Author Archives: Justin

Memorial Day 2013

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Take a deep, luxurious breath. How does it feel? Normal? It should feel both normal and abnormal.

It’s normal because it’s the same as the million of breaths that have come before it. You’re an American breathing freely whilst pursuing your life’s happiness. Yet it’s abnormal and weird because the only reason you’re content taking that breath is because there is man or woman who has earned it for you.

An American soldier has pulled on his boots, shouldered his ruck, and squeezed the grip of his rifle, sweating. This man forfeited his freedoms, left his family, and sacrificed his youth. This man did all of this, yet is hardly compensated for his sacrifices. In fact, he is often shunned for going out of his way to choose this fate.

Yet, this man is the reason you are able to take your next breath, the reason you can wake up in the morning and do whatever you damn well please. This man protects the richest of the rich, yet also enables the dredge of society to suck the teat and be rewarded for sloth. He’s the reason that a bar fight, this website, or a children’s spelling bee can exist. His sacrifice is blind to the recipients’ outcome, yet it is all-encompassing nonetheless.

You may have known the man with the rifle, yet he has existed for more than 200 years and he gives you this next breath freely. You are free to do whatever you want with that breath, but it’d be a disgrace if it wasn’t spent doing everything you can to be the best person, father, brother, friend, son, worker, or stranger that you can. Your last breath was a freebie; now earn your next in honor of those riflemen who make breathing possible.

Lest we forget our fallen…

A Quick Note

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Dear 70′s Big Readers,

I have accepted a position that will limit my ability to write for 70′s Big for a few months. In order to be successful I will not have time to reply to messages on the website, social media, or e-mail. Fortunately, Jacob Cloud will continue to help in his new role as Editor and will make sure you are supplied with quality, entertaining content. I’ll be around — helping Jacob — but I won’t be interacting as much.

Even though this website is a part of my personality and life, throughout the years I’ve made it a point to hold onto some element of privacy. Thank you for not violating my privacy by repeatedly asking about it.

Enjoy the site, get edu-muh-cated, have a good time, train hard, and eat well.

–Justin

 

 

Paleo For Lifters E-book Release

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In late 2007 I shifted my training focus from two years of  ”bodybuilding style stuff” back to an emphasis on performance. In early 2008 I started doing CrossFit exclusively for several months. As I was studying Kinesiology material in school, I also soaked up training and nutrition information at home. I read Loren Cordain’s “The Paleo Diet” and implemented it immediately. I quickly found that lots of protein and fat with controlled carbs was not only optimal for performance, but also helped me gain almost ten pounds of lean body mass in a month even though I was doing CrossFit. I was meticulous. In the beginning of 2009 I focused on strength training and put an emphasis on low quality, yet high calorie foods in high quantities. I ate like this for 18 months and gained weight and got stronger, but I always felt a bit sluggish. Since the middle of 2010, I’ve steadily experimented and progressed my diet into something that uses the Paleo diet as a base, but provides enough calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fat to fuel strength and conditioning training.

I constantly aim to improve my knowledge and how I teach nutrition on 70sBig.com has evolved over time. It’s possible to consume enough macronutrients and calories to recover from training and do so with quality foods that make our bodies more efficient and healthy; increased efficiency improves training recovery.

The result is that I maintain a sub-10% body fat while hovering between 210 and 215 pounds and can perform the following any day of the week: squat 450 for reps, press 225, deadlift 500, snatch 125kg, and clean and jerk 155kg. I don’t like humble-bragging, but these methods are effective not only for me, but lifters and trainees I work with.

Paleo for Lifters is an e-book I’ve been writing off and on for months and is about 26,000 words and 60 pages. It surpasses the length of Texas Method: Part 1 by several thousand words but isn’t as big as The Texas Method: Advanced, which sits at about 35,000 words. While the TM books were riddled with figures, graphs, and images, Paleo for Lifters is mostly just old fashioned text and explanation. Those who have read my books in the past know that I don’t put out crappy e-books, and this book is chock-full of useful information.

Add to Cart

Table of Contents
Preface
1 —  Introduction
2 — Nutrition Basics
3 — Why Paleo?
4 — Implementation
5 — Tips and Such
6 — A Final Word

The early chapters explain the basics of nutrition physiology as well as how much food a lifter, athlete, or trainee needs. Chapter 3 explains why the Paleolithic Diet is a good foundation for quality food and how it can help reduce systemic inflammation and therefore improve training recovery. Chapter 4 teaches readers how to use the Paleo diet to get enough quantities of protein, carbs, and fat and even how to tweak it based on body type and goal. Section topics include questionable and acceptable food choices (that differ from Paleo zealot recommendations), supplements, types of trainees, and a step-by-step guide to improving food quality. Chapter 5 ties up loose ends by covering topics like how to effectively use “cheat meals” (a goofy term that I use for consistency’s sake), how to read food labels, cooking tips, eating on a budget, eating while traveling, timing food intake with training, and how to tweak carbs intake, and information on sleep and hydration.

There are no recipes in this book, though there is a section that gives information on learning how to cook.

PR Friday, 1 FEB 2013

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PR Friday: Post your training PR’s and updates to comments. This gives you chance to communicate with like-minded readers, get encouragement or tips, and to be a part of our community. I know there are a lot of lurkers because every time people meet me or message me they say, “I always read, but I never comment. I’ll have to start commenting.” Join in on the fun.

Week In Review: “Women Allowed In Combat Arms“, “Paleo for Lifters“, “Never Miss A Chance to Get Better“, and “Lessons From Lifting“.

The Super Duper Bowl

The NFL championship game is this Sunday and it has turned into big media frenzy. I’ve personally avoided anything about the game since the media hype can produce a huge let down on Super Bowl Sunday. But, more importantly, do you give a shit about this game? I love football, grew up playing and watching it, and I’ll be watching this Sunday, but the celebrity frenzy can be laborious.

What about pro athletes? Do you really give a damn about them? Are they clowns paid to perform for you? Do you care that Raven’s linebacker Ray Lewis possibly murdered or witnessed a murder on the weekend of Super Bowl 34? Does a different set of ethics apply to famous people?

If a white trash chick skipped trial 20 times, violated probation, then made some shit up about not showing up to court and everyone found out she was lying, and then was not sent to jail, how would you feel? Cause that’s the life of Lindsey Lohan.

And more importantly, do you care if Beyonce lip-syncs the national anthem?

Who wins the game?

These are the questions America needs to know!

 

 

 

Lessons From Lifting

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Along with opening the site to reader submissions, I’ve asked various friends to contribute. Aaron is a PJ, or pararescue jumper, a Special Operations job in the Air Force where operatives are tasked with recovery and medical treatment of personnel in humanitarian and combat environments. His experience, attitude, and humor are unique and he can squat over 405. –Justin

I’ve been in the military for 11 years. I joined the Air Force after spending some time bouncing around Ohio where I grew up. I was always good enough at sports to make the varsity team – I swam and played water polo – but I wasn’t good enough to pay for school or to make a living out of it. I wasn’t challenged enough by college to care to keep going. For about 8 months in the start of 2001, I talked to recruiters, asked what they could offer me, took some placement tests, and scored well enough to get my pick of jobs. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go in despite coming from a family heavily entrenched in military and civil service. I wasted a lot of time that year. Then September 11, 2001 came and went, and like so many other young men and women I was gone a month later.

I chose the Air Force to try out for Pararescue, or PJ – a special operations job in the Air Force where operatives are tasked with recovery and medical treatment of personnel in humanitarian and combat environments. It’s arguably the hardest Special Operations job in the United States military. I was attracted by the difficulty, the attrition rate (more than 90% fail), and the mission. Saving lives, bringing home fallen Eagles, no matter the cost. “That others may live” is the motto. Small teams are asked to do impossible things only to succeed time and time again. It’s mentally challenging, physically demanding, and packed full of the world’s best training opportunities. It took all of 5 seconds for my recruiter to tell me about the job before I wanted to sign papers.

This is usually the point in the story where I tell you how I completed selection, realize my dreams, but it’s not. I failed the selection course for Pararescue, called “The Indoctrination Course”, or colloquially “INDOC”. I did not have the maturity, physical skills or mental preparedness needed to be a PJ, and I found that out in the harshest way over the course of my first year in the military. I love the saying, “failure is not an option.” I assure you, it most certainly is an option.

I spent 5 years in Washington, D.C. working a very cool but very “desk” job. I excelled, made a couple stripes, and was well set up for a very “easy” career in the Air Force. I loved the people I worked with, I loved the Air Force, and I loved my life. I even got married, had a baby – the whole deal.

At 3 a.m., on the night I graduated from Basic Army Airborne School, my wife looked at me as she held my then-three-week-old daughter, and said the one thing that changed all of our lives.

“It made you want to go back, didn’t it? Did jump school make you want to try INDOC again?”

I responded with some really pansy type, “Uh, babe, you know…”

“Shut up” was the only response from my wife. “Put the packet in. Let’s go back. But I am changing the locks on the doors, and you aren’t coming home to this family unless you pass. You can get your new keys at graduation. You are gambling on our lives here, and I won’t bet on anything but a sure bet. Let’s do this.”

Fast forward to now. 8 years after that conversation, I am a PJ with multiple combat deployments, and international SOF experience. I just returned from a deployment, and I am getting ready for the next one, as usual.

But now the question: why did I spend 300 words telling you this, and what does it have to do with 70’s Big?

Well, it has everything to do with it. Along my journey, a couple resounding truths kept my head right and kept me on the right track.

  1. You have to stand up, do the work, and grind out every day of your life. Some say, “Half of life is just showing up,” but the other half is putting out, and getting the work done. 50% is a failing score in real life; just showing up isn’t enough.
  2. The second you lose sight of item 1, someone will call you on it and you will pay a penalty. In my line of work, that could conceivably mean a serious injury or death – or the worst possible scenario, that I would be unable to answer the call when it comes. It seems as if I got those two consequences in the wrong order. Trust me, I didn’t.

These lessons were taught to me at the gym. Not during some “cool guy” combat scenario or during a movie-type scene; I learned these things under a bar. Trying to find a way to push into a max-effort set; showing up an hour early to make sure I get my mobility work in; getting up hours before the sun because I don’t have enough time in my day; or refusing to miss a weight or a progression. These lessons were taught to me in the most unforgiving fashion possible. The weight is constant and the entry in your journal for that day is a pass/fail event. Would you like to skip today’s workout, or mail it in and only do 75% of what you had programmed that day? That’s fine. Just realize you will not be strong and you’ve increased your chance of failing. If you are ok with that, well, I’m not sure we are going to get along.

Throughout my career I’ve loved learning and passing knowledge on. Long ago I saw the value of strength training and have never looked back. Three years ago I found my way to 70’s Big and saw a community of like-minded individuals and have been an avid follower since. When I was presented the opportunity to contribute in any way, I was amped.

So, here we are. Hopefully, I can contribute some quality articles. I want to bring my military and Special Operations experience as well as my experience coaching athletes of all shapes and sizes – males, females, special operators, intel officers, housewives and grandparents. Hopefully my experience can help make 70’s Big readers better.

If not, at least I “showed up”, and that’s at least worth half credit.

 

Aaron is a Pararescueman (PJ), a special operations job in the Air Force where operatives are tasked with recovery and medical treatment of personnel in humanitarian and combat environments. He spends his free time eating meat and repetitively moving heavy things.