Category: Uncategorized

10/3/23
Today’s workout was a playful mix of a barbell loaded to 65lbs (a few reverse curls and curls – the curls with slow negatives and a 90° joint angle isometric hold on the final rep), a tad of flipping and catching a 25lb bumper plate, some burpees, but mostly handstand practice.

“plate flip challenge” – I’m more proud of it with my right

I love the handstand.
This, again, becoming a period where I do lots of handstand practice.

See, of Doug Hepburn was doing freestanding handstand pushups while both shorter and heavier than me, I can get to that level too!

…..

The handstand is a surprisingly full body workout.

More than anything I felt my lats, while the velocity of kicking up, landing, the lower body works in something of a plyometric manner.

Try it. You’ll see.
Acrobatics are awesome.

I settle on lots of handstands cause I enjoy the thing, the euphoria the first goal, the pump, the great sweat, the metabolic effect I notice from gymnastic type training all secondary, tertiary benefits.

Go train to be awesome.
To be capable of basic gymnastics, animal movements, decent sprinting and jumping, while too brutally strong…

The aesthetic is a side effect.

…..

I realized with a heavy late lunch (a few hours before the session) that one meal ish a day is where my energy levels feel best.

I hadn’t needed to eat then, and the meatballs (a mix of beef and pork) were far too heavy a food choice.

I want that saturated fat, and dessert, and whatever, at dinner time, maybe later.

If I’m really hungry I may have two dinners in around a five hour pm timespan.

If I feel the need I’ll have something light earlier than that big meal, it’s not a rigid thing, but it’s what has the most history of me feeling good while on it.

…..

Related to the last, the feeling I have after a great sweat from handstands, or from the out of breath euphoria of bunches of burpees – these things never make me ravenous, but make me want to hydrate.

I put water to my lips, and know the existence of god, water is that heavenly after a good calisthenics sweat.

Things like this, it’s what makes me want to see all busting out simple daily workouts, things that don’t have to be much quantifiable – burpees and jumping jacks mixed back and forth til a state of bliss, high rep calisthenics where you discover it’s like running sprints.

People need to workout.
They don’t need equipment.

15:00 of one no equipment required exercise can make a huge difference in one’s life.

Most would have the workout of their life just doing jumping jacks for the time, no treadmill tomfoolery.

Persistence & Tenacity

10/2/23
My energy was garbage, almost 5pm, and after a lazy day on little sleep – I was considering napping.

Here’s a trick for when you’re really being overly housebound… “I’m going to check the mail”.

Forces you to step outside, and check.

Once outside it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to actually do something, whether that’s exercise, run an errand, whatever.

…..

“Well I’m outside, might as well lift.”
“But I’m tired” says the devil on the opposite shoulder.
“We’ll do one set, just one set of presses, then we can go inside if still tired ”

The Session :
Press
11x155lbs
8x155lbs
8x155lbs
Clean
5x155lbs
10x155lbs

The whole thing took twenty five minutes.

With the first set I thought “I’ll do a second, 50% set”, on the second I realized I’d do a third feeling warmed up.

The third was stronger than the second, though the reps matched.

With that third set my mind went “the clean is my limitation on the press – do an easy feel good set”, and I changed the music from rap to

where i’m from – jason michael carroll

The above saw me cry (very lightly), that tear dripping down my left cheek during the the cleans – it’s a coming of age song for me – I remember listing to it at 14yo/the start of high school, soon after my grandpa had passed.

The song ending, I had it repeat thinking “5 was too easy, we’ll go 7, no 8”, and since it’s STILL way within max I went 10 reps, took stock, and called the session – happy to feel good, not bummy, having done something that is better than nothing.

(not that a c&p only session is just better than nothing lol)

…..

After the lift I listened to a bunch of positivity, meditated, and stretched.

I’ve started to actually stretch ; butterfly, prying in the bottom of a deep bw squat, doing a bit of dynamic and isometric stuff aimed at flexibility.

It feels good man.

Persistence & Tenacity

Today I made a talkie!

blue collar? yeah yeah yeah, technically red during filming

Show Notes & Related :
I don’t go for perfection, I use workable.
My setup isn’t ideal, it’s far from fancy.

Metal plates, a regular decent barbell – not a primo eleiko, just an affordable all around bar that will last forever – my platform particle board and a pair of rubber patio tiles.

My form looks horrendous, but I am not going to get hurt or injured by it, so again for me it’s workable.

I don’t bother doing technique work as in weightlifting I am a nobody, not minimally on the national championship stage.

I still do MY VERSION of weightlifting, mostly lots of presses off of a, singular, one clean.

It really put a pair of shoulders on me.
If you need shoulders – press, press lots, and might as well go old school, develop a hand balancing habit to go with it.

I enjoy lifting this way, my way.

This works for me.

I want to lift, therefore I do.
Facilities don’t factor in an iota.

Be the strongest nobody you can be.
Real world I thrive with this mindset.

Persistence & Tenacity

9/25/23
No matter what it is, no matter where you are, you can take positive action.

Movement always makes you feel better.
Get up. Do something. You are always capable.

…..

You already had one minisession.
Well dude, I needed another.

I did a second one.

The second one upper body focused to the lower body focus of the first.

But that’s inconsequential.
The benefit more mental than physical.

…..

When you’ve an open mind, when you need to make something happen you find a way.

With little to no equipment you can get muscular and strong.

It’s in the need and the open mind, in the openness to universal abundance – when you’re set…

It’s gonna happen.

…..

See, you can find a spot, you can improvise this, improvise that.

I couldn’t find a nice level spot to do one arm pushups…

Then I looked at the driveway.
The incline/decline – I put my feet higher than my head, now it’s a bit harder than the same on level ground.

Cool. Getting stronger here, where it’s harder – I’ll be stronger when I go to the tennis courts, the designated content creation (video) spot.

And it won’t be long to get 20+/side.
Maybe that’s my viral video.

…..

Getting dizzy from the x5/side on these one arm pushups, okay – not continuing with that high a tension exercise, back off a bit…

When did I last do a clap pushup?

Okay, 3×3 with good long pauses on the bottom.

…..

The one arm pushup is “heavyish”
The clapping pushups are powerful.

I didn’t do any tonight, but the burpee, getting down, is absorbing force in the negative of the pushup cause you’re basically dropping/jumping down into on your face on the floor.

It’s building you through absorption of force.

I too have that side project of handstands, aiming to get a freestanding hspu.

Put all this together, whether I touch a barbell through the journey or not…

When I go back to the gym, is there any doubt I’ll have went from a mid 3s bench to a 405+ bench.

No.
You can get real strong with a calisthenics habit.

Do your pushups.
Do your pullups (or your regression – australian pullups?
Do your squats or lunges or cossack dance.

You don’t need weights.
You can use weights.

I highly suggest you use both.

They do feed into each other.

…..

Pushups note – resistance bands do work for self adding weight to pushups when you’ve no one with you to stand on your back.

And the acceleration makes that a power builder firstly – a cool side effect.

Maybe I’m buying the whole set of bands.
I own an orange. In the past I’ve got a handful of reps with the thickest grey band.

The training effect lays in the moderate strength of band, it was for me then in the blue and better yet, the purple band.

The medium sizes.
There’s a lot of training effect advised in this section.

…..

Funny how life throws both at you.
The good and the bad.

The positive and the negative.

It’s your choice where your focus lays.

So the good, focus here ;

A subscriber in germany made another shout out video.

Thank you!

My one arm pushup videos yesterday gained another two subscribers, a bunch of likes, a couple comments.

(yeah it was up three subscribers at one point, then someone unsubscribed, but hey it ended the weekend up)

Every short uploaded gives more subscribers!

This past month, month and a half – about 12 subscribers, and it was seven years to sub 30.

Now I’ve broke 40.

A month, month and a half back, I thought to myself “I can grow this to 50 subscribers in the next month or two”.

And that’s happening.

The unknown is “how does this become my living” (P&T both here and on the youtube)

I’ve been out of high school over a decade, letting the waves of life crash me onto and hold me onto an undesirable dirty shore of broken glass, needles, litter…

It’s time to make it.
Make my life that sunny shore, to make my day to day, whether metaphorical or literal, my happy spot on the pacific.

Persistence & Tenacity

wes watson – staying positive in the shu
on repeat as I typed

First Session :

515am
Aztec Pushup
attempt, close
One Arm Pushups (all on video)
8r, 5r, 2 fail 3 l
35 total pullups
x25 dips
15 total chins

In the 5 o’clock am hour you have the world to yourself.

My buddy wasn’t able to meet up this morning, but I’ve come to like 5am, 6am, 7am calisthenics (and the possibly more importantly content creation).

So I went by my lonesome.

Ran the camera four times, no warm up and shirtless in the, now cooling down, fall air 🙂 just wanting to see if I could triple aztec pushups, didn’t – the foot tap was a close miss on the first and only rep, and seeing what I could rep out on one arm pushups – getting 8 right, 2 fail 3 left.

Last week’s sets of 3/side, well I knew I’d do better righty.

The path to sets 20+.reps/side.
It’s about 80lbs, eight years since I was there.

The one arm pushup, similar in strength to benching bodyweight (it was while I was 205-225) I think heavier it’s actually worth more than bodyweight.

No way I’d only hit a 8x275lbs for instance.

I’d liken it as sheer pushing strength is similar to a bw bench, the oblique demand higher in the oapu.

Second Session :

915am
(pushups x50, x10 – daily PT done early)
Jump Rope
~700 revolutions
Front Squat + Zercher GM + Zercher Walk + Zercher Shrug
10fs+5zgm+short walk+15zshrug w/empty bar

man did my triceps feel good like they’d worked, moderate sore, but activated from the dip during the pushups – I did the pushups rather early today

…..

I saw today’s uploaded shorts take me from 39 up to 42 subscribers.

As has been my experience with uploading shorts most of the views come in the first hour.

•it’d have made sense to let one video run it’s course, then released the second at a different time – maybe tomorrow afternoon

I’m still figuring out when the best time to upload is for views, mostly I just upload as soon as I’ve edited the video

The subscriber count went down from 42 back to 41. That disappointed me. With shorts thus far I’m used to some likes being removed, so check the stats twelve hours later instead of compulsively for the first ninety minutes to have an accurate assessment.

It’s cool that every time I upload a short I get 1-3 subscribers from it. My face hurt from smiling so much, so happy I was seeing everything come in real time.

A tad more than quarter of my total subscribers within the last four to six weeks, versus since 2017 on slow roll.

I’m into ↓↓↓ THIS ↓↓↓ right here, my brand Persistence & Tenacity, and have a few lines of training that I’m pumped to get on video in the near future.

Make this. THIS!

Persistence & Tenacity

9/21/23
Whether today was summer or fall, at ~245pm it sure felt like summer 🙂

Lifting outside, barefoot and shirtless in the sun it sure felt like summer, in fact warm enough that performance suffered a tad…however it felt good to lift.

My mindset wasn’t exactly right/where it should be, but it was going in the right direction….

For that I’m happy.
I’m on the up.

State is a conscious decision.

And I can go outside, lift with what equipment I have, and give myself that daily win.

…..

I sit here sipping an arizona iced tea, чай in russian – I’ve been doing russian on duolingo the past few days, more than usual and exclusive – giving my brain a break from spanish, sometime short time I’ll rotate back to spanish.

These rotations have been working better for me than just doing one language exclusively and straight through.

…..

Today’s session was a tad under a half hour, call it twenty to twenty five minutes.

Power Snatch
1x135lbs
Press
5x185lbs
Front Squat
2×10 w/95lbs
Snatch Grip SLDL
2×5 w/185lbs
Curl
5x95lbs

Of all things the front squats gave me a slight glute pump. I’ve long felt better overall muscular activation from front squats vs the back squat.

It actually wasn’t a strong feeling day at all.
The snatch, press, and snatch sldl all felt far heavier than the bar weight should’ve.

The curl on the other hand felt pretty dang light, and half an hour later I still feel it euphorically in my biceps.

The front squat?
I’m going to get into training thought here…

…..

Now you know I write lots, easily 5x more than I publish, and earlier I had one with a point that I fell asleep on, woke up to, and took as a universal hint to act on…

Squat!

…

I was verily obsessing over the front squat and noted that I’m not nearly so fat when I do a handful of things, including ;

•squat regularly
•jump rope regularly

So with the intention of using this to get back in shape, and honestly this fat I am not…I front squatted.

…

I’ll be putting on legs, thickening my abs, and getting fit in the most fun weight’s way.

Yes, that’s how I view the front squat.

And honestly ; I do better mentally with high frequency lifting.

I think I’ll be bastardizing something, and doing frequent high rep front squats for a time – getting myself back into shape, but more importantly setting my mind right.

…..

If you won’t run consistently, skip rope or barring that do your jumping jacks.

Burpees can always be done for more and harder.

Incorporate pullups til you’ve wings and rep out pullups like a beast.

Make squat every day a habit, and play with all the variables until you’re using the approach which clicks.

Fairly strong and out of shape?
Fuck that, stronger and in shape.

Persistence & Tenacity

9/10/23
Meeting up with a buddy for early morning PT fell through.

Though (still) up in the 4am hour to get ready for it I’m not mad, as he texted me before I’d left the house to cancel – reasonably courteous I’d say.

I’d have been displeased if I had left the house before knowing he was cancelling.

But I knew before walking out the door.
That’s okay in my eyes given the logistics.

Besides I’d had an all nighter, watched a couple hours of youtube, then slept a few hours (three to four) waking up still before noon…

Surprisingly refreshed.
Fully refreshed.

Whether I’ve said it here the past few weeks or not ; today, again, I watched porn, and masturbated twice, once technically without porn (minutes after turning the shit off), once truly without porn upon waking.

A few weeks ago, after years, I got past the compulsion to shave as punishment for not being better than human about the teetotal self discipline I expected of myself about the two.

Now? Mostly I don’t give a shit.
There’s bigger fish to fry.
Money.
Career.
Etc.

And having the beard (now ~1½ months long and growing) is better than starting over at day 0 yet AGAIN.

…..

Having drank green tea at 5am in the morning I thought I’d start a fast there, the idea to go 24+ hours.

At about 430pm I scrapped that.

I was ravenous.

…..

I’ve long noticed that when we men “get off” we end up needing healthy refeeds.

You came life essence, so you rebuild the life essence – food, drink, water, meditation, good thoughts/positivity.

As far as food and drink for me it’s steak, usually grape juice (which I’m not having today – nor cranberry juice – I figure that craving is my body desiring some particular vitamin or mineral), today just drinking the little bit of milk I have left in the house, and more arizona green tea of which I’ve been on a kick.

And hydration. Drink your h2o.
Always drink your h2o.

I had been mad dehydrated from Thursday, Saturday being catch up drinking A LOT of water.

…..

I had had a 1⅕lb steak that needed to be cooked.

I cooked it part way as a slab of steak, took it off the pan, cut it up, and threw it back in the pan as cubes.

With it a little older I cooked it closer to well done than raw, my usual being medium at most.

As it cooked I poured spuds into a bowl, mixed in the water, cracked in five eggs, and then poured in the spices.

A egg and potato mix that I’ll attempt to fry, pancakes the ideal consistency, but far from a given.

(Like how I’ll stir eggs and oats together in a bowl before pan frying – one of my initial high school “I’m getting into this lifting thing and need to eat well” meals – the combo for me goes way back. 🙂)

I was HUNGRY.

…..

Initially craving fried eggs, mashed potatoes sounded good – so I mixed it together.

Simpler that way.

Spuds come in clutch for the simplicity.

They stir in and turn into mashed potatoes, easily making with pulled chicken a meat slop in the crockpot.

I’m probably going to have to start making steaks over meat slop in the crockpot again.

I’ve been hungry, not eating right, and having a struggle to eat enough really all summer long.

…..

It looked like it’d be an off day, but then as I ate…

I saw my youtube channel was blowing up a bit, 100+ views over a couple hours, comments from a subscriber, and…

He made shout out videos!

The interactions – seeing the shout out videos, and with the comment thread conversations suddenly I WAS AMPED!

Thank you Balbos!

(one of his shout out videos)

In one of the comments he said he was about to hit a calisthenics session, and I replied I was about to get rained on…for my night’s kettlebell snatches and mace swings.

(pretty sure he posted it, a minisession I might add)

A 5am PT session had fallen through.
I’d done some pushups early afternoon while doing laundry.

It looked like a lazy day, but then I got 1⅕lbs of steak, ~2½ eggs, some mashed potatoes, ~28oz green tea, 12oz milk in me, plus seeing my channel blow up plus the interactions while eating that…

Yep…

First I got into the zone to termanology’s “watch how it go down” then “walking to the gym” (zoning in as I approached the spot with a purpose) seconds before I switched it to ;

Today’s Minisession One Song Playlist :

canon – no loss
“Run it. Run it. Oh. I really feel it’s my time, think it’s my year.”

↑ feel it, internalize

745pm
OA Snatches w/20kg
~30-35/side total
Mace Swings
~30-35/side total
Deep Knee Bends
~70-80 total

I simply mixed exercise, five reps of this, ten reps of that, til I did 50+ reps of all three, doing 70ish of each total.

It took 12:00.

A minisession, amped up from the subscriber interaction and his shout outs instead of a lazy truly off day.

Thank you!

Persistence & Tenacity

9/7/23 ~1155pm
Every so often the pushups, you revert to minimum daily physical activity, sometimes you go back to an old style.

I just felt like saying “I did a set of 100+”, and did so…without a care in the world as to range of motion.

The resurrection of the “woody woodpecker”.

The rom a fraction of full reps.

The set stopped a bit past 110 reps.
I was out of breath, the pump in different than usual muscle groups – I felt, my…traps strongly.

On the shitter earlier I’d thought “start jumping rope again”.

I guess 2015’s PT was on my mind.
I did so many 1000 pushup and 1000 jump rope revolution workouts.

10×100 supersets, the last set brought far closer to failure.

That’s a surprisingly fast way to become fit, do a zillion jump rope revolutions, this on top of your base of even more pushups.

2015 was the first time I practiced handstands.

I did for about 10:00 today, about 13:00 yesterday – getting some solid ~:10 holds.

It’s turning into a skill, then at night I do the daily pushup PT.

…..

We can make this stuff out to be real complicated, or it can be kept simple.

Effort is all.

-J
Persistence & Tenacity

9/6/23
Man today is hot!

Hand balancing is free.

I have no fear about kicking into freestanding handstand attempts, apparently being upside down is a mental block for many…if I ever had that, wrestling in high school rid me of it.

Anyway, me being 280lbs I can’t let Bert Assirati and Doug Hepburn have all the fun.

545pm
I set a 15:00 timer, headphones on, one song playlist going in em.

stockholm city – sinan

Did a couple narrow bw squats, alternating raising a leg midway up to focus these closer to pistol squats, but really only did 4 or 6 total.

The session was truly handstand practice, though I attempted to handstand walk a couple of times after saving a wipeout once or twice had me nearly there.

My best was a better than ten second handstand. Possibly as long as fifteen or twenty seconds.

Once that’s solidly baked in it’ll be time to build to the freestanding hspu.

Again can’t let Bert Assirati and Doug Hepburn have all the fun.

I can see myself doing them.
On the floor, off the edge of a picnic table or park bench, maybe a handrail somewhere.

I can see myself doing them.

The solid handstand, the freestanding handstand pushup, the handstand walk – it all is close, and I can already tell the hand balancing floor work makes you gorilla strong.

Hand balancing is free.

Much of physical culture is like that ; available always, we are all we need…
SWEAT EQUITY

Persistence & Tenacity

9/3/23
605am – I pulled into the spot.

Twenty minutes prior my buddy had texted me “can it be more like 6 than 630”.

Not canceling, but running a bit early.
🙂 That’s fine by me.

I made it work, arriving about ninety seconds before him…

I watched this at 14/15yo (when it was new) – I’m linking it for a reason…

…..

We did somewhere between five and eight sets of pullups.
I started with a set of seven chins, and mostly did sets of three in a rotation of grips – narrow, overhand, hands touching struck me as the most fun.

Interestingly the normal pullup grip was probably my weakest, and chins are now stronger than pullups (again – as was in the beginning – makes sense as lately I curl semiregularly, but very rarely do pullups).

…..

Next was burpees or at least the intention of burpees.

He did not want to “I go, you go” with one pumps until someone tapped or ∞ was reached.

I actually had started a 30:00 timer to call ∞, but seeing he wasn’t doing that I just goofed around, some burpees here and there, kicked into some handstands which hyped him up – I got a few good few seconds handstands, rode down a freestand handstand pushups negative, did a couple half negatives there too.

Also goofed around with pistol attempts, he has them, I don’t.

I showed him cossack dancing as something of a touche, also showed him a kneeling jump and got him to do one.

At one point as he goofed around with his phone, he more than me wanting to film calisthenics content this morning…on my third attempt (ever and within a couple minutes of the idea initially striking), then repeating it another four times or so as we did our session, this session in a style which in my eyes epitomizes the vibe of street workout calisthenics…

(ie playful, mostly seeing what you can do – a lack of rigidity to the thing)

I now have the burpee where you jump touching feet and hands – super, aztec or something the name for this.

I knew it to be called aztec pushups on sherdog circa 08.

He filmed me. The problem it being with his phone. HE has a nice high definition video of me doing it lol

I’ll see if I can get a copy to upload, otherwise I’ll just go film it myself soon.

Hopefully the tennis court lights still turn on at night. I like the optics of doing burpees nighttime under the lights.

…..

As we parted ways (with a fist bump instead of handshake – ick), I joked “and now, being up it’s off to my favorite place…the grocery store, where they shall sell me one of these (I held up my gallon jug) of milk”.

The grocery store did soon after sell me a gallon of milk amongst other things.

Postworkout I sit finishing off the last 40oz or so of my already open gallon alongside a nice little meal of pancakes with a few sausage, some butter, whipped cream, and strawberry slices.

…..

Out of the house for a 6am workout…

What a start to a good day!

…..

Scratch the above about not being able to link it. I did get a good copy from him.

Firstly I took some time in inshot…then I discover black and white filters in youtube itself!

And the short itself is doing quite well…

It’s time to ramp up the effort put into the burpees.

Persistence & Tenacity