Seminar Hangover

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“Mmmm…can you smell it?”

It is the night after our barbell seminar in Wichita Falls, and we are all a bit burned out. 20 hours of material will do that to you. There were a lot of great people at the seminar, and I hope to see most of them again (I demanded that a few of them make a return soon). If any of you who attended are reading this, feel free to give your thoughts on the seminar.

On Friday, someone from JP’s gym posted a link from his website. It is written by one of his female trainees, and can not only give us dudes an insight on female training, but can also be an interesting read for the ladies. The article can be found here, and here is an excerpt:

Armed with the confidence that only strength can bring, I ate with reckless abandon. I immediately blew past my previous sticking points and hit PR, after PR, after PR… a 50-pound deadlift PR instills confidence in the milk like nothing else! About six weeks into this “gaining” cycle, I competed in my first powerlifting meet. With my first official lifts under my belt, I paused to take in the moment. I was in awe of the progress I””d made in such a relatively small period of time, and I recognized that without the simple dietary additions of milk and meat, this rate of strength gain would not have been possible. I had arrived at a much-awaited turning point. The realization that my new found strength was the result of a carefully executed strategy allowed me, for the first time in a long time, to believe I was capable of changing my body. I had successfully escaped my obsession with body image and in the process, managed to reverse the longstanding misconception that I””m stuck with my body as it is. Confident and inspired, I was ready to take my training to the next level. Or so I thought…

Discuss.

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Here is a video of my pal Brian who I have been training for a few months. Brian is on the weightlifting team, and will either lift in the 94 or 105 kg class (he was about 205 when he started, now he is accidentally 216, so we have to figure it out before the meet in January). I have Brian on a linear progression type program that includes the Olympic lifts, so he squats twice a week. Recently he started practicing football twice a week for a “semi-pro” football team (or whatever you call it, Brian). In other words, he is doing two strength workouts, two weightlifting workouts, and two practices a week, and still making progress. Friday he squatted 495x5x3, and here is a video of the third set:

PR Friday

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UFF-DA!

PR Friday, people! This is where you will post the week’s accomplishments in lifting, eating, or gaining body weight. If you lift over the weekend, write your PR’s here anyway (as opposed to Monday’s post).

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On the back-end of this website, I am able to go in and see who is linking to us. We’ve been linked to from a lot of places; from Washington state to Europe. 70’s Big makes an appearance on a lot of forums and it’s kinda funny to see the random criticism for the site, because usually it doesn’t make much sense.

The biggest misconception is that we are claiming that you eat an asinine amount of food for THE REST OF YOUR LIFE! ARRGGGHHHHH! Look, there is no 70’s Big diet. The main thing we are concerned about is that you are eating enough to sustain getting stronger and bigger for your training goals, and we hope that those goals include some kind of competition.

It just so happens to be that the majority of people who are reading this site need to gain around 50 pounds of body weight just to be useful. Guys and girls like this — yes, lots of girls are underweight, albeit not 50 pounds underweight — need to get lots of calories in along with the mandatory protein. Will they gain a little bit of bodyfat? Potentially, but usually it is insignificant if they are training hard.

I am going to say this really obnoxiously because everyone always misses this important fact:

NOBODY IS SUGGESTING THAT YOU EAT A BAG OF TRAIL MIX, ICE CREAM WITH MAGIC SHELL, AN EXTRA LARGE PIZZA TOPPED WITH OLIVE OIL, AND EGG NOG FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

I AM suggesting that you do this if you need to gain muscular body weight, and I AM saying that you need to do this if you are skinny and want to get stronger. Once you achieve an appropriate weight, then you will eat to maintain that mass while fueling your recovery. Quit misconstruing what I say or what this site stands for. I just want you strong, and if you are small, you need to do things in order to get bigger and stronger.

Bigger guys (230+) can probably get away with a Paleo-type diet that includes milk and dairy. Bigger guys will require lots more food to meet protein and caloric requirements, and even more so when they are lifting lots of weight on a regular basis. You people that don’t strength train have to understand that the nutritional requirements change when you are placing a lot of stress on your body. Things don’t affect you in the same way that they do when you are an “exerciser” or a lazy person.

70’s Big is most inspiring to the skinny kid who needs a kick in the ass to eat like a 220 pound guy would instead of a 150 pound child. But this website also serves anybody who is wanting to get stronger. The fact is that everybody has a unique situation, but we are all the same in that we want to be stronger today than we were yesterday. There are no absolutes but getting stronger.

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Since we are talking about it, here is a food plan that I made for my buddy Cliff to help him push from 200 to 220. Cliff weighed around 175 when he started lifting here, and got up to 220 while working a full time job. He figures he will make a push to 240 after the city league basketball season. This picture appeared a few months ago, and I consider it a classic.

Cliff’s stellar food plan

A food plan from a few months ago



Note: I made a mistake with what I refer to as the Facebook Fiasco. I stated that I wanted you guys to identify yourselves if you want friendship on Facebook, and then I got a stupid amount of friend requests. I’ve since decided that I won’t be accepting any of this fubar unless I actually know you. Sorry, but it makes things easier to manage, and it ensures that I won’t A) be murdered in the middle of the night or B) subject to awkward bromances. Females are still welcome.

Competition

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“You can’t just go around killing people!”
“Why not? I’m a Terminator.”

At 70’s Big I have always encouraged people to compete in something so that training can be pinpointed to a goal. Competing is a lot of fun, it makes training more interested, and it gives you more of a sense of purpose than just exercising (which is what you do if you say, “I just want to get better at everything, tee hee!”).

Well, if you ever were interested in competing in the barbell sports (powerlifting or weightlifting), then you better get acquainted with the rules.

USA Powerlifting (USAPL) is a member of the International Powerlifting Federation (IPF). Their rule book is found here.

USA Weightlifting (USAW) is a member of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF). Their rule book is found here.

It’s a good idea to become acquainted with the rules so that you don’t have a booboo in a meet. Kinda like Jacob did on his third attempt squat…

Nevertheless, nice job, Jacob. I will let him recap the meet in the comments.

The Truth

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Girls heart guys that are 70’s Big

I got an e-mail from someone asking me to do a favor. They wanted me to talk about love today. I’m a nice guy so I agreed, and now I have to pull something out of my ass.

I’ve always considered love to be one of those things that is necessary for happiness. That could mean the love of doing, the love of things, or the love for someone — all of that shit. I’m probably one of those people who will be happiest being in love with someone while doing the things that I love — and the same probably goes for most people.

It’s a pretty big deal if you can find someone that not only has all of the qualities you would look for, but also when that person loves you in return. For example, if you are a guy named Craig, then you might be in the midst of having a really happy anniversary with your lovely wife, Dana. That’s right, Craig, your wife loves you so much that she weasled her way into having me write about love today.

Now, I don’t believe in luck or anything like that, but I wonder what kind of shit Craig pulled to find himself in a situation with a caring wife like Dana. You’re a lucky guy, Craig; you’ve got a woman who cares about you and hearts guys that are 70’s Big. Must be nice.

You two love birds have a good anniversary, ya hear?

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The obligatory Meatloaf video:

And here is some lifting to stay in theme.

House Keeping

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“Live every day like it’s Shark Week.”

Look, I don’t have much time to post right now, so lets get some basic stuff taken care of.

  • If you are going to send me a friend request on Facebook, and are a guy,  give me the courtesy of identifying your purpose of doing so. In other words, I don’t like getting friend requests from creepy dudes that live in Montana.
  • Edit: This did not say “every dude on here needs to send me a friend request today”.
  • If you are a girl, you have the green light. Please.
  • The reason that whenever you type a single right quote mark (’) into the comments and it turns into a double quote mark is because there is some kind of coding error on our server. We called the people that run it, and they are unable to do anything about it. Some people have offered to look at the issue, but we’re just living with it for now.
  • If you want to type a single right quote into the comments section, then you can paste “’” without the quotes and space. That whole text sequence is going to be the HTML code for the ’.
  • Lastly, http://StartingStrength.com has published a couple of articles lately that may be pertinent to your training or knowledge thereof. So far, Mark Rippetoe is the only author, but there will be more articles by VIP’s. Stay tuned. You can read the articles here.

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Daniel is a 19 year-old sophomore at Gonzaga University. He is 5’11″ and 210.  This here is a video of him pulling 525 for a 1RM.