There’s a reason we take time from our day to go to the gym. There’s a reason we pay close attention to our diet and spend evenings working on mobility. There’s a reason we read and talk about strength training every day online. Imagine:
Chalk floats softly through the air. The thumping of your heart is all you hear, all you feel. You step to the bar and place your hands on it, feeling the cold knurling on callused hands. The whirling hurricane of emotion settles into the eye of the storm, the peaceful moment when you have to make a decision to begin.
This introspection is the true reason we love training. That delicate, beautiful moment before starting a lift is the ultimate reflection of the soul. Is it angry, irritable, and ready to tear flesh with gnashing teeth? Or is it unsure, unsteady, and hesitant? As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t — you’re right.”
There are moments where our bodies feel defeated, incapable. Whether the fire comes from within, a friend, or music, our minds can kick down the door of possibilities and force the body to destroy a set with frightening clarity. The ability was always there, yet we must learn how to awaken it every training session. The fire rises, brother.
Your co-workers have an idea of who you are, some kind of abstraction. But there’s more to you, something illusory that no one can understand. You can stand there smiling while shaking hands, feeling their flesh gripping yours. Your lifestyles may even be comparable, but the truth is that they know nothing of the internal struggles, battles, triumphs, and failures you regularly feel. They’ll never understand the significance of cold, rough steel. Instead of bothering with these true moments of clarity, you smile again and ask how their Tuesday evening was. It’s easier that way.
Listen up fuckers, it’s Movember. This isn’t a game.
Movember is an annual call to hairy arms to raise funds for men’s health issues, specifically prostate and testicular cancer. Last year we kicked cancer in the BALLS by collectively raising about 6,000 doll hairs. I think this year we can do better. This year’s goal is to raise eleventy bazillion 8,000 doll hairs.
If everyone who is reading this donated ONE doll hair — just a single doll hair — then we would easily hit our goal in a day or so. So please, join the cause so we can really GIVE IT to cancer.
Movember focuses on growing a mustache, but 70’s Big just asks you to grow facial hair in general. You can do “no shave November”, start a mustache from scratch, or continue whatever facial hair you’ve already been working on.
I’ve spent so much time trying to help guys get their the women in their lives training that I’ve neglected the gals who actually DO train. You lovely ladies actually carry the torch — the one that sets fire to bullshit conventional cardio bunny stereotypes.
This girl expects to be sore from stretching.
In this video, Nick Offerman of Ron Swanson fame reads tweets by young female celebrities. Ashley Tisdale — who I honestly have never heard of before — said, “Cardio then yoga? I am gonna be sore!” This is a god damn joke. Aside from the fact that it’s one of those pointless-ass status updates that reflect the epitome of narcissism in American youth, the girl expects to be sore from repetitive movement on an elliptical, stretching, and posing. FUCKING POSING.
Ladies. This is what we’re up against.
Wait, this isn’t supposed to be about the enemy. Let’s try and ignore her internal rotation and thoracic flexion. Let’s try and ignore her complete lack of muscle mass. Let’s try and ignore the fact that if she were to be caught in a stiff breeze, she would fall apart.
No, this is about you ladies — you lifting, training ladies — carrying that torch, lighter fluid, and trebuchet to burn down the preconceived notion that being a useless human being WILL NOT STAND. I salute you, woman of barbell lifting.
Tell us about yourself. How did you get into lifting and serious training? Why do you like it? What do you hope to get out of it? There is no wrong answer, I’m just curious as to what was the catalyst for setting yourself apart from the waif or fat girl modern society expected you to be.
Continue to pave the way for serious female trainees by setting a good example. If possible, help your friends — male and female — try it out. Find your niche, whether it’s just getting stronger, powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, or strongman, and stick with it. Train hard and have fun.
Quick question: I have been experiencing achy elbows lately, especially my right one. I’m not doing anything different that I am aware of, but mobbing and stretching them seems to do nothing. I’m guessing it is probably the beginnings of tendinitis and it may stem from grip width during low-bar squatting, but it never ever bothers me until I’m outside of the gym doing random stuff. The most painful thing is gripping a full glass with my (right) arm fully extended and the pain gets worse if I were to dump the glass out to the right. What would you recommend I do to diagnose/fix this issue and prevent it from happening in the future? I know a recent vid of my squat would probably help immensely, but I never film myself since I train foreveralone.jpg in a globo…so I will work on getting one asap.
I’ve also been hitting a wall with the Texas Method, which I’ve been running strictly for 4 months now after buying your book in June – No real PRs in, like, 3 weeks. I’ve been feeling good, mobbing, and eating like a horse (at least getting 1g protein/1lb BW) but just not feeling any stronger. Is it time to get advanced with my TM template (I’m hesitant to do this since I haven’t been on it that long), or just change up some of the set/rep schemes for now? Some numbers:
5’5” – 175lb – 33y.o.
VD SQ – 295x5x5
OHP – 120x5x5
BP – 185x5x5
ID SQ – 365×5
OHP – 140×5
BP – 205×5
DL – 395×3
I can’t say it enough, but thank you so much for all of your help thus far, Justin – You’re advice has proved invaluable and I can’t wait to see how much better and more useful in general you can make these aging and broken human beings – – Keep it up! (sorry for the novel, btw)
-Joel (aka. blister)
Dear Joel,
Good to hear that your wife is doing better (he explained this in the e-mail, but I omitted it for space). Once you guys get back from the vacation, get on a regular exercise regime — start with at least 2x/wk with other days for walking (have dogs?).
Regarding your elbow, I’d first assume that your squat grip is what is irritating it. This is actually quite common. You can see some discussion on this from Q&A – 27 and Q&A – 28 (just ctrl+F “grip”). Improve shoulder mobility and grip position on the squat and do some soft tissue massage up and down stream from the area of injury. The former will fix the underlying problem while the latter can help treat the issue itself.
Regarding your lack of progress on TM, your volume squat work is only about 80% of your intensity squat work, so you can actually stand to increase the volume a bit more. I’d say stick with the 5×5 and increase the weight a bit and see what happens on that particular lift. As for the other lifts, there isn’t a whole lot of info here to go on, but your bench volume is 90% of your intensity bench work, and that is a bit high. Either reduce it down to a 3×5 on the Volume Day or reduce the weight overall. Your presses are also a bit weak, and in this type of situation I usually like to recommend weighted pull-ups once or twice a week and later adding rows into the mix as well. Filling out the upper body strength and musculature helps drive the presses, but also be sure to check out this press video (the elbow positioning is important while benching too, these videos may help: one and two):
Lastly, you need to eat more protein than just 1g per pound of body weight. Check out this “PROTEIN” post, but I would add 50g on top of what you currently get. I suspect that you’ll start making progress after a week straight of the additional 50g (the new intake needs to be chronic, not a “sometimes” thing).
This is Brent; 5’5″ of Korean anger and disappoint.
You guys will never believe all of the Brent look-a-likes I’ve been running into! For those of you that have been living under a stupid rock, Brent is my friend (and you’re not). He became infamous via his training log, and nowadays is pretending to run MopeilityWOD.com. He also sells some pretty sweet shirts HERE. To give you some perspective, I’ve had a 48 year old Australian man ask me, “Does Brent really act like that in real life?”
Anyway, I’ve strangely noticed how so many people out in the world look like Brent Kim. In June, Chris and I took this photo with our waiter, because he bore a striking resemblance to the sexually frustrated Brent Kim.
Whether or not this waiter is Mexican is immaterial
While I was in Denver, Shawn, Jeremy, Dan, and I continuously thought Brent was in our presence. We decided to take some pictures with these look-a-likes. Here are our findings.
This fun loving guy looks EXACTLY like Brent.
After some more beers at the Great American Beer Festival, this guy looked even MORE like Brent.
While sprinting back to our hotel, we found this guy stumbling around incoherently. Jeremy told him to flex, and he just yelled. Oh, and he looks EXACTLY like Brent.
On our way to breakfast the next morning, we found this studly Brent look-a-like.
We couldn’t believe how many Brent Look-a-likes we found! I can assure you that as I encounter them, I will photograph and document the moment for your viewing pleasure. If you happen to take any pictures with guys that look like Brent, then post the pictures on the 70’s Big Facebook or Twitter.
This introspection is the true reason we love training. That delicate, beautiful moment before starting a lift is the ultimate reflection of the soul. Is it angry, irritable, and ready to tear flesh with gnashing teeth? Or is it unsure, unsteady, and hesitant? As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t — you’re right.”
