When I am the machine every bit of minutia ceases to exist.
A machine thrives off of volume! It can’t be stopped. You can’t outwork it!
It’s getting cold out, but this month (November 2020) I’ll be putting weight overhead everyday between yard lifting (overhead squat, press, power snatch), c&p at pf, and handstand pushups.
Я машина I thrive off of frequency.
Я машина I put weight overhead daily.
A машина does not notice, nor care, nor feel soreness!
Я машина pities the fool!
The gym is so easy, just do it daily til you’re the best!
There will be these periods of time where those who know me, and the gym staff will realize that I’ve spent an indefinite period of time averaging 500+ pushups a day…not caring, just doing the work.
Months back I talked my training partner into and through 400 pushups after he’d already done dips and chins.
See, volume? I’m always game to hit some more, and in addition to being good at teaching the gym, I have a coach’s eye – I’m good at reading when your intensity is lackluster, when you’re talking yourself out of ability, when you’re not consciously aware of your higher potential, and am good at snapping you out of your head to higher performance.
“Do you think I can hit 6?”
He’s hesitant, weighs 155, and is about to walk over to the dip bar, at the moment strapping 90lbs to his waist.
“You can hit at least 8.”
After rep 6, I see he’s about to step down from the bar, legs uncrossing, just about to have his feet touch the step…
“Keep going”.
You see his body language snap to attention, feet instantly recrossing – 1, 2, he gets down, now giddy realizing he hit 8 with 90lbs after a set of 6 with 70lbs which had him wondering if he could match the reps with the added weight. This happens often enough that it’s on film, on his social media, my voice in the background causing this, multiple times, and as I tend to hold as policy “I’ll film one set this session for you” it happens on the top PR sets with some regularity.
He realized that when we train together that I’m in his head.
I realized that I picked up this ability with my jacked ginger on again off again training partner of the last 7 years. That the experience of spotting the same dude daily for a year straight burned into me the ability to read people while they’re in their set.
That buddy, the redhead, to fuck with him once – he had been playing cod right before we commuted to the gym after all, just as I’m removing my hands from the lift off I gave him on his first ever attempt at either 300 or 315, I say “if you fail the rep I’m not going to put my balls in your mouth”.
And down it goes!
Think about the spacing of giving a spot sometimes. Think about teenagers virtually tbagging virtual corpses in cod. He’d just been playing. Without a spot a failed new bench 1rm could be death. 2+2 = I had full deniability of ill intent.
He didn’t hit it that day, he got it half a week later.
(So the ability can be used for good and evil, hahahaha.)
Back to more recent anecdotes :
The 400 pushups to not crush him I made it very reasonable 20×20 in 40:00.
¾ in he’d be failing to hit 20, he’s cussing, wanting to stop, and I’m telling him the time left to finish those remaining reps before next up, and he freaks when I hit an extra small set as for myself – I’m bored with the long rests.
(I actually did the second half sets of 25 just to make it a little more interesting, I’ve never let him in on this.)
See, his problem is he thinks too much.
In the absence of positive self talk, when you’re talking yourself into worse performance, the answer is to turn off your brain, to go dumb.
Be thick headed and action taking, there’s no hamstringing, no self sabotage that way.
Many would be better served by approaching their training in this way.
A simple program, massive work, and zero thinking.
9/22/20
“G” – He’s a cool old timer, I believe he said he’s 76 (update : 71 – I confused people), fairly fit, and one of those older guys that are just so positive that they’re always a pleasure to speak with.
He saw me, we had a brief chat, and he made a comment about one arm pushups.
“Wait, you can do one arm pushups. Still?”
He gets that fun loving mischievous look in his eyes, stands up from the machine he was at, and got down on the floor.
His range of motion wasn’t great, probably half way to touching chest to floor, but there he was, 76 years old, a set of 10-15 one arm pushups with his right hand on the spot.
“That’s cool.”
He did some pushups, regular two handed, and had similar range of motion. I think something in his shoulders bugs him.
(I remember “N” at the old commercial gym, had the same personality, and benched hard with the same range of motion.)
I respect the hell out of him for taking care of himself, getting to the gym, and playfully and honestly working.
It’s cool to see that there are people who still have youthful personalities, never losing it as they age.
It’s striking how willing to learn he is, he is joyous to discuss training, full of wonder at it, viewing it all as new and wonderful. He didn’t start the gym til after retirement.
We met last winter, which I likely posted about, him asking me a question about the pulldown variation I was doing, and it became a personal trainer type practice for me as I showed him how he could train lower body around a bad knee(s) while the chick nearby watched intrigued.
“G” is a decent example of how to age right. There are teenagers who think they’re capable of less.
You might not get it, entirely okay to take “one day off”, but one has the tendency to turn to several, and before you know it you’re hitting pushups NEVER instead of daily.
I’d have to be buried or physically restrained to miss a day!
And restrained I’d still be attempting, one arms could be plausible in that situation.
I’d be attempting!
Missed pushups?
Not happening!
I’m so close to five years I can taste it, nearly 4.5!
The craziest results you’ve ever had, or have witnessed others have, were laid atop a solid foundation of belief. The results came from buying into the method.
I like to bag on those who train in methods of the least personal creativity, and highest blandness, but hey, when they’ve bought into the boring…it too works.
For example : I watched my lifting partner have true belief in bigger by the day, to the point Rich Piana was personally surprised how well it worked for him when they spoke at an expo.
It’ll all be good. Just believe…buy in.
Those idiotic training methods? They’re not with a buy in.
The buy in makes whatever you choose to do the oft searched for perfect method.
When I take a day off from training, I don’t truly take the day off.
Having internalized the PT mindset, every single day I’m going to do pushups at the very least.
So even if I’m doing almost nothing physical that day, I’m still dropping, I’m still doing pushups as it’s habitual 365 day a year accountable to self mandatory PT.
It’s a better approach to fitness to have a simple equipment free daily PT that you refuse to miss.
You don’t need to make training into a big deal mentally.
Training motivation is inconsequential to me as I’m doing pushups.
If I go to the gym, I’m doing pushups still.
If I don’t go to the gym, I’m doing pushups, and sometimes no more than that.
If I don’t have a gym membership, I’m doing pushups, and probably in a much higher volume.
You see, I beat the “don’t have time to train/don’t want to go the gym/etc” list of excuses.
If I opt into one of them, somewhere, at sometime EVERY DAY I’ll be dropping for pushups.
No rigidity past that, and really the true true minimum is about 30 reps, for me 20 seconds.
It’s amazing to outsiders just how high paying a 20 second daily habit can be.
2½ minutes of pushup PT at the minimum weekly, puts you light years ahead of the competition.
And you don’t have to stick to minimal PT, it’s just there as the fallback when you decide to do almost nothing.
It’s amazing that many are so mentally weak that they don’t even do this.
You have 20 seconds a day! Drop during a commercial or loading screen in what is the first step, you lazy fucks!
If girls can get a nice toned build with silly light weights, and often on machines to boot…
What’s stopping you?
You can think of testosterone as the muscle building hormone, and a severely low level of testosterone in a guy is the top end of testosterone on the female spectrum…
This means that naturally as a man you can, you have the potential to, get very very muscular!
From Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger In A Strange Land” :
Jubal found Mike stripped down and the ship’s surgeon looking baffled. “Doctor,” Nelson said, almost angrily, “I saw this patient only ten days ago. Tell me where he got those muscles?”
“Why, he sent in a coupon from the back cover of Rut: The Magazine for He-Men. You know, the ad that tells how a ninety-pound weakling can-“
(- Heinlein’s a little harsh on the ad.)
“Doctor, please!”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Jubal suggested.
Nelson did so. “I thinked them,” Mike answered.
“That’s right,” Jubal agreed. “He ‘thinked’ ’em. When I got him, just over a week ago, he was a mess, slight, flabby, and pale. Looked as if he had been raised in a cave-which I gather he was, more or less. So I told him he had to grow strong. So he did.”
“Exercises?” Nelson said doubtfully.
“Nothing systematic. Swimming, when and as he wished.”
“A week of swimming won’t make a man look as if he had been sweating over barbells for years!” Nelson frowned. “I am aware that Mike has voluntary control over the so-called ‘involuntary’ muscles, But that is not entirely without precedent. This, on the other hand, requires one to assume that-“
“Doctor,” Jubal said gently, “why don’t you just admit that you don’t grok it and save the wear and tear?”
Meditate (until you grok) on thinking yourself muscular.
The main character isn’t the only one in the book who does.
Since first having read the book as a teen, the quoted passage, and what possibility it implies has stuck with me.
I’ve internalized belief that I can think myself fit. This passage caused a big philosophical dawning in me of my true physical potential. Human potential as designed by God is ∞, greatness is within your grasp. Think only of high possibility! We are capable of far more than science currently knows.
