Persistence and Tenacity

A buddy and training partner is mostly vegetarian.

(like he eats some chicken once every 4-6 weeks)

At 5’10” 200lbs +/- 5lbs he’s fairly lean, has a six pack, looks better/bigger shirtless, but he’s not as obviously big as I am.

He often says to me how he wants to gain a bit more weight but struggles to eat more.

I constantly tell him to add meat into his diet otherwise he’s going to really have to up his egg and dairy intake.

Plant food just isn’t going to supply a high enough calorie level for most with moderate to heavy physicality.

“Grains feed the masses not the jackedess.” – Me

You’d have to really up the egg and dairy intake.

Kushti is really the only sizeable group of jacked vegetarians, and their diet is comically heavy on dairy.

I’m pretty adamant that the only vegan thing I consider up there with animal products is chickpeas/garbanzo beans.

A vegan trying to be jacked?
Oh man how stupifyingly high chickpea and coconut oil intake would be.

Fruit juice is great energy, but it’s not saturated fat, nor protein.

That brings the vegan back to chickpeas and coconut oil, and I much prefer butter to coconut oil.

Heck, I don’t waste any animal fat either.

75/25 beef has all it’s fat poured into the noodles, or used to pan fry eggs.

Saturated fat is the #1 macro, and it’s sparse amongst plants, abundant from animals.

I’ve got a funny story :

You know how people eat egg whites alone?

You know about Jack Sprat and his wife?

I’ve eaten egg yolks alone…like Jack Sprat’s wife would.

My buddy was going through massive quantities of egg whites, “hey I’m hungry too, put the yolks aside not down the drain”, I fried up yokes after he was done with his cooking, I even went back home with a mason jar full of yoke for the next few breakfasts.

An egg is 6g protein – so the white is 3-4g, the yolk 2-3.

I realize up to this point I’d been spelling yolk yoke. Hmm, I’ll continue.

All the fat is in the yolk yoke, all the nutrients in the same.

The yoke tastes better.

I’d rather eat yolks only – I’m the only person I know who has, and that’s because I was hungry and my buddy was wasting massive amounts of nutrition in front of me.

8/1/21
Weighted Chins :
12 x bw+40

It cracks me up to be hitting all these high rep sets at whatever I weigh + x.

Probably 290lbs total for 12.

I can remember the time where it was up to 7 half reps, maybe 3 reps full range.

I was 14 years old.

That year (freshman) I went from 212 to 178 in about a semester.

290 for 12 easier than 178 for 2 –
I’ve come far.

I ended my sophomore year at 174.
Interestingly enough I threw the shot put almost as far at under 175 as at 225 the next year, which was only a foot shorter than at 255 as a senior.

Says something about the quality of the weight gain – we all made mistakes starting out, the important thing being that I was training and learning.

The funny thing is after junior year wrestling season I went from 195 to 215 in ten days.

My body was primed to grow, having gone from 185 to 195 during the season despite what amounted to a starvation diet of white rice, chicken breast, and half a pb&j sandwich each day.

You gain weight while running a 5k 4x weekly, having 8-10 hours of wrestling practice, morning PT (calisthenics, mile runs, lifting), and lifting whenever it fit in – mostly at home.

I’ve talked with guys from all over – ones who wrestled on the east coast, west coast, and in the midwest – no one has ever heard of someone other than I growing during wrestling season.

Whatever was going on in my body that winter – it disagrees wholeheartedly with science.

One doesn’t get taller and gain weight on a massive calorie deficit…only I did.

I’m glad for the experience.

The body is more capable than any study says, only look to real world examples of high potential.

What you expect and accept as belief you get – I’d have wrestled at a higher level, thrown further, been much stronger, and much leaner – all much earlier having held better beliefs.

What can I do isn’t a problem, it isn’t said in desperation…it’s said looking up at the stars, thinking on the actions to take, doing them, and soaring.

Persistence & Tenacity

Today I got a set of 20 weighted chin ups at bw+15 to start my session.

I was psyched to break into the 20 rep range weighted.

While I have to bring my dip belt in for weighted dips, I love the kettlebell(s) hooked to the foot/feet method for chin ups.

It lends itself to being done daily.
The logistics are simpler.

I do chins most every day, right now not doing them once every 5-10 days or so.

Basically I’ll hit an amrap set here and there throughout the session, one or two sets to start, and a set every so often for the rest of my gym floor time.

Noticably I end with the wrestler’s bridge the two out of three days I do them.

I’ve been sleeping lots and eating up, and there are regular questions about if I compete in powerlifting, bodybuilding, and strongman as of late.

Obviously what I’m doing is right.

Still eating dirty.
Still massacring volume.

I’ve been slowly adding in more and more leg work – to be more well rounded than “Captain UpperBody Man™”, still though I’m comically strong doing so at planet fitness – just jumping in with my buddy on seated row and leg press one limbed at whatever his work weight is.

The equipment goes a whole lot heavier that way, though I actually focus more on lighter feel the muscle type work doing sets of 15-35 to pump up and speed recovery from the heavy work, have been putting on traps via lots of sets of 10 on smith machine upright rows, and probably every third day stick mostly to my lazy sets of 7 across most exercises.

Lazy 7s.

For whatever reason sets of 7 are the easiest thing mentally for me.

Full body since I’m actually hitting legs again after months of facetiously saying “I don’t train legs”.

The pump from seated leg curl has felt particularly good.

I’m show stopper strong on hip thrusts, I expect to be maxing it out for sets of 50+.

6p

Planet fitness is what you make of it.

Weighted flexed arm hangs would do me good on hand strength.

50 rep wrist curls to put on forearm size.

I’m at a spot where I can start moving towards one arm chins, and become the largest person I’ve come across to do one.

Until tommorow,
-J

View planet fitness as a challenge.

So much is online against the place, against the smith machine, and hell – I’ll tell you my initial thoughts about joining when I joined :

I joined knowing the dues would pay for itself on water bill savings showering up after work daily, that there’d be a dip bar and pullup bar – I could get good at calisthenics as at the time I was under 20 pullups, and having been about 7 months without a gym membership at that point I’d at least be able to catch pumps on the machines in addition to all the aforementioned.

Now I approach it wholly as a challenge.

Such as :

How can I make the smith machine work for me without barbell access.

I know adding plates is stronger, get to 3p+ on the upright rows, get to a lot of plates on the bottom position squats – yeah the same strength will be there on a barbell, higher even, as the smith machine is so wonky.

I’ve been getting good at weighted chin ups.

I’ve been doing upright rows/high pulls, bottom position squats, and hip thrusts in the smith machine.

I’ve been wrestler’s bridging regularly.

I make planet fitness work for me.

It’s all a matter of what you can come up with :

One arm presses with the cables is a trick, one leg at a time doubles the resistance on every machine.

You’ve got to want it.

There’s plenty to work with with the right mindset.

Persistence & Tenacity

7/28/21 :

Weighted Chins At 945pm:
7 x bw+60
2×10 @ bw+30

Chins At 11pm :
26 chins

In Between :

400 pushups, and a set of 15 on the machine curl at 155lbs.

Chins improve hugely by doing them weighted regularly.

After the 26 rep PR I continued with pushups passing 650 total on the day (yesterday was 700+), and doing probably eight sets of face pulls.

Solid session, a little over two hours total, lots of volume.

I thrive on volume. It worked for all the 70s bodybuilders, and it works for me.

Do massive volume and you’ll be muscular with the fat burnt off.

I consciously am focused on bringing up my back.

7/29/21 :

Weighted Chins :
2×15 @ bw+30
w/5:00 rest

I walked into the gym with the idea to hit 12+ at bw+30, to beat the 10 reps from yesterday, did it, then matched it after a roughly 5:00 rest with the kettlebell hooked to the opposite foot on the second set.

Treating weighted chins as if they’re bodyweight, and doing them high frequency is a physical cheat code for awesomeness.

The rest of the session was :
•smith machine hip thrusts
5x2p
3x3p25
5x5p all done very explosively
•the majority of the ~150 total pushups,
•5×10 one arm seated row light •2×25 one arm hammer strength lat pulldown machine light
both done each side
•1×20 or 25 seated leg curl
•1×15 leg extension
both leg machines focusing on a good contraction, and feeling the muscle
•a small amount of the ~150 total pushups

I find the pump work effectively speeds recovery from heavy work, that why the extra back work, particularly the hammer strength lat pulldown machine – I love that machine for high reps, especially how it consolidates heavier back work into higher ability and more gains.

This was actually a light day in my eyes done about seven hours after a massive late lunch (about 230pm) of an entire large pizza with mexican soda on the side, dinner of a quart of coffee milk, and following a two hour muscle nap.

Post workout I ate again too, pasta and burger, drank milk and some more mexican soda – a high calorie day.

The last few days I’ve been catching up on sleep, and eating a good deal.

It’s funny all the chin PRs coming within a few days of rest, not that I take a day away from the gym lol

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.