Don’t forget that it’s PR Friday. Give us your weekly updates and PR’s.
Ladies! Gentlemen! Friends!
In February I dropped a note that explaining how I accepted a position that would limit my involvement with the site for a while. Jacob Cloud has done a wonderful job putting interesting material up in my stead. This site won’t ever die, but hypothetically there could be lulls in my direct involvement.
All that being said, I have a bit of time to spare and will be contributing again! To the long-time regulars: hello again you curmudgeonly Todds. To the new users that have logged on in the past few months: salutations and welcome to this wonderful community.
Wolverine makes a 70’s Big face.
In addition to your normal PR Friday updates, I’m interested in hearing from the 70’s Big community on three topics:
1) How has your training been through the first half of 2013? What are you excelling at? What are your deficiencies? Have you hit any of your 2013 goals yet?
2) What is the most significant thing you’ve learned about training so far this year?
3) What is the most momentous piece of news from the strength and conditioning world in 2013 (to include powerlifting, weightlifting, strongman, and related competitions or sports)?
Sy Perlis is 91 years old, has a beard, and is setting lifting records.
That, my friends, is what dudes do.
Sy Perlis is a World War II veteran who trains five days a week and has a pretty good lookin’ wife for being almost a century old (see it in video below). In the WABDL National Push-Pull Bench Press and Deadlift Championships on June 8, 2013, Perlis benched a world record 187.2 lbs on his fifth attempt (really old guys get more attempts). He was aided by what looks like a single ply bench shirt and a strangely perfect set of teeth (Excuse me sir, where did you purchase that exquisite set of chompers?).
One article also says he didn’t start strength training until he was 60 years old; it’s never too late to start. The man is in good health and is still kickin’ at 91 years old. There must be something to this strength training stuff; strong ain’t wrong.
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.
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.
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 massin 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.
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.
