Monthly Archives: September 2010

“I’m feeling reckless.”

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Editor’s Note: In case you can’t tell, this is another post by Brent. Oh, and it’s PR Friday so post your PR’s to the comments or update everyone on your training.

Chris Riley is a man of captivating words. Chris has always been very creative with language. We’ve mentioned it a few times before on the site – instead of saying “I need to wash my hands,” Chris will say, “I need to wash my gripz.” Instead of asking if he can taste or try something that you’re eating, he’ll ask, “Can I flavor that?” or “Do you want to flavor this?”

He also has an interesting way of insulting people. According to Chris, a “Todd” is someone who fucks everything up but doesn’t realize he is a total fuck up.

Brent: The Arkansas Razorbacks are a bunch of fucking losers. They couldn’t make a touchdown if the goalie was a paraplegic.

Chris: Goalies are in soccer, Todd.

Brent: Ooh KAY.

There are some other colorful terms that Chris is fond of using, but I don’t think they’d be appropriate to share here, but if you’d like to know more, call me, we’ll talk about it (<– this is also one of Chris’s sayings, often said in the middle of a conversation).

Oh, and the infamous WHAT ELSE ISN’T A SPORT that some of you may have seen in some of the comment threads actually originated from a night during which Chris had been drinking. Mustache Mike (not to be confused with Big Mike, who you’ve all been acquainted with) ascertained that figure skating wasn’t a sport, and Chris grew increasingly agitated as he interrogated Mike about what else wasn’t a sport.

Mike and Chris are currently training partners at WFAC. They follow a Texas Method-style program, with a volume day on Tuesdays, a light day on Thursday, and an intensity day on Saturday. Mike has observed that almost invariably, Chris comes into his Saturday workouts with the odds stacked against him. He got drunk Friday night, or he has to train in a hurry because of work, or he doesn’t eat an optimum amount of pre-workout calories because life gets in the way.

Chris, however, is a competitor.

Chris and AC are similar in that when they commit to something, they put all of themselves into it. It’s why AC gets so intense that he’s brought to tears before a 3rd attempt squat. Chris is the same way. Fight a +17lbs PR 650lbs deadlift for like 10 seconds and make it to above the knee? Ooh KAY. When Chris commits to a lift, he’ll throw everything he has into the effort, and if he fails, he’s gonna go down swinging for the fucking fences.

One particular Saturday, Chris went into the workout under shitty conditions, as usual. He takes his last squat warm up and decides to load 545lbs on the bar. He’s not sure how many times he’ll squat it, or if he’ll even be able to squat it at all today, but before he gets under the bar he turns to Mike and says one of his new trademark lines –

“I’m feeling reckless.”

And then he squats it for a PR set of 5.



Mike and I have agreed that Chris is a fantastic training partner. It’s hard to find someone who trains as hard as he does and has the raw desire to BEAT ‘EM. He’s overcome setbacks and has only gotten bigger and stronger. His performance is consistently excellent. Whenever I train with Chris, my motivation fucking sky rockets.



I’ll have what he’s having.

60% of a bull’s mass is in his traps.

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Hey guys, Shrugthug here.

Let me go off the record in saying this –

I don’t actually think my traps are that big. Well, they aren’t big ENOUGH. I admit they are disproportionate to the rest of my body, sure, and they are probably one of the only remotely visible pieces of evidence of the fact that I lift weights. The bottom line is I weigh 175lbs and this just isn’t a significant amount of mass in general.

But as you all know, I am aggressively working to rectify this.

Justin and I have had several discussions about the need for me to develop more muscular bodyweight, particularly in my upper body, but basically, it’s generally been agreed that I need to fill out 85kg with some quality weight, and eventually 94kg if I’m planning on doing anything cool.

There have been disagreements between us about how I should go about adding that mass though (paraphrased):

Brent: so i want to get more yoked, man

Justin: Oh yeah? What are you planning on doing?

Brent: probably some shrugs, Bill Starr style. i want bigger traps

Justin: (sigh) Your traps are big enough. You have the traps of a 215lbs guy on a 175lbs body. Maybe you should hit some other areas.

Brent: what do you mean?

Justin: I don’t know, maybe the rest of your upper body OTHER than your traps?

We’ve had some other disputes regarding this.

Brent: look, all i’m saying is, i don’t see why there’s a problem with me wanting to be yoked like a bull

Justin: There isn’t, but a big yoke requires the body of a bull, not a calf.

Well, here is my response to THAT:



Shrugging for 17 reps isn’t really standard ops for me. It was kind of a special day since I was training at the WFAC with Mike, and I wanted to get a PR set of 10 in. I typically have been doing these shrugs for a top set of 5 once a week, but I wanted to have some fun. I wasn’t counting reps; I think I was more concerned with telling myself I WANNA BEAT ‘EM. BEAT EM. BEAT EM. BEAT EM! with each rep. I figured at some point that I’d done about 10, and so I did two more “just to be sure.”

I asked Mike if I got 10. He said, “Seventeen. Close though.”

As my friend Chris says, I was feeling reckless.

Football and Steroids — Do You Care?

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Sorry Brent, we’re gonna talk about football again. Roger Gooddell, the commissioner of the NFL, and the team owners want to increase the regular season from 16 games to 18. This would be a good thing because they’d eliminate the worthless pre-season games, but then the owners want more games (because they want to match or increase their revenue). Some of the players realize the problem here:

“I would vote to eliminate two preseason games and then keep it at a 16-game season because the longer you’re out there playing, the more your body breaks down,” Chicago Bears tight end Desmond Clark said. “When you get into December, you’re like walking zombies. You can’t feel your joints.”

The players are TURNING INTO ZOMBIES! OMG!!!1111@!@!11!224ehjr09fujdlvkn

NFL players have resorted to eating BRAINS and the NFL wants to increase the season? I always knew there would be a zombie outbreak, and now I know the source of its inception. (GASP)…Is this a dream? I’m gonna need a kick. But…how can you kick me without any gravity?

All right, the point is that the only thing left to seal the deal on the 18 game season is playing nice with the player’s union. Let’s just assume this will happen, much like we have to assume the whole “death, taxes, and Brent Kim will be shrugging” thing. NFL players get injured enough as it is in the 16 games they already have. A quick search yielded this bit of research about injuries in the Canada West Universities Athletic Association. Regardless if it’s good research or not (I only skimmed it), we know intuitively that players are more likely to be injured in a game, on turf, if they are veteran players, if they are fatigued, and if they have a pre-existing injury. Injuries can remove a player from participating in practice and games, or it can be a less severe injury that the player has to deal with depending on their position.



The point is that football players are injured enough, and now the work load is going to be increased to a point that will be more difficult to handle, genetic freak or not. It’s obvious that pre-season games don’t garner the same physical effort or intensity as real games, and the real games are where guys are more likely to get hurt. Owners don’t realize that this will be debilitating to their investments (the players), and players will find a way to survive: steroids or other drug enhancement.

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