If you sit around all the time you’re gonna be out of shape.
If you train, and eat, and do them both well you’re going to be built well and in shape.
It’s that simple.
It’s not a complicated thing.
When you talk to most young adults, they all – the ones that are in the gym seem to view themselves as not having good genetics.
That’s just shooting yourself in the foot from the gate.
You need to look at it from a positive angle, regardless of what like you think your “genetics” are
You have to look at it from a positive perspective, not a negative perspective.
A dude who’s super super wiry, and has very little muscle, and zero body fat.
He’s never going to put on an ounce of fat, he’s always going to be lean.
Positive.
The mesomorph? He’s muscular, he’s pretty much always going to be muscular.
Positive.
Big fat dude? He’s got like 100lbs on that mesomorph.
He could cry about it, be like “uhhn, I’m fat”, or he could look at it from the positive angle, calculate his bodyfat percentage out, then look at his lean body mass and go “oh shit, I’m the same height as the mesomorph, but I have 40lbs more lean body mass than his entire bodyweight”.
Positive.
And that brings me to the so called skinny fat, the one that the internet claims is the never to be built well dude.
Which is wrong.
Everyone can get built well, it’s just a matter of effort, and years – that’s all it comes down to regardless of where your genetics are.
Effort and years, you’re good. Period.
That skinny fat dude?
Negative perspective is “ohh, ohh, I’m skinny fat, I’m always going to be skinny fat”.
That’s wrong!
What he needs to look at it is :
•”I’m skinny fat.”
•”I’m gonna change it.”
•”I, by having the worst starting point, I’m allowed the most epic journey to overcome it.”
Those are my thoughts for today on DNA, genetics, and genetic potential.
Persistence & Tenacity, J Out!
Cut it.
1. A handstand falling over the top is saved by finger pressure. Overpressure.
2. A handstand falling feet back to floor from where you kicked up is saved by a small bend of the elbows and pressing. Underpressure.
I learned those two rereading the York handbalancing course.
Underpressure results in a light drop back of the feet to where they started.
There’s no need to fear kicking up.
Purposefully kick high enough to need the finger pressing required to save overpressure.
Kick hard. It’s balls. There is nothing to truly fear.
If you lose it despite trying to save it with finger pressure, a hand naturally moves forward, and you cartwheel out of it.
Laugh. Play.
Use your balls. Kick hard.
Mix in some pushups between freestanding kick ups and holds.
The skill comes quickly.
Persistence & Tenacity
To maximize your upper body training you should be supersetting, giant setting, and/or getting bicep pumps before pressing.
A few sets of 10 or 1-2 high rep sets on the machine preacher curl heightens pullup training, and makes the dip groove more smooth.
Mixing pushups in with freestanding handstand work adds a muscular effect, making it bodybuilding, and skill.
A pair of dumbbells allows the biceps to get in with the two as a giant set.
You want the dumbell weight to be one that allows for peak contraction.
You’re trying to get the muscular effect.
Going straight into weighted pushups, a person standing on your back, is performance at anytime ability.
Starting from the bottom I did a pushup with a 175lb guy standing on my back today. No plate loading beforehand. Straight into it.
That’s roughly a 345 bench, bottom position, “cold”.
Cold – the true strength.
Frankly the weighted pushup plus a standing 175lb human was easy. I attempted to double it.
What’s crazy is how full body it is too.
I feel the part of the quad that hockey players develop big time by skating.
As came up in conversation :
A human flag needs only a small amount of pullup and handstand pushup ability assuming ab strength is there.
The one arm pushup is rather easy. Twist down trying to touch your shoulder to your hand, then corkscrew back up.
Persistence & Tenacity