Month: February 2021

Sentenced to forever roll a boulder up a hill, Sisyphus was required to physically train for all eternity!

The ancient greeks idolized a man’s muscular thigh as the most masculine body part to have developed.

Wedding proposals were known to be refused on the premise of the man not being found masculine enough, for he lacked what was deemed a proper level of sturdy thigh development.

Slaves were used at labor/punishment similar to Sisyphus’s task, developed the ideal thigh of the time, causing with jealousy and possibly emulation the free greeks to go about getting the same thigh development.

A boulder was the ancient prowler sled or football/rugby drive sled!

No vehicle in neutral, a boulder would be rolled/pushed around a sand track!

In a way being made to what in the eye’s of the time was an eternal leg day gave Sisyphus a blessing in the eyes of an ancient greek gym bro.

He was forever working on his thighs!

Like Tom Platz in his respective time, no one would out develop Sisyphus’s thighs.

Put it this way :

He was made to task something which caused jealousy in the trainees of the day, which too made him the most marriageable in myth to the day’s maiden, likely causing even more jealousy to an ancient greek hardgainer – one who the Spartans would’ve exposed in infancy, but being born in another city state grew up scrawny probably being a pupil of one orator or another, while jealous of the athletes and phalanxmen.

He was sentenced to bodybuild!

His task would’ve been far worse had he been required to roll a tiny pebble up the hill while crawling on all fours.

That, robbing him of leg development, with the humiliation of crawling on his knees for all eternity…that would’ve been a sentence of tedium really worth the term sisyphean task!

Persistence & Tenacity

1030pm
Gotta get them in.
Earbuds in.
Interval timer on.
On my face.
One oh oh.

50 in :30
rest :10 – one knee on the floor back up into position
33 in :20

83 pushups in 1:00.

Range of motion? PT test legal or close.

Only the first 50 were PT test legal though, as the counting stops with the knee having come out of front leaning rest – this is easily remedied, stay in position.

I didn’t need to rest like that, I chose to.

PT? ✓
Every day always and forever.

With the song in my mind I’m back in high school (technically not the remix version) juggling wrestling, grades, drivers ed, etc – the mindset of doing my work while looking to the future.

My time! My time! My time!

“My calves are sore”, I note, “that’s odd I don’t specifically train them”.

I realize it’s from the jogging in place burpees – a running like stimulus that I actually will do.

As a fat middle schooler I developed “fat man calves” which stayed with me when I lost about 40lbs as a high school freshman.

I remember liking that my calves stayed big, even growing from all the newly participated in locomotion, while my weight shrank.

I maintained this size with basic activity (walking, running, sports), and an occasional set of the calf raise machine using the stack, superset with dips in the school weight room before catching the bus.

Only two kids in high school had larger muscular calves than I.

One, a jock, who always walking on his toes, developed the ability to rep the stack of the same calf machine one legged.

Another, my buddy, with a pill head mom who didn’t have a car, always walked or ran everywhere (backpack on), and out of boredom would do bodyweight calf raises up to 500 in a set.

I’ve seen him do that at random multiple times.

That’s why he had 19″ calves at 5’8″ish 165lbs or less. With at times a 100lb weight difference he always had larger calves than I.

Probably the biggest muscular calves I’ve ever seen are on a relative who hikes in the summer and goes for long walks in the winter, those walks sometimes with pack on.

The biggest my calves ever were was in the period I did 100 calf raises a day for a decent amount of time as part of my daily PT.

First you do it in sets of 10, 15, or 20.

You get consistent at 5×20, then go 4×25, soon after it’s 3×35/35,35,30, then 2×50, then 1x amrap, 1x30ish, then it’s 100+ a set or 2 amraps which will get to 100+ each given enough time.

The 3×35, or 35,35,30 protocol the lazy maintenance get it done day.

That program maintained all my leg strength for awhile without other leg work, it’s something I always have in my back pocket should I need/choose to use it, and is something I recently spoke of to a kid on the gym floor speaking to me of his desire to build bigger calves.

Calves may be stubborn, though from Arnold to an old lifting partner, even a pair of calves with the worst of insertions can be built up.

My buddy annihilated his something like 4x weekly to end lifting sessions, and in all honesty with my bigger calves and better insertions for size did this regularly while I wouldn’t go through the entire thing with him (normally tapping on the seated calf raises sets), and eventually his calf size did surpass mine.

The work you require is what you require.

They’re a body part I’m fairly blessed with, but not as freakishly as that jock, my buddy (who by lifestyle had the highest calf workload in the modern world running/walking everywhere with his backpack on), and my at one point 21″ calves with a mind of their own sporting hiking relative.

He actively wanted them to atrophy.
They’re still 18 or 19″.

Lots of contractions big calf make.

Locomotion wearing a pack while not necessarily time efficient (though it may just be what’s required for monster calves) builds the largest of calves.

I know a guy ; he’s went from very obese to a completely normal bodyweight.

Though his neck has the turkey gibblet look, and his torso a lot of folds due to a massive amount of loose skin, his face is that of a new man, he looks much better, younger even.

He’s walking around in large tshirts now, while he had to have been a 3x or larger before.

His college age son started getting into bodybuilding, eventually getting on stage, and as far as I know this got him motivated to quit being obese.

That’s cool as hell, and why regardless of who you are – be putting a good example into the world.

He was far more into bragging about his son’s doings than mentioning what he’d done.

I didn’t bother asking when and what he’d done. Only taking educated guesses as to the speed due to all the loose skin.

(He lost weight too fast, and without enough strength training, though I’m sure his quality of life is 100x better as it’s much more comfortable to carry 200lbs than 350+, he likely was 400lbs, any way you slice it he’s healthier now.)

I love seeing people make great changes.

It’s better never to have gotten that far gone in the first place, but until your 6′ under you can always change circumstance for the better.

Physical surrender only follows mental surrender. The brain, the proper mindset will force great changes even amongst the oldest and most feeble of senior citizens.

Do you know how many retirees I’ve seen over the years at the gym, getting to it, while on average being extremely sociable and pleasant individuals to share a weight room with?

The time is now. It’s not over yet.
That’s why we fight!

The beauty of flexing is that it’s always available, and works everything from every angle.

I flare my lats, then do four way neck dynamics, followed by firing everything as hard as possible at the top of a sumo deadlift, then a double hammer curls contraction, ending with a double triceps contraction.

As I did the above I envisioned being more thickly muscled with visible abs, lifting heavy weights, and putting the mental into my head that this work transforms me.

Realize there’s zero equipment involved.

It’s flexing and mental.

As I type I flex my calves.

Perfect logistics.

What if you put your heart and soul into making flexing work for you?

Honest effort, positive self talk – expecting only the best, flex, you’ll go sky high.

Flex your way strong.

No one in the first world has it bad…compared to what has been historically.

The worst fed american now?
The american with the most taxing physical job?

Easy peasy.

Only a couple hundred years ago one could be in both those circumstances at the same time!

This means that one would be simultaneously starved, given only brackish water and cornmeal, while being worked to death

“Oh, that doesn’t sound so bad” I hear someone claim, well guess what princess, that’s literally nothing but foul water and cornmeal.

A low calorie , zero protein, zero fat diet with disgusting water while working long heavy hours.

Your inexpensive meal of cornbread doused in melted butter and drizzled with honey while drinking milk on the side is downright luxurious.

You should view it as such.

Ever the moreso with your bowl of baked beans and hot dogs going with it.

Luxurious.

The above sounds like sound nutrition and good calories.

You’re not starving.
Far from it.

Life is good.

For awhile now whenever I think of my problems I compare it to that situation.

Hard labor on a low calorie, zero protein, zero fat diet, drinking rank water – my problems aren’t.

They don’t exist.

Life is good.

It’s first world problems princess, there’s a reason the world wants in to america.

I had a small filipino once tell me of how america has meat, telling me how the minute he landed on these shores he went about eating as much of it as he could as he had none in his native land.

Then he told me of how he fed his sons the opposite of how he ate as a child, and they all grew to ballpark 6′ 250.

He guessed my height and weight accurately taking his own sons into account.

“Yeah, 6′ 255-260, that’s spot on.”

“You look a little stockier than my son an inch taller than you, and a little less stocky than my son two inches shorter than you. I averaged their heights and weights.”

That blew my mind, the first generation born in america growing that big and tall.

This little old filipino was maybe 5’2″ 115. His wife a filipina immigrant.

While I didn’t meet her I assume she was not some giantess – that their sons grew large from proper childhood nutrition and ample red meat consumption.

It showed me something we know instinctively, that most suppress cause the culture says it ain’t so.

A lot of immigrants don’t suppress this instinct having truly gone without, so while the sons of suburbia, the so called “affluent” kids, don’t get enough good nutrition – often only growing to the national average of 5’9″, there are many sons of immigrants, from places where everyone is thought of to be short, growing to heavy 6′ builds.

10lb bags of chicken leg quarter from food 4 less results in children being fed better than a few “proper portion” size/few oz servings of organic chicken breast do at a suburban table.

I got a kick out of food 4 less, all the big and tall hispanics there and I had similar carts – big bags of chicken leg quarters, milk, and rice or ramen primarily.

My relatives (childless I might add) eating organic from whole foods and trader joes – they got maybe a quarter of the calories at quadruple the total cost.

Think about that a second.

Nutrition in america can be 1/16 the cost of what people have been led to believe it is.

There are so many calories available, and life is so easy physically that there is rampart obesity, while some people go to gyms for leisure activity!

It ain’t worked to death and starved to death on corn and water that’s for sure.

Food is always on the table, and once you take charge of your nutrition you can eat as well as you like in this country.

At affordable prices to boot.

Anyone can make $50 or less a week work.

It’s a matter of budgeting and cooking.

The lazy way would just be frozen food and drinking milk.

$7 a day still fits doing that.
It covers a cheap frozen pizza and a gallon of milk.

That’s something like 185g protein, high carbs, enough saturated fat, and around 4500 calories taking nearly no work to prepare.

Do you know how much dark meat cuts of chicken, rice, beans, pasta, and milk you can eat for $7.

It’s staggering.

1000 calories per dollar or better.

Food is abundant, and highly affordable when you eat like an immigrant or like your forefathers did in tougher times.

So smile, buy ingredients you have to cook, and then do so.

You’ll never starve.
You’ll thrive.

Life is good.