I’m currently planning a trip this winter to go snowboarding down Brent’s traps.
I read this next comment a second ago and decided to do a double COW this week (since last week I didn’t do one).
High Voltage Says:
July 30th, 2010 at 6:45 pm e
Also, I met a boy on the street today. He was a friendly child, but he was very sad about the economy and seemed to be down on his luck. He asked me if it was true, the rumors he heard, that Brent Kim would be taking his Shrug Tour cross-country this summer.
I told him that all we can do is hope.
The count so far:
For those of you keeping score:
1 – Jacob
1 – StonewallWells
1 – tonypop
1 – High Voltage
Generally, people approach inpatient drug rehab Los Angeles to get rid off overweight that is caused due to intoxication.Skinny Guys who are no longer skinny know that when strength is built, muscles get bigger. Some people are more genetically apt to get bigger muscles than others, and that’s just the way it is. The growth of muscular mass is known as “swollertrophy”, a condition where the muscles reach a point in which their “maximum jackage” levels are saturated.
A lifter who experiences impressive strength gains my feel some of the effects of swollertrophy, but may have to turn to other means to express an impressive yoke. Brent Kim of 70’s Big Research and Design is such a lifter. Kim’s last six months of training have focused on improving his force production ability, but now his training has taken a different turn.
“I temporarily want to get my fucking yoke on.”
Kim in high school
The road has been long and arduous for Kim, a former 100 pound high school senior. When a Veitnamese friend convinced Kim that lifting weights might improve his confidence and self-esteem, Kim was sold; “The door was opened to what could only be a shrugalicious journey.”
Kim’s memory of this time was hazy (perhaps due to limited eye sight), but it was clear he didn’t understand the concept of “fucking yoked”. He toyed around with curls, extensions, and presses and later half squats with 225 lbs. It wasn’t long before he was Google searching – a trait that would later earn him the title of Head of Research and Design – power cleans and was introduced to Olympic lifting. At a body weight of 115 lbs, Kim was enamored with the sport and figured he was a 56kg weight class competitor “indefinitely”. It’s safe to say that Kim did not have a clear understanding of “yoke”.
Kim trained the Olympic lifts, squatted, and deadlifted and increased his body weight to around 140 and would go on to compete in the 69 and 77kg weight classes. It was at this time that Kim met Justin.
Kim was a seemingly unkept Asian with wild hair and mis-matching socks (Editor’s Note: Nothing has changed.) who squatted 350×5 and deadlifted 400. It wasn’t long before Justin tried to convince Kim to try his hand at the Linear Progression. After months of violent arguing, Kim relented. It took him approximately five training sessions to admit, “I should have listened to Justin sooner.”
Not only did Kim increase his strength (to date he has squatted 462 in competition), but his attitude was electro-charged. When asked about these personality changes, he shot back, “What changes are you talking about, Justin?” Justin later reported, “Brent became more aggressive and antagonistic in a matter of days. I feel that I have created a monster.” These traits have seemingly earned Kim a cult-like following.
All in a day’s work for Kim who hit a 107kg PR snatch three days after competing at USAPL Raw Nationals. Kim’s current program is managed around his temporarily hectic work training schedule, but he says it will consist of sets of ten and then shifting into a swollertrophy-oriented Texas Method.
“Strength is obviously necessary to do this kind of program, and I’m still increasing my weight every week. But the sets of ten – I’m just interested in maximum jack right now.”
Kim and his traps
Kim is an Olympic lifter at heart, and is known for his mountainous traps. Kim is hard at work developing his traps with Bill Starr style shrugs and has recently hit 485 lbs for a set of five. He was overheard saying, “I mean, my traps have to get bigger, Justin.”
A proper “stack” will be necessary when trying to fully saturate “maximum jackage”. When asked what his stack was, Kim replies, “Excellent question. Lots of techno, some fish oil, and protein.”
Rumors circulated recently about Kim taking a shot at qualifying for USAW’s American Open in the 77kg class, and Kim stamped those rumors; “If I’m trying to get my maximum jack on, and I’m above 77k, I don’t want to cut to 77k to qualify for a meet that I’m probably not gonna go to.” An undisclosed source revealed that Kim may not be able to afford such a venture, but Kim’s time is mostly filled with work and “getting (his) yoke on.”
Kim did reveal that his next meet will most likely be the Texas State Weightlifting meet in January 2011, and he has modest goals of hitting 110/135 as an 85kg lifter. After the meet, he would focus back into his beloved weightlifting. Kim reported that he would love to lift as a 94kg lifter since he would “be pretty fucking jacked” at 5’5”.
It seems like Brent Kim has what it takes to embody the spirit of swollertrophy. He is fearless in this pursuit and left our interview by saying, “I don’t think that I have any limitations and keep a mindset that if there are limitations, I can overcome them with good programmiong, work ethic, and a beautiful set of traps.”
On my way back to Denver last week I sat next to a thin young woman who told me that she aimed to gain some weight. We talked throughout the plane ride and she said something to the affect of, “Wow, I didn’t realize everything I knew was wrong. I have so many friends that are skinny just like me.” Really? I forgot about this demographic. You can’t blame me since around 60% of Americans are overweight or obese. Girls typically are wanting to “lose weight” and “get toned” when they get involved in fitness stuff, so you don’t run across too many that are trying to grow.
Women like this need a sandwich
It’s hard for these women like this to actually grow, even if they are “doing weights”. Assuming they get the advice to lift some kind of weight, that advice is followed by recommendations to move 15 lb. dumbbells around a few times a week. I suppose that’s better than sitting on one’s ass all the time, but it isn’t going to help a skinny girl grow.
The principles are the same: get stronger with compound, full body movements and eat to have an abundance of protein and caloric surplus. Squatting, pressing, benching, and deadlifting are the foundation. Skinny girls owe it to themselves to gain weight for the sake of practicality as well as aesthetics. I’m not a woman, but I would think that a woman would want a curvy figure. Squatting and the related exercises help develop this wonderfully.
There are some problems that a skinny girl will run into. She’ll need help understanding why getting stronger will help, and why eating much much MUCH more protein is necessary. Compound movements that help make you strong cause some natural damage to muscle. This causes a lot of disruption in the body as well as in the relevant muscles used. In order to repair and help that muscle grow, an appropriate amount of protein is necessary along with adequate calories. “Appropriate” and “adequate” are much much MUCH higher than what Skinny Girl has been taught, and these fallacies need to be rectified. The gal I spoke with on the plane probably weighed 95 pounds. If she wants to be 110 pounds, she needs to eat like a 110 pound girl. That means she needs 110 grams of protein. I bet she was getting less than 30 grams before talking to me.
Females in general don’t eat enough protein, so having them plan their meals around their protein is the first step. Getting them past that “conventional wisdom” and “social barrier” of not eating a lot of food is necessary so that they will actually get enough calories to grow and…well…survive better. I wouldn’t place any dietary restrictions on a skinny girl if she was trying to gain weight. If after 5 or 6 weeks there is noticable bodyfat, then we can adjust things. But, I’m telling you, if she eats the minimum protein amount and is squatting three times a week, she won’t have any problem with bodyfat.
It’s actually quite simple, but the fitness and nutrition industries have fucked things up so bad, most women are handicapped before they even start their quest of gaining weight, looking better, and feeling better. I hope that we can help change this silly mindset one Skinny Girl at a time…
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I know that was boring for a lot of you dudes, but it’s for the best. Hopefully the following video will entertain you. This was on the Friday before the Raw Nationals meet we went to in Denver a couple weeks ago. We had just gotten our rental car and I only recorded two clips, but they are worth watching. Brent is being his usual pain-in-the-ass self, Chris is exasperated by his behavior, Mike is saying random things that don’t make sense, and I generally don’t acknowledge any of it. Oh, and Chris apparently called shotgun right before I turned the camera on. I like how Chris and Brent are bickering from the get-go.
Last week’s posts were dominated by our experience from Raw Nationals. A lot of you have written in saying how much 70’s Big has inspired you to compete, and I enjoy every one of those e-mails. 70’s Big is an attitude, and part of that attitude is putting yourself to the test and risking failure along the way.
I’m going to periodically share some stories from people who have written to me about their competitions. Today I want to highlight Antoinette’s journey into her first powerlifting meet earlier this month. You may remember her from this post when she deadlifted 250lbs. Antoinette is coached by her boyfriend Eric, and he did a solid job on teaching her the barbell lifts and helping her develop a great strength base. On a side note, Antoinette told me that when she got into lifting, she dropped bodyfat and even though she was eating a lot more. I’ll let her comment on that, but typically when girls start getting stronger they have an improvement in body composition.
Eric and Antoinette having a rough time with the 70's Big Face
The first time Antoinette e-mailed me, she was asking about the best way to taper her “Texas Method” program into the meet. TM programming works really well with people shifting from novice programming to intermediate, and once the lifter has been on it for a few months, it can be transitioned pretty well into a short taper for a meet. I recommended she start doing 3 rep maxes (3RM) so it would paint a more accurate picture of what she could open with.
Antoinette kept in touch with me as she got ready for the meet, and unfortunately she was hit with various types of the black plague for the three weeks leading into the meet. In any case, she didn’t let it deter her from having a solid day. Eric wrote me a recap, and I’ll give it to you from the horse’s mouth:
So our plan was to open conservatively and make reasonable jumps for the second attempts on each lift so, worst case, she could go 6/9 and put up lifts in the neighborhood of her training PRs. Seeing how she was coming off being sick for most of the three weeks prior to the meet, and the fact that her Tuesday recovery day hadn’t gone very well, we definitely wanted to keep things on the low side. Add in the fact that she was on the verge of having an anxiety attack prior to her first lift (she can tell you more about that) and I was still a little worried going into the squats.
We decided to open at 105kg on squats, which was a weight she had tripled without too much struggle two weeks ago. You can see that it looked a little more difficult than it should have, which was mainly due to her nervousness preventing her from getting a good deep breath before starting the lift. So we only went with a 2.5kg jump for her second attempt, which put her about 9lbs short of her gym PR of 245lbs. 107.5kg went up without too much problem since she had calmed down a lot once she got the first lift out of the way. She had a slight knee turn-in and loss of back angle, so we knew she could handle quite a bit more weight if she fixed that. For her third attempt we jumped to 112.5kg, and even with a slight knee turn-in (looks like it was due to toes not being angled out enough in the stance) it went up without any problem.
Bench was definitely her weakest event–on her last intensity day she had put up 125lbs (which was a PR for her) but it didn’t go easy. We opened at 52.5kg which went up easy enough, but I was still hesitant about making a big jump on bench so we only went to 55kg for attempt #2. That went up easy enough that I felt comfortable calling for 60kg on the third attempt. By this time she had gotten over the nervousness and was able to channel the pressure in a productive way and get amped up for each lift. 60kg went up far easier than I had expected, giving her a 7lb PR on bench.
With deadlift we wanted to use the first attempt essentially as a final warmup lift so she would have something left for her second and third attempts. So we opened at 102.5kg, which she has done for a set of 5 before. That went up easy enough for us to feel comfortable jumping to 110kg on her second attempt…again short of her gym 1RM but something that would let her get a solid number on the board without too much trouble. After hitting that attempt easily we jumped to 115kg, 3lbs over her gym PR. She pulled 115kg like it was a warmup lift, and it looked far stronger than when she set her previous deadlift PR a few weeks ago.
So in the end, she went 9/9 and totaled 287.5kg, good for 2nd place in her weight class in the raw open. Tracee Patterson, the winner in her weight class, hold several national records in that class, so it was no shame to take second place to her. All three lifts were PRs and it looked like she could have handled about 5kg more on the bench and 7.5-10kg more on the squat and deadlift, but being her first meet we thought it was a better idea to leave something on the table rather than taking a chance bombing out or getting hurt.
That, my friends, is how you handle someone at their first meet. Antoinette had e-mailed me, and we went back and forth with strategy. I mentioned that they could take the last warm-up for deadlift on the platform, and that’s what they decided to do in order to help her go 9/9 in the meet. And really, PR’s on all the lifts and going 9/9? I can’t think of a better way to motivate anybody, especially a girl in her first competition. Nice job Antoinette, and nice job Eric.
Here is Antoinette’s last deadlift (you can see her other lifts here):
