Yes it’s true, I wear short shorts un-apologetically. And you should too.
Exhibit A
What I’m talking about is drawing a line in the sand. Unchecked aggression. We have a dedicated enemy, a worthy fucking adversary. Men. Women. This is what we’re up against (Exhibit A).
The metrosexual. The skinny guy. The college kid. The hipster. The hippy. They come in many forms, yet they are all the same. And they’re trying to steal America away from us! It’s time to make a stand, and we do that by proudly revealing two meaty, bouldering thighs that emit a testosterone-filled musk that inspire women to savagely claw at your hairy chest, urging you to take them to the promised land.
This is your density.
If we are to make a stand, to show this country that masculinity is not only en vogue, but necessary to teach young children that waify, frail, useless humans are not the future, that children can work hard and have something to show for it, then we must — repeat MUST — reduce the length of our shorts. It is the only way; it is known. (By the way, I don’t know what “en vogue” means, but I think you can take penicillin for it.)
I will teach you the way of the short shorts. I will begin as a leader, but evolve into a member of the resistance, the last chance we have at rescuing the children — THE CHILDREN! Let me show you the way.
What Short Shorts Are Not
As indicated above, evoking masculinity through your short choice does not start with khaki. Sure, khaki must inevitably be worn if you are dragged to a quasi-nice house party in the middle of the summer, but my friend Jeremy and his wife can attest to the fact that I showed up to a quiet house party and not only was I the only one not in a collared shirt, I was the only one wearing short shorts and a tank-top. At first I thought, “This is mildly inappropriate, especially since I don’t know these people.” Then I embraced it, because this is our last hurrah in the “I’m A Little Pansy-Man Frontier”.
Exhibit B
And in case you were curious, masculinity is not emitted in the form of rolled up jean shorts, capris, or shorts that have fake paint splattered on them (Exhibit B). GOD DAMN IT, A REAL MAN SPLATTERS HIS OWN PAINT ON A CUTOFF PAIR OF LEVIS THAT HE HAD TO CUT BECAUSE HIS THIGHS GREW TOO FUCKING BIG FROM SQUATTING HIS DICK OFF EVERY WEEK. This, by the way, is the only acceptable reason to own or wear jean shorts. And if you do wear them, for fuck’s sake…put on some underwear.
Make no mistake, short shorts are not a show of style; they are a show of attitude. Keep this in mind when selecting your shorts. I don’t even understand “style” anyway.
The only exception to wearing capri pants is if your name is Arnold Shwarzenegger in the ’70s and you cut the bottoms of your pants off to remind yourself how skinny your calves are. The only other acceptable reason is if you are a prisoner of war and the enemy is making you wear them to psychologically weaken you. But then you could just rip the bottoms off to make short shorts, and then use the torn pieces to wear a sweet headband.
What Short Shorts Are
Short shorts are a necessary social statement that say, “I’m a man, damn it.” Either that or “Eat shit, skinny guy.” There are several requirements to pulling off the short shorts.
1. Be muscular.
This should be a no-brainer, but once we start this bandwagon, everyone is gonna want to join. You can’t make a statement about masculinity when you don’t embody the evolutionary male archetype. That’d be like Martin Luther King, Jr. staging a civil rights sit-in protest as a nerdy white guy. If the line of your thigh from your knees to your hips is straight, then you do not qualify.
Additionally, “muscular” means there is shape to your quads instead of just a fatty log. Clean up your diet and clap dem cheeks let your quads boulder out over each other. The more those striations pop, the more effective your message, especially when you just got done squatting over 4 or 500 pounds.
2. Don’t be creepy.
The last thing we want when trying to induce a lustful rage in women and inspire children is to give them the “I’m a creepy uncle” or “no-no” feeling. If you’re pretty fat and hairy, you’re gonna creep them out. Sorry dude, that’s just how it is. Get less fat by cleaning up your diet, and reduce the scare of your hairy-ass thighs by getting them in the sun. A tan/hairy specimen is much better than a pale/hairy one.
This last part is the most important part: trim your pubes. I don’t know where it became cool to not trim certain body hair, but if you don’t trim your groin area, and you inevitably put your foot up on the couch when talking to your nieces, you don’t want your ball hair to protrude out and tickle their noses. Please, think of the children. If you aren’t willing to trim, well, maybe short shorts are not for you.
3. Don’t wear a t-shirt.
Unless you’re doing squad PT, take that ridiculous shirt off. The sun is out, it’s over 70 degrrees (F), and you should enjoy some quality Vitamin D. Go shirtless or bump a sweet tank top. The best tank top I’ve ever seen is this “bear wearing sunglasses” one that my friend Norman has. Note that rocking a tank-top or going shirtless requires the machoism to shine from your upper body too, so hurry up and press over 200, bench over 300, and then do at least 1,000 barbell rows every week.
4. Don’t neglect the hams
One of the worst things you can do for our cause — other than make a child sneeze with your pube hair — is to not develop your hamstrings. We aren’t mirror lifters. So RDL your fucking face off. With, like, a bajillion reps a week.
5. Have the right shorts.
Exhibit C
And finally to the equipment section. Some of you may remember the sweet shorts that Arnold Schwarzenegger wore in Pumping Iron (Exhibit C). These were undoubtedly my inspiration.
I don’t know how Arnold came across some used high school football shorts, but he inadvertently set the tone for our social movement. Though I will point out that wearing Keds with long socks is a bit out of style. That’ll put you in the “creepy” category, especially if you’re hairy and fat.
When shopping for a pair of shorts, ensure that a) there is a liner inside of them and b) the tip of your dugan is not easily visible when viewing the front of your shorts. The liner will help hold your junk in place, and the “not showing your mushroom tip” will prevent us from being banned from cable television. Oh, and Marine Corps “silkies” made by Soffee will inevitably outline your wang, so steer away from those. And if your dong isn’t outlined, you probably should stop wearing them now that everyone knows it’s supposed to be outlined and they’ll just think you have a wee little pee-pee.
Exhibit D
People usually ask where I get my shorts (Exhibit D), and I usually get them on military bases/posts for about $10 a pair. Soffees are pretty cheap on their website, but then you run into that “everyone is drinking in the view of my bone” thing. Feel free to post other brands to the comments, but I highly recommend having a liner in your shorts. The last thing anyone needs is an “accidental ballsack discharge” or “peek-a-boo-wiener”.
Fight the Good Fight
Remember, every time you clothe yourself in the morning you make a statement. Do you want that statement to say, “I will conform to how skinny, no-lifting puke-faces are shaping modern society”? Or will you say, “God damn it, I’m a man”? I know some of you have real jobs and can’t show up to work wearing short shorts, but the aforementioned Jeremy routinely shows up to the office wearing multi-colored cowboy boots and a beard. He paves his own way.
On Friday, 24 August 2012, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency erased Lance Armstrong’s 14 year career — including his 7 Tour de France titles — and banned him for life from the sport of cycling. They did this without a shred of physical evidence because Lance allegedly did something that every Tour de France cyclist — every elite athlete — does. That something is use performance enhancement drugs (PEDs).
Lance Armstrong is an American hero. In his early career he was an up-and-coming cyclist who showed flashes by winning the UCI Road World Championship in the pouring rain in Norway in 1993. He also had won the first stage of the Tour de France but had not yet won “The Tour”, the pinnacle of cycling racing.
Then he was diagnosed with testicular cancer at the age of 25 (October 1996). The cancer had metastasized into his lungs, abdomen, and brain. After emergency surgery to remove his tumor-ridden testicle, he was told he had less than a 40% likelihood of surviving. His final chemotherapy treatment was in December of 1996.
Did Armstrong feel sorry for himself, only to wallow in self-pity? No, he made a decision to get back on the bike and train. He would later win his first Tour de France in 1999, less than three years since he went to the doctor coughing up blood with a swollen testicle. He would go on to miraculously win the next six Tour de France races (for a total of seven), beating every top rival in the world.
And then there were the PEDs allegations. For an exhaustive list and timeline of the allegations, you can read the Wikipedia article. What it amounts to is Armstrong vehemently opposing the idea of using PEDs, various sources claiming he used, and him passing over 20 drug tests in his return to cycling from 2008 to 2009. Yet the frozen urine samples from 1999 allegedly contain erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells.
Meanwhile Armstrong started The Lance Armstrong Foundation that has sold the Livestrong bracelet since 2004. This non-profit has raised over 325 million dollars and is one of the top ten groups funding cancer research along with supporting people afflicted with cancer.
Lance Armstrong is a respectable, successful, amazing man. And he used performance enhancement drugs.
There is no hard physical evidence saying that Armstrong has used PEDs and he has never tested positive for them. USADA is a pain-in-the-ass organization that is crucifying him for something that is not only not proven, but something that everybody does. Wake up boys and girls, elite athletes are all “dopers”. That’s the way it has been, that’s the way it is, and that’s the way the future will always be. This doesn’t take anything away from Armstrong’s success because all of his opponents were doing the same thing. However it does take away from his “American Hero” persona because the world is full of naive people who want to believe that everyone is clean and the rules make sense.
Just because something is a rule or a law doesn’t mean it’s right.
Let’s prevent this from turning into a philosophical discussion on how we should derive our rules, laws, and regulations, and focus on this single fact: everyone dopes.
Angel Heredia provided PEDs to elite and Olympic athletes. He supplied them to our friend Maurice Greene, Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin, and Tim Montgomery. He admits to it because the FBI caught him and now he has to tell the truth or he goes to jail for a very long time. He did this interview with a German magazine in 2008 that was quite revealing. For example:
SPIEGEL: Mr. Heredia, will you watch the 100 meter final in Beijing?
Heredia: Of course. But the winner will not be clean. Not even any of the contestants will be clean.
SPIEGEL: Of eight runners …
Heredia: … eight will be doped.
SPIEGEL: There is no way to prove that.
Heredia: There is no doubt about it. The difference between 10.0 and 9.7 seconds is the drugs.
The best athletes in the world use drugs. They do it for several reasons, and I bet it’s up to the individual as to which is most important. The first is that it improves their performance, helps them recovery (including from injury), or subsequently helps prevent injury. PEDs do not make a person elite; an elite person becomes cream of the crop by using drugs.
SPIEGEL: Can drugs make anyone into a world record holder?
Heredia: No, that is a misapprehension: “You take a couple of tablets today and tomorrow you can really fly.” In reality you have to train inconceivably hard, be very talented and have a perfect team of trainers and support staff. And then it is the best drugs that make the difference. It is all a great composition, a symphony. Everything is linked together, do you understand? And drugs have a long-term effect: they ensure that you can recover, that you avoid the catabolic phases. Volleyball on the beach might be healthy, but peak athletics is not healthy. You destroy your body. Marion Jones, for example …
SPIEGEL: … five-time Olympic medallist at Sydney 2000 …
Heredia: … trained with an unparalleled intensity. Drugs protect you from injury. And she triumphed and picked up all the medals.
Another reason that PEDs are used is money. Elite athletes have sponsorships. Their success is directly correlated with the flow of money and therefore dictates whether or not they get paid to train. In order to keep their dream alive — the dream of competing and winning at the world level — they will do whatever they can to retain that money. Sometimes their family depends on it. They are full of incentive to train, recover, and perform to the best of their ability. Put yourself in their position: if your wife, kids, and grandparents relied on your money to live comfortably, or you could make enough money to support them for the rest of their lives, would you use PEDs for several years?
The last reason that PEDs are taken is because everyone is using them. Why would you subject yourself to a performance deficit when everyone around you is using PEDs? Glenn Pendlay has been told by junior international weightlifters that they cannot make it to the next level because they aren’t able to take enough “medicine”. Professional baseball and football players are routinely caught and disciplined for using banned substances. And you bet your ass that Olympic athletes are using whatever edge they can get.
And here’s the thing — most of it is untraceable!
SPIEGEL: Do you have any other secrets?
Heredia: Oh yes, of course. There are tablets for the kidneys that block the metabolites of steroids, so when athletes give a urine sample, they don’t excrete the metabolites and thus test negative. Or there is an enzyme that slowly consumes proteins – epo has protein structures, and the enzyme thus ensures that the B sample of the doping test has a completely different value than the A sample. Then there are chemicals that you take a couple of hours before the race that prevent acidification in the muscles. Together with epo they are an absolute miracle. I’ve created 20 different drugs that are still undetectable for the doping testers.
Angel Heredia doesn’t have a chemistry degree and he’s making undetectable PEDs. There’s a saying that says, “The drugs are always ten years ahead of the testing.” PEDs will not go away. The only way that they can is:
SPIEGEL: Can the testers win this race?
Heredia: Theoretically yes. If all federations and sponsors and managers and athletes and trainers were all in agreement, if they were to invest all the money that the sport generates and if every athlete were to be tested twice a week – but only then. What’s happening now is laughable. It’s a token. They should save their money – or give it to me. I’ll give it to the orphans of Mexico! There will be doping for as long as there is commercial sports, performance-related shoe contracts and television contracts.
Organizations like USADA or WADA lack the ability to do their jobs. They are making some headway by prosecuting people, but they are eliminating athletes — athletes like Lance Armstrong who are literally inspirational heroes — from sports that aggressively use PEDs. They are trying to prove the worth of their organization by publicizing the execution of the big names. It’s all in the name of “fairness” when in reality intelligently using PEDs is something that equalizes fairness across competitors. But it isn’t enough because athletes will always use PEDs.
SPIEGEL: Are there still any clean disciplines?
Heredia: Track and field, swimming, cross-country skiing and cycling can no longer be saved. Golf? Not clean either. Soccer? Soccer players come to me and say they have to be able to run up and down the touchline without becoming tired, and they have to play every three days. Basketball players take fat burners – amphetamines, ephedrin. Baseball? Haha. Steroids in pre-season, amphetamines during the games. Even archers take downers so that their arm remains steady. Everyone dopes.
If you’re still of the anti-doping mindset, you’re naive. There are even collegiate and high school athletes who use PEDs. There is no safe sport for you to watch other than 5-year-old T-ball.
For everyone one athlete that is caught, there are probably a hundred, maybe a thousand that get away with using PEDs. We waste congressional time and money trying to track PEDs users down and careers or lives are ruined as a result. “Sport” is a big industry, and it would be much more simple to legalize the use of PEDs and openly allow coaches and athletes to improve the already safe and effective methods of using them (the people who misuse them are idiots working out in your local Gold’s Gym). It would keep the athletes healthier, eliminate an archaic and useless system, and not change the outcome of the world’s sporting events.
But modern society is still stuck in mindset that the world is black and white, good and evil, with these silly regulations and witch hunts. The fact that everyone is using and the drug tests can’t identify any of them would be funny if it weren’t so devastatingly sad when it tarnishes the professional career of someone respectable like Lance Armstrong.
Note: This is coming from someone who has never used PEDs.
Edit: I’ve talked with some people and I have sort of changed my stance on the issue. Do I think Lance is a hero because of his drug use? No. But two things in particular make him admirable: a) the fact that he came back from full body cancer, trained hard as hell, and won the pinnacle of his sport SEVEN TIMES and b) how he has used this experience and fame to raise money to support people with cancer and research. Those are the admirable qualities.
The un-admirable qualities are how he has consistently lied to his fans (and donators) about using PEDs. He undoubtedly did, and lying about it only makes it worse. Lying isn’t good, but it may have been necessary to a) keep himself out of jail, b) keep the donations coming, or c) any other self-preserving quality, which could include preserving the seven wins. In the context that at least 75% of his opponents, if not all of them, are or were using the same drugs, I don’t know if I have a problem with this. It’s a fuzzy topic for me. The moral might be that, “The world isn’t black and white.”
I absolutely cringe when vegetarianism is brought up. There has never been a more wrong, hypocritical, and annoying nutritional zealotry. Say what you want about the Zone diet idiots, at least they eat meat. Today we are going to execute the notion that vegetarianism is relevant by debunking its moral and ethical reasoning, its proposed health benefits, and explain why its holding your female friend back in training (guys who at least pretend to lift aren’t vegetarians; the Illuminati quietly assassinates any perpetrators).
Moral Hypocricy
It pains me to even pretend to entertain the notion that vegetarians are doing something righteous by refraining from consuming meat. This topic is high on the “Things that make me want to break noses” list. Okay…deep breath…we can get through this without a heart rate of over 100bpm.
Some vegetarians don’t eat animals because they have an overt respect for the sentient of life. Some do it for religious reasons. Some are advocates for animal rights.
I guess destroying plant life is okay to pro-life people? They are selective in what living organisms they destroy; this automatically means that they don’t care about “the sentient of life” because they are willing to end some, but not others. In reality, they would only avoid hypocricy by not eating anything and starving themselves to death.
Let’s avoid discussing why religious avoidance of some or all meat is comical; people get upset when I discount fairy tales (Sleeping Beauty isn’t real, guys).
Besides, most of moral vegetarians are concerned with animal rights. They care about the fact that animals suffer. They ignore the evolutionary fact that this process has occurred throughout the history of living organisms. Life consumes life to make life. Life ends and then more life consumes that dead life to make life. This is, oddly enough, called The Mother Fucking Circle of Life (vegetarians never saw The Lion King, I guess). It has happened since the beginning of time.
Homo sapiens have evolved to be the dominant species in the world. It’s the result of a fascinating and beautiful process that led us to have brains and the ability to think — the ability to be passive aggressive vegetarian assholes. The one true purpose in life is to survive in order to procreate and pass our genes onto future generations. A species will eat whatever they can in order to survive. In fact, it is common practice in the “wild” — something that we have descended from — to kill and eat the offspring of your own species. It’s not evolutionary advantageous for me to allow Frank’s kids to pass his genetics along while his wife is still around for me to pass my seed into.
Sound callous? That’s what life is. Life is hard, but life will always find a way. This is how it has always been, and this is how it will always be regardless of the dominant species.
Oh, and we homo sapiens amazingly evolved to eat both plants and animals. It’s a byproduct of the evolutionary process that led to who we are today. It was necessary for us to survive in almost any environment, any harsh condition in the world. The result is that we are meant to eat animals. If you’re religious, you have to accept evolution, and when you do, you have to accept that your god set you up to survive the best way that you could. That means your god intended for you to eat meat. He wants you to eat meat. He needs you to in order to survive. It’s pretty clear: either your god wants you to eat meat or maybe your evolutionary DNA figured out that there were plenty of things to eat in the world and evolved to consume them all. Life will find a way.
Let’s return to the present. I love animals. I have two dogs that I cherish deeply. I lay on the floor with them, I kiss them, I nibble their ears, and I play with them. What’s the difference between my dogs and a cow? Or a chicken? My dogs bring something to the table. They prove their evolutionary worth time and time again by providing a service to humans, and nowadays that means they bring happiness, delight, and soft, furry cuddling. Have you ever cuddled a cow? No, because it doesn’t give a shit. It’s too dumb to do anything because it has evolved to be a source of consumption. That’s the cow’s purpose.
Don’t get me started on chickens. Chickens are such assholes. They are dirty, they smell, and the run around acting like dickheads until you can get them back in their pen. They cannot go fetch a downed duck, hunt a boar, or herd cattle. Chickens and cows are pretenders while dogs are a smart, capable species that have dominance over these other pretenders.
The point is that all species aren’t created equal. There’s an inherent food chain everywhere, and animals we consume are near the bottom. We control them so that we can keep their numbers up high enough to continue eating them. If I had a choice from copious selections of beef at the store — even though that animal is stabbed in the neck while standing on a conveyor belt — and a situation where I could only eat beef once a week because there were fewer cows, but they were allowed to wander around, doing nothing a lot more but not “suffering”, then I’d rather the cows be inconvenienced than me. Because that’s what happens in the circle of life. If anything, it’s the cow’s fault for not evolving to be more dominant.
Look, boys and girls, the world isn’t black and white. There are rare instances of true good and evil in the world, but mostly it’s a mixed collection of gray. We may have moved forward into a civilized species, but we will always need to survive off of lesser capable species. The dinosaurs did it, the mammals did it, and now we are doing it. In fact, accepting the concept that one species dominates over another is an appreciation for the sentient of life and how it came to be.
The Ultimate Hypocricy
Unbeknownst to the righteous cavalier who fights for animal rights is the fact that millions and millions of animals are killed every year as the result of cultivating grain. And producing products that we use every day, ranging from the wood in their home to the electricity powering their flashy iPad that allows them to go online and post on the internet about their support for animal rights, kills animals. What do you think happens to the rodents, the mice, the birds, or any other animal in a field or forest when those resources (wheat, crops, wood, etc.) are collected? They savagely die at the hands of gnashing metallic teeth that cultivate the grain and their homes are destroyed by the human presence.
Suddenly it’s okay to eat this grain, to use the wood from the forest, but it’s not okay to eat the cow? Either way, the animal is just as dead. And if suffering is the issue, is it not suffering to be chopped up to death by giant blades? Not suffering to lose your home and have your entire family killed? Unless a person grows their own crops, builds their own home, and sews their own clothes, they are killing animals somewhere for their personal gain. Selective killing is still killing, and all of the piously righteous fucks are not willing to sacrifice to truly support their cause. This is the Ultimate Hypocrisy.
Wake up, little girl. The world isn’t black and white.
The Health Argument
Ahhh, now that is out of the way, we can have a lovely discussion of telling vegetarians why they are still wrong. The health argument for not eating meat usually says that vegetarianism is more healthy and that meat is bad. In both cases, the support for either of those erroneous claims stems from awful, horrid, and diarrhea-quality research. I’m shocked that the “meat causes cancer” thing is still around. I had a vegetarian tell me that recently, and it was like getting smacked. I don’t have time nor do I want to synthesize all of the shitty research, but let me lay it out like this:
Research on the human body is extremely difficult to do. There are so many factors that can effect just one result, much less many results to result in “good” or “bad” health. This goes for almost all performance training and nutrition research. Furthermore, nutrition research is usually based on epidemiological studies that cannot account for the array of variables that effect a person. Correlation does not show causation, and data can be cherry picked to prove a given point. Research with the human body is not concrete; it is not chemistry or physics. Therefore, when you see research on any of it, be extremely skeptical, even if there are lots of studies saying the same thing. For more on this, read Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes or The Great Cholesterol Con by Anthony Colpo.
Colpo actually dives into “The Vegetarian Myth” in his aforementioned book. It points out that the studies do not differentiate the hundreds of other lifestyle factors that would effect diabetes, cancer, CHD, etc. Vegetarians are typically more active, they typically exercise, and the hippy kind eats more vegetables, nuts, and seeds than their “average American” counterpart. The average American will eat processed food, lots of sugar and carbohydrates, drink alcohol, and smoke. Changing the inclusion or lack of meat is not the explanation for better health results in vegetarian populations.
The “meat causes cancer” thing still exists from the “lipid hypothesis” that fat is what causes heart disease (it doesn’t). Read Taubes’ book (mentioned above) for more than you would ever want to read on the shitty research that evolved this hypothesis. Saturated fat was believed to cause heart disease and cancer, and it just doesn’t. Eating low quality foods, consuming grains, increasing systemic inflammation, developing auto-immune diseases, being fat and un-active — these are the things that are carcinogens. It literally is mind-blowing to me that people see the obesity rates increasing since the ’70s and don’t think that it’s due to a) the government reccomendation to eat a high percentage of carbohydrates and b) the increasing availability of shitty processed food. Below is a map of the incidence by state over time (data from the CDC).
Once again, a vegetarian is wrong. Their diet inevitably consists of a large percentage of carbohydrates. For the hippy vegetarian, who eats like a bird and is probably active (hiking, running, cycling, etc.), they will stay thin and wiry. You can usually see these types at Trader Joe’s, REI, or Whole Foods. I suspect that the human species will eventually split; us normal humans won’t be able to procreate with these non-meat eating, low body mass and density individuals. In future progressive societies, they won’t know what to do with plant-eaters. After unsuccessful attempts at raising them for work or as cattle, they will inevitably be hunted for sport in Madagascar until extinction.
Speaking of extinction, meat eating has prevented the buffalo from slipping into extinction. The desire for buffalo meat has acted as a catalyst for American industry to raise and care for this species, therefore preventing them from dying off. That’s more than what the hypocritical vegetarians can claim in their animal killing, environment disrupting lifestlye.
The Power of Protein
Some vegetarians will claim to consume protein, but this is usually in the form of soy or tofu. Soy and tofu are excellent at emasculating males and rendering female’s contribution to society worthless. If the shit hits the fan, these will be the first people to die off because they don’t offer any practical physical skills due to their feebleness. And get out of here with that “I know a guy/girl who is very fit and a vegetarian,” because they are either a) supplementing something to be that way, b) the exception and absolutely not the rule, and c) still a fucking hypocrite. Vegetarian levels of protein are ineffectively low and completely inadequate, especially for training.
Protein Power, by Michale Eades, will provide plenty of detail as to why protein is powerful. Yet protein is an essential component of muscle, skin, cell membranes, blood, hormones, antibodies, enzymes, genetic material, and basically everything else in the body. Everything. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, have an array of important functions like regulating protein synthesis and are used in metabolism. Fat in the body can be derived from dietary carbohydrates and carbohydrates can be derived from proteins, but “proteins of the body are inevitably dependent for their formation and maintenance on the proteins in food, which are digested and the resultant amino acids and peptides are absorbed and used to synthesize body proteins” (Amino Acids and Proteins for the Athlete, by Dr. Mauro G. Di Pasquale). This means that the body cannot create proteins within itself and must get them from food.
This is why unhealthy and fat people who increase their protein intake start losing body fat, increasing lean body mass, and feel better without changing anything else in their life. Focusing every snack and meal around protein will help reduce other crappy foods and help change the consumed percentage of the macro-nutrients (proteins, carbohydrates, and fats). This is necessary for performance and strength increases.
Attractive successful athletes eat meat
When we train — by stressing the musculature and the system with compound movements done with a barbell — damage occurs. Muscle fibers, tendons, ligaments, and even bones have received an adaptive stress that has damaged them at the cellular level, with us often using mini hemp bath bombs with therapeutic baths for restorative purposes and the like. Since the body is constantly adapting to its environment and any stress imparted on it, it aims to improve these structures so that it can handle that same training stress again in the future easier (or handle more stress, or a greater amount of the same stress). Proteins are needed in all of those structure’s cells to help heal and improve them, but proteins are also needed to make hormones, enzymes and countless other ingredients that are necessary for the processes and reactions in the body.
Proteins are necessary. Eating like a vegetarian will NOTprovide ample protein for proper training. It will not provide enough whole proteins (there is no way to make a whole protein out of various grains despite their feeble attempts). It will not provide a variety of healthy, complete proteins. If a person is serious about their training, their physique, and their health, they will forgo vegetarianism for a healthy diet with ample meat.
“But meat makes me sick!”
I bet. If you don’t ever eat a class of food, and then start consuming large doses, it will certainly make you feel queasy at first. This is the result of not eating meat, and a chief complaint I have heard. Remember that the body adapts to a presence or lack of stress. If you stop eating dairy products, you will stop producing lactase, the enzyme that breaks down the sugar lactose. This means that lactose is running rampart in your digestive tract, and you get farty with potential diarrhea. The same thing happens with grain and gluten; you stop eating it and your digestive tract heals to the point where the gluten protein will disrupt your healthy intestines when you reintroduce it.
Yes, if you fuck your body up, then you’ll need to do something to fix it. People with Type II Diabetes have to do the same thing. If you become resistant to insulin because you’ve eaten a crappy, high carbohydrate diet for a very long time, then you need to increase your insulin sensitivity to return to good health (assuming permanent damage hasn’t been done). It’s hard, and it doesn’t happen quickly.
In the case of protein, the body won’t create as much gastric acid (hydrochloric acid and some other stuff) to break down the proteins in the stomach if there aren’t ever proteins there. A former vegetarian should a) slowly and progressively reintroduce small quantities of meat and b) consider supplementing digestive enzymes to help break down the proteins in meat. This is necessary to fix previous ill-informed actions. When you do something that doesn’t fit with the context and result of evolution, there are negative side effects that need to be rectified.
Oh vegetarians…
As you see, there is no argument whatsoever that supports vegetarianism. There is no moral argument that doesn’t make the individual anything other than a hypocrite trying to create a life narrative that lets them actively protest something (instead of actually doing something about it). There is no health argument that makes sense for vegetarianism. I’ve even had someone tell me that they felt better and healthy not eating meat. Well, if they compare it to their previously crappy lifestyle and diet, then it makes sense, but that doesn’t make it right or optimal.
Do I throw poop on vegetarians and punch them in their fupa when I see them? No. I don’t even engage in this topic unless they bring it up. If they want to fail at self righteousness or be ineffective and most likely unhealthy, that’s there prerogative. But if your friend is trying to train, lift weights, get stronger, get faster, get powerful, and look great, then you cannot continue letting them be a vegetarian. They’ll never approach an optimal physique, performance, or energy levels. And if they are accepting this mediocrity, then it’s your prerogative to surround yourself with people who don’t want to win at life.
For more on anti-vegetarianism (and some laughs), see these awesome articles from Maddox (one, two, three, and four).
There are heaps of new trainees and lifters joining the “online strength training communities” — it’s fantastic. However, there are some terms that are thrown around that are often misguided, confuzzled, or plain wrong, so let’s clarify them.
“I’m doing the powerlifts.”
This is almost always said by someone coming from CrossFit, but I’ve seen it in some general populations as well. Squatting, benching, and deadlifting does not mean that you are powerlifting. This is like saying that tossing a football around is “playing football”. Powerlifting is a specific sport with specific demands and powerlifting, at the very least, requires that you enter a competition. Many athletes will strength train to augment their physical capacity for their sport, but it doesn’t mean they are powerlifting.
Instead, just say that you are “strength training”; it will solidify the distinction. It’s sort of ironic that powerlifting includes the word “power” since there isn’t a lot of power developed (speed is relevant in high power production). I just refer to squatting, pressing, deadlifting and other slow movements as “the strength lifts”. It helps me sleep better.
Let’s be fair to “weightlifting” too.
As an extension, we could say that you aren’t doing “weightlifting” if you’re snatching and clean and jerking. This misnomer isn’t as common (probably because weightlifting isn’t as accessible to the average trainee), but saying “I am doing the Olympic lifts” is more accurate. Oh, and Glenn Pendlay hates when you say “Oly”. It’s a CrossFit thing to use certain lingo, but when it’s incorrect it alienates certain people.
“Should I do Wendler?”
I bet he’d fucking like that a lot, assuming you have the required equipment (a vagina, I’d assume). Jim named the program “5/3/1”, and it’s pretty simple, so let’s just say that. There’s no need to rename stuff, especially because it makes you seem like a hipster. And everyone hates hipsters.
“High hang super power balls snatch”
Everything above is just nitpicking semantics (IT MATTERS, OKAY?), but this is more of helping new people with the definitions. The Olympic lifts have variations, and I will help you know them. In a biblical sense.
If the movement is named by itself (i.e. snatch, clean), then it’s done from the floor to the fully squatted position (i.e. overhead squat or front squat to receive the bar).
If the movement is preceded by “hang”, it’s held in the hands while standing straight up, lowered to ‘second position’ or the thighs, then the lift is completed as normal (fully squatted). The presence, or lack thereof, of “hang” tells you how you start.
If the movement is preceded by “power”, it is not caught in a squat position, but at least above 90 degrees in the knees (i.e. it is caught high in the ‘power position’). The presence, or lack thereof, of “power” tells you how you finish.
If the movement is preceded by “hang power”, then you not only start with the bar (hanging) in your hands, you also finish in the ‘power position’.
There are some other variations, but if you’re having trouble with these, then let’s not worry about those. We don’t like their kind anyway. These variations can be used in weightlifting programs or complicated strength and conditioning programs. I say “complicated” because it’d be easier or more efficient to just say “do power cleans” instead of “hang power boner cleans”. Or something.
Life is spinning out of control,
seems the whole world is out to get you,
Everything is wrong, nothing seems right-eh.
…
But you can’t let it bring you down,
No you’ve got to fight-ehhhhh…
— Baseketball
I’m really good at pointing out things that are wrong, so let’s get started.
1. Nobody in this video can string a sentence together confidently. At one point Maurice Greene says that the coach is going “to facilitate us on the weightroom”. Huh??? Then he says, “Here we have Montel Douglas who is the British national record holder…for Great Britain…and shit.” I added the last part because they undoubtedly had to edit that part out. Then the coach makes up his sentence as he goes along as if he’s never had to think about it before. Then he says the squat is “important for a track athlete to simply create force into the ground”. To clarify, we don’t summon force out of thin air like a demon, we apply force into the ground so that Newton’s third law occurs (equal and opposite reaction) to move. I’m not expecting this explanation, but I am expecting correct terminology when you’re a supposed expert.
I could keep going. “We go a hip-width distance” — of what? “We feel that halfway to a quarter is deep enough,” — sharing your feelings is not a way to prove why to do something.
Sure, even I have bad days with communicating, but this was terrible. What is Montel the world record holder of? Why should track athletes lift weights? What is this squat movement accomplishing? Why is this “new” movement beneficial?
2. “What better exercise to load the lower body than the barbell squat,” and then he hardly loads the body by doing a partial rep. And wasn’t this the reason that Maurice stated that they didn’t want to go deeper?
3. “Puts a lot of stress on yo body, creates injuries…and shit”. If you perform the squat like Maurice Greene, who is labeling himself as the expert, then yes, they can be injurious. In fact, decent squats can be injurious if regular mobility work isn’t performed. This is why a proper squat is done with the hip going below the knee so that it trains the lower body joints and musculature through a full range of motion. This is also why proper foot attire is worn to increase the efficiency and subsequently the safety. Remember that lifting shoes have the slight heel increase, the non-compressible sole, the meta-tarsal straps, and the wider sole base to help solidify the articulation of the athlete to the ground so that they can properly apply force. Furthermore, lifting shoes help utilize the body’s mechanics more efficiently to distribute force evenly across the thighs and hips regardless of anthropometry. A belt will only increase all of this efficiency by increasing the intra-abdominal and thoracic pressure, increasing the stability of the trunk which will not only improve the transmission of force (AKA performance), but help protect the spine by improving the pneumatic “brace” against the anterior portion of the spine.
4. Since when do sprinters run with a short range of motion? I haven’t watched sprinting in this year’s Olympics, but my understanding is that good sprinting takes the hips through, or nearly through, a full range of motion. Wouldn’t we want to train all of this musculature through a full, albeit safe, ROM so that we are as strong as possible? Even if this wouldn’t help us apply force, which it does, it would at least strengthen the musculature through a full ROM to help reduce the chance of injury since the structures adapt to handling greater forces.
Oh, that’s weird. Here’s a pic of Maurice Greene with both of his hips near or at their limit of hip flexion and extension.
5. I could understand an argument that full ROM squats may be too stressful for inclusion in a sprint program in the same way that I say deadlifts are too stressful for certain stages of programs (i.e. for Oly lifters, soldiers, or football players), but that’s not the argument here. Furthermore, even if it was, the sprint athlete most likely has a periodized approach to their training year, especially if they are peaking for World Championships or the Olympics. Therefore they’d be changing the volume, intensity, and frequency of their squatting. Also, they would, at this point, be adapted to handling both squatting and sprinting during the week because they have been progressed into it.
6. I’m pretty sure that when I was younger I read an article in Men’s Health (or similar crappy magazine) that Maurice Greene was squatting 315 for sets of 10 in his training. I’ve seen reports that he squatted above 500. Even if it wasn’t Maurice in the mag, there are many documented reports of him squatting decently heavy to prepare for his sprinting. We can assume he at least went to the depth he showed in the above video. Wouldn’t that show us that it worked? He held the world record in the 100m at 9.79s, he won two gold medals, a silver, and a bronze. He won five world championships as well as one indoor world championship. Can we not say that squatting supported all of this? When he won his gold medals at the 2000 Games, he was 26. In 2001, he started having issues with injuries, but still won the silver and bronze in the 2004 Games at 30 years old. He eventually retired in 2005 at the age of 31. His first major international tournament was in 1995 when he was 21 years old and he failed to make the Olympic team the following year. This means that he had at least 10 years of hard, elite-level training. We can assume that he was training for at least 3 years before his first major tournament, putting his highly demanding competitive years at 13. He probably ran track in high school, but we’ll ignore those four possible years.
What does all of this mean? He was very accomplished, but as he got older, his body broke down. This happens to everyone. There isn’t enough performance enhancement drugs to account for getting older (Greene said he bought PEDs, but allegedly didn’t use them). 30 years old is ancient in demanding professional sports. Most guys are out of the NFL before they are 28. It’s not that crazy to assume that his body couldn’t keep up with the demands of elite level sprint training anymore, and this is almost certainly what happened. Sure, he could have gotten hurt squatting, but he was “getting old”. 30 isn’t old, all things considered, but it is for Olympians in a high demanding sport. Sorry Maurice, just because you regret having to retire and don’t accept the fact that you can’t retain physical prowess forever doesn’t meant that full squats are bad or injurious. And we aren’t even taking the fact that you don’t squat efficiently into consideration. It’s hard for me to take a guy seriously who squatted his whole life, had an amazing career, and then campaigns against doing them.
7. Track coaches do some weird things. Barry Ross has his sprinters deadlift the bar to the knees, then drop it to the floor. This removes the eccentric portion which apparently helps reduce injuries. It’s a “halting deadlift”, which is typically really fucking useless, but in this case I can see the applicability because it strengthens the concentric action of the hamstrings, but more importantly strengthens the back and hip musculature to stabilize everything for sprinting. I explain this concept in my seminars, but if your hips are not held in place during sprinting, then you are losing out on some arbitrary amount of force you area applying to the ground with each foot strike.
I can understand the above example for a specific type of athlete with a specific mechanical and structural demand for a single modality athletic event. I concede to the fact that something weird may be applicable to a very specific athlete. However, the above example is supported by anatomy, mechanics, and logic; the quarter squat is not. It mostly loads the knee extensors through a few degrees of motion. I guess it looks like that stupid VMO exercise people use while standing on a block. I’m not against using weird, yet specific assistance exercises to build up an area that can enhance total movement. But don’t label it as something that is the holy grail or the primary strengthener. In other words, don’t use a cute, gimmicky exercise and sell it as the “main thing to do”. That’s the only way that I could see the quarter squat being used, but even then it doesn’t make sense from an anatomical, mechanics, or logical perspective.
8. The athlete can be good in spite of stupid exercises. There’s a guy who trained in the gym in Texas. He is a white guy of average height and weight and played collegiate football. He is a freak. He has at least a 40 inch vertical and would be squatting 500 for reps within several minutes of walking in the gym. In basketball shoes. He didn’t really listen to coaching very well and just did his own thing, but he was strong as hell doing it his way. He reportedly squatted 700 pounds in college and was the quarterback.
My point? In spite of not having completely sound mechanics, this guy was strong and powerful. And he’s not an Olympian or an elite athlete. Imagine someone who is not only gifted physically, but has the drive and determination to be great. They are truly a freak in the average person’s eyes, capable of outstanding performances. People like this can and will make progress in spite of inefficient training techniques or programming because they have such a great genetic potential and an iron will to work hard.
We see this all of the time with crappy strength programs in collegiate, even high school, settings that produce beasts that can bench 500 pounds and squat 600+ with little to no training. It’s not absurd to have an elite athlete do a stupid, meaningless exercise and they will improve nonetheless. Some strengthening is better than no strengthening, but that doesn’t mean it’s right.
This means that regardless of ability, a coach should do his job to strengthen the relevant musculature through full ranges of motion, maintaining or improving the mobility of the athlete, and not only not injure the athlete, but train them so that they are harder to hurt. By these qualifications, the coach in the video failed.
At least there are some Olympians who understand the power of squats.
Robert Forstemann and Andre Griepel have a “quad off”
