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Sophomore year. High school.
Winter time.

Wrestling. AP US History. JROTC. Drill Team. High Honors.

15 years old.

The next school year I got very depressed, but sophomore year?

Sophomore year I was a robot.

I remember being stressed out of my mind, nerves had me tightly wound, my stomach hurt constantly.

I didn’t letter in wrestling. Looking back, I should’ve accepted the struggle and went harder here disregarding drill team and letting my grades slide to honors.

I was considered the blue chip cadet though, got chosen top of the top 1% of cadets nationwide.

The history teacher gave out a jobs worth of homework front loaded Monday, Tuesday. Nope couldn’t hand it to us Friday night. So Sunday I’d just go to church and lift weights, nothing school related.

Wrestling meet Wednesday, tournament Saturday.

I’d sleep maybe an hour or two on those wrestling bus rides, gym bag the best pillow I’ve ever had. It was my only moment that I’d not be required to do history work. My internal clock always woke me 10 to 15 minutes out from location.

Drill team competition one Saturday a month. I skipped the wrestling tournament here. I have a picture of a bus full of cadets talking, laughing, me seated at attention, drill rifle vertical between my legs, the contrast, I can still remember the thoughts.

“I have discipline! Discipline is strength!” I felt otherworldly.

I would do history work the moment I’d finished my english classwork plus english homework while still in english class, before the period had ended. The teacher was cool, he’d let me hustle like this.

Basically every moment of down time in school was spent doing another class’s work. Lunch too often enough, many days I sat in the nearly empty english classroom continuing to work.

I’d finish most homework after practice, and before dinner, pass out for 10 minutes seated on a section of the couch, get woken up, eat, and be doing history work most often til 1, 2am.

Alarm was about 5am. I’d lay in bed , my brain going 100 miles a minute for hours. I’d get a little sleep.

JROTC was first period, PT, go hard.

What you got!

This was the song that year. Probably 1000s of repeats on the iPod.

Whistling “anchor’s aweigh”.

I didn’t drink coffee.

I shaved every school day that year.
Every single one.

I shocked some people banging out pushups the second I stepped off a plane.

I’d slam my feet off the bed the second I heard the “dring dring”, it’s like a 6th sense, I was always awake before the alarm.

No one understood how I woke up. The above and immediate hydration.

Under 3 hours of sleep a night was the norm. During track season I felt well rested getting as much as 5 while other kids complained.

One day deep winter the school linebacker was trying to pick a fight with me in the hallway. I didn’t hear a word, just read the vibe. Friends came over to me both asking me why I didn’t hit him, and saying he was trying to bait me. I was in slo-mo, almost hearing trombone as if I was Charlie Brown, my brain going “is he going to hit or not, if he swings so can I, then I can go and sleep during the suspension, sleep ahh, that’d be nice, did I even get an hour last night, where am I, oh yeah school, I don’t get to sleep, what time is it, what class am I walking towards, oh yeah biology”.

I may have been tired, stressed, but I was challenged and learning to rise to the occasion.

Ease results in weakness.
Struggle is a blessing. Overcoming is all. Don’t quit. Never quit!

(Burnout is the slipping of infallible self determination.)

Self discipline and self defined/self chosen purpose is where we make ourselves great.

I knew this at 15. I’m 25!

Persistence & Tenacity

From the archives :
Date lost.

Over the years I’ve heard some anecdotes, seen some things.

I believe the human body is capable of absolutely amazing physical abilities. I believe all around athleticism is not only attainable, but natural.

I’ve heard old time Army and Marine Corps stories, “superfats”, incredibly long PT, sergeants running blazing fast ruck sack & gas mask 5ks.

I’ve heard laborer stories, seen laborer feats.

I’ve heard of how football practices in the 1950s were ran. I’ve heard of crazy size mismatches at heavyweight in high school wrestling. 180lb bumping to heavyweight against ~400lb good ole boys…no weight limit.

I’ve seen what lifetimes spent at sport, work, training can do.

Years of vodka and pushups can lead to insane ability on weighted pushups, I calculated it out, it was equivalent to a ~350lb bench cold at I’d guess a stocky 180lb.

All the knowledge commonly accepted in gym culture is limiting.

What equipment you have doesn’t matter. In reality you don’t need much, nor do you need much space.

All you need is the proper mindset.

You are the madman. You are the one who outworks everyone.

Persistence & Tenacity

“On Paleo Silliness : A Dietary Thoughts Flow Write”

The paleo diet and self identified paleo lifestyle in the real world looked at with honesty is quite a silly thing.

The only people I’ve seen eating all paleo and fad like are upper middle class, live in the city, and are sterile.

Is it paleo to live in a city?
How about to be childless?

Both counts are not a check.

In reality my observations of those who identify as paleo is that they’re just as silly as strict vegans.

Both groups are spending money out the whazoo to eat an organic and rigid diet…only available in the modern world…AND not the most nutritious overall.

While both tend to be sterile and living in the city.

Me? Our civilization’s food chain is a cornucopia of abundance, a blessing from God.

Yeah you can waste mental effort sweating the superiority of raw organic grass fed milk versus homogenized whole milk from the store…or you can realize a gallon of sound nutrition from the cow’s udder (though heated up before plastic bottling and purchase) can be purchased 24/7 for about $2.50 less than 15 minutes from your front door.

My view is that a mixed macro meat heavy omnivorous diet is the way to go.

A meat heavy omnivorous diet is the apex of diets, the best for robust, healthy human development.

This allows me a lot of play in dietary choices while lacking in restrictions.

Thankfulness :

I’ve come to look at it in the sense of the dietary choice (historically lack thereof) afforded the peasantry.

Let’s face it. When you are not a billionaire, this means that despite your freedoms that you are in the peasantry…never historically outside of tribal settings has the lower classes eaten so well… especially without significant effort in gaining that food.

It’s all grown, harvested, raised, slaughtered for you!

(Even put in pretty packaging.)

Why today alone I ate two forms of meat. Meat! The sustenance historically banned by penalty of death outside of rare and infrequent circumstances to the commoner.

(I also had dairy and grain with that meat, even chocolate! A product from another continent thinking historically. Ain’t the supply chain an amazing thing?)

Bringing home the bacon was a luck of the draw between the entirety of parishioners historically. Most went home to oat or wheat gruel.

Food was seasonal! Yet as I type I can see both avacado and fresh apple.

My water was in a plastic bottle, and while the media would lead me to be deathly afraid of cancerous chemicals leaching out from the same…I have not contracted a deadly stomach virus during the act of hydration.

Diet? Food?

In the modern world we’ve got it pretty good.

There are stores selling sustenance everywhere.

It’s all quite affordable.

The government will even give you a plastic card from which you can eat aplenty for free!

Produce the world over makes it to our shores. We can eat as varied a diet as we please.

Within five minutes I could be eating multiple types of meat, grain, dairy, fruit, vegetables. It’s all available, it’s all here!

Our food access is so good that instead of starvation issues we have society wide issues of obesity!

Everyone can eat as well as they choose!

Any medieval peasant surely would call this heaven. Mechanized horses, grain aplenty, access to meat…they’d trade places in a second.

There is much to be thankful for. We are truly blessed.

In America you’ll never starve!
We have food here!

Persistence & Tenacity

Strength is both natural, and the result of hard work.

I think about how I feel, and realize I DON’T HAVE TO CHASE PHYSICAL STRENGTH!

It’ll come to me. Strength is natural.

There doesn’t need to be science.
There doesn’t need to be planning.

Rigidity isn’t requirement, play is the way.

Do whatever, whenever, you’ll get stronger.

Which brings me to :

The Value Of Natural Movement

I was reading some old time lifting articles, I believe it was one by J.C. Hise, where he stated that a hiker who eats a meat heavy omnivorous diet is going to be robust.

A buddy and I did the stair climber.
Averaging 90 steps per minute I made it easier half bending over hands still on the handles, lats and triceps taking some work that otherwise would’ve been on the legs.

I found it similar to hiking with poles, lower body challenged with some upper body work.

Immediately I thought of the old article.

A well fed hiker is going to be robust.

I know a man in his mid 50s. He goes hard on the stair climber before lifting “cold” just about daily.
6’3″ 280, he has endurance. I’ve worked construction with him after he’d just worked an overnight. I know so many older men that put young men to shame on working endurance.

Natural movement, locomotion that’d be in a more primal setting has serious value, something missed in a world of car commuting and air conditioned gyms.

All this said I’m making peace with not lifting weights.

Outdoors walking regularly, and doing overhead squats, curls, deadlifts when the mood strikes seems to be my necessary path to scary strong right now.

A job unloading trucks, maybe into the backroom freezer at a grocery store could be just what I need.

Physical job. BJJ a few days a week. Lifting outside at random. Calisthenics everywhere and often.

I feel that robust is natural, and destined.

I don’t see how to not be strong.

It was a eureka realization. Lots of hard work, but not heavy, and lots of activity is my physical path to walk. I don’t need scientific heavy lifting! I, me, personally do better without the mental stress of having to bring weights outdoors and the mental stress of having to go to a gym.

My destiny is robust!

The best way for all to get there is volume and activity!

Physical strength is a mental decision, and frankly gym culture top to bottom is most generally rotten.

I succeed as I’m outside the mainstream.

I look forward to walking, lifting, wrestling, chins, stairs/hikes, pushups, walking lunges, , all the physical activities.

Persistence & Tenacity

“Everyone is all the gym they’d ever need” – me, enough times I may as well quote myself

Multiple times over the years I’ve given someone wanting to start working out the same advice :

“Dude, start doing a small amount of calisthenics at home every day. Be consistent with it, add a few reps every so often, and down the road it’ll pay dividends. Don’t think of what you don’t have, use what you do.”

Fitness can be as free as you want, as free as you require. The motivation? While a training partner can help, the motivation, the drive is internal, in you yourself.

No one going to skip rope, do chins, pushups, and lunges for you.

It’s you on the floor, the bar, the street, not your trainer, training partner, brother, dog, or mother…YOU!

Where so many go wrong is getting sucked up into the “I need a gym with ___ equipment” mentality. Calisthenics are free, always accessible, and allow everyone to be all the gym they’d ever need.

No commute and not a penny of dues required. The dues are paid in sweat…anywhere.

It’s most often unrealized just how far a frequent simple full body calisthenics routine will bring you when you truly milk the movements.

I often call calisthenics “Cardio Calisthenics™” as many styles of doing them will cause a cardio effect.

(Nicely without the catabolic effect of such things as jogging.)

High reps will make you strong. There’s been so much lost potential due to a rigid internet beginner belief in “high reps only build muscular endurance”, something that if honestly tested against would be found to be false.
Freakish strength is built going high reps as heavy as possible, or when unable to load movements high volume.

(How many pushups did I do yesterday?)

You are all the gym you’d ever need. Are you training or making excuses?

I can teach you how to train, but I’m not forcing you to do so.

Your gym is you.

Persistence & Tenacity

The old man archery storyteller.
I hadn’t seen his channel in almost two years, thought of it the other day.

There’s health wisdom in here.

Instinctive.

(Run with the principle and you get into prisoner burpee like work…that is simply equipment free movement. For example ; I was touching the ground into a standing knee rep after rep, it’s movement that rids you of gym weird walking stiffness, movement that allows primal movement. Wrestling like.)

“If you just keep moving, eventually it gets so that you can just keep moving.”

“It doesn’t have to be a special time, but you have to have the mind, the mind to do it, this is what it takes. The benefits are great.”

I still love this storytelling :

On Happiness, Controlling Thoughts, Health :

Some of us don’t have living a Grandpa. Gary Chynne gives that type of advice. The internet is a vast resource. Use it well.

Persistence & Tenacity

From the archive :
1/17/19 : A Gymless Period

I’ve always been into the simple & esoteric, been big into training streamlined, the kind you can do anytime, anywhere.

My first purposeful exercise was karate. Possibly gojo ryu, I’m uncertain, I know it wasn’t kyokushin, nor shotokan which I did later.

Needless to say it makes sense that the training “style” espoused on the Shifu’s channel groks with me.

Do some pushups and squats. The exact variant is irrelevant. Throw some strikes, do your best at them. Get the small muscles of the upper back and shoulders firing, then drop into a horse stance. If you can, stomp (depends on where you are, it’s preferable to not do indoors), and then stretch.

Go at it “hard” yet playful, for exercise is too pure to be wholly rigid and schoolmarm methodical (there’s a post there).

This style of training won’t make you a bodybuilder, but it’ll give you a good build. When this was my primary I dropped to a leaner 210 or so, and carried myself with an animalistic vibe.

Go outside, this style of training can be as simple as 15 minutes of fresh air PT.

Persistence & Tenacity

Ten til 2am, kitchen floor :

Normally my posts are scheduled ahead of time, but for this I had to complete the subject before publishing.

46 mantra pushups, the 15 and 4 mantra sets done like so ; 15+15+4+4+4+4.

I’ve done pushups every day for 3½ years without a miss.

6 more months makes 4 years no days off, and a definite zero misses PR length since I started during the summer of 2008.

I suggest everyone do their PT daily.

I still remember the miss on 5/13/2016 (if I actually did them that day the streak is much longer), I can remember the reset started 5/14/16.

One day in April of last year I dropped during my peak energy for the day doing 3 reps in the kitchen with a ridiculous fever to keep the streak alive.

(Pushups streak, plural hence 3, because I was very weak that day, and three sounded better to me than two, which felt like too much of a technicality for pluralization. Likely it was the most difficult low rep pushup set I’ve ever done.)

I can taste 5 years, zero misses.

To an old friend, I still recall walking those city hills at night, talking, I recall where I said this, that hedge next to the beat up car, the mood :

Daily Discipline! A victory every day!

No matter how small it seems, it’s a win! You must exert your will in the world!

I recall restarting the reps back in 2012 after most of that school year off, of shocking you when I did them with you that night eleven days in, having started the very same night as you, doing mine up to that point in secret. Gotta walk the walk, as “do as I say not as I do” is a farce, is unmanly.

I pray for you brother.

Persistence & Tenacity

From the archive :
8/5/19

300 dips.

300 reps has become the minimal number of dips I do each day at the gym, and I’m at the gym every day after work…5-6 days a week, and sometimes too on a day off.

My rep PR keeps creeping up. There is no doubt in my mind as to my ability to push this well into the triple digits. My bodyweight is slightly dropping, as my upper body is recomping for the better. I am leaner, and more muscular.

They’re getting wicked easy, I may have to start AMRAPing all my sets, that, and/or add weight via the long neglected dip belt collecting dust in the trunk of my car.

But for now I’m straddling 2000 weekly reps, most often superset with similar reps of back/bicep using a handled resistance band.

Starting out I did dips.
I stopped for awhile.
Again I do dips.

My freshman PE teacher, this 5’10” fresh from college volleyball blonde, pulled me aside before the first day in the weight room, and asked me if I could do dips :

“Yeah, I can do dips.”
“Good, I can’t and someone has to demonstrate the exercise.”

She expected maybe 5 reps, as did the class, I stopped at about 30. A dude was butthurt about his perception that I was showing off…I wasn’t. I was asked to show the class dips…and did.

I used to go to the weight room before the bus, and do a quick few sets of calf raises, and dips on a regular basis.

Dips are my most true upper body bread and butter.

(Though I’ve been far more faithful over the years to my pushup habit.)

I’m built for them, and am high response to them.

I’ve done 600 in a session as the highest volume workout so far (800+ since writing) in these few weeks of this dip odyssey. I may still push into the 4 digits, and/or add weight (some rep PRs since writing).

Want to make some physical changes quickly?

Take a calisthenic that you can push effectively into high volume density training, and do so. It’s a lot of bang for maybe an hour of daily workout time.

For me the density training is best done with push calisthenics, as I have the t-rex arms of a natural presser. I can push these to Cardio Calisthenics™ territory, which I feel is where the best progress occurs. With different leverages one may be better served doing the same with pullups.

Another interesting note is how much lat involvement I get because of both the volume, and the super slow and controlled reps I do to end each set. The dips helped me relearn how to put my lats into pushups.

*Cardio Calisthenics™ – very high volume calisthenics done in a period of time with as much training density as possible, that not only causes a strong cardio/conditioning effect, but an inexplicable gaining of strength. Cardio Calisthenics™ is the ideal way to train, and is how I personally make the best progress.

Persistence & Tenacity

From the archive, early August 2019, another post on what I call “survival mode” :

Screens as sources of information are either the most helpful or most harmful method of brainwashing yourself.

Are you mindless or purposeful when you choose to watch?

At 14 I subconsciously knew this, and went in with the proper mind while watching Lockup Raw on MSNBC.

Prep for war “preworkout”.

I’ve taken to watching these, prison movies, and “after prison” YouTube recently, and am more masculine and militant minded for it.

You fuckin train because you have to.

You do pushups, and use whatever else available.

A militant mind makes the simplest exercises extraordinarily effective.

Pushups, wall sit, jumping jacks, walking.

Good enough for war, be it overseas, on a mainline yard, or in your day to day mind.

Fasting? It ain’t a thing, has a purpose, it makes you mean.

At 18, 19, 20 I was starving, often under 60g protein a day, fucking building work capacity in the gym everyday lifting, all the while a lifting partner of mine at the time (a 23 or 24 year old former D1 linebacker who ate a “perfect” bodybuilding diet complete with BCAAs) was looking at me as if I was insane.

Diet don’t matter. Get enough. Mental can make anything enough.

Equipment? You is enough, everything else is icing.

Muscle up.

Ain’t nothing in the way.

Persistence & Tenacity