January 2021 - Page 2 of 4 - Persistence and Tenacity

1/20/21 Flow – Empty Bar Olys & An Anecdote Of Building Another Up :

1/20/21
I go outside, and with my empty barbell clean grip whip hang power snatch a few sets of 10.

Reading of Jon Andersen (deep water) going 35x253lbs on cgps has me mentally into doing the movement when I’m not going to pf.

I’ve started with the most upper back intensive variation – from a high deadhang, whip style (no loading, drop, immediately repull).

As the weights increase I’ll work towards starting from the floor.

After the snatches I do one set of 20 overhead squats.

Calisthenics primarily with a little bit of barbell work is a great way to train.

You can make the empty barbell work.

Eventually the snatches get done one handed, you do more reps and more sets.

The overhead squats are the best light leg exercise I’ve found besides long walking swamp lunges.

When you’ve weightlifted simply end with overhead squats at whatever weight you were using for the olys.

A memory from 2015 had popped up just before lifting, in fact the recollection inspiring me to do so.

At the mail boxes I spoke with this big teenager who lived a few doors down from me.

I’d seen some balloons outside his door, and asked “who’s birthday”.

“Mine” he answered sullenly.

“Happy birthday dude, you’re an adult now.”

He looks at me funny, “you think I’m 18?”

“I would’ve guessed older, close to my age, but I know you’re a high schooler. I’ve seen you get off the bus before.”

“Dude, I’m not a senior. Today is my 15th birthday. I still have three more years to go” he still sounds all sad.

“Damn dude! You’re a giant. You playing football, lifting weights?”

“No. I just go to school, come home, play playstation, keep to myself.”

Now this kid is friendly enough, but always seems sad. He’s a big dude probably 6’4″, around 300, only a little bit fat, very wide shoulders, big shoes, etc, and only 15.

I’d always been friendly in passing to him, his mother. We’d cross paths in the parking lot their door being near my spot.

Single mother. Young looking for her age of mid 30s to maybe 40. Fairly pretty, an almost petite blonde – a hilarious contrast to her giant brown haired son, but damn did their faces look alike. You saw that resemblance.

Kid must’ve got his mom’s face, and dad’s build.

It’s his birthday, he’s all sullen, like he always seems to be. The kid is 6’4″ but makes himself closer to 5’8″ walking around slouched over, looking at his shuffling feet.

You just know he doesn’t have a father figure.

I decide to build him up.

“You’re only a freshman. That means you’ve got time. Start lifting weights, I guarantee with your build you’re already wicked strong. Get stronger. Play football, you have the bone structure that a few years of effort, which you have, you could be going to college for free playing defensive – no offensive lineman.”

“You really think so?” He sounds a bit higher in life already.

“Yeah dude. You have that potential.”

He asked me something about having the confidence to strike up a conversation, and I remember quickly showing him head up, shoulders back, a quick lesson on better posture.

I showed him victory pose, told him how it helped me, and told him to do it daily.

“The confidence will come, but you’ve gotta work for it.”

He walked tall as we walked back from the mail boxes continuing to chat.

Him dwarfing me (6’4″ 300 with a bigger frame vs 6′ 215) since for the first time he was standing fully, like a man must.

No looking at his feet! Walking, no shuffling!

I realized that I was 20/21 when I had this conversation, and realized he’d be 20/21 now.

I wondered if my words took. If he stayed lonely and sad playing video games, or if he got to the weight room, went out for sports, and if so where he went with them.

If football didn’t go past high school, or he didn’t choose that route he had the frame at 15 for growing past the 308lb powerlifting weight class.

Always build others up.

Persistence & Tenacity

1/19/21 Flow – Pullups & :

•12 chin ups
•10 neutral grip
•9 pullups

I’ve been hitting these at any given time, and the ability is improving every couple of days.

As you get better at calisthenics you get built along a more athletic animalistic line.

I feel it as I walk.

As long as you’re not force feeding while doing so, the improvement of calisthenic abilities builds you more lean and mean.

Then your calisthenics improve further by having become built more lean and mean.

Then you get even more lean and mean since you’re getting better at your calisthenics.

Calisthenics ability and build feed strongly into each other.

I can’t eat enough, while every day the performances are better, and I’m leaner.

The longer you’re consistent, through physical maturity, you will get better.

Regular pushups and any pullup variation done consistently is enough fitness for all.

So simple – few do it.

This feels like it’s 2015 with all the calisthenics, the constant hunger, and the more athletic animalistic build.

It’s 2021. I experienced this all before, I’m doing it better this time.

I feel great.
Hit a victory pose.

-J

1/17/21 – Timed Silence, Thinking, No Television, & More :

1/17/21
I go somewhere quiet. I wonder can I go 20 minutes without noise?

No speaking. No listening. No reading.

I set a timer.
No checking the timer.
That’s something I used to do ; check the timer because minutes in silence can feel long.

It’s why while doing timed holds I like to have someone call out the ticks every so often – hearing the time in/time left is a trick for time to speed up.

It’s easier that way.

Because of this no checking the time.

I’m sitting there. With the breeze it’s a bit chilly.

Thinking.

Good thoughts. Bad thoughts.

By checking in, you train yourself to think better thoughts.

Stuff that bothers you, it will be forgotten, otherwise you reframe.

Everything in life can be told in story. Everything is a learning experience.

A simple reframe and it’s no longer mundane.

I highly recommend getting away from the noise.

It’s why I don’t take in the news. It’s why I don’t watch video.

Why go home and just fill the room with flashing noise?

As is there’s enough noise people – passive aggressive, fearful, negative.

I see no purpose in hitting yourself with more of the same from a source that never sleeps, never eats, never hydrates.

Wow! I just got hit with a warm ray of sunshine as I typed the above.

I had stopped typing a minute. The ray came back as I continue.

There are people who sleep with the television on. That’s not healthy.

I look at those who spend lifetimes in front of it, and they’re all emotionally combinations of lonely, sad, scared, angry, bitter.

The whole slew of negative emotions.

I won’t do that to myself.

I’ve cut out much of my consumption.

Even positives.

To trust my own thinking, gut, and instincts.

Some consumption, months later I’ve retained :

The next few paragraphs (italicized) come from a rough draft, I’ve now typed up where I feel they fit.

Wes Watson has “die slow” tattooed on his knuckles.

I get it. I understand the sentiment. The meaning is clear to me.

I don’t want life to go by quickly!

That’s the meaning of “die slow”, it’s about living life to the fullest.

To not have your shit day, day after day go by quickly, but to have perfectly ran day after perfectly ran day go slowly, feeling every moment of pain, every moment of pleasure, joy, every experience experienced fully – never hiding, never numbing yourself to the world.

Having pasted and touched that up the sun shined directly upon me again, and I shivered with the wind.

“feeling every moment of pain, every moment of joy, every experience experienced fully – never hiding, never numbing yourself to the world” – I was articulating this as a teenager, looking at bad habits (video games, television, porn) more and more for the negatives they are until I cut them out completely.

The sun has come through, and stayed upon me, as I go back to sitting quietly.

1/16/21 Sledgehammer Levering’s Carryover To Grippers :

Sledgehammer Levering’s Carryover To Grippers :

1/16/21 Early Am – Gripper :

I hadn’t squeezed any of my heavy grips grippers yet this year.

I’d purposefully decided to take a minimum of ten days away. I let it extend.

I wanted to rest them specifically, and see what would happen with frequency sledgehammer levering in their place for daily laid back no mental effort grip work.

I take the 200lb heavy grip gripper.
With deep sets on just about every rep I get 5 or 6 with my right hand.

With my left I get three near closes, take the 150lb gripper and just squeeze it hard while closed for awhile.

Yeah the rest helped, but it was very specific rest.

I was training the same function with a different implement, the sledgehammer, just as frequently.

1/16/21 Evening – Sledgehammer Levering :

With my right hand I get 11 reps.

This might be a PR, I hadn’t done double digits in a few years since I’d last levered regularly.

I do another set right handed for 10 reps, and having alternated hands had done my left handed sets in a similar rep range, to failure on the first set, but choked up on the handle.

My gripper strength is higher. My chin up strength is higher.

I say this is the result of daily sledgehammer levering practice.

Now today’s sets were all arm in front, but I generally do from the side (crucifix) as well, sometimes going 45° with arm position halfway between front and side.

I do a lot of levers past my head, not just to the nose, and choked up I’ve been working on leveraging both directions at the wrist, not just towards my face, but away from my body at the wrist like a sword salute.

It’s a sledgehammer, the variations are unlimited, and the practice does very good things not just for the wrist, but for grip strength.

Persistence & Tenacity

P.S.

I may have to visit home depot or lowes soon and beat this video.

1/15/21 Gym Journal – 30 Second Handstand & 12 Chin Ups :

1/15/21
I’d done very little the last few days, nor had I gone to the gym.

I ate up. Staying home averaging 3 meals a day vs going to the gym averaging 1½.

After PT at home most of the week, it’s Friday I decide to go.

Start at handstands.

Continue reading “1/15/21 Gym Journal – 30 Second Handstand & 12 Chin Ups :”

Developing The Tendon & Ligament Strength Of Ancient Humans :

I tell him I train in long sleeves because “not the joints, but my bones on a low level hurt”.

That’s the simplified version, it’s not entirely accurate.

I’m describing it like that to make my point easily understood.

While doing pushups a night or two later the word “ossification” popped into mind, and I was struck by a eureka moment.

I am definitely feeling something in/on my bone, the ones between shoulders and elbows, like there’s a light bruise on the bone itself.

Something is causing this…
Up to that point I hadn’t given it much thought.

Now the bone itself could be thickening, then I realized what is going on :

It’s “bone strength”, more accurately the tendons and ligaments growing in thickness and strength.

That’s the primary, the bone itself may be thickening as a side effect of their respective pulls.

See they studied the bones of legionaries, gladiators, trireme rowers.

These well fed soldiers, fighters, and sailors of the ancient mediterranean were looked at as if they were practically a different species of human by modern scientists.

Though the roman legionary averaged at about 5’8″ 150lbs (an interesting correlation), not only were their centurions documented as larger, 6′ 235lbs, but the centurion also as capable of holding their own with today’s professional strongmen of 7′ 400lbs in physical strength.

The average legionnaire himself was far more rugged than his modern size would suggest.

And too olympic level athletes have failed to match the capability of the trireme rowers for one day, while the ancients were documented to perform day after day.

How?

The skeletal remains show that far more thickly developed tendons and ligaments were pulling on the bones and at more advantageous to strength insertion points.

The roman legionary, his centurion, the gladiator, the trireme rower – the hardships of their ancient lifestyles gave them far more muscular power through sheer magnitude of their greater physical hardships than ours in this soft modern age.

With this information I put 2+2 together.

I’ve long known years of consistent training to effectively change your genetics and somatotype.

What I’m experiencing right now is my bones adapting to the growth of tendons and ligaments more resembling those of the roman legionaries than modern physically inactive humans.

This is a huge argument in favor of heavy physical labor while in youth.

Listen to Bill Kazmaier speak of tree service work in high school, and you’ll understand the implications here.

I’m doing lots of handstands, regularly hitting pullups, doing anywhere from 15 to 50 weighted pushups at a bench equivalent of around 330lbs without warming up, and have another 2000 vanilla pushups on top of that each week.

It’s enough to cause this positive, thought to be impossible, adaptation!

The tendons and ligaments are growing thicker, more powerful, and I just keep doing the work – having my buddy standing in my back, ignoring whether he’s positioned perfectly nor allowing his struggle to hold his own balance atop me stop me.

Without stopping to think I’ve been training rugged grizzly bear viking berserker type strength, and continue to do so.

Strong enough to not consider the details.

Be so strong everything else is minutia.

I just shrug when other’s make this realization, my inner thoughts like conan the barbarian.

They say a detail, I shrug, my inner instinct going “hmn – inconsequential, no concern”.

The tendons and ligaments are getting stronger, more like the ancients, and this development is the way of freakish strength.

There is no such thing as physical hardship. I love doing the work.

Persistence & Tenacity

January 2021 Flow : “Chicken Legs Don’t Happen”

Chicken Legs Don’t Happen :

“Dude, I’m at planet fitness. The mood in the air doesn’t involve training legs. When in rome – at the moment I’m captain upper body man.”

I said the above word for word at some point in the last couple of weeks. The guy I was talking to saying he needs to do more leg work, me saying I don’t bother at present.

It’s funny, starting out with weights I squatted primarily.

Now I barely train legs, and yet…they’re fine.

I feel my quads firing during the weighted pushups.

That’s how you get through the sticking point. You fire quads as hard as possible. It’s possible that I now could use leg drive on a bench. If I was to bench.

Everything is firing during the weighted pushup position planks.

I’m still explosive.

Occasionally I’ll hit some kneeling jumps or goof around cossack dancing.

From the many kick ups into handstands I feel my legs worked in a very athletic feeling way.

When I do a wrestler’s bridge pullovers or holds it’s a leg static too.

The body doesn’t like growing very far out of proportion.

Even without much leg focus they’ll develop to match upper body gains.

The body isn’t going to build a brick shithouse on top of a stork/stilt looking support structure.

And that’s with all the time I spend on my hands in training.

I’m entirely okay with my upper body developed a bit more heavily in proportion to my legs.

It won’t go too far, EVER.

The legs will always match.
Maybe at 60/40 instead of 50/50 even, which is fine.

I can always throw in some swamp lunges. They pair real well with upper body calisthenics.

I don’t even need to oly or high rep overhead squat.

My legs are fine with the current training.

“Chicken legs don’t happen.” -J

Ridding Yourself Of The Urge To Watch Porn With Immediate Physical Activity :

Wanting to watch porn is a manifestation of the nervous energy of inactivity.

Idle hands are the devil’s playground, so give yourself something to be busy with.

I’ll always train. It’s a positive activity I am always able to be busy with.

You’re not going to watch porn when your phone is off, set down overnight in the kitchen.

You can pick it up, and turn it on the next morning. It’ll be okay.

Realistically your cell phone does not need to be within arm’s reach 24/7.

It is not at all a necessary accessory to taking a shit, nor to eating a meal.

And you know many treat it as such.

If you’re really struggling to combat the urge to watch porn – smoke yourself.

On the spot.

You’ll even start to associate that same physical location with not porn viewing and wanking, but with the positive activity of PT.

“Get ready for PT!”

I said in conversation recently “if that urge is there, and you’re struggling to not cave – by the time you’ve done 250 burpees that urge isn’t going to be there”.

Ample physical activity is going to rid you of that urge.

I’m committed to no porn for life.

The urge will redirect to better positive paths. It redirects into real life human and positive directions. Guide it.

Do enough burpees and you’ll find yourself without social inhibitions – you’ll be outgoing.

When that urge is worst, wherever you are, smoke yourself with calisthenics.

“Get ready for PT!”

If burpees don’t work logistically, do pushups like a machine gun.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Flying!

And lay thy head to sleep before witching hour. In all likelihood you don’t need still be up, but if you’re awake, and have that urge…

Smoking! 1, 2, 3, 1!

You’ve got this brother.

Persistence & Tenacity

January 2021 Flow : Outside The Box In The Gym

I’ve done a lot of outside the box things when it comes to lifting weights.

I found high rep jerks carried over to my 225lb bench for reps.

Overhead squats for high reps, as light as the empty bar, saw me grab rim from a standstill.

That was the best vertical jump of my life.

The high reps with the accordion action of the legs and forceful hip thrusts to lockout saw me get powerful under fatigue.

Holding weight at deadlift lockout flips a switch where I mentally freak out.

However long holds and supports are likely the fastest way to improve physiologically.

They’re technically yielding isometrics, and while they may wipe you out – they build you very well.

I like pushup position planks with people standing on my upper back.

5 sets of :45 with my 160lb training partner – I went somewhere.

Then looked leaner the next day while being ravenously hungry.

Humans as weight gets you gorilla strong, and is available in any prison setting outside of solitary confinement.

My favorite implement I’ve ever used?

That was the 185lb rogue yoke at the “hardcore?/powerlifting?” gym.

Seen here deadlifting…with the box…for simulated full range of motion.

Wherever the height was set, I’d pick it up to press it cold either immediately after I walked in, or immediately before I walked out.

Using anywhere from 185-200lbs I’d press it cold, generally for a few reps per set (getting near double digits with 185) as the desk girl looked at me like “he’s freakishly strong, yet refuses to powerlift like the others”.

I never did video tape pressing it.

I liked “rack pulls” on it too. It felt harder than the barbell movements, but also caused far higher muscular activation.

The weight closer to your center line made it easier than a barbell, but the 3″ thickness made it harder than a barbell with greater muscular activation.

I felt the two evened each other out.

The best upper body pump you’ll ever get is to be had flexing hard in simulation of what looks like nail bending.

It makes me wonder how I’d be at nail bending, as manual resistance four directional wrist work improved my sledgehammer levering.

The only levering video I have, during which as luck would have it my buddy flipping me off is out of frame.

And something I’ve learned about bulking :

Bulk comes easily after a period of going very hard.

Fighting a growth spurt during wrestling season junior year of high school, the moment the season was over I went from 195 to 215 in 10 days.

After 3 weeks going psycho on bent rows at the SoCal bodybuilding gym, I went from ~255 to ~270 in a week to ten days as I drove across the country eating poptarts, mcdonalds, continental breakfasts, and drinking half to a full gallon of milk a day, while doing minimal PT.

Do “too much” for a period, up to three months or so, then recover, and grow.

It’d be interesting to use this principle in a chaotic way over shorter time frames.

1500 reps daily, and some heavy work for 7-21 days on low to medium calories, then high calories and little training for a period about half as long. Spend a week or two going normal in food and stimulus, then repeat the process.

As long as you have leg strength, you can focus on the upper body.

Having big strong glutes eliminates back pain.

The wrestler’s bridge is an all encompassing exercise.

Neck, spine, leg/glute, and doing pullovers in this position causes extremely high lat activation.

Always expect athleticism from yourself.

How To Be Effectively Superhuman :

•Strong Wrists
•Strong Ankles
•Strong Neck

Stomping and dropping from height (I regularly jump instead of taking the last few steps) is very useful for leg strength and bone density.

20 rep front squats instead of back squats because legs.

Squatting daily, not only low reps, but with volume back off sets.

Axle cleans and snatches.

And when I’m not at a barbell gym I start pushing calisthenics.

At present I’m working on handstands firstly, and secondly on pushups with people standing on my upper back.

He’s now 5-10lbs heavier, and I get him for triples.

5-10 sets of weighted pushups when the opportunity is there.

Bands allow me to somewhat bypass needing a person for weighted pushups.

If you have the time, and want to experience an interesting body transformation – do 7+ hours a week of density dips, or 7+ hours of handstand practice.

They’ve both worked quite well for me.

-J