1. Post any Personal Records you made this week to the comments. If you didn’t have any, update all of us on your training and ask questions if you have them.
2. Have a jolly good Halloween. If you survive, go ahead and send photos of your costume.
3. The September TSC results have been published for quite a while. Here is the LINK to the spreadsheet.
4. Feel free to talk about football in the comments too.
5. Here are various videos that should get you excited.
Thanks to Tyler T. for the vids.
And this marks the first cartoon posted on this site:
Editor’s Note: In case you can’t tell, this is another post by Brent. Oh, and it’s PR Friday so post your PR’s to the comments or update everyone on your training.
Chris Riley is a man of captivating words. Chris has always been very creative with language. We’ve mentioned it a few times before on the site – instead of saying “I need to wash my hands,” Chris will say, “I need to wash my gripz.” Instead of asking if he can taste or try something that you’re eating, he’ll ask, “Can I flavor that?” or “Do you want to flavor this?”
He also has an interesting way of insulting people. According to Chris, a “Todd” is someone who fucks everything up but doesn’t realize he is a total fuck up.
Brent: The Arkansas Razorbacks are a bunch of fucking losers. They couldn’t make a touchdown if the goalie was a paraplegic.
Chris: Goalies are in soccer, Todd.
Brent: Ooh KAY.
There are some other colorful terms that Chris is fond of using, but I don’t think they’d be appropriate to share here, but if you’d like to know more, call me, we’ll talk about it (<– this is also one of Chris’s sayings, often said in the middle of a conversation).
Oh, and the infamous WHAT ELSE ISN’T A SPORT that some of you may have seen in some of the comment threads actually originated from a night during which Chris had been drinking. Mustache Mike (not to be confused with Big Mike, who you’ve all been acquainted with) ascertained that figure skating wasn’t a sport, and Chris grew increasingly agitated as he interrogated Mike about what else wasn’t a sport.
Mike and Chris are currently training partners at WFAC. They follow a Texas Method-style program, with a volume day on Tuesdays, a light day on Thursday, and an intensity day on Saturday. Mike has observed that almost invariably, Chris comes into his Saturday workouts with the odds stacked against him. He got drunk Friday night, or he has to train in a hurry because of work, or he doesn’t eat an optimum amount of pre-workout calories because life gets in the way.
Chris, however, is a competitor.
Chris and AC are similar in that when they commit to something, they put all of themselves into it. It’s why AC gets so intense that he’s brought to tears before a 3rd attempt squat. Chris is the same way. Fight a +17lbs PR 650lbs deadlift for like 10 seconds and make it to above the knee? Ooh KAY. When Chris commits to a lift, he’ll throw everything he has into the effort, and if he fails, he’s gonna go down swinging for the fucking fences.
One particular Saturday, Chris went into the workout under shitty conditions, as usual. He takes his last squat warm up and decides to load 545lbs on the bar. He’s not sure how many times he’ll squat it, or if he’ll even be able to squat it at all today, but before he gets under the bar he turns to Mike and says one of his new trademark lines –
“I’m feeling reckless.”
And then he squats it for a PR set of 5.
Mike and I have agreed that Chris is a fantastic training partner. It’s hard to find someone who trains as hard as he does and has the raw desire to BEAT ‘EM. He’s overcome setbacks and has only gotten bigger and stronger. His performance is consistently excellent. Whenever I train with Chris, my motivation fucking sky rockets.
Mikhail Koklyaev is an impressive human being. He is crazy strong in every lift you can think of, powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting. Watch the following demonstration where he does a 270kg behind-the-neck jerk, deadlifts 400kg for a triple, does a 290kg NO HAND squat, and a 190kg snatch. Egad.
His best snatch is 210kg and his best clean and jerk is 250kg. Those numbers would put him among the best in the world in the super heavyweight category, and if he trained the lifts exclusively he probably could win a gold medal. Look at this video of him push pressing 220kg (to clarify, that’s 484 lbs.):
He also has some pretty damn good powerlifting numbers. His bests are a 365kg squat, a 240kg bench, and a 415kg deadlift — all raw. In pounds that is 803, 528, and 913! He could be a top contender in powerlifting too! Here is a video of him deadlifting 415kg:
Koklyaev is a good strongman competitor — he finished on the podium for all the IFSA World Championships and has done well at the Arnold Strongman Classic (5 finishes in the top 5) and has won a lot of Strongman Champions League in Russia. Plus, he’s got some other skills. You can see more of Koklyaev’s domination of the iron at his YouTube channel.
One of 70’s Big’s campaigns is to get people competing in something. There are a lot of mental and introspective benefits to competing and it focuses training and makes it fun. Whether you are a grizzled veteran or just starting out, you can send in videos and I’ll actually start posting them regularly. I’ll try to dip into my e-mail archives for those of you who have already sent in videos.
For all you spectators, maybe you can use this as motivation. I haven’t heard of anyone having a bad time at their first meet/competition. And for all of you daily commentors, go ahead and strike up a conversation. I leave it up to you resourceful goons to incite a riot conversation topic.
Oh, and if you find things around the internet that are relevant to 70’s Big, whether they are videos, pictures or articles, then feel free to send those on in.
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Stephen Winburn is a powerlifter competing in the 220 lb. class (presumably raw?) in Georgia. He has competed against AC before, and this is a video of him pulling 555 for a triple for a 37 lb. PR. Nice.
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Duane competed in the 110kg class at the Brute Strength Stars and Stripes USAPL competition in Norfolk, VA. His total of 587.5 kg was good enough to win the weight class by a margin of 2.5kg (the same increase he made on his third attempt squat). Nice job, Duane.
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And lastly, NolanPower from the comments did awesome at NJ states. He went 8/9, 1636 lbs. in the 220 lb. class — RAW. He caps the meet off with a 716 lb. third attempt deadlift. Fucking awesome.
We are up in Hayward, California in the bay area. You should be busy eating meat and training hard. If you’re getting bored, here’s a video of Ruth and Sean’s (who hosted us at their house and gym for the first workshop) dog training. Her name is Nalu, and she takes her training seriously.
