70’s Big may cause adverse effects in your life by changing your physique and/or mentality. Take careful note of these possibilities and verify that you are prepared for such changes.
Abnormal Increases In Size
Beginning a proper quest to 70’s Big will result in exceptional increases in muscular development. This may cause problems if you are A) emo, B) attend art school, or C) live in California or Europe. Expect the following:
– you will fill out your 70’s Big shirts
– your pants will no longer fit
– there is a 50% chance that your clothing will rip and fall right off of your body in fear
– your underwear/spandex will become uncomfortable unless you upgrade
– if you wear swim trunks with the netting on the inside, it will wedge up your butt crack because you’ll have amazing glutes (if I do say so myself)
– dress shirts will not fit around your neck, even if you get fitted for a tux/suit for the specific reason of having it fit (he even measured my neck, wtf?)
Uncomfortable Gains In Strength
Your abnormal size gains express an uncomfortable (dare I say uncanny?) increase in strength. Take caution with your daily activities as they are now a smaller percentage of your absolute strength. Beware of the following:
– hug your lady carefully lest you suffocate her (don’t be Lennie Small)
– avoid fine China
– exhibit caution when pretending to be a zombie in order to show your friends what it would be like to be attacked by an intense zombie…who lifts weights…
– consider projectile motion trajectory when tossing children in the pool; anything other than a resultant vector in the vertical direction could land the child on the roof, a busy highway, or a grizzly bear den
– ready yourself for accusations of steroids or alien anal probing, for it is unnatural to the average person that you have doubled your squat and gained 25 pounds of muscle in a couple of months
Stark Changes In Personality
With this size and strength you will be overcome with a sense of honor and pride that throws itself intensely into tasks of self betterment. You will find yourself:
– knocking down personal goals
– ready to take on the trials of life
– and doing so with an intensity and focus that ripples the earth to its iron-nickel alloy core
Heed this warning; 70’s Big is a process that results in unfathomable changes.
I hate the Steelers, but DE Brett Keisel has a respectable beard
Story
In the fall of 2008, I was getting bored with the bodybuilding routine I was doing. It had been a few years since I played (very small-time) football in college and intramural sports were the only thing I “competed” in. I decided I wanted more of a performance type training program because I didn’t want to lose my athletic ability. My friend Shawn and I were catching a pump in our workout (it was probably arms, and I was probably pissed), and I spontaneously decided I wanted to run a mile.
You see, back in high school I could run a mile close to 6 minutes routinely (I weighed between 185-195 and played linebacker). I wanted to go upstairs to the indoor track and run a mile in 6 minutes. I don’t know why, but I just wanted to know if I “still had it” I guess. This turned out to be one of the worst experiences ever, and I want you to learn why.
The recreation facilities indoor track was short; it would take 9 laps to complete a mile. It was 15 minutes until the top of the hour, and I had to train someone…so I needed to be quick. I figured that was plenty of time; a few minutes of loosening up, run the mile, change clothes, and get started. Yeah, not so much.
I loosed up briefly (I like dynamic stretching, still do), readied my wrist watch, and stepped onto the track. I beeped my watch and got started at a pretty good click. I’ve got this pretty good pace, and I completed lap one, no big deal. Now, stop and imagine this. There’s this 203 pound guy running on the indoor track. Well, running isn’t the right word, I’m kind of bounding along. And then I have to dodge a person every now and then (there were a few walkers and joggers, what have you). Those pedestrians see me repeatedly, and I’m making more of a fuss each time.
You see, the first two laps weren’t that big of a deal, but all kinds of shit was going on in my body. Lactic acid started filling in my legs. The phospho creatine system no longer could supply ATP at my work load, and the glycolitic system was also unable to do much since I really hadn’t trained it all that much — especially at this workload. It turns out that riding a bike to class isn’t really an adaptive stress.
I don’t remember what happened on the middle laps, but I do remember lap 8 and 9 (this is Brent’s favorite part of the story). At this point, I’m convinced I’m going to die. I felt as if I was breathing through a snorkel and mask. My legs didn’t want to move. But I pushed ahead as hard as I could. By god I wanted to get that 6 minute mile. My bounding turns into more of a blundering as I’m struggling to keep my velocity. My breathing turns into gigantic rhinoceros breaths; I sounded like a cow giving a horned mating call to the African plains. Every time I breathed out it was a mixture of forced expiration and a sharp moan. As I neared the end it became gorilla-like, frantic. I pounded each step and pushed forward as hard as I could. Remember, there are people on the track, so they’re seeing this dude finishing a mile like he’s sprinting the last leg of the Badwater Marathon. I probably looked like an asshole.
I blew by the finish line and beeped my watch. I didn’t fall down on the ground (at this point in my life, it had never occurred to me to fall on the ground after doing something difficult; athletes usually stay on their feet because the game isn’t over), and waved my watch in front of my face. It read “5:31”. Elation. I did it. I continued to hyperventilate forever, but I walked over and told some of my friends who worked at the facility my time. I continuously said, “I’m not doing that ever again. Ever.” I wish I could say this was the end of the story, but the worst part hasn’t even happened yet.
I don’t know if any of you have done something intense when you aren’t adapted to it at all, but your body is confused. It experiences this work load, this stress that it isn’t accustomed to, and there are repercussions for this stupidity. My stomach started bubbling. I sneezed. I was still sweating profusely, still breathing hard, but my system seemed to be shutting down. My eyes became swollen, and my stomach bubbled. Again.
“Oh my god, I’m not gonna make it to the toilet,” is a censored version of what I thought to myself. I staggered to the bathroom, a journey that was more difficult than lap number 9. I sneezed. Again and again. As I walked into the bathroom I sneezed uncontrollably. Snot poured out of my nose and probably flew everywhere. The constant sneezing seemed to be shaking up the apparent chemical reaction in my stomach. I’m not going to explain in detail what happened, but it was very similar to THIS, yet way worse because I was constantly sneezing. I lost count at 47 sneezes.
I sat on the toilet for at least 15 minutes. After I finally stopped sneezing (after what seemed like half an hour), I sat there, sweating, exhausted, and nauseated. What happened next is the worst part about all of this; my sinuses turned into concrete. Everything in my head cemented itself into place and I could only breathe out of my throat. My eyes felt like they were being pushed forward, like when you shoot ping pong balls out of those air guns. I washed myself, dressed myself, and went downstairs to my personal training client 18 minutes after the top of the hour. I could talk, but I was so congested that I sounded like Meg Ryan if she were to get beaten with a golf club and then waterboarded.
So what in the hell is the moral of the story? When you’re doing something new, or something you haven’t done in a long time (i.e. you are unadapted to it), ease into the activity over time. If you have been lifting and want to be able to run a mile without feeling like crap, then do a light walk/run fartlek workout. If you’re wanting to do hill sprints on sand and haven’t even ran yet, then get adapted to running before sprinting. In my example above, I experienced systemic responses because I wasn’t systemically ready for it (by the way, you have to be strong enough to push yourself hard enough to get systemically fucked up, if you’re weak then it isn’t possible). The two running examples in this paragraph are more relevant to the localized structural stress in your joints and legs. You don’t want to have sore knees from jogging a mile when you haven’t ran in a year and half, and you certainly don’t want to pull a muscle trying to sprint since it will limit all of your other training too.
Don’t be stupid or stubborn; ease yourself into new activity. If you don’t, you can have a miserable experience like I did one night, or you’ll cause an injury that will last longer than sitting on the toilet. In either case, bad programming is to fault. You’ve been warned.
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Post your training and life PR’s to the comments. If you didn’t hit any, then update us on your training, ask questions, or talk about this weekend’s football games.
Beard of the Day
Sébastien Chabal – French Rugby player
“Known for his full beard and merciless tackling his fans call him l’Homme des Cavernes – The Caveman”
Apparently he’s 6’3″ and 255 with a rumored 7% body fat. Thanks to RobE for the submission
New Shirt for the Ladies
A shirt made specifically for women is now available for pre-sale (orders will begin shipping next Friday). The Bella brand shirt is a thinner, softer cotton that form fits to the body with cap sleeves and a modest v-neck (not blatant cleavage). The shirt comes in two flavors, light and dark, and each is emblazoned with the image:
This shirt allows the affectionate women to display their preference for a delightfully muscular man in their life as well as their appreciation for 70’s Big. The light shirt is baby blue with a pink heart while the dark shirt is plum with off-white font and a light pink heart. Images displayed below are low quality. Refer to the above image for design.
Today is Veteran’s Day, Remembrance Day, or Armistice Day depending on where you live in the world. I’m sure you’ll see events on television or experience moments of silence. I’ll ask two things of the American readers:
1. Remember the the cost of creating our country. While this is a stereotypical sentiment, consider the individual sacrifices it took to have a country of our own. Freedom from tyranny was worth dying for and it was worth the struggle to create a republic with individual rights and opportunity.
2. Consider the individual sacrifice it took all those years ago in a rebellious fight for freedom. Now look at the image above and think about every single battle that has been fought since to preserve that freedom, that way of life. Wars and battles occur for a multitude of reasons, but the men and women who lead this country chose war and violence in order to protect and preserve our freedom (even if that reason only made up a small part of that decision). The sacrifice doesn’t lie with the country, but the individual and his family. You can read the book 1776 by David McCullough to read about the sacrifices of George Washington and his band of starving farmers. You can read Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose to read the story of how Dick Winters and Easy Company fought and survived through World War II. Nowadays you can go to any base or post throughout the country and see the personnel who continue the, for lack of a better term, tradition of upholding our freedom. These are Americans who have chosen to not only risk their lives, but ironically give up their own freedom to a country that aims to preserve liberty. The real hero in America is the mother who holds steady with two children while her husband deploys halfway around the world. The real hero is the husband who kisses his daughters one last time as he he leaves for his year long PCS in Korea. The Americans serving in the military and their families bear the individual sacrifice of preserving freedom so that you don’t have to think about it. And that’s what makes them heroes.
Today think of the past and think of the present. Place your politics aside and be thankful that these people exist, and they always will.
The Internationa Powerlifting Federation (IPF) has re-structured their weight classes. The old weight classes:
Men (kg)
56/60/67.5/75/82.5/90/100/110/125/125+
Women (kg)
48/52/56/60/67.5/75/82.5/90/90+
New Weight Classes
Men
58/66/74/83/93/105/120/120+
Women
47/52/57/63/72/84/84+
I don’t know what to make of it. In both cases the cap for heavyweights was lowered and the minimum changed (men’s increased, women’s decreased). I know that Chris won’t be slimming down to the 265 lbs weight class, so it looks like he’ll be a super heavyweight. There’s speculation of why the weight classes were changed, but I’m not familiar with the variables that went into the official decision (I’m sure there are a lot of pissed off dudes). Feel free to share any info you find.
Additionally, I always look at the USAPL as the standard in powerlifting. I’ve had issues with their judging (and other people have echoed the same), but it’s one federation that is prominent throughout the country. I’m not a fan of having eight thousand different federations (Hitler is most definitely NOT a fan either, see video below). It seems that the changing weight classes will just stir the pot around a bit more and promote disparity between feds. Thoughts?
Beard of the Day goes to Brian Daboll, Cleveland Browns offensive coordinator, who called a HELL of a game against the New England Patriots last Sunday. He sported a decent beard (and a shaved head, so he looks extra creepy) in the big victory in which running back Peyton Hillis rushed had over 200 yards of offense (184 yards of bruising, biceps-led rushing), and Colt McCoy pulled his weight in completing 74% of his passes, making key third down throws, and scoring a rushing touchdown. More importantly, this fired Daboll the. fuck. up. He basically attacked McCoy after his rushing touchdown and almost knocked him over. Finally…something to be glad about as a Browns fan.
