Interior monologue…

Feet: Whoa whoa…what the fuck, why are we moving so quickly, are we being chased? Is this farmers carry? Eyes, what the fuck is going on?

Eyes: I don’t know, the scenery isn’t changing, were standing still

Feet: We definitely aren’t fucking standing still here! Jesus H. Christ what is this? Are we running now? HOLY FUCK HELP! This is an awful farmers carry!

Arms: Negative on farmers carry, no loading here and we aren’t about to be separated from shoulder. We are being windmilled about in some strange fashion.

Heart: Increasing rate to 120 beats per minute

Lungs: Uh….we can only maintain this pace for maybe another 30 seconds

Feet: Guys! What the fuck! We’re in lifting shoes, this shit isn’t supposed to happen to us any more, someone please tell us what the fuck is happening

Ears: I hear shitty top 40s…

Feet: That means we’re in a commercial gym. Is he doing sprints? I can do sprints, maybe two of them.

Heart: Increasing rate to 140 beats per minute

Eyes: Negative, we still aren’t moving forward

Feet: This just doesn’t make any fucking sense!

Glutes: Hey, I know I’m not really involved in all this but I just want to say I appreciate all you guys do and I think we’re a really good tea…

Feet: Shut the FUCK up ass, people are dying here!

Arms: God feet you are such pussies. All you do is absorb impact and you’re fucking whining like you actually do something around here.

Heart: Increasing rate to 160 beats per minute. Infarction warning issued.

Glutes: You know, I don’t appreciate this tone. I work very hard on squats and deads and all I ask for is that we take a moment to think about how we can work better together.

Sweat Glands: Open all apertures to 100%

Eyes: Hey! Check that shit out in front of us Gonads!

Gonads: What? Someone call me? We’re not getting a lot of blood down here…check back later.

Heart: Increasing rate to 180 beats per minute. Infarction imminent

Feet: Hey, has anyone bothered to ask brain about this?

Brain: 2 more minutes until 1/3 of the way there, then 20 more minutes. 30 seconds…31 seconds….32 seconds…33 seconds

Arms: What the fuck is he doing up there? And what is with all this goddamn swinging?

Lungs: WE’RE FUCKING DYING HERE!

Heart: commence shutdown

Eyes: were losing it, it’s all black

Feet: Brain! For the love of god! Stop this madness

Showing up is half the battle

I recently had the pleasure of enduring PMT 250, program management tools, the latest selection of training force fed down my throat in an effort to teach me how to buy pipes. PMT 250 is taught by Defense Acquisition University (DAU), a hallmark institution that prides itself in being the Harvard of Fort Belvoir. Normally, DAU classes consist of 6 to 12 modules with about 150-300 PowerPoint slides apiece. You login to DAU and these slides are firehosed into your face from their central abacus at about the rate of one every 20 seconds. If you do the math, that means the average course takes approximately 17 years to complete.

I’d like to adjust this rant for a second and address the phrase “the value of the course is in the discussion.” First, the value of the course is never in the discussion because chances are the people in your class aren’t any smarter than you, and in the case of DAU, probably much less so. Do you think that a professor in a computational fluid dynamics course stands up in front of his class on the first day and says, “Well I know some of you might not understand the material and might not ever get anything right…but the value of this course is in the discussion.” No. The value of the course is pounding Navier-Stokes into your brain until you understand that PDEs were a contrivance of Satan himself. There is no discussion on the finer points of whether or not Bernoulli was good at BJs, just lots of math and headache. I know what some of you are saying, “Zoids, what about classes for people who don’t ever find a job, like English literature or philosophy?” Nope, sorry, same rule applies. The value is in reading Socrates and trying to wrap your head around what he is trying to say, not listening to some asshole in the corner pontificate his reflections upon bong hits. So when Professor Asshole tells me that the real value of this program management shitshow is in listening to Francis over at Army Logistics Center discuss his intrepid ventures into cost accounting the latest pencil contract, my brain shuts down.

A further adjustment to this rant brings us full circle back to the purpose of this blog, namely, lifting heavy shit. This type of phrase, “don’t worry about getting X, just doing Y is good enough,” is repeated in many other infuriating circumstances, but this one…

Know that showing up is half the battle (courtesy, Gold’s Gym)

Furious anger.

Yet another brilliant abdication of personal responsibility, thank you Gold’s gym. I showed up at the gym and waddled on the treadmill for 30 minutes, but at least I showed up…and that’s half the battle! Look, I get it. For Joe Couchington showing up is pretty hard due to the fact that his familial love for his namesake is constantly convincing him to watch TV all day. But immediately upon making Joe suffer by running wind sprints he realized showing up didn’t matter shit, running the first 50m of the 100m was really half the battle.  But then he had to run twelve of them so really running the first six was half the battle. Then when he went home and realized that he only burnt 400 calories and he really realized that showing up meant absolutely nothing. What they are saying is commitment to do something is half the battle, but really commitment is a useless wafer-thin construct of words much like love or grief. The only commitment is where you have 500 pounds on your back and you are currently at the bottom most position on squat, you have a COMMITMENT to stand back up or you will DIE. That’s half the battle.

Zoids Jerks 300

I've been wanting to put 300lbs over my head for a while, glad it finally happened. Though I don't have it on video we do have a video of me doing some narrow stance squats.

Now, I know what you are going to say. Looks good but my knees are coming forward of my toes, which you always hear is a big no-no because it puts a lot more strain in your knee. What you really need to ensure is that the weight stays directly centered over mid-foot, knee position relative to your feet isn't too terribly important. You can tell if you no longer have this balance if you lift your heels.

Blammo.

Functionally Retarded

Here are my top five reasons to build your own gym:

1)      No waiting for the guy to finish stretching in the squat rack

2)      No more maximal effort squats set to top 40s.

3)      Chalkzone maximum

4)      Shirts/shoes optional

5)      No more personal trainers telling you that squats are bad for your knees

I've got a bone to pick with a two-bit jerk tissue called A. Kalvado. I was reading his book while doing number two and I gathered that he is into this whole Zen approach to fitness. First of all, I completely agree, fitness certainly requires Zen. Fitness is being able to walk up stairs without having a coronary. Fitness is being able to tread water, or go for a nice Sunday hike. I like feeling one with the universe with all the tweety birds and shit when I go for a hike, so a Zen approach seems logical. Oh wait, this guy is talking about my lifting. Zen? Are you fucking kidding me? Deadlifting a fucking truck doesn’t take Zen, it takes a gallon of testosterone, 18 cups of coffee and a steady stream of rageahol pouring out of your mouth like a laser cannon of screamy justice. Get the fuck out of here with your Zen. If I tried to be all calm and shit when I lift I’d probably turn out like….well, like this douchebag Kalvado, who apparently has about the same amount of muscle tissue in his entire body that Jimbo has in one of his calves.

So this waste of oxygen then goes on to pontificate on the finer points of being a balanced individual who has practical ability (or functional ability by crossfit fags) that they can readily use. He then throws bodybuilders under the bus by saying they are non-functional peacocks that couldn’t run a marathon or swim a mile. Of course they can’t you shitstain, they are 300 lbs of fucking meat. Why would they need to train that way? That’s like saying the F22 is a piece of shit jet because it can’t fly under the goddamn ocean.

Bodybuilders are specialists! Incidentally, so are these marathoners you so desperately want to fellate. By the same logic, let’s see a marathoner deadlift 800. Second, why are you harping on bodybuilders? Last time I checked, the strength community doesn’t hold them as the paragons of their art. He picked an easy target, try and tell me that Derek Poundstone doesn’t have functional strength. Motherfucker can carry your car home at a brisk jog if you run out of gas.

Dipshits like this make me so angry not because they are completely fucking retarded, and they are, but because they impose their own logic and judgment system on what is RIGHT and WRONG on a group of people who aren’t even in the same fucking category. Yes, I am aware of the irony of my anger. But hey, fuck you.

It’s these middlemen, the guys that try and be OK at everything that earn the ire of the elite, because they claim that unless you can run, jump, swim, lift, and shoot arrows out of your ass you are somehow inferior. Mr. 4.3 40 yard dash is invalid because he cant do some kettlebell bullshit. It’s particularly hilarious because in a room full of crazy ass athletes, you can bet your ass I would sooner identify with the lunacy of a serial marathon runner that this nozzle. Being moderately good at everything sucks. Being remarkable at one thing is what people remember. Not that I care what anyone remembers or anything. Just sayin’.

For the 11%

225 years ago, some drunk with two first names, Sam Nick, got real faced in a bar and decided it would be a great idea recruit a bunch of dudes that were better at fighting and drinking than sailors. He wanted these men to be of salty character, but with more tattoos and wanton desire to choke people out.  Figuring the best place to handle this sort of thing was at a bar, he started recruiting at a local shithole called Tun Tavern, Old English for Keg Bar. Unfortunately you can’t go to this place now because it was burned down in a fire and paved over by I-95.

Once Sam Nick had enough vagrants, criminals, and all-together Continental hard asses, he piled these fuckers into two boats commanded by a capital weirdo called Esek Hopkins, a pirate who was so bad at sailing that his only venture into slave trading ending with over 60% of the people on board dead.

With Esek in command, Sam Nick took his band of ingrates to lead a healthy invasion of the extremely fortified and well stocked British Nightmare Base at Nassau Bahamas.

Just kidding, Sam Nick just wanted to score some cheap rum and bang hookers, the base wasn’t even garrisoned, so the Marines captured the British encampment without a fight.

After the horrendous conflict and bloody battle in the Caribbean, the Marines decided to take a 15 year break to get more sweet tats and choke some more people out.

And that my friends, is the history of the Marine Corps.

This just in...

 Dumbass Eats Donuts and Loses Weight

And in a completely unrelated story, person B reduced his calories by the same amount, ate only meat and vegetables, and lost twice as much. The problem with this story isn't that a whole bunch of people are going to read this as "eating junk food is OK," they're going to read the tired bullshit that "calories in calories out" is the only salient maxim of weight loss. Sure, he lost weight. If I don't eat anything for 7 days, I'll lose 20 lbs. If I binge and purge, I'll lose weight. If I eat carriage bolts and hex nuts I'll lose weight. It's easy to lose weight, the argument they are attempting to make is that it is only mildly questionable that this d-bag is probably not healthy. Of course he isn't fucking healthy! he ingested nothing but trans fat and HFCS for 2 and half months! Oh but his bodyweight and LDL dropped too, he must be healthy! What about the fact that this fucktard probably didnt sleep a whole night through for 10 weeks? or that he probably dropped 2/3rds lean muscle because he ate about as much protein as an 8 year old girl? He probably spent his days in an insulin induced zombieland of pre-onset diabetes and wildly fluctuating GI levels. God help him. I hope he does it for another 10 weeks then promptly keels over with his perfect cholesterol levels.

On Crossfit

Interviewer: "Based on the experience of friends doing the Crossfit program, I have heard many reports of new PR's and other feats of strength in specific lifts. This happens despite the fact that the particular lift only comes up on an occasional basis. This completely flies in the face of conventional training wisdom, so I must ask: how is this possible?!"

Glassman, founder of crossfit: "If you come to us with a 4-minute mile, six months into it you are going to be 30 seconds slower but a whole hell of a lot fitter. Similarly, if you come to us with a 900-pound squat, in six months it's going to be 750 pounds, but you, too, will be much fitter. A 4-minute mile and a 900-pound squat are both clear and compelling evidence of a lack of balance in your program. This doesn't reflect the limitations of our program but the inherent nature of flesh and blood.

But here's the fascinating part. We can take you from a 200 pound max deadlift to a 500-750 pound max deadlift in two years while only pulling max singles four or five times a year. We will though work the deadlift, like most lifts, approximately once per week at higher reps and under grueling conditions. It may intuit well that if you can pull a 250 pound deadlift 21 times coming to the lift at a heart rate of 180 beats per minute, then 500 pounds for a single at a resting heart rate is perhaps manageable."

What? This is just a fucking lie, there is no way high volume on deadlift produces superior one rep maxes. There isn’t a single honest powerlifter, Olympic lifter, or even bodybuilder that trains that way. They are apples and oranges, you train completely different muscle fibers lifting your 20 rep max than you do training your 1RM. Hey, I can squat 315 20 times (almost) so therefore it stands to reason that my 1RM is 630, right? Fucking wrong. Second, what kind of spread is 500-750? At what bodyweight? Getting to a 750lb deadlift in 2 years in the 181lb weight class from UNTRAINED is going to be virtually impossible. If it were possible, it certainly wouldn’t happen from endless sets of 20 with 225 on DL. 

Also, define "a whole lot fitter." If I lost 150 lbs from my squat just to take my mile time from 9 minutes to 8 minutes, congratulations, I am fitter. I'm also no longer an elite powerlifter, and still a pretty slow runner. What is it with crossfit's obsession with balance? WTF do I care to be mediocre in all things, or sacrifice being truly amazing in one thing to improve marginal ability in other tasks? What's more impressive, the guy that comes up to you and says he can bench 500 RAW, but can barely eke out a mile in 10 minutes, or the guy that comes up to you and says he can bench 315 RAW but can crank an 8 minute mile. THE BIG DUDE! As long as he isn't a mountain of lard, who cares how fast they run? They're Fucking awesome!

How about a whip thin 180lb dude with an 800 dead, but the poor dude doesn’t know how to swim. But here comes Mr. Crossfit D-bag who can swim a 1/2 mile, run 10 miles in 75 minutes, and bench press 225lbs. Oooh, I am so impressed with your solidly OK performance in all tasks. Should you ever be called upon to do some sort of cross country retard fest, you shall surely succ... "BUT OH GOD, MY SON IS TRAPPED UNDER MY CAR, QUICK! GIANT MAN WITH THE AWESOME DEADLIFT, SAVE HIS LIFE!" Women and riches are heaped upon him. Crossfit guy hangs himself.