8 sets of pushups at the gym.
2 while reading.
2 late night.
12 sets on the day, about 300 pushups, just a few over.
That’s in addition to volume gym lifting.
I can tell you how prisoners get muscular.
It ain’t supplements.
It ain’t drugs.
It ain’t diet.
It’s simply doing volume, building muscle because at some point enough work forces muscle growth irregardless of all other circumstances, and once you’ve muscled up enough your body type becomes mesomorphic.
Training will turn you into a mesomorph.
It’s a positive feedback loop.
As you build muscle you’ll build more muscle.
It gets EASIER as you do so. Period.
I don’t know what I started as, probably endomorph.
I then cardioed myself skinny fat.
Force feeding got me to endo-meso, and as I continue to age and lift (both factor in) the switch to mesomorph comes more and more.
Train for a decade, you’ll make some serious changes, then never stop.
Everyone can, but not necessarily will, become a mesomorph.
“Dude, you could lose 75 to 100 in three to six months.”
“I lost 30 in football, but that was like four hours a day.”
“So? Commit. Go all in. Walk your dog seven times daily, may as well have your girlfriend come with you too/two, when you’re done look at him, say thank you, he’ll look up, say you’re welcome, and be understanding that you’re at the gym for three to four hours nightly.”
“You do know I work right? That she works too.”
“You do know you have a large, high activity dog. Seven walks a day.”
I wasn’t being facetious, maybe exaggerating a bit. I’d say 3×30 minutes walking his dog each day minimally, more being preferable, and if I were him would be at the gym daily for a few hours each day.
20 hours of gym time a week isn’t that much activity, especially considering the sedentary nature of our society.
Only in the modern world do we think a couple sessions at the gym is high activity.
People used to do EVERYTHING by hand – it’s now mechanized.
I should get him to read up on JM Blakley and Bruce Randall.
You can put in the hours, it’s not difficult physically.
Transformations come fast when the commitment is there.
You’ve got four hours for tv each day, imagine if that was switched minute for minute to self improvement.
“I’m coming up on six months, no watching nothing.”
I read that Chuck Sipes was natty, and frankly I believe it.
He had a very quality physique, and to me it looks attainable.
Being listed at 5’9″ 220lbs surprised me, I figured him closer to 6′ in the 215-225 range.
and frankly I knew a guy who looks like this at 6’3′ 235lbs
He has the classic build in appearance we all can achieve, the look from bodybuilding of yesteryear, from the ages before steroids and when steroids were something you only ran briefly GAINING WEIGHT coming into a show.
Reading of him there are lessons to be gleaned.
He worked hard physically, not just in the gym, but with the gym as an addition to a physical lifestyle.
Time spent as a lumberjack, and a love for hiking lay a phenomenal base in which to bodybuild on.
It’s notable that he’d bring cables and do calisthenics when on long forays into the woods.
Even going for evening runs after hiking all day, and training with cables, and calisthenics.
It’s notable that he’d regularly train thrice daily. The man believed in putting in work.
His freakish strength is explained not only by shear volume, a dedication over years to being strong with work capacity, but the fact he did lots of heavy partials and supports which are like a cheat code for unlocking your body’s true power.
You can go as far as you’re willing to work for.
Don’t accept limits.
Someone like Sipes is considered a freak today, but if you were raised in Sparta BC he’d be par for the course.
The biggest battle, is the one in your mind, the battle between accepting limitations and going as far as you truly can.
You not only have to push physically, but more effort must be applied to pushing mentally, in being able to look at yourself and tell yourself you’re not even going hard, to tell yourself that you’re not getting nearly the results you could be, the ones that others are in worse circumstances with less than you.
Exceeding yourself by applying the beyond the extreme of outward results to the deepest level of your internal belief.
People are not big and strong, as a rule, because they do not have enough workout volume.
People are all sorts of dysfunctional BECAUSE THEY DON’T GET ENOUGH WORKOUT VOLUME.
Even people I train with look at me like I’m crazy, but they can’t argue with the results.
Volume works.
When I don’t get in volume my strength will hold yes, however the majority of my progress has come from volume.
Throw out your ideas about only three or four sets, throw out your ideas about never going past 15 reps a set.
In general you need movement.
In the gym you need more sets and reps.
You know what works, always has, always will?
Effort.
If you committed 30 minutes a day to density training you’d be a god among men.
The bar is so low. You actually have to search out true potential and hold it in mind to keep upping your own limits.
Not getting stronger?
Nine times out of ten you’ll solve it by throwing more volume at it.
You should be doing as much volume as your joint health allows for.
Time? lol, you’ve got time.
Never watch tv again.
There’s plenty of time.
Everyone has it in them to be a sidewalk crackin motherfucker.
They get there with volume.
If 10×10 done as heavy as possible was the standard protocol there’d be a whole lot more muscular beast on every gym floor.
•Do more work.
•Up the intensity.
•Up the volume.
Be big, strong, & in shape.
It’s not rocket science, it’s only effort.
Do more volume.
I’ll write about this at some point, lss, I’ve started helping my fat ass buddy get in shape.
I’ve got him started real light on machines, building him up, with reps, my idea to get him doing either 5×20, 3×30-35, or 10×10 full body as a way to awaken dormant too much video game and zero gym time muscles I know must be there by virtue of having locomotion at damn near 400lbs.
Beginners need lots of volume, as volume is what builds work capacity.
I’m getting him doing volume a couple times a week, and I keep upping mine.
10×10 benching has been real fun, plus I do extra credit heavier sets.
I’ve never done 10×10 pullups, I’ll train for it soon.
Yeah I’m using a smith machine, and benching more than bodyweight in it for 10×10 superset with the pullups will be badass.
I believe in human potential, and I believe in frequency and volume.
Write your own program.
Disregard science, disregard forum posts, and disregard normal training programs.
Make yourself the program that mentally you buy into, and run it.
Run with it!
Too many don’t run their program, and hence have lackluster results.
My program is literally:
•do pushups today
•get to gym often and apply effort
I don’t think whether I’m tired or hungry.
My programming is by instinct, and I barely consider whether I have soreness or not.
I definitely don’t act like soreness matters, and it definitely doesn’t stop me.
I’ve found as a general rule that I perform better physically while fasted.
Psychologically, if not physically, 90% of the time I need “high frequency”.
I believe humans as designed are meant to be highly physical.
So a focus on days off and recovery is just a way to slack off.
Making decisions is healthier than constantly overthinking.
Don’t hide behind some excuse. Choose to train, or own your choice to take a day off aka to not train.
For instance, I often choose to eat in a way that “you don’t want to know how I eat”.
Instead of eating like a bodybuilder I choose to self regulate diet mostly by cravings which for me ends up alternating between fasting, and what I consider gluttony.
One day on an exercise bike cutting weight for high school wrestling I decided “I’d rather exercise more and be able to eat more”, and have been doing some version of outtraining diet since.
My first summer as a mover I was eating dirtier and dirtier trying to keep weight on.
Out training a “bad diet” isn’t some impossible thing.
America needs to match it’s activity levels to it’s calorie levels – this alone could change the health landscape of the nation. Outside the box baby!
Maybe I’ll go full bodybuilder. Maybe I won’t.
Right now I’m laughing expecting to see abs soon, and I’m getting to this higher level with the least mental activity involved.
I don’t care much, and I’m flying.
Soaring high by having embraced the sea floor.
I stopped caring. I just do.
Not touching a barbell, and here I am getting better and better.
Going to planet fitness, lol the place is so bad, at least that what the internet would have you believe.
I don’t care. I just go.
Effort. Where I am. With what I’ve got. No thinking. Brainless. Yet no one can help you with your training like I can.
After long enough in the gym you can make anyone muscle up.
You can lean people out.
You pick up the knowledge of dieticians, physical therapists, masseuses, etc as par for the course.
Even an idiot savant becomes a genius trainer.
Even trying not to think, taking your brain out of the gym as much as possible when applied to self, doing your best draft horse with blinders (straight forward nothing can stop me – budweiser horse philosophy as an article – note to self) impersonation you get the ability to teach.
You do.
It’s a natural evolution.
Since I’m not thinking about how I train, just going straight forward, my brain being naturally at 100mph always has to do something, so it’s active, me looking around figuring how to fix someone’s form, what they should be doing instead, figuring out how to get your training partner to double his reps, etc, etc, etc.
Be a draft horse with blinders – straight on forward, the freight train on rails – can’t stop me!
To Arnold’s Conan I ask “What. Is. Good. In life!”
I spoke with a buddy about 2019’s “dip odyssey”, and leverages allowing you to really rack up the volume on certain movements, milking them for all they’re worth.
Likening the process to a “body transformation gone dumb”.
A body transformation gone dumb – for me this tends to be doing dips, dipping some more, after that dipping even more, and then thinking I’m done doing more dips.
I’m not doing a 2021 “dip odyssey” at present.
I’m using dips as a way to get more volume in, and because of 2019 know the effects and what I can get from them.
Instead of daily it’s more like every other day.
(500+ happened because dips are a way to go light, do meaningful volume, and get meaningful stimulation all at the same time.)
I spoke with a fat boy failing his PT test. I’ll probably do an article more specifically on this soon.
I offered to do burpees with him.
He needs it.
Fat boy didn’t want to do burpees…
He needs to!
I’ve never had a fat boy take up my advice or offers when it comes to burpees.
Burpees would stop fat boy from being a fat boy.
Burpees – an Rx for fat boys on the macro and micro levels, which keeps the fat boy from participating in said status of being a fat boy.
To really make this fat loss, I’d superset dips with some leg calisthenic.
Bodyweight squats most likely, though lunges too would work.
PT is the way to go.
Military, felons, and smart civilians agree on it.
Thinking on this note I want you to view diet as irrelevant.
Like Wes says in the video above ; “fuck the motherfucking food”.
During 2019’s “dip odyssey” I was doing the dips on top of moving labor, living on pizza, subs, kielbasa, whoopie pies, gatorade, ginger ale, and milk.
It wasn’t clean eating. I was getting leaner through high activity at work, and sheer volume with dips.
Body transformation gone dumb.
You can do this with a commitment to volume calisthenics.
Dip or chin ups for the “odyssey” portion, one or the other depending on whether you have arms more closely resembling a tyrannosaurus rex’s or an orangutan’s.
Then sometimes, or if you’re choosing to emulate the “Iron Wolf” channel, all the time – you smoke yourself with burpees.
100 1 pumps in 20:00 or less daily is maintainable physically.
You work on jogging up longer and longer portions, all set to an interval timer.
So you’re looking at :
•massive volume dips or chins
•some of the other and pullups
•100+ pushups as daily standby
•bw legs
•burpees – smokin
(Since I’m at pf I supplement with machines and dumbbell c&p, since they’re available.)
Physical Transformation Gone Dumb
This has near zero attention to eating right now, that’s the next step for going all in.
And in all honesty at a barbell gym I’d be running this with ~225lb deadlifts for the volume (like the dips), power cleans (& press?) and power snatches, the olys in 50/20 protocol mostly, and weighting bent rows all across the board as the heavy work, and as an alternative volume lift.
Muscling up is easy.
I know it to be true, though a decade ago, at age 15/16, I wouldn’t have believed it.
Researching programs tends to have a hamstringing effect. You leave the lifting forums thinking “what works”, instead of more accurately “what doesn’t work”.
That’s a 20/20 hindsight that would’ve been huge to know at 13 years old.*
See it all works. That’s my experience. It can be yours.
Take any method, put heart into it for a decade, and it trains you into having the best genetics.
As a teenager you may struggle to get big, but by your mid 20s it’s more difficult to not make gains.
At 20/21 something changed in me.
While I credit the million pushups and loads of isometrics I was doing at the time in part, at 20/21 I also gained some man strength overnight.
I’ve seen the same happen with at least one friend. The sarms don’t explain all of what I saw happen there.
A decade of consistency makes you a whole different person… physiologically.
16-21, that’s 5 years. It very well likely only takes 5.
The body is far more pliable than people realize.
Give the body credit. It’s amazing. It has potential without limit.
Once upon a time you’re struggling to get over 200lbs, “dirty bulk” for long enough, with God tier training consistency having good effort, and abs at 250lbs is very plausible.
My lifetime goal of 275lbs with abs is realistic from where I’m at now.
The method of training doesn’t matter.
It’s the consistent effort that does.
-J
*As I was reading up on lifting well before having access to weights via the high school weight room.
As a high schooler I looked with disgust on the others speaking of genetics and shit, stuffing their faces, never once putting in any physical effort.
I remember thinking upon seeing and hearing this big dude, 6’3″, 280, BIG BONE STRUCTURE, big hands, griping about the genetics of the kid who played starting running back? on the football team (small, maybe 5’8″ 145), and thinking…
“Why don’t you get your fat ass into the weight room for a couple hours every day, then run 20 minutes of bleachers or stairs afterwards every session, and see what your genetics truly look like!”
See I went from 212 to 178 as a freshman, and ended sophomore year at 174.
By the end of junior year I was around 230 after having went from 195 to 215 in ten days the second wrestling season was over.
Big changes by my own hand.
At 14yo 212lbs I remember showering up, soaping the moobs I had at the time, and thinking to myself all these negative thoughts like “how could I ever even bench 225, more than I weigh, with my arms”, feeling like a disgusting fat body, and thinking my genetics were fucked…
While soaping my moobs I decided that moment that I’d put in the work, and find out if my genetics were truly screwed. I’d put in the work to change it regardless of payoff.
“I’ll train til the day I die! If my genetics truly are that bad, I’ll die happy still a disgusting fat body knowing I fought, continued to fight, and never stopped fighting to change it! Or I’ll change it.”
The shower that evening was a pivotal moment in my life.
Whatever the circumstances, whatever the “genetics”, whatever whatever.
