Category: Uncategorized

7/27/21
Late Evening, Gym

This asian college kid I’m friendly with, in addition to him some of his social circle was talking with me.

The conversation walked from the locker room to the parking lot where it continued for another 10 minutes or so.

The kid talking with me the most of the ones I had just met, he did introductions with me.

He says his name.
I look at him funny “what’s your last name”.

He tells me.

Small world, I remember him from his job at the grocery store, hadn’t seen him in a year, and knew his older brother.

I didn’t expect him to be the same kid at all.

Last summer he was 230.
Tonight he was 150.

That’s a big ass change, enough to not know that I’d met him before.

At 5’6″, 5’7″, 5’8″, you go from 230 to 150 and you’re a different person.

He told me he was losing weight for eight months.

I’m laughing about having no clue I’d met him before until he said his name.

I also find it kinda funny that his start and end bodyweights are 10lbs off of that smokeshow freckled brunette, an anecdote I’ve written up before.

The lesson here is an obese person loses a third of their mass, and they’re a whole new person.

That girl was a smokeshow.

He went from pudgy to an athletic build with a handsome face.

The obese are doing no favors to self in appearance being so.

Under the flab tends to be a good looking person.

They’ve just gotta make that come back.

I’m a firm believer in eating before you sleep.

You’ll find plenty of advice saying for the trainee to nap if at all possible, I say go a step further – copy the sumo world and eat before that nap (and/or before bed).

“Common knowledge” says you’ll get fat eating fat or carbs or whatever before you sleep.

Real world experience says you’ll process everything you take on more effectively as sleep is repair/recovery time, and nutrition is what you repair with.

Eat before you sleep.

It works well for me.

-J
Persistence & Tenacity

I hit three sets of pushups near midnight in the bathroom.

That’s 15 sets or so on the day, close to 400 reps total.

This is prison style PT. I have the largest chest around because I’m at a nearly unbroken streak of pushups daily for half of my 27 years.

You can develop any body part in this manner, just do something for it everyday for a decade+.

Not rocket science, just discipline and effort – consistently.

CONSISTENCY

I’d actually like a weighted vest or something (someone to stand on my back works), to start treating pushups as more than I truly weigh always, like I’ve been doing with weighted chins at bw+60 lately.

And always doing the calisthenic weighted leads to gains bro, it leads to serious gains.

I’ve been doing upright rows and anderson squats in the smith machine, rack pulls too.

Strength movements, squat, and pull – I don’t care to bench in the smith machine, I’d rather do weighted pushups, and the logistics aren’t the greatest for that right now.

Getting strong in the smith machine, I know my lifts will be up if/when I go back to barbells.

I’m making it work for me – dieseling up the muscles.

The upright rows are purposefully in disadvantageous positions…I’m thinking “power clean”.

The rack pulls all double overhand thinking “build the grip to match the rest, then get even stronger”.

Bottom position squats?

Nothing feels heavier. Logistically simpler to make challenging since there’s only enough plates for 1½ full smith machines, or one bar (the only one, it’s pf mind you, they removed the second) on the hammer strength leg press.

They feel fine on my knees, I start a bit above parallel, and am entirely okay with that.

Fuck the motherfucking powerlifts!

I’m making everything work for me. Make everything work for you.

Persistence & Tenacity

7/23/21
I punch out of work, and immediately drive to this spot – an outdoor pullup bar…

One good set, shirtless, get some sun on more than just my face, shins, and forearms.

15 reps, I could’ve went 17, pullups, I feel my rib cage expanding on the negatives.

I’m alive.

Eat dinner.
Nap. An hour or two.

Gym.
About 150 pushups, a handful of weighted chin sets.

I love training.

I’ve found my immediate term strength goal :

To power clean 315 within six months training exclusively at planet fitness.

The smith machine serves it purpose, bottom position squats, and high pull/upright row/karwoski shrugs – be brutally strong in the smith, so much that you have the same levels of strength on a barbell.

Beat it…outside a barbell gym.

I am.

7/20/21
I hit a 2:00 wrestler’s bridge to end the session.

I do this roughly two out of three days, the hold getting longer.

I’ve been enjoying them lately, and I’ve got that muscle dysmorphia going in relation to the size of my neck and traps.

They’ve been a focus lately as I lean out.

I like the wrestler’s bridge as a one stop shop exercise.

The entire posterior chain fires, and you can diesel it up by pressing or doing pullovers in position.

A lot of uncommonly done exercises are the greatest.

All these high school kids bridge daily all winter long, yet you almost never see the exercise done on a gym floor.

That’s a problem, I don’t participate in that problem – I bridge.

Have been getting back to them.

10:00 unweighted is worthwhile, I’ve heard of it being done.

I haven’t set a weighted goal yet, though I’ll be rotating weighted in too.

The bridge pullover is the greatest lat activation I’ve ever felt.

Fuck the powerlifts!

You don’t have to lift a barbell, with full range of motion, or do anything you “have to” do to be big and strong.

Heavy is heavy, I’m relearning this making the smith machine work for me.

Snatch grip rack pulls from knee height, something resembling a high pull, pause squats from the bottom (even a bit higher than parallel).

Making it work for me.

You want to be big and strong, and you will be.

Every gym, even no gym, is good enough.

It’s in your efforts.

Persistence & Tenacity

Funny how the sodas from mexico are made with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup.

More similar to american craft sodas.

I can tell the difference.
I feel crummy having drank a typical soda.

The ones made with sugar don’t have that effect on me.

They’re just energy, I don’t have to be really spent to be able to stomach them.

Nutrition is an interesting subject.

You ever think it strange to eat garlic bread with pizza or pasta?

It tells you that wheat was abundant, and meat not so much.

Our access to both meat and calories is unprecedented.

Everyone can grow to large stature with proper childhood nutrition.

Laziness is what keeps the legions of the obese from being effectively offensive lineman.

The mass is there.

I saw a ten year old kid very likely over 200lbs the other day, needless to say we aren’t lacking calories.

The junkies don’t even buy food!
Still they stay fed. Yep, it’s from that food pantry.

A former coworker, a methhead living in his van – he didn’t buy food!

It was all for free!

It’s possible to go a lifetime in this country and never hunger!

You don’t even have to make money and buy food!

Somewhere you’ll get fed.

You choose whether you eat, eat well, don’t eat, don’t eat well – it’s completely under your control.

I have something of a rule for myself :

I eat on an hour’s pay or less each day.

Let me tell you, with this country’s prices and the abundance of food available – $7.25, federal minimum wage – that’ll feed you amazingly on staples, often made into stew.

A gallon of milk, pound of some meat, and as much potatoes and vegetables you desire.

That’s easily under $7, and is truly well fed.

Heck, you could pull it off buying a half gallon of milk and a mcchicken twice a day.

7/18/21
I realize for the longest time that I held onto a negative belief of “I can’t get lean”.

The realization dawned checking myself out in the locker room mirror yesterday, thinking I should be leaner than I am as I am presently dropping weight.

See I felt I could manipulate my weight anywhere, yet staying about the same bodyfat percentage.

At 17 by force feeding I showed myself I could get big.

Funny that I went from 212 to 174 from 14 to 16 years old, and was thinking at a point that I’d never be 200lbs even though I entered high school weighing more.

I am leaning out. Life is doing it for me.

The more results I see, the more I buy in, and desire to/do it right.