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.

Animated Zoidz

Coming soon - I will begin posting a graphic novel I'm calling "Zoidz: Man-thing of Iron" or "Pump: The Adventures of Hairy Zoidberg."

Stand by for a preview.....

Old Timey Asshat

This specimen you see before you, this wondrous mutant from a long forgotten era, is not to be stared at or mocked.

The Shit Day

I want to take a moment here and tell you why I am better than you. Its not that I pick up heavier shit, embrace physical misery, or have more back hair... It's because of the bad days.

When you have a bad day, you bag it. You give up. You say, "Well fuck it, I didnt sleep well, my wife yelled at me and my dog bit my ass while I was peeing so I guess the gym is pretty much shot today."

Fuck that.

It happens shittrumpet, if every workout was gold medal we'd all be walking around with single digit body fat and forearms that could bend nails. Let's assume for a minute that all our golden days are great, new PRs, totally satisfying lifts and trucking forward on that big excel sheet we measure our progress on. Sure, some golden days are better than others, but every golden day results in progress forward...so let's just assume all progress forward is equal regardless of rate.

Now you have the shit days. The days when your feeler set seems like your 1RM, and you know right then some seriously bad shit is ahead. This is when normal sacks of shit just say fuck it and they do 5x5 with something they know they can get, then go masturbate in the shower and eat a cake. I LOVE THE SHIT DAY. you know why? Because now I've got to think of something that will be absolute hell, and since I am now free from hitting a target, it can be whatever I want so long as I want to die. It's fucking liberating man!

Every time I walk into the garage I've got a plan, warm up then 5 progressively heavier singles...warm up then 5 sets of 3 at 95%, warm up then death set at 80%. The shit day means I get to just fuck around. Last time I did as many 60% squats as I could (32 total) while listening to my main jam, roughly 4 minutes. I wanted to bash my head into the wall to end the pain. Other times I'll just pick some weight that I can really whip around (which is usually 60%) and just do endless sets until I feel so broken down that I find missing joints and tendons laying behind the plate rack as they attempted to escape the misery by leaping from my body.

Most of the time, I feel better after a shit workout than I do after a golden workout. Sure, no new number to put on the white board, but I know I had a mental victory. My body was giving me shit so I just decided to torture it into oblivion so that next time it doesnt try and pull that shit again.

That is why I am better than you. Because you give up, and are weak. Go eat a donut.