“Nobody should be training if they haven’t had any coffee.”
This was an important lesson I learned from Rip many months ago. A warm cup of joe can rejuvenate your mood, warm your loins, and give you a convenient caffeine energy boost.
In order to be useful, your coffee needs to be bold…like your attitude. And America. And my pal Spence, a fighter pilot who grows stronger to battle G-tolerance and enemies who defy him in the air.
A fighter pilot’s breakfast: coffee with a shot of jet fuel, napalm, and a side of death.
Coffee gives you an extra kick when your mind and body feel tired. In fact, sometimes it’s the only thing that can get you prepped for the stress you are about to impart on your body. You can’t get this done with Folgers; you need something dark enough to produce the kick. Caffeine pills can’t accomplish the same thing either; it must have something to do with the the powerful aroma and the boiling liquid coating your belly. Most problems that occur in training are usually correlated with a lack of coffee.
It is the night after our barbell seminar in Wichita Falls, and we are all a bit burned out. 20 hours of material will do that to you. There were a lot of great people at the seminar, and I hope to see most of them again (I demanded that a few of them make a return soon). If any of you who attended are reading this, feel free to give your thoughts on the seminar.
On Friday, someone from JP’s gym posted a link from his website. It is written by one of his female trainees, and can not only give us dudes an insight on female training, but can also be an interesting read for the ladies. The article can be found here, and here is an excerpt:
Armed with the confidence that only strength can bring, I ate with reckless abandon. I immediately blew past my previous sticking points and hit PR, after PR, after PR… a 50-pound deadlift PR instills confidence in the milk like nothing else! About six weeks into this “gaining” cycle, I competed in my first powerlifting meet. With my first official lifts under my belt, I paused to take in the moment. I was in awe of the progress I””d made in such a relatively small period of time, and I recognized that without the simple dietary additions of milk and meat, this rate of strength gain would not have been possible. I had arrived at a much-awaited turning point. The realization that my new found strength was the result of a carefully executed strategy allowed me, for the first time in a long time, to believe I was capable of changing my body. I had successfully escaped my obsession with body image and in the process, managed to reverse the longstanding misconception that I””m stuck with my body as it is. Confident and inspired, I was ready to take my training to the next level. Or so I thought…
Discuss.
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Here is a video of my pal Brian who I have been training for a few months. Brian is on the weightlifting team, and will either lift in the 94 or 105 kg class (he was about 205 when he started, now he is accidentally 216, so we have to figure it out before the meet in January). I have Brian on a linear progression type program that includes the Olympic lifts, so he squats twice a week. Recently he started practicing football twice a week for a “semi-pro” football team (or whatever you call it, Brian). In other words, he is doing two strength workouts, two weightlifting workouts, and two practices a week, and still making progress. Friday he squatted 495x5x3, and here is a video of the third set:
PR Friday, people! This is where you will post the week’s accomplishments in lifting, eating, or gaining body weight. If you lift over the weekend, write your PR’s here anyway (as opposed to Monday’s post).
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On the back-end of this website, I am able to go in and see who is linking to us. We’ve been linked to from a lot of places; from Washington state to Europe. 70’s Big makes an appearance on a lot of forums and it’s kinda funny to see the random criticism for the site, because usually it doesn’t make much sense.
The biggest misconception is that we are claiming that you eat an asinine amount of food for THE REST OF YOUR LIFE! ARRGGGHHHHH! Look, there is no 70’s Big diet. The main thing we are concerned about is that you are eating enough to sustain getting stronger and bigger for your training goals, and we hope that those goals include some kind of competition.
It just so happens to be that the majority of people who are reading this site need to gain around 50 pounds of body weight just to be useful. Guys and girls like this — yes, lots of girls are underweight, albeit not 50 pounds underweight — need to get lots of calories in along with the mandatory protein. Will they gain a little bit of bodyfat? Potentially, but usually it is insignificant if they are training hard.
I am going to say this really obnoxiously because everyone always misses this important fact:
NOBODY IS SUGGESTING THAT YOU EAT A BAG OF TRAIL MIX, ICE CREAM WITH MAGIC SHELL, AN EXTRA LARGE PIZZA TOPPED WITH OLIVE OIL, AND EGG NOG FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.
I AM suggesting that you do this if you need to gain muscular body weight, and I AM saying that you need to do this if you are skinny and want to get stronger. Once you achieve an appropriate weight, then you will eat to maintain that mass while fueling your recovery. Quit misconstruing what I say or what this site stands for. I just want you strong, and if you are small, you need to do things in order to get bigger and stronger.
Bigger guys (230+) can probably get away with a Paleo-type diet that includes milk and dairy. Bigger guys will require lots more food to meet protein and caloric requirements, and even more so when they are lifting lots of weight on a regular basis. You people that don’t strength train have to understand that the nutritional requirements change when you are placing a lot of stress on your body. Things don’t affect you in the same way that they do when you are an “exerciser” or a lazy person.
70’s Big is most inspiring to the skinny kid who needs a kick in the ass to eat like a 220 pound guy would instead of a 150 pound child. But this website also serves anybody who is wanting to get stronger. The fact is that everybody has a unique situation, but we are all the same in that we want to be stronger today than we were yesterday. There are no absolutes but getting stronger.
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Since we are talking about it, here is a food plan that I made for my buddy Cliff to help him push from 200 to 220. Cliff weighed around 175 when he started lifting here, and got up to 220 while working a full time job. He figures he will make a push to 240 after the city league basketball season. This picture appeared a few months ago, and I consider it a classic.
A food plan from a few months ago
Note: I made a mistake with what I refer to as the Facebook Fiasco. I stated that I wanted you guys to identify yourselves if you want friendship on Facebook, and then I got a stupid amount of friend requests. I’ve since decided that I won’t be accepting any of this fubar unless I actually know you. Sorry, but it makes things easier to manage, and it ensures that I won’t A) be murdered in the middle of the night or B) subject to awkward bromances. Females are still welcome.
“You can’t just go around killing people!”
“Why not? I’m a Terminator.”
At 70’s Big I have always encouraged people to compete in something so that training can be pinpointed to a goal. Competing is a lot of fun, it makes training more interested, and it gives you more of a sense of purpose than just exercising (which is what you do if you say, “I just want to get better at everything, tee hee!”).
Well, if you ever were interested in competing in the barbell sports (powerlifting or weightlifting), then you better get acquainted with the rules.
USA Powerlifting (USAPL) is a member of the International Powerlifting Federation (IPF). Their rule book is found here.
USA Weightlifting (USAW) is a member of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF). Their rule book is found here.
It’s a good idea to become acquainted with the rules so that you don’t have a booboo in a meet. Kinda like Jacob did on his third attempt squat…
Nevertheless, nice job, Jacob. I will let him recap the meet in the comments.
