Maybe you’vee heard of this website, maybe you haven’t. It’s been around for about six years and you may have seen various shenanigans or articles. I find it difficult to articulate what 70’s Big to a new person. It turns into, “Big like guys were in the ’70s, except they were on a lot of D-bol…”
It sounds pretty silly, after all. If it’s not pornographic then what is it? The About section details the long standing mission statement: strength training as a means of performance development resulting in a robustly muscular physique. There’s a key secondary objective: to lift intensely and have a good fucking time doing it.
70’s Big is more about attitude than anything else. Goals will change. If you’re in that “consume and destroy” lifting stage, then you should eat the world. Maintain that for a few years and you’ll turn into a sloppy mess, and that’s just irresponsible. 70’s Big becomes an attitude and mantra for men and women who like to jack steel, get stronger, and overcome adversity. It’s about punching through fear and doing something different. It’s about setting the bar high, taking chances, and persevering through the shitty days, training sessions, or lifts to overcome it all and stand on top, victorious. Sure, it’s about the 405 squat, the 225 press, or the boulder shoulders, but it’s more so about the journey. Those defining moments of turmoil — and how we respond to them — make us who we are. And if you keep pushing with the undying intensity, that, my friends, is 70’s Big.
There was a guy on the Facebook Fan Page who asked, “Why don’t any of the people that run 70’s Big look “70’s Big”?” The answer is obvious: we’re all pussies! I only snatch 125k right now, and there are dudes at my body weight in this country snatching 160k and more. We’re not on steroids and we don’t lift as a profession. I put a premium on athleticism both out of necessity and because I prefer it. AC tries out new lifting sports, Mike works his ass off to become a pro strongman, Chris finds time to train while owning a gym and raising a kid, and Brent coaches, works, and eats a lot of Korean food. But we train hard, are stronger than an average lifter, and — most importantly — push hard and have a god damn good time.
There are a lot of things I aim to teach, but I hope everyone can walk away with the idea that attacking each day with the intensity of a max squat is the only way to live.
Here’s a really old video of all of us pussies living the 70’s Big life — the life worth living (various WFAC folk make an appearance):
A friend asked me what my thoughts are on “Reverse Dieting”, a method of manipulating metabolism to decrease body fat or weight. Is it something lifters should use? Is it healthy? What is the effect on performance?
Reverse Dieting Review
There’s a concept in “dieting” where knowing the total calories consumed and burned in a day will have a net loss or gain in weight. The standard recommendation is to drop 500 calories off of the daily intake, and since 3500 calories equals one pound, you’ll have a net decrease of one pound per week.
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Reverse Dieting adds a low percentage — around 5% per week — of calories back into the daily diet in order to raise the metabolism. A bunch of good things happen, and the person generally feels better, yet they still have a decrease in weight or fat because they’re overall caloric intake is still below their “pre-dieting level”.
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My Response
Of course they are going to feel better when they add some calories; they were fucking starving! Look, I’m probably the wrong guy to ask about this. For one or two years my recommendation was pounding as much food as possible and drinking a gallon of milk a day. Kidding aside, here’s a full disclaimer, I wrote and sell a nutrition book — Paleo for Lifters — and don’t really like conventional nutrition wisdom, even the natural bodybuilding kind that is successful. And here’s why.
First, the concept of “dieting” bothers me. The word “diet” is a derivative of a Greek word that means “way of life”, implying that a “diet” is what you do all of the time, not just when you’re trying to lose weight or fat. My nutrition philosophy revolves around a base structure that can be tweaked towards a goal. We can call this base “the Paleo diet”, or we can say “not eating processed and inflammatory foods”…whatever. If food quality is consistently sound, then it solves a lot of weight and body fat issues without even getting specific. I’m not a weirdo who thinks the entire lifestyle needs to be predicated on Paleolithic populations, but remember what century you’re in; there’s a lot of horrible, shitty food out there, and the more you cut out all the chemical bullshit, the better.
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Second, Reverse Dieting is based on a conventional idea that cutting calories solves the problem. Sure, diet is an important part of health and fat/weight loss, but it’s exponentially more effective with purposeful training. Another tenet of my nutrition philosophy is the training associated with it, and that’s strength training with barbells and high intensity conditioning. The hormonal effect from training, not “working out”, is so important, it can even overrule a shitty diet (yeah, I’m talking to you Dr. Kilgore!). Let’s assume someone is doing a decent job of exercising while Reverse Dieting, which leads me to the next point…
Third, there’s a hormonal effect from food. Dr. Barry Sears said it best with, “Food is a drug.” I understand the concept of not “violating the rules of thermodynamics” blah-fuckity-blah (such a pretentious thing to say about nutrition), but there are direct, secondary, and tertiary effects from the things you put in your mouth (more on that in “On Drugs and Supplements“). Calories obviously matter, but to ignore the fact that sugary corn syrup and a sweet potato have a very different effect means you a) don’t know how it’s different or b) don’t really give a shit. This isn’t the place to get into it, but food is a drug and will have an effect on hormone function, and not just insulin and its sensitivity. Merely cutting calories is a temporary solution, because if someone is fat, they need an entire paradigm shift of how to consume food, not merely having less of it.
Third, Reverse Dieting is one of those “counting calories” things. And aside from it being a giant pain in the ass, it makes people weird. More often than people want to admit, it makes them have a complex about their food, bodies, and self-esteem. Any coach or trainer who thinks they haven’t had a client with one of these issues must have got their certification for a few hundred bucks this past weekend. Even in my world — the one where people want to kick doors down, run fast, and throw some god damn iron around — there are people who get lost worrying about this stuff. I think everyone should be able to look at a few ounces of meat and know how much protein is in there and look at some fruit and know how many carbs they are about to eat, but counting calories and macros should be reserved for those really hard pushes for competition or losing body fat…after learning and implementing food quality.
Fourth, calorie cutting and Reverse Dieting isn’t good for performance. Again, I prefer to work with guys who want hairy chests and jacked backs, and women who want to squat more than most “men”, so “cutting calories” is the equivalent of a POW scenario. Most of these gimmicky diets are used by folks who only, or primarily, care about aesthetics. We train to get better at something, and the aesthetics are a byproduct of training. Instead, restructure how you eat, train intelligently, and then — and only then — jump into the weeds looking for tiny-ass insects like “macros” and “total calories”.
No, I don’t think Reverse Dieting is a good idea. I may not have explained it accurately, but I don’t think I care. I’m all about cleaning up food quality, eating protein to maintain or build lean body mass, eating carbs to match activity level, and eating fat to recover from elbow dropping training sessions. When people complain about Paleo being low-carb, they’re just stupid…just eat more carbs! This shit isn’t hard to explain, it’s just hard to do because it has to be done consistently.
I’m not into gimmick diets like Reverse Dieting, I’m into the “way of life” thing. Base your nutrition on real food — it was slaughtered or gardened within a couple days — without inflammatory effects, train smart, sleep more, and reap the reward. It’s easy to adjust, and there aren’t too many fat people who do it this way.
I know, I know. Some of you CrossFit or lifting veterans are tired of hearing about this. But I’m having an xkcd moment (pictured below) where I need to explain something. It’s important to me. And I haven’t been able to write anything in a while anyway.
What are you crying about?
If you follow the 70’s Big Twitter you may have seen an exchange talking about a traumatic condition called Rhabdomyolysis, or “rhabdo”. I asked the lovely Shana Alverson (@ShanaAlverson) how she was feeling for CrossFit regionals, and she mentioned she had a mild case of rhabdo (seen below). I then asked a weird, inaccurate question of whether it was systemic or local. Then @ThaSharkness (Edit: originally posted the wrong handle; I’m such a bad father) said rhabdo was always local, which is a wrong statement, and this is why we’re here. Let’s get down to it.
What is rhabdomyolysis?
According to the A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia:
Rhabdomyolysis is the breakdown of muscle tissue that leads to the release of muscle fiber contents into the blood. These substances are harmful to the kidney and often cause kidney damage.
It’s a simple definition that is quantified by the disruption of the skeletal muscle membrane — remember this sentence because it’ll be important later. CrossFit et al. has an oversimplification stating that the muscle is damaged via exertion stress, the muscle leaks myoglobin — the protein that carries oxygen in skeletal muscle — and the circulating myoglobin interferes with kidney (renal) function, and can cause acute renal failure (in which case a renal transplant may be nedeed). This can occur, yes, but there’s more to it.
The disruption of the membrane of the skeletal muscle means that things that are supposed to stay in the muscle cells get out, and things that are supposed to stay out get in. It’s like leaving your door open and your dogs get out while the neighborhood cats come into your house and creepily spy on you. The point is that rhabdo is defined by this breach in the membrane, and even minor cases still have this shift in contents in and out.
Why is this a systemic reaction instead of solely a local one?
I’ll try to be as simple and concise as possible for the following. The pumps on the cell membrane get damaged and they can’t function properly. Potassium leaks out of the cell into the blood stream causing a high blood serum level of potassium (hyperkalemia). Calcium increases inside the cell, which destroys the muscle fibers (necrosis). Some other stuff leaks out of the cell like phosphate, myoglobin, creatine kinase (CK) and urate, which all have an effect on their respective serum levels in the blood. My point, the catalyst argument for writing this, is that these events are systemic as opposed to local.
For example, let’s say you eat 200g of sugar. Is there a systemic response to this? Regardless of the current adaptation of the person, the answer would be yes. Serum levels of sugar increase, therefore insulin levels increase to bring the blood sugar down. Insulin, along with all hormones, has a dynamic relationship with other hormones to regulate the amount of sugar in the blood and therefore we would see arbitrary repercussions from other hormones as a result. The same goes for blood levels of anything, particularly potassium and calcium. If these levels change from homeostasis, then there is a systemic response to return to homeostasis. This is systemic, hence validating my point that rhabdomyolysis is a systemic condition, even if it’s minor.
If you’re wondering what the hell is going on, it goes like this. Muscle is damaged and stuff goes into the blood that is not supposed to. Each part of that “stuff” can do bad things if it stays there. If the total effect of all of that stuff is not enough to kill the body, then the body, AKA the system, will have a response to regulate and control it. The end.
It’s not a semantics conversation because the exact definition of rhabdomyolysis states that not only does muscle break down occur, the contents of the cell will be leaked. Simply being really sore and having damaged muscles isn’t rhabdo. It’s defined by the stuff being leaked, and it’s more than just the myoglobin. For example, the potassium and calcium being in the wrong places can cause heart arrhythmias, which can throw someone into a cardiac code and potentially kill them if treatment is not available. And, if you’re still interested, the serious cases can cause other issues like compartment syndrome, sepsis, seizures, and DIC — which are just more easy ways to die.
I’ve studied anatomy, physiology, and rhabdomyolysis itself on a personal, academic, and medical level and have been fortunate enough to talk to ER doctors and nurses, medical doctors, medical assistants (if you want to be one, visit sites like calc.edu/programs/medical-assistant/ for additional guidance.), and more about it over the years. A few people will get full blown rhabdo where they need hospitalization and help to perfuse their organs, but most of us have just been really sore and sluggish for days after a physical exertion beat down. That is the systemic response of the body trying to deal with the skeletal muscle membrane disruption.
As an aside, we treat regular non-traumatic muscle damage from things like squatting, pressing, and pulling as systemic stress anyway, so I could have just ended the discussion there.
If you want to learn more about rhabdo, I’ve written an article on how to avoid giving clients, trainees, or athletes rhabdo. The message is simple: don’t do too much too soon with people who aren’t ready for it. Also, be aware of the continuum of symptoms since rhabdo is a systemic condition that will be debilitating to training.
Adam Schefter works for ESPN and is an NFL reporter who gets all the “insider” information. The above tweet is talking about the top three quarterbacks that will be going into the NFL draft this year. These stats are gleaned from the NFL Combine, which allows the NFL personnel to evaluate the talent coming from collegiate sports to the NFL. It’s a lot of mental and physical testing to try and project how well these athletes will do in professional football, yet it is often incomplete because physical stature and prowess do not always make the best football player, though it helps.
I was listening to Mike and Mike on ESPN radio this morning, and they were talking with various experts on the size of these quarterbacks, particularly Manziel and Bridgewater. The important stats for quarterbacks, from an anthropometry perspective, are height, weight, and hand size. The hand thing is apparently a good projector of success (i.e. it’s easier to hold onto a football in adverse weather), but let’s ignore that. Height is also very important — seeing over the large lineman to throw a pass is important — but we’ll ignore that too. How much a guy weighs and fills out his frame is important because football is a rough, collision-based sport, and frail guys will not have durability. Especially when there are mastodons who weigh anywhere from 250 to 350 pounds wanting to crush your soul.
The experts point out that two of the above quarterbacks weigh 207 and 214. As a “lifting and athletic population”, we know that these guys aren’t heavy. Yet we also know that it’s actually kind of simple to add mass on to a guy, especially when their frame has room to fill out (as both of those quarterbacks do).
What I find baffling is how difficult the experts think gaining weight is. And I’m not even just talking about gaining weight for the sake of gaining it, like in Starting Strength-style linear progression. I’m talking about putting a focus on retaining athleticism, agility, and speed yet increasing lean body mass. Most rookie mini-camps don’t start until the end of May. Training camp starts in July. The season actually starts in September. How long was your linear progression? I got some pretty solid fucking progress in 8 weeks by moving my three-sets-of-five from 325 to 445 while increasing my body weight from 195 to 215 (in 2009).
If the experts think it’s difficult to put five, ten, or even fifteen pounds on a guy in three to six months, then either the strength and conditioning is really shitty, there’s no athlete compliance, or they don’t even try. I’m no expert in the realm of NFL strength and conditioning, and maybe we should get John Welbourn’s thoughts, but it sounds pretty stupid to see a 21 year old’s body and think that it can’t be improved. I’ve done it over and over with athletes, so why can’t they?
Shameless plug, but this diet style would help an athlete build quality mass and aid recovery.
Edit: I forgot to mention what I would do for a guy that needed to retain athleticism but increase size. I’d have him lift three days a week in conjunction with his agility, speed, and/or skill sessions. He’d squat, press, row, and do pulling movements that wouldn’t interfere much with his other training (i.e. stuff like power cleans, RDL’s, and lighter deadlifts instead of trying to push his deadlift up). A quarterback would be doing weighted pull-ups and chin-ups, possibly some barbell pullovers. I’d throw a Paleo for Lifters diet at him, which would be a quality, clean diet of meat, potatoes, fruits, veggies, and good fats with a little bit of protein powder in quantities that would help him grow. It wouldn’t be all that hard for kids that are described as “not very thick” or having a “slight build”.
I’ve noticed some guys complaining about how bland their eggs are. Our own Arin Canecchio and Chris Riley go through spurts when they find it difficult to wolf down six eggs in the morning. I’ve eaten at least three or four eggs every day for almost ten years. Since 2009 I’ve eaten at least five, and usually more than six with peaks of eight or nine. To the complaining gentlemen, I say, “You are a fool.” Dress your eggs up and they won’t let you down. Here’s how.
USE BACON
How could you forget? Nowadays I hate to talk about how great bacon is because all of the hipster pieces of shit tasted it after several months of anorexia nervosa and realized they were fucking missing something. Naturally they rallied together — the most ironic hipster-piece-of-shit thing to do since they allegedly want to lead an independent lifestyle — to make a bunch of shitty t-shirts and memes and never shut the fuck up about it. Yeah, we get it, bacon is fucking awesome; WELCOME TO 1776 AND 1861 WHERE BEARDED AMERICANS ATE BACON WAY BEFORE YOU FORGOT HOW MUCH YOU HATED YOUR PARENTS WHEN YOU TASTED IT ON YOUR FIRST DAY OF LIBERAL ARTS SCHOOL.
Let’s move on. If you clicked the Civil War link above, you would have seen that bacon grease was used to fry beef and corn meal. Confederate and Union soldiers didn’t carry around chickens or delicate eggs, but we’re going to use the same principle.
Hipsters weren’t the first to eat bacon.
SELECTING YOUR BACON
Do you like skinny hipsters? Ptsh, then why would you want skinny bacon? I know of over 900 studies about why thick bacon is better, and they are all single day case studies where I cooked it, ate it, and pat myself on the back for such a solid decision. Thick bacon will cook better, have a better consistency, and yield an appropriate amount of grease (discussed later). I shouldn’t have to say this, but the bacon I’m referring to is the United States variety; Canadian and Australian styles are good, but standard Second Amendment loving Americans will call that “ham”.
BACON TO EGG RATIO
You read that title and thought, “Holy SHIT, I’ve never even thought about this,” didn’t you? I’m here to show you the way. After over 900 studies, I’ve found that two pieces of thick bacon for every two or three eggs is optimal. If you’re bitching about how it’s not enough, then you don’t understand scrambled egg cuisine and can kindly leave. If you’re bitching about how it’s “too much”, then you’re probably a) a terrorist or b) one of the aforementioned hipsters who googled “bacon” looking for a sweet meme to send to your hipster friends so you can ironically fit in with a social crowd instead of doing some squats and curls before bed.
CUT DEM BACONS
No, don’t cut your bacon like a young Ray Lewis; take your pieces of stacked thick bacon and cut it in two to three centimeter segments (for you neanderthals, that’s about an inch). The layers of the bacon pieces will separate when you cook it in the pan.
Bacon thickness as well as cut segment length.
FRY THE BACON
Not too hot, mind you. If the temperature is too high, then you’ll just sear the outside too quickly and potentially ruin the consistency. On a stove where “10” is “High”, I’ll go to 7.5 at the highest. If you want the satisfying sizzle when you put the bacon in the pan, then warm the pan, but it’s not organic to this operation.
WHIP YOUR EGGS
While your bacon is frying, you can prepare your coffee (I prefer a press pot) and eggs. Crack your eggs into a bowl, and whip that shit with a fork. If you use a whisk, then you’re like my 5’3″ mom. If you have a pair of testicles, use a nice, heavy fork. I take a lot of pride in my egg whipping ability; I’m the best on both sides of the Mississippi. On New Year’s Day, I whipped two dozen eggs. Proof below, fuckers.
The technique is a circular wrist motion. You want to think about pulling the eggs off of the surface, break that surface tension, and then push them towards the bottom of the bowl without hitting your fork on the bottom. The business end of the fork has an elliptical motion and the key is pulling the egg off the surface. If you do this quick enough, it looks like you’re separating the layers of the egg and results in much fluffier scrambled eggs without using any cream or milk (which are traditionally used to fluff them up).
ASSESS BACON GREASE SITUATION
Notice what’s happening here; you’re frying the cut bacon in a pan prior to cooking eggs. That’s because you’re going to put your scrambled eggs into the pan with your bacon. This how you’ll change your retardedly bland breakfast into a heavenly romp through taste and time.
You want your bacon to be cooked, but you don’t want it to be charred or overly crispy. Ideally, if you’re a sensible human, you’d want your bacon to have a slight chewy texture instead of crunchy. You wouldn’t cook a steak like a giant buffalo chip (i.e. piece of cow shit), would you? That’s almost as bad as not eating steak.
This bacon is almost ready.
Aside from the bacon “doneness” is the grease situation. Too much grease will result in sweaty eggs; their texture will be oily and you’ll feel like you’re eating the stool of someone with cholecystitis. As crazy as this sounds, too little bacon grease is better than too much. Get a jar and pour your excess bacon grease into it (you can use that grease on your baked vegetables later that evening). Knowing how much grease you need for a given amount of eggs is a learned skill, but if you tip your pan at a 45 degree angle (as if you were going to pour grease into the jar), you wouldn’t want your pieces of bacon submerged. The grease does serve a purpose, so don’t pour it all out; it coats your pan to prevent the eggs from sticking, which is a huge pet peeve of mine. The picture below shows the grease pouring technique and the amount of grease before and after pouring.
POUR IN AND COOK THE EGGS
I’m quite surprised at how some people manage to fuck this part of the process up because it’s very easy. Your pan will be hot enough to make any amount of eggs within a couple of minutes. Pour the eggs over the bacon, make sure your bacon pieces are evenly distributed throughout, and continue to use your spatula to move the eggs off the bottom and sides of the pan.
Letting the eggs sit in the pan, as if you were making an omelette, results in an overcooked eggsterior (I couldn’t resist). If your eggs have a slight browning, that means you’re doing it wrong. If you like that, refer to the charred steak comment above. There’s probably some validity to an argument that would claim you’re denaturing some of the protein by overcooking it, but we’ll save that for another day. Just remember: move the eggs around and off of the pan by flipping the eggs constantly until they are light and fluffy. The fluffiness will be highly dependent on your whipping ability. I also like to use the edge of the spatula to break up the eggs so they aren’t in big clumps. This will improve the texture.
CONSUME AND ENJOY
This next part can make or break your egg eating experience. Some of you will be amazed at how much the bacon will improve your eggs, but if you’ve eaten them like this before you may need something more. I prefer condiments on my eggs, namely ketchup (without high fructose corn syrup in compliance with Paleo for Lifters). Ketchup works really well with white potato hash browns, which you can buy pre-cut up or make from scratch in grass-fed butter or coconut oil. I also like Chipotle Tabasco sauce, but that’s more so for fried eggs or scrambled eggs eaten with my Sweet Potato Hash recipe.
A dozen eggs yields enough for two.
And there you have it. If you’re hating your egg eating experience, you need to cook them with your bacon. Food doesn’t have to be bland, so stop doing all this hipster-like complaining and dress your eggs up.
