The first set is loose form going for PRs, the second set, is following a Paul Carter suggestion – the 50% set, bout a minute rest, looking for bout half the reps, but my spin on it is go from loose to strict form.
…..
I’m in love with the press.
Yesterday I could’ve lifted and didn’t, even thinking that I may take a week off from lifting, at points this year I was lifting once every week to ten days at best, and plenty of world class lifters will take a season off yearly…
I took Monday, yesterday, one day, and lifted real minimally today – the two sets aforementioned.
Did my lunges a couple hours later, and really dug how they alongside a bit more bw leg movements really pumped up my legs.
If I was to take a season off, well I’d probably have to travel – some beach somewhere, or maybe make it the simplest thing ever logistically (like live next door to) a boxing, bbj, muay thai, or mma place.
As is I lift.
…..
It amuses me to know that many make a power clean out to be a complicated thing needing a coach.
If you were to start with a 300lb weight set thrown in the yard, massive desire to be strong as fuck, big as fuck – you’d eventually figure the shit out.
Does it really matter if you’re using textbook form?
Shit, the international oly girls way out pull me, and I’m known in my day to day life as being bullishly strong.
Go the Mario Martinez route, fuck the form – be strong instead.
It’s amazing how much being strong enough overrides little things like technique, the right attire, perfectly level floors, heat/ac (I lift at The Cold Air Barbell Club), etc.
It’s an open secret that effort, not programming, is what makes awesome results.
You can put me in any circumstance, and I always get stronger.
At present it’s c&p, for whatever reason ducking just about any other lift I do have floor based access to, and just talking about joining the current sports performance/powerlifting (trendy), admittedly well equipped local facility.
The answer for me really is :
•open my own gym
•fill it with people worth being there
pictured : a strongly built tatted asian with nice thick thighs and boner inducing butt
12/5/22, 345am
Ravenous I go to the kitchen, what am I craving – meat? Maybe. The only option is leftover chicken wings. Not in the mood right now.
The more accurate craving is just saturated fat, and I’m not in the mood for eggs – cheese sandwich sounds good, peanut butter and cheese sounds horrible, the peanut butter that is, the stuff’s consistency doesn’t always sit well.
Now, in a way, I’m more european than american, I butter my sandwiches everywhere in place of what you expect to be mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise, I only eat the stuff when it comes on something I ordered. I don’t not eat it, I just about never add it myself or say yes to it when asked.
(Exception – taking bout eight packets to slather over my burger and fries for a higher calorie takeout meal after what was probably a 20hr fast.)
A lazy cheese sandwich is peanut butter and cheese.
This morning?
See how I feel about the consistency of peanut butter in the moment.
So we’re doing it right, bread, butter, peanut butter, and cheese.
We want the extra heaviness of the peanut butter. I do sometimes eat butter and cheese sandwiches.
I slice the butter real thin and chop it into tiny lardon sized pieces, microwave the bread and butter for :15, spread it, glob on the peanut butter, mix it around with the extra, bigger than space to spread, butter, and with that set – I slice the cheese, about half of an 8oz brick of what I have on hand.
Some cheese crackers on the side, and voila – I enjoyed my before 4am meal.
Still a bit hungry – this meal probably cause I’d skipped the apple pie and vanilla ice cream I’d usually have eaten around 11pm.
…..
You’ve gotta listen to your body when you eat.
I only touch peanut butter when it is a craving, this morning the lazy sandwich sounded terrible, while butter and cheese (something I do eat) didn’t sound strongly appealing, so the sandwich included it all.
Milk, while I drink copious amounts – is drank at the end of the day, while I am ravenous, when I crave it, or during/after lots of sweating and/or physical effort.
And ice cream is great at any time when hydration is an issue! It’s a great refueler, even used as “prehab” like refueling!
I expect to go to bed, at the very least nap, after eating grits. It is generally thought of as breakfast food, but it puts me to bed, relegating it to a craving food or when ravenous desiring something “heavy” late night as an extra meal.
I tend to cook it with pepper, and sometimes garlic powder added, shredded cheese mixed in, whatever meat is on hand to finish the bowl.
Oats I’ve found to work as a raw ingredient in egg shakes, or mixed with eggs in a bowl before pan frying.
I will eat oatmeal cookies.
I do not cook oats as is traditional in liquid – that preparation gives me stomach aches, and overconsumption leads to some stomach turning blast poops near the end of the day.
…eating serious quantities of instant oats at a hotel continental breakfast, I’m talking 2500-3000 calories of instant oats, 12-16 hour delay – that’s how I know…
Funny that I spent a good deal of middle school and high school having a bowl every morning, listening to what is “common knowledge”, not what I felt, my instincts buried.
A stomach ache after nearly every breakfast.
I eat little in the way of bread, just the occasional cheese sandwich, or almost common buttered sourdough toast.
Almost never do I have the bun when I make myself a burger at work. For months coworkers thought this very odd – now they’re surprised on the odd night I have a traditional looking burger.
Eggs are the superfood…and I rarely eat/drink them. Yes drink, I go through phases making daily raw egg shakes.
When I eat them it’s fried, often cut with oats as written above.
I never eat them scrambled, that’s almost never sat well, just like oats cooked in liquid.
Cream of wheat is not food so far as I am concerned. Tastes nasty, doesn’t digest, it’s like all the cons of oatmeal without a positive.
When I eat a sandwich a regular occurrence is butter, grape or strawberry jelly, and salami.
It’s a regular enough craving.
My red meat is generally cooked to medium at most, and that’s when I accidentally over cook it.
I dodge low fat/no fat dairy products as much as possible.
Skim milk tastes like off water. Whole milk tastes like “God made this especially for me, so I can be big and strong” – YES
I’ve noticed significant difference in my preference to other full fat dairy products as well. Walmart generally has an organic full fat kefir, the latter part the selling point to me – much better than the low fat or skim based product normally found.
Occasionally I find full fat greek yogurt, and tend to always buy it. It’s much better, much more a difference than with kefir.
It’s shameful that so much dairy on the shelves is without part or all of its fat.
Where does it go?
Does commercial baking use all the cream byproduct?
An interesting historical fact – prior to world war two most skim milk was simply dumped as a byproduct, as waste!
And now it’s sold at the same cost as it’s more nutritious counterpart…whole milk.
I try to waste as little as possible of fat from my cooking. I’ll fry something in burger grease immediately following it’s cooking.
This will often be, splash some water, a pack of crunched up ramen letting the beef fat cook into the noodles, the water cook out of the hot pan.
At least once I ate the yolks, the food waste from my buddy’s serious egg white habit – “dude, stop throwing those down the drain, I’m hungry too”.
Blew his mind that I’d eat all the cholesterol willingly, it’s I that know the yolks are the best part, a third or half the protein, all the fat, all the cholesterol – mother nature’s testosterone booster.
It’s always surprised me that we’re in disagreement on this point.
Potatoes are a robust carb.
You can’t go wrong with any preparation, even shitty restaurant mashed potatoes are acceptable.
Wendy’s sell good enough baked potatoes.
Solid in a pinch. One restaurant I worked in tossed at least 4-6 big uns every night.
When I worked, and being the new guy not being sick of them – I’d take every one available, and then at home put meat and cheese from the grocery store over them, partially free twice baked potatoes.
The free food, whether employee meal or snagged food waste, is a big perk for line cooking these past ~15 months – most of my weekly hamburgers are cooked at work in the already smelling kitchen as I already smell.
I more rarely make the house smell like beef fat for 18 hours at a pop (not the greatest ventilation I’d say)..
A large percentage of my calories is restaurant food. But unlike the following…I lift weights, c&p baby, awesomeness….
I made fun of my buddy when he went from a solid 185lbs to 185 of mcdonalds based fluff on the 100% free mcdonalds diet (his only off menu eating other drive through “food” bought by the kfc classy single mother coworker he was hooking up with).
lol – at the above anecdote, and the “kfc classy” description that just came to me. During that period for him it was mostly 5-6 days of free mcdonalds, then 1-2 of kfc as supplied by his single mother whatever they described themselves as.
And I wrap this up.
…..
Might be a lifting one later today.
…..
juicy – which is not exactly what to write after a bunch about food…and this being as close as I got to porn last night, for whatever reason I was going through it over that urge – hence awake typing at 345am
12/4/22
I’ve got a Wim Hof podcast playing, the title of this post sparked by something I was thinking last night – the day off of work, a buddy cancelled on me for us working out (he’s gotta hook up with a stripper – lol – hoe before bro in this case), and what I just lifted.
Press Ugly :
On today’s best set, a new 8rm of 195lbs (two and a half years since 8×185 which was only recently beaten for reps at the same weight), the form is UGLY!
I won’t be letting the bar go below my chin, it’ll be down to chin height at best, I lean back a little (rippetoe approved mind you), and something I noticed in research of old time austrian and german strongmen – I stagger my feet slightly.
This is more stable.
lessons from Karl Swoboda – the first man to jerk 440lbs
Fuck strict military form, none of us use strict military form anyway – have you pressed with your heels together? Zero layback, only the head angled (if that) backwards to let the bar pass the chin.
(Funny gym memory – a chick wearing a forward facing ball cap as she pressed – I recall looking over and saying “lose the cap, at least spin it around, you’ll be getting the reps again”.)
No. It’s better to use the looser form (still a muscular challenge), and be fucking strong!
When you put people’s benches overhead you can press however you want.
Emevas at mythical strength is right, Dan John is right, this past year+ I’m right – you can do nothing but the clean and press and thrive!
Ideally you’d have every sort of implement to press overhead, atlas stones, strongman logs, natural stones, sandbags, heavy dumbbells, a barbell, people, random heavy objects, EVERYTHING, etc.
I’ve got a barbell.
I intend to keep pressing overhead, outside, with my barbell.
Like I did today, you can use perfect form on light sets – the 10rm, the 20rm, the 15 rep maxes – today’s set of 15 probably a tad shy of a rep PR at that weight (155lbs – I was looking for 20 reps, as the 8rm of 195lbs was looking for 10 reps).
For heavy, reasonably get ugly, and be the strongest around for it.
I love the clean and press.
Though I no longer military press, it’s now the press, king of lifts.
Eat Pizza Like A Ninja Turtle :
Lifting big, to a degree you’re going to have to eat big.
Pizza.
It’s so easy.
There’s probably no other way to eat a bunch of calories as easily as pizza allows.
Maybe those 90s cartoons were trying to teach me something…how to build myself the muscularity of a 80s cartoon (He-Man obviously).
I’ve got the power!
pizza power – the bulking power of mixed macros – tmnt teaches eat pizza, eating pizza + lifting like you mean it = becoming he-man
Drink Milk Like The Tiniest Of Babes :
Arnold is quoted as saying “drink beer, milk is for babies”.
Mark Rippetoe is quoted as saying “babies drink milk, and look how they grow”.
Arnold might be more famous…fuck his outlook, I’m in agreement with Rippetoe – drink your milk!
A half gallon a day is nothing!
At 17 years old I was getting close to two gallons a day for a good six months.
I remember people thinking I insane when I described milk as my hydration drink in the sense of gatorade.
Funny, science caught up with that just now…a decade later.
While I’m not at gomad right now, I’m solidly at about 5 gallons a week.
Lately I’ve been running on apple pie heated up, scoops of vanilla ice cream over it, milk drinking with it.
Pizza may be easy high calorie mixed macros to eat, but milk is your easy high calorie mixed macros to drink!
Calories are easier to drink than eat.
Milk is sold at every gas station.
Hilariously, there is stuff online saying some bodybuilders are drinking breast milk, an article comparing ice cream and breast milk, all the word written about chocolate milk post workout, comparing eating ice cream vs drinking whey…
hilarious…and contradictory – raw can’t be pasteurized and homogenized
Drink your milk!
Eat your dairy!
Like the tiniest of newborn babes.
They grow!
I’m 200 something pounds of jacked from milk!
Thank God for the Irish blood in me which blessed me with full lactose tolerance!
12/3/22
The fuck would you not do daily workouts for!
I swing the mace, tonight it was 2×10 each side, after work – it’s been after every shift for over a year now.
Yes, I’m a bit compulsive about my workouts.
I lunge down and back, getting about 30 total/15 each side.
Inside, another set of pushups before I shower. This is two sets before work, one after, probably another still before bed.
It’s so simple.
Just do daily workouts and eat real food.
As I drove home I felt this instinctive thing – my life needs to be harder.
Fuck the job, fuck whatever job it is that you’re working – you need to PT daily, which I do, but that’s not enough.
You need to rigorously study, and rigorously apply.
Run your own business, have a few hobbies, speak more than one language, have a social life too.
You know many muslims memorize the koran?
It’s always struck me every time I’ve heard of it. I’ve little heard of this being done by christians with the bible.
Read motherfucker!
What have you got to lose with vigorous study?
…..
An ideal day is run walking the line of your limit, study, work, PT – NO DOWNTIME, every moment budgeted into the maximum use.
I lived like that as a sophomore in high school. Live that way again – and make it build something grand!
…..
As I drove I felt it…”have no mental blocks”.
Get that 300lb clean and press.
It’s not even elite, yet in all likelihood stronger than 99.9% of those you’d ever have to come across.
Have I fucked up in that I’ll never be a professional strongman, never hold a world record in powerlifting?
I’m definitely not on that path right now, just cleaning and pressing in the yard.
…..
Timed deadlifts – one hour.
…..
Why not see if I can press 20×155, then work on that rep range briefly.
…..
I remember this from when I started lifting. Once even came across the chick pictured being interviewed about her photo going viral – at the time she was something like a nebraska (or whatever the colors are) undergrad who stated her quads really took off when she started lifting, that she wished her ass grew more, and that the photo was snapped on a whim before heading to a football game
Now 9¼ hours of food prep isn’t exactly ideal for lifting, you’re dehydrated from standing next to the oven, but in circumstances unideal you get a solid litmus test for where you stand.
I started daily lunges about a week ago…
Tonight’s cleans had horsepower!
Being out of position in all sorts of ways, and getting the rep anyway – exploding too early, managing to bump my thighs against the bar, GRABBING THE BAR OFF CENTER, etc.
My quads and glutes firing to press through the sticking point.
Tonight likely the first time this had actually been an efficient thing.
I swear my ass is more dense, more easily activated/often activated throughout the day, and in a week my thighs are bigger.
Why wouldn’t walking lunges quickly out thigh size back on?
They’ve been larger at 20-30lbs of bodyweight less (back when I did squat every day – highly recommended), so this could be muscle memory, and too – I respond really well to reps.
Lunges are a forte type movement for me.
It’s good to be back.
I’d not much trained legs these past few years.
…..
He who hath the biggest ass lifteth the most weight…while dem thighs provideth forth thy base from which thy press burst forth skyward.
12/1/22 – Walking Lunges After Work :
17x/side, after the tree branch mace swings, when I get inside it’ll be another set of pushups, then shower up.
Tonight instead of down and back I went in something of a square around the yard.
Mentally I need daily workouts, they can be the one win, the one thing that keeps you going – “I worked out today! I workout tomorrow!”, and that’s you.
Teary eyed as I drove home.
My voice breaking as I state “no porn tonight!”
I’m not running to the vice like a bitch.
You have to trust that God will put the opportunities in front of you, and that you have the ability to take them.
…..
The manager who’s kinda a fitness dude gave me props, as occasionally I brag of my press numbers to him.
He said to me, roughly, “you’re pressing overhead what many are happy to bench – you’re getting into the territory of my max bench”.
I have no doubts I’ll clean and press 300lbs before 2024.
10×205, 5×225, and 255 as a 1rm are all numbers that are close.
The clean concerns me more than the presses.
It’s not exactly your best approach to hitting heavy cleans to do one per amrap set of presses, however lots of moderately weighted, crisp reps have in the past improved my max clean.
I’m actually very into this program of clean and press, with walking lunges.
It’s following the k.i.s.s. principle nicely, and enjoyable to me in the moment.
…..
In April 2017 I lunged 400m.
It makes sense to me to density train these with frequency.
…..
I just shot off a challenge text to a buddy, see if he’s gonna race me lunging 400m on new year’s day.
