Learn to cook

Posted on January 8, 2010 by Gant

“Winky Dinky Hocake. Cause hoes got to eat, too.”

(Good luck with that one)

I am not very creative with titles, so there you go. Learn to cook.

Cooking for yourself ensures that you get exactly what you need to get 70’s Big. It is also more cost effective than eating out and (hopefully) a hell of a lot cleaner. And it’s a useful skill to have. Modern man should know the difference between a Wok and a saucepan.

I realized early on that most girls my age weren’t spending much time in the kitchen and that if I wanted to keep eating well, I would have to feed myself. Fortunately my mom was (and still is) a good cook. She taught me the basics of cooking and how to make my favorite dishes. I learned a few more things over the years and, at some point, became a moderately competent cook.

So learn. That is all there is to it. Help your mom/wife/girlfriend/mistress/live-in-tranny. Watch a cooking show. Take a class. Do whatever you need to do to learn to cook. You would be surprised at how simple some of your favorite dishes are to make.

Your first assignment is an easy one. Make some Texas Chili this weekend. To help with this, Jacob Cloud has sent in a video. This video has everything: history, training, Texas beer, mild hazing, and skillet corn bread! Yes!

Here is his recipe list:
2 lbs course ground beef
2.5 lbs tri-tip, trimmed and cubed
1 can peeled whole tomatoes
1 can Rotel
1-2 minced jalapenos (more or less depending on how spicy you want it)
4-5 crushed/minced garlic cloves
1/2-1 cup chopped white onion
1/4-1/2 cup chopped cilantro
Lime juice from 1 large lime
Thickener (corn starch, masa, flour, etc)
6 pack of Texan beer

Chili Mix (all measurements heaping!):
2-3 tbsp chili powder
1+ tbsp cumin
1 tsp ancho chili powder
1 tsp chipotle chili powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cayenne
1 tsp Mexican oregano leaves
1-2 tsp black pepper (to taste)
1-2 tsp salt (to taste)

Jacob notes that you can be a real man by adding some habanero peppers to the mix. You can also make JM Blakely happy by using MSG instead of salt (like they do in chili cookoffs).

So go forth and make chili. Then shove a 90’s small guy into a snow drift.

Happy eating.

Note: Andy Gann also provided a recipe that looks outstanding. This will be on the updated FAQ when I get to it this weekend.

Note: Yes, it’s PR Friday. Post weights lifted, gained, or consumed.

Chicken Fried Awesome

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Gant

I hope everyone had a good holiday and is ready to climb back under a bar. As promised, here is some more footage on how to prepare a simple version of an outstanding 70’s Big offering from Texas.

The finished product.

Chicken fried steak is a piece of tenderized steak that is coated in seasoned flour, pan fried, and served with cream gravy (Yankees screw this part up and serve it with brown gravy or, ketchup, which is even worse). It is similar to Wiener Schnitzel (VEE ner!) and was brought to the promised land by German immigrants. Historians guess it originated in Bandera, but I’d like to think that some Texan from New Braunfels sopped his biscuit with gravy outside of the saloon at Gruene and claimed the dish as his own.

CFS has amazing utility. Like pizza or fried chicken, it can be eaten any time of day. It can also be combined with most of the things it is served with. Drag a bit of CFS through your gravy mashed potatoes. Make a breakfast sandwich with fried potatoes and toast. It’s all good.

There are a lot of regional variations and personal touches you can add. What I’m showing you is a very simple recipe that will have your guests licking their fingers and asking for more.

You’ll need:
* tenderized cubed steaks
* flour
* seasoning (S&P are fine)
* eggs
* milk
* cooking oil (vegetable is fine)
* potatoes

The first video talks you through the prep and putting it in the pan. The second is a quick mid-cook check. The third video goes into making gravy and mashed potatoes. Timing is crucial here because you want everything to be served hot. Sorry for the length. I hope they’re helpful.

The plan is to eventually expand the FAQ into more general matters and include a video recipe section in the nutrition part. Submissions are welcome so long as the recipe promotes strength. There will be a link to new videos from the main page article, so don’t worry about your fine work going unnoticed. Happy eating.

Edit: I want your help in closing out the Texas Three Step. I’m talking about BBQ, CFS, and chili. I’ve done two, and I want to get y’all involved. Send me a recipe or a clip [gantgrimes@gmail.com], and we’ll get it on the site. It can be measured to the teaspoon, or you can ballpark it like me (but remember chili’s heritage…). No beans, please.

Edit 2: Casa Manana in Wichita Falls has a dish called chili steak, where two piece of greatness are combined. It features TWO chicken fried steaks (floured but not battered) covered with chili con carne and cheese. It’s served with the mandatory red taco.

Edit 3: This comes from the late great Jerry Flemmons of Fort Worth, “As splendid and noble as barbecue and Tex-Mex are, both pale before the Great God Beef Dish, chicken fried steak. No single food better defines the Texas character; it has, in fact, become a kind of nutritive metaphor for the romanticized, prairie-hardened personality of Texans.”

That brings a tear to my eye.

Steroids: Part I

Posted on December 23, 2009 by Gant

Anabolic steroids.

If you train with and around people that lift heavy weights, you know at least three people that are on steroids. If you don’t, then you are either naïve to that fact or you’re not really training heavy.

This is the first installment in what will be a multi-part discussion on the hows, whys, and what-fors of steroid use. If you’ve been in the iron game for awhile, you’re not going to learn anything new. If you’re reading this stuff for the first time, you’re not going to learn as much as you would from a good site on anabolics. The point of this article is to get the geared up elephant out of the room and clear up one unfortunate misconception.

I’m going to give away the ending so the 70’s Big detractors can quit reading. Yes, Doug Young, Anatoly Pisarenko, and company took steroids. Damn right. Back in the day, they stacked their stacks. Breakfast was meat, eggs, black coffee, and DBol. Lunch was a cigarette and 200mg of Cyp. They had more test than a boy band. But to say that this is the only reason they were champions is short-sighted and ignorant.

Roger Estep could have passed CrossFit's drug test but not WADA's

For the record, 70’s Big advocates hard, clean training. The guys that are shown lifting on this site—Justin, AC, and Chris—are all natural. I know this because I’ve seen them train and I’ve seen their logs, but mostly because I’ve seen them in person. They are strong as hell and densely muscled, but they don’t have the look (we will talk about the look later).

I want to address a Rip quote that has been taken out of context numerous times. A guy asked Rip about taking steroids while doing linear progression and got this response:

“There are no shortcuts. The fact that a shortcut is important to you means that you are a pussy. Let me be clear here: if you”d rather take steroids than do your squats heavy and drink enough milk, then you are a fucking Pussy. I have no time or patience for fucking Pussies. Please tell everyone you know that I said this.”

Most people cite this for the proposition that steroids are a shortcut and bad in all instances. This is wrong, and it is not what Rip meant.

The linear progression program in Starting Strength works. If you work your ass off in the gym and in the kitchen, you will get stronger every week and add muscle. Thousands of people have figured this out. There is no point in short-cutting a process that gets more weight on the bar every time you lift. Rip took issue with the fact that the guy was looking to avoid time in the gym.

Our co-captains were in a different situation. At the elite levels of sport, there are no shortcuts. At that level, progression is limited by the ability to recover. The Piz didn’t juice so he could miss workouts. He used so he could work more, work longer, and work harder. That is a key distinction.

There are no shortcuts to a 733# deadlift at 220 while wearing short shorts.

The bottom line is that you can and should squat, deadlift, and eat your way to male adulthood (over 200 pounds) and beyond. No alternatives should be considered until you are well into intermediate programming (if ever). We’ll talk about what some people do next in a future issue.

Next: Chemistry, Benefits, Side Effects, and Misconceptions

Letter of Intent Day

Posted on December 22, 2009 by Gant

Justin and AC are traveling to Georgia today. I don”t know if he”ll get to comments and emails or not.

What are you going to do in 2010?

Today is 70s Big Letter of Intent Day where we commit to competition in 2010. It’s where we state our competitive goals for the coming year. If you’re already competing in something, stay the course. If not, browse the web, find a local comp, and circle the date.

I don’t want to hear any crap about how you can’t win. Competition isn’t all about winning at the amateur level as much as it is learning about yourself. Hell, I don’t win most of the stuff I compete it (in fighting, you have the added benefit of possibly breaking something or being choked unconscious), but I keep going back, and I get better every time.

Guess who did linear progression.

Competition puts your training into focus. A date on the calendar forces you to taper your program (hell, HAVE a program), tweak your nutrition (especially if you’re in a weight class), and arrange your schedule (sleep comes to mind).

You also get instant feedback on your training program. You will quickly find out if you did too much or too little conditioning, spent too much benching and not enough squatting, or didn’t work your technique enough.

You also learn game day management. I’m talking about how to pick lifts, when to warm up, what and how much to drink before your event, and the myriad other things that don’t come up during training. This can ONLY be learned by competing. Most of it is learned by watching and asking other competitors, many of whom will become your friends.

Everybody reading this could at least do a PL or OLY meet. If you’re a CrossFitter, find (or host) a CrossFit Total competition (and make sure the damn thing is run correctly). If you’re not close to one of those places, find a training group, and enter a Tactical Strength Challenge. Find SOMETHING.

Finally, manage your expectations. If you’re squatting 400 in training, don’t open with 500. You probably won’t win your first time out, either. And that’s ok. But you’ll learn a lot that you can take back to the gym with you.

Consider Jared Allen your inspiration for the day.

I’ll go first:
• Win gold at the Texas Brown Belt Championships. I took silver last year, but I want the big prize.
• Get three scoring throws in the caber at a Highland Games. I won the novice division at a Games next year and threw the B caber for one score. I don’t expect to make any noise in the B’s, but I’d like to throw that damn pole.
• Go 100/130 at an OLY meet. This would force me to actually practice the lifts. Since I only do power versions of the lifts, this sounds pretty reasonable.
• Enter and finish a mountain bike race. It’s been four years since the last one.
• Schedule permitting, do either a Strongman competition or a Masters Track Meet.

Alexander Karelin

Posted on November 23, 2009 by Gant

“I train every day of my life as they have never trained a day in theirs.”

Justin is still out at the barbell cert, and we don’t have AC’s video yet. So we’re going to take a little time to consider the merits of weight class athletes in the world of 70’s Big.

Moving the iron is all well and good, but I personally cannot think of a more useful application of strength and power than tossing another human around. And nobody tossed humans around better than today’s subject.

Alexander Karelin is one of the greatest ~~wrestlers of his generation~~ athletes of all time. Karelin was a superheavyweight Greco-Roman wrestler that represented the old Soviet Union and, later, Russia. The Russian Bear went undefeated for 13 years in international competition, including a six-year stint where he didn’t give up a single point. Over this period he won 12 European Championships, nine world championships, three Olympic golds, and one Olympic silver (his last match was a loss in the finals). And lest we forget, at 6’3 290, he was definitely 70’s Big.

Greco-Roman differs from other forms of wrestling because all the action happens above the waist. Grabbing, hooking, or tripping the legs is forbidden. As a result, the throws are often quite dramatic. Body slams and suplexes are commonplace in Greco-Roman.

You can get a feel for the setups by watching Karelin in this video:

Karelin wrestled at 130 kg, but he was impossibly fast and athletic. The big guys couldn”t keep up with him. No other wrestler matched his strength, either. Opponents were so scared of being slammed that many sprawled onto the mat (giving up dominant position and possibly points!) hoping to avoid being thrown for big points. Karelin countered this by applying his signature reverse body lift, which was a gutwrench suplex off the mat! This move affectionately became known as the Karelin Lift.

To put this into perspective, try to clean a 300 pound resisting object from the floor. Do this multiple times over three two-minute periods, and you get the idea. Still not clear? Here you go:

As is customary with dominant athletes, Karelin was accused of using performance enhancing drugs like HGH and steroids. Many referred to him as “The Experiment, “a not so-subtle dig at the U.S.S.R.’s tendency to dispense testosterone like it was candy. However, Karelin never failed a drug test his entire career (and Olympic drug tests actually have some teeth). When asked about these rumors, Karelin shrugged and said, “People cannot believe I am natural because I train every day of my life as they have never trained a day in theirs.”

Read more about Karelin here.

Edit: If anybody has any factual training info on Karelin, please send it in. Most of the information on him is in Russian, and my Russian is quite poor. I have read claims of him doing a 420 pound clean and press. Supposedly Pavel remarked that Karelin did 440 pound Zercher deadlifts for a set of 10. That would be applicable to the Karelin lift, as you need your arms underneath your opponent (Karelin was blessed with very long arms). I have also seen a training clip of him running through waist-deep snow with a log on his back and rowing for hours. You know, stuff from Rocky IV.