Mobility-wise, I have not felt better in a long fucking time. My fucking internal rotation? I’m like – this feels like fucking 100% to me. I muscle snatched 110lbs/50k for a triple, and it was like, legit muscled – I lost momentum at about neck height and there was quite a bit of muscling involved to turn the bar overhead. And it didn’t hurt and my shoulders weren’t fucked. I also benched before this, and also snatched and c+jed after, and my shoulders aren’t fucking inflamed. My bottom position squats feel pretty solid, I held some decent stuff overhead (as well as two days ago). I have legit improved my movement options. I’ve been doing mob work for … I dunno. Maybe a little under a year. I started probably sometime last year around October or November. I feel like a completely different athlete.

I benched up to 265lbs for a paused double on Friday, backed off to 245lbs for a paused triple. This has been an interesting week for pressing. For starters I’ve pressed 3x this week with 48 hours rest between sessions and I haven’t felt too bad. It’s been relatively low-volume.

Power snatched + snatch from the hang up to 195lbs, then squat snatched + snatched from the hang 205lbs, then squat snatched 215lbs (and missed a snatch from the hang).

Clean-and-jerked up to 275lbs, cleaned 285lbs twice and missed the jerk both times. My jerks felt surprisingly good, and I thought today would be the day I’d fucking PR on this shit but I have a few loose ends to tie together here. My split’s a lot better (from couch stretching and attacking quad/suprapatellar soft tissue) so I’m able to fucking support the shit I get overhead. However, I probably need to think about starting from a tight, organized position so that I finish in a tight, organized position, thinking about something to cue external rotation in the front rack.

For a while, the discrepancy in my knee flexion was affecting my snatch and clean bottom position quite a bit. Especially in the snatch, I’d always twist towards the side that was deficient in knee flexion. That’s definitely a lot better now and in addition to that I feel a lot more organized receiving cleans.

Finished up this workout with some weighted ring dips and worked up to +60lbs x 4.

Overall this was a pretty good workout, if for no other reason than I felt like a reasonably supple leopard.

* * *

Power snatched 205lbs today (Saturday), then power cleaned 260lbs + front squat + jerk for a power clean PR. Also c+jed up to 285lbs for a 10lbs c+j PR.

High-bar squat 365lbs x 5 and 385lbs x 3 afterwards, went home, ate, rested, came back to train with Saul and Becky and high-bar back squat 385lbs x 5.

Push pressed 195lbs for a single and a double.

Snatch-grip dead 352lbs for two sets of 4.

Weighted pull ups, curls, rounded-back extensions, I was fucking done after the first set of snatch-grip deads.

So let me link this one more time – starting from a stable, organized position to finish in a stable, organized position. Thinking about externally rotating the shoulders + pulling them back (not completely, but not having them forward and deliberately squeezing the scaps back) did a fucking legit number for my jerk. I felt real solid overhead, the jerks I hit today are the best jerks I’ve hit in a real long fucking time.

Went to a breakfast place pre-workout in the late AM today, saw a real cute hostess with a pretty smile, didn’t talk to her. Supposedly she was looking in our direction as we walked out the door but she was either into my roommate’s guns since he was wearing a sleeveless shirt or my buddy’s emo haircut and glasses.

Jake writes:

Have you watched many movies from the 70′s? Do you realize that ALL of them end in the most depressing fucking way possible. Usually it involves the main character dying. Fuck, just check out Get Carter.
So in honor of those horrible movie endings, you should start a 70′s Depressed seminar. I’d go and I have a fucking girlfriend. Fuck.

I’m very rarely in a depressed mood so I wouldn’t know anything about giving a seminar on being depressed.

melody writes:

I go to the same gym as you, but at a different time. Now when I read your blog IT makes me feel like a total stalker. Even though I read it before. Way to make things weird.

You may as well have just asked me “so uh … what are you wearing?” with a comment like that.

Best writes:

This was a deload week, so no PR’s but I did find a wallet with about 350 cash in it. I went to the chicks house cuz she lived near me and she gave a hundred bucks for returning it. She was ugly so I didn’t bang her but I clearly could have. My girlfriend had a pumpkin carving party with her friends, I went to that and got drunk then went to sleep; it couldn’t have gone better.
Life is good in SoCal, where do you live again?
Oh, and thanks for inspiring me to help out at a suicide hotline; since you don’t update frequently enough for my misery fix, I supplement with phone calls of other self loathers. I hope this doesn’t make you jealous.

Pumpkin carving party doesn’t sound that fun, if you’ll lettuce beans real tea for a moment. I’d rather be couch stretching or rolling my glutes/high hamstrings out with a ball. Or playing StarCraft 2. Watching the Day[9] Daily. Getting drunk just sounds fucking terrible. Since I’m Korean, any experience with imbibing alcohol typically blows since I just get a headache, inflamed, and go to sleep after very minimal intake (i.e. less than two beers). I’ve never enjoyed the sensations I got from drinking alcohol. Some people feel sorry for me because of that but it’s hard for me to see a downside to not drinking. I think the first time I went to sleep after drinking two beers, the people I was hanging out with took turns dry humping me. I don’t remember it happening.

I am off Oct 31st but don’t have any plans to go to Halloween/costume parties. Nor have I been invited to any. I intend to be at the gym for the majority of the early evening, doing some volume pressing, and probably eating a lot of grass-fed meat afterwards. There’s a lot of people on my facebook feed posting pictures of their costume parties. I’m pretty indifferent.

Ask me how foreveralone.jpg I feel. Seriously. Just ask me. Ask me.

I clean-and-pressed 175lbs for a pretty smoked triple on Wednesday for a legit life-time all reps dead-stopped press PR. Thom Vale had this to say about it:

Tom: that’s decent
i don’t care what you press
because it’s never going to be 230
so grats on prssing
Tom: 55lbs less
than the required amount?
Tom: hi 5 for not reaching the goal?
Tom: congratulations, you made it to everest base camp, but not the summit?

So I filed this away in my folder labeled “Motivation.” where I compile all the things that have been said and done to me that make me want to train (these are the same things that haunt me that will drive me to start a never-ending cycle of 500mg test IM a day). Among other things, this is the same record where I’ve written the one time that a girl – who I WASN’T hitting on – told me, “You’ll find a nice girl one day.” That is to say, “You’ll find a nice girl one day, but it sure as FUCK isn’t going to be me. I am just saying this pre-emptively just so we are on the same page. Good luck with your being single goals of 2011.”

Yeah that folder doesn’t really exist. I mean it does but I don’t have a written record.

For those of you aren’t aware: a current side quest in my overall mission statement is to press 230lbs while at a bw < 175lbs before the end of 2012. Thom Vale doesn't think I can do it before then. I intend to press 230lbs from a clean, with a dead-stop, for a double, since I am 2x the man Thom Vale doesn't think I am. Every time I do something pressing related I think of Thom Vale telling me I am shit, I am nothing, I don't belong here. NEGATIVE SERGEANT I AM SPECIAL FORCES MATERIAL.

I also snatched 225lbs, c+jed 275lbs (after three or four attempts, meaning I cleaned it 4x and missed the jerk 3x), and high-bar back squat 390lbs x 3 without a belt. I haven’t been stretching my glutes/hip external rotators as frequently as I have, but I’ve been hitting them pretty regularly again and my shit is normalizing back into something that makes for decent squat mechanics.

This is a guy who does commentating for SC2. If you think SC2 is lame, get fucked please. Anyways I wanna train with Day[9]. Him and Tasteless actually, two coolest guys in the world, I’d def do some benching with them in a globo. If I could choose between training with some hardcore national team in like Cuba or Russia or even the OTC vs. benching with 30mm bars at a fucking globo with Day[9] and/or Tasteless – well I’d pick the former if I have to be 100% honest. But honestly? Honestly? Day[9] legit seems like a cool guy and it’d be sweet to bang out some dips with him or something.

This is what I’m reduced to. Watching clips of a guy’s fucking YouTube vlog wishing I could be friends with him.

Ryan asks:

Brent, how do you feel about the McRib?

It looks like a pile of dog shit.

Captain Ronn writes:

The Choctaw Nation has a wellness center in Hugo. It’s for shit. I live in Oklahoma City now but we could definitely meet up in Hugo. We could buy a 30 pack of Keystone Light and get rejected by toothless meth heads. And then fucking kill ourselves. Please respond.

Oklahoma City?????? Jesus. Fuck that. I’m not gonna have both of us drive 2 hours to meet in a fucking podunk city to train at a shitty gym, eat shitty food, and have one person drink shitty beer (since I do not drink). We should figure something out though. Maybe we can meet up for a meet if you do PL or OL.

I’d be interested in having a 70s Big/I’m Just An Asshole Who Reads Your Blog meet-up sometime as well. Would make for at least a few good facebook pics and a decent blog post I imagine.

Matt writes:

If you need to meet a nice Korean girl come to Gwinnett Co. GA. You pick pick tons of them out at the Assi Supermarket or Super H Mart. Or you can check out one of the 10,000!! Fucking Korean church’s that are EVERWHERE in Duluth. If you can’t find the soy for your sauce here you are out of luck chop stick.

One of the best comments ever posted to this site, well done.

No it didn’t really make much of a difference in my online activity.

I was supposed to do an intensity press this past Monday but I forgot when I got to the gym and tried to do another volume press. I ended up pressing 162.5lbs for 5, 4, 2, and 1 and did a back-off set at 150lbs x 5. The strikingly decreased performance after the second set probably came from the fact that I was super-setting my presses with front squats, and hit 335lbs for 3, 3, and 2, which is pretty close to a kind of volume PR.

This workout would have been better if I pressed 172.5lbs for a triple, or 175lbs for a double. I will prob be attempting that tomorrow and doing a lot of weighted ring dips for accessory/bodybuilding. Unless my warm-up presses feel like shit, then I’ll just do push presses and a bunch of ring dips, then continue with regularly-scheduled programming.

My aunt from Hawaii is in Dallas this week. I’ve been hanging out over at my other aunt’s place where some of the family has gotten together. My grandma asked me why I didn’t have a girlfriend. I said I don’t know. She asked me how old I was. I said twenty-five. She said I needed to hurry and get married, but not to a Korean immigrant. She recommended finding a good American-born Korean girl. Or a white girl. They were OK, too. I said ooh KAY.

I also had another unreal conversation with my dad a few days ago:

Dad: Hi, Brent.
Me: Hi.
Dad: What are you doing?
Me: I’m at work.
Dad: When are you off this week?
Me: I’m off Wednesday.
Dad: Eh?
Me: I’m off Wednesday.
Dad: Monday?
Me: Wednesday.
Dad: You’re off MONDAY?
Me: No, I’m off Wednesday.
Dad (frustrated now): Brent, are you off Monday or Wednesday?
Me: Wednesday.
Dad: MONDAY!?!?
Me: Can you hear me?
Dad: What?
Me: Can you hear me?
Dad: Yes.
Me: I’m off Wednesday.
Dad: Oh, Wednesday. OK, Brent. Don’t work too hard. Talk to you later.

Just so fucking unreal. This is my reality. There are no lettuce or beans in it.

I realized today that my so-called “happy place,” or my go-to thought for a mental break from work or a stressful situation, is to think of myself squeezing belly-tight into an externally-rotated start position for the snatch by first tightening the back, then loading the hip. That is what I think of when I’ve been working a busy shift, or when the girl with the pretty smile at work doesn’t pay much attention to me.

Ryan writes:

I am from Hugo, OK which is about 15 miles north of Powderly. It’s probably the smallest town in Texas.

What’s the gym scene like in Hugo, OK? Also – you wanna hang out sometime? Like train together and have a post-workout meal. Come at me if you’re interested. At the very least I can bring my 40lbs dumbbell and meet up somewhere, we could do a bunch of sets of db curls to failure and then eat at fucking McDonald’s. That last sentence was pretty serious except for the part about eating at McDonald’s.

Best writes:

Had a great week of lifting last week, each day was better than the last and I’ve never felt so far from suicide. I’ve decided to give up reading anything written by anyone positive and instead focus my attention on the miserable and use that to feel really good about my sunshine life.
Thanks Brent.

Hey man that’s cool keep me updated. I’ll be here. Waiting. With the muzzle of an M1911 in my fucking mouth.

I called VPVG when we were both working Saturday. She didn’t seem terribly excited to talk to me.

VPVG: Hello?
Me: Hi, VPVG.
VPVG: Hi, Brent.
Me: What are you doing.
VPVG: I’m wor-
Me: Please respond.
VPVG: What?

No, but how funny would it be if I did say that. She was asking about the girls working at the front desk at my clinic and I said

“Why, are you afraid I’m going to cheat on you?”

to which she replied, “Oh no, you would never!” Be still my heart. We spoke on the phone for about five minutes and then I had to get back to work. Then she didn’t respond to a text I sent her. Please respond. Take care.

If it sounds like I’m depressed, I’m not. This is me having a good day.

I’m shirtless on Thom’s webcam and he is at uni. People are walking past him in the background – we’ve done this before and people have seen what’s on his screen (because he full-screened my cam) and started loling and pointing. Thom doesn’t care.

Training hasn’t been ideal this week because as Justin has mentioned many times I don’t sleep like a fucking human. I was wanting to bench on Wednesday, but slept in, then wanted to do it Thursday, but slept in instead again (and had to go to work both days). So I did a fucking lot tonight (Friday) and ended up doing the following:

high-bar squat 405lbs x 1, 385lbs x 3
power snatched 185lbs x 2
power cleaned 245lbs x 1 + 1 squat clean
benched 245lbs x 2, 4, 3, 4
RDLed 330lbs x 9, 6
rounded-back back extensions
curls

This was after about 5 hours of driving with Saul and it really could have been better. I probably would have benefited from some mobbing after the drive. It’s fine. The RDL x 9 was a PR and hurt a lot to do. So Cristina:

Brent,
When I do over 14 deadlifts, my legs get tired and I stop. How do I improve?
I guess I could use an ergometer.

I’ve never done more than 10 deadlifts – and I’d probably fucking kill myself if I did. Cristina pulls 220lbs x 14 @ like 137-140lbs lol lol lol.

Benching could have been better and might have gone better if I didn’t take my last warm-up at 215lbs and go directly to 245 – it felt heavy when I took it out of the rack for the first set but on subsequent sets felt much more manageable.

I warmed up with muscle snatches and worked up to 105lbs x 3, so Brian:

95lbs for a muscle snatch is a fucking jelly dick weight

Oh I’m Brian, I’m gonna make fun of a guy WHO JUST FUCKING OBTAINED THE GLENO-HUMERAL INTERNAL ROTATION TO EVEN DO A FUCKING MUSCLE SNATCH for doing jelly-dicked weight, hey man thanks for the fucking constructive criticism, let me implement what I learned from that into my training. Call me if you want to talk about it – I’ll be the guy foaming at the mouth on his bedroom floor after swallowing a cyanide capsule.

Justin writes:

It’s like me travelling all the way to Libya, using HUMINT and SIGINT to find relatives of Gaddafi, traveling to their home, knocking on the door, introducing myself, then saying, “Hey, I just wanted you to know that I don’t care that Gaddafi was killed. Or that he cried like a bitch before it happened even though he pissed thousands of people off to the point that they wanted to go to war with him.”

lol lol lol

Best writes:

I have been training for a little under two years, in this time I went from 26 yrs old 165 to 28 yrs old 210 at 5’9. My whole life before lifting weights was getting shit faced, skating, and playing pool. I recently squatted 440, Deadlifted 510,PC 125 KG, and benched 320.
My girlfriend is hot and she trains now too. I live in SoCal and have a great relationship with my family and friends. I still drink and smoke heavily regularly and my bodfat is around 10%.
I guess what I’m saying is thanks.

Tell me more.

Saul and I drove to Powderly, Texas again to get more grass-fed beef which took about an hour longer than it should have because I took or missed about 3 turns. I should note that this didn’t happen the first time we drove since I brought directions. We drove past a lot of cows and Saul made it a point to make sure I knew that the cows basically never stopped eating, as they are an herbivore that must eat 3% of it’s bodyweight a day in fucking grass which would fucking blow. We talked for at least a cumulative total of roughly an hour about cows eating grass and various extensions of that subject ranging from metabolic processes, to hypothetical situations i.e. bulls are pretty jacked, could humans get jacked as well eating grass?, to talking about how relaxing and enjoyable it can be to simply watch cows eat.

There is a dog at the farm we go to for our meet who demands attention. It will walk pretty lazily over to our car whenever we come and then forcefully nuzzle our hands so that we pet her. It made me feel needed, and her neediness made me like the dog. I was more or less emotionally fulfilled for about ten minutes today while this dog insisted that I gave her attention, then I left the farm and felt a familiar void of emptiness.

This weekend was a landmark in mobility – I did some pretty legit muscle snatches and didn’t end up with a SLAP tear.

Just been real consistent with hitting my goats, internal rotation for the shoulders, overhead mobility, suprapatellar pouch. I need to put some time aside for my meat sticks, though, forearms + calves and I’ve never really done tack-and-stretch for the hamstrings which I think I should try. That and some high hammy flossing.

On Saturday I muscle snatched 95lbs for a few triples, did some weighted chins that amounted to +55lbs for two sets of 5, +75lbs for a triple, and +90lbs for a single. Did some barbell rows and curling after that and finished up, did some mobility throughout this workout as well.

Sunday I pressed 162.5lbs for 5, 4, 4, 3, and 3, then front squat for 330lbs x 3, 2, 2, then weighted ring dips with chains around my neck for +20lbs x 8. Did quite a bit of mobility after this including super couch, behind-the-back adduction for the shoulders, and joint approximation with the wall squat.

There was a vid on mwod.com that talked about the difference between couch stretch with plantar flexion and super couch with band distraction – apparently you can focus on knee flexion vs. hip extension between the two, and often a limiting factor in couch stretch with plantar flexion is quad soft-tissue tightness – I’ve been hitting my suprapatellar pouch pretty regularly, as well as whatever tight spots I find higher up the quad (esp on the left side), and all of a sudden couch stretch + plantar flexion is a lot fucking easier. There’s always been a discrepancy in knee flexion between my left and right knees, and I was never sure what the FUCK that was about but I think I may be doing the right approach to address it. Tack-and-stretch the suprapatellar pouch, attack quad soft-tissue, and couch stretch + plantar flexion.

Also been hitting glute/high hammies for some soft-tissue work, felt a pretty significant fucking difference squatting tonight, like more musculature was involved.

The changes I’m seeing from mwod legitimately help my deep-seated depression by giving me the illusion of reward in empty progress, the same way that an MMORPG addict is kept hooked into the game by grinding out item hunts/experience.

So yeah – despite the fact that NO ONE gave me any advice or guidance on doing front raises in that thread, YES I will be doing front raises tomorrow after benching. Lateral raises too, hopefully – this is all depending on how fucking early I actually get up to train. If you need me, call me – I’ll be the guy getting a REAL SERIOUS FUCKING PUMP IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR DOING DUMBBELL FRONT RAISES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lone ranger writes:

lol brent ur a real funny guy…but im kind of getting tired of seeing u getting friend zoned by hot chicks. lol im a bit curious who the father of the half hispanic half pakistani girl’s kids are…i bet ur more jacked than him though…anyways im still waiting for the day u make a move on the pretty powerlifting chick and live happily ever after.

Dude, I am real glad you get something out of the shit hole of emotion that this blog is a vessel for, but if you LEGITIMATELY THINK that I am going to even LOOK in that girl’s direction for more than like half a second I’m afraid you’re gonna be real fucking disappointed. I can’t. I just. Fucking. Can’t.

Phil B writes:

I like this youtube meme. I could take or leave hearing about your training and foreveralone.jpg status though. This blog could have more gaming content.
How does this video make you feel?
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxX7SRuU0ho&t=1m55s]

I think that I’d like to fucking play co-op with that guy??????

Becky writes:

you spent more time naked with saul than i did. so sad. so on a scale of 1-10, 1 being uff da ugly and 10 being sizzling hot, how would you rate saul?

He’s about a 9. Like Justin, he is a source of inspiration for my aesthetic goals. No homo.

Interesting mob issue – my shit feels like it’s fucking sucked since my volume squat the day before hitting 1rms three days apart for Chris’s study and just hasn’t gotten better. Squatting in particular has fucking blown, though I’ve felt pretty shitty snatching and cleaning as well. I feel weak coming out of the hole, and my pull and receiving position in both the snatch and clean has not been that great – it started with just sucking at the bottom position as far as hip/hamstring tension, and then later on I kept dumping lifts that should have been made forward so my overhead position has been blowing a while too. After squatting last night I felt like I wasn’t utilizing as much musculature as I should have been, i.e. external rotation of the knees was not happening very well. So after yesterday’s workout I did three things: banded the elbows together and went overhead with externally-rotated grip (supinated) and neutral spine, then at home I tacked-and-stretched my suprapatellar pouch, and rolled on my glutes and high hamstrings with a lacrosse ball.

Today’s workout went a little better, I felt better pulling my snatches and cleans and I was receiving everything overhead a lot crisper and didn’t have to chase everything like I’ve had to for the past two weeks. I think what made me do the tack-and-stretch was the shitty squat workout last night combined with lateral knee pain with the left leg that has required some warming up in the past few workouts to go away; there was an mwod vid that talked about how having tightened suprapatellar pouch tissue could effect the bottom position of the squat because you’re having to compensate with shitty mechanics to get the last few degrees of knee flexion. I found some pretty grody bits on distal vastus lateralis on both legs that I collected some time tacking-and-stretching with, and suddenly squatting felt a lot fucking better. Might need to do it one or two more times and collect 3-5mins each leg. The first couple times I tacked-and-stretched my suprapatellar pouch, it was my VMO that fucking sucked to deal with, I went to 9/10 pain scale real fucking fast with those. I’ve been back squatting almost exclusively recently though – maybe causing vastus lateralis to get tightened up disproportionately compared to VMO for some reason?

I’m not saying that my force production has been reduced, and all of a sudden it’s back to normal after mobbing – I probably won’t be making PR squats and a lot of that is prob just needing to recover and come back up – but positionally I feel much better and it’s that improved positioning that’s actually had legit, immediate effects on my oly lifting and I suspect it’ll make my squats feel more manageable, i.e. I will be able to start utilizing external rotation of the knees a little easier.

So yesterday I benched up to 260lbs for a double, squat 335lbs for a few sets of 5 and 365lbs x 4, power snatched 175lbs for a triple and missed a lot of power snatches after that, and finished up with some ring dips weighted by +40lbs of chain around my neck. This workout was pretty shitty, esp. re: squatting, and I should have benched 260lbs for at least a triple, and I should be power snatching quite a bit more than 175lbs x 3, but I think I can attribute this to coming back from illness. Have lost some bw, which helps with my bf%, but isn’t really helping me get much more jacked.

Today I felt much stronger despite being the lightest I have been in a real fucking long time, and snatched up to 220lbs without chasing the bar, attempted to c+j 285lbs twice but missed the jerk both times, snatch pulled 255lbs for three triples, and snatch-grip deadlifted 352.5lbs x 5. Felt pretty solid and crisp overhead, and received my snatches and cleans with a pretty good, stable, externally-rotated bottom position.

I met a half-Pakistani, half-hispanic girl at work a few days ago, she’s one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever met and has the ROUNDEST ASS I have ever seen, and I don’t even really give a fucking shit about asses but the ROUNDNESS of her buttocks simply couldn’t be ignored (she was really fucking juicy) – I thought she was flirting with me at first because she showed me a picture of her Halloween costume from last year which was a slutty school girl outfit, but I found out later that she’s married and is a mother of two. Not only is she a mother of two, she’s like a NINETEEN YEAR OLD mother of two; she had a fucking kid when she was 15. I thought she was fucking my age?????? I suppose this is fucking irrelevant since she thought I was funny and seemed to enjoy making conversation with me – I was probably friend-zoned before we even said hello. She said to herself, “I’m gonna friend-zone the next guy I see,” and *poof* there I was. She spoke Spanish to me a few times, i.e. “gracias,” and something something or other “par favor” and the way she spoke made my loins quiver. I guess it’s better this way.

Super hot fitness/powerlifting chick was at the gym this evening today, luckily Brad was lifting as well so I had someone to talk to rather than just twiddle my thumbs and pretend she didn’t exist. Quite frankly I’m surprised I even trained today after I saw her, my tolerance for any interaction with real hot girls has been been more than exceeded by the half-Pakistani chick. I think I’m gonna fucking kill myself.

Look guys – I’m just a regular guy who wants to lift, get jacked, flex in the mirror after showering, and get more mobile. I try not to let my emotions get in the way of that happening. I just do the best I can OK???? Sometimes the best I can is still pretty shitty – but it’s all I’ve fucking got.

criedthefox writes:

Brent, I am curious if you care to comment on this youtube channel? [http://www.youtube.com/user/SpottyDog#p/u/0/ZXvlRqK6Ffs]

I’m not gonna go there man. If she’s training, that is great. Good. Solid. Thick. Best of luck with her YouTube flexing goals in 2011. I’m not delving beyond that.

melvin writes:

thoughts on this video:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD1Dcm0CquI&feature=related]

It’s real real REAL important to me that I lift more than him. Not in that fucking gay shrug exercise but like, I want to bench a lot fucking more than that 90s guido piece of shit.

Jake writes:

Hamworld might be mildly retarded: [http://www.youtube.com/user/hamworld05#p/u/0/myeGT8qDmk4]
Googling his screen name I also found that he’s on some forum called “Personal Development for Smart People Forums”
http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/members/hamworld05.html
Here he is in all his glory:
http://i560.photobucket.com/albums/ss47/hamworld05/Picture0401.jpg

I guess he’s like legit in fucking high school????? I’m not touching this one either. I’m washing my hands of it.

Caught a cold over the weekend, could have been less pleasant.

I did some shitty oly lifting on Friday, snatched 215lbs, tried to do some power snatches and fucking blew at them? C+jed up to 255lbs with a press-out and cleaned up to 265lbs.

Did some clean pulls, weighted chin ups, rounded-back back extensions and curls to finish up. +45lbs x 5 on the chin ups followed by +65lbs x 3.

Today I clean-and-pressed 172.5lbs for a double and another single, then front squat 325lbs for a triple and a double, hit +55lbs x 4 weighted ring dips, +55lbs x 6 weighted chin ups, and banged out some quick hammer db curls but only did 2 sets so this workout does not count towards my goal of curling 5 sets 2x a week. I am glad I did not fucking blow terribly hard after this weekend as I’ve lost a few lbs and was sweating like a motherfucker five minutes into training.

JC writes:

I love that people come here via links on Stronglifts and see you telling them and Medhi to go fuck themselves.
So, serious question: are you still training intuitively or do you have some form f programming at the moment – you seem to be keeping/improving strength on weightlifting and powerlifting movements atm.

lol

I have a schedule I follow, basically Texas Method without a light day and I try to do the oly lifts every training day (though I may be adjusting the frequency of these, or at least how hard I go when I do them. I should prob do more variation than attempting max-effort singles all the time). I haven’t made very many lifetime PRs yet, other than high bar squat PRs but I have not improved them beyond my low bar performance yet. 172.5lbs x 2 press is kind of a lifetime PR since I did both reps dead-stop. I may have front squat a lifetime PR sometime recently. My curling has definitely seen some lifetime PRs recently though.

mdm writes:

I thought this was funny and yeah the first guy you posted from the SS boards now posts on BBcom, great! As for Medhi I personally cannot stand him and I usually get along with everybody but its just something about how he presents himself that I can’t put a name on. Just not the fact on how he words the “articles” he writes but ALSO that for about maybe three years now whenever Deadlifting comes up he ALWAYS has to first mention how he is a natural athlete and can pull 500lbs @ 165. Three years and you can’t even add 5lbs?

I want to see what SL.com looks like with 90% of its user base having been banned.

Tell me how you guys feel about this thread.

Snatched and c+jed like shit, I felt real weak tonight. I did manage to make the session semi-productive by doing some snatches off of blocks for position work. I wish the boxes were like two inches higher, right now the bar rests at exactly knee height when I lift from the blocks, which works, but I’d like a few more options for above and below the knee. I think I can make something work for starting below the knee, there’s some rubber matting that should stack fairly well.

I benched 240lbs for 5, 4, 4, 4 and a final set at 2 (was attempting to take 20 reps total) tonight. I’ve been rolling the fuck out of my triceps the past couple days and have been hitting a legit 9/10 on the pain scale, seems to have worked pretty well, my lockout feels quite a bit better.

Front squat 315lbs for a triple and a couple doubles, wish I felt stronger here but this is all I had for tonight.

Mark showed me this thread which was real fucking good – this fucking guy, who CAN’T DEADLIFT 300LBS WITHOUT STRAPS, is being a real fucking virgin about lifting weights. See Marotta’s opinion of him. Guy is A+++++++ unintentional troll. He definitely gives too many fucks. BRB posting more about lifting than actually lifting. BRB “Johnnie Jackson did 765 pounds with straps. His grip ain’t exactly suffering. So how come he uses straps and he can DOH DL 400 pounds?” BRB “Strongmen use straps. The best deadlifters in the world use straps. Their grip isn’t exactly suffering. If I have to, I’ll just do some fat gripz work. Can’t be too hard. Kroc uses straps for god’s sakes.”

Mark, I loved this response to him as well (Marotta aka Puke deadlifts a lot for those of you who don’t know him).

There have been a few links to this blog from the “StrongLifts Inner Circle,” bothers me because I can’t stand SL.com, so if you’re reading this, and you’re a subscriber to Mehdi’s forum – can you ask him what he benches and post it in the comments? You probably don’t want to do that since he’d just ban you though. I can’t stand heavily-moderated forums (since you can’t troll them).

I loled while reading this thread as well. If StrongLifts ends up burning to the ground, all the ex-members could go to bodybuilding.com, they’d be all right. Have some flame wars in the misc for a few days too, I’d bookmark a couple of those threads.

Matt writes:

Speaking of girls.. how about this [http://www.buzzfeed.com/burnred/katy-perry-topless-nsfw-281t]
Brent what is your take on this photo?

Lettuce beans and real tea here, I don’t think Katy Perry is that hot. Her tits jiggle, yeah, and yes I like “California Girls” and “Teenage Dream” but other than that I don’t really give any fucks. I think Ellen Page is real cute though.

YES she plays a 17 year old in this movie but she is 24 IRL go fuck yourself thanks. Favorite parts are 3:35 and 3:45. And then when she loses it at 4:00 I lol too. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST this is pathetic.

Funny story guys, I was actually watching bloopers from this movie and SuperBad at like 3am last night and I was legit loling real hard alone at my computer, that’s all I got, I’m done now, if you need me I’ll be outside on my second story balcony – I’ll be the guy hanging by his fucking neck.

I got one more though:

And also this one:

I was going to have a bad training day – I had missed 225lbs twice and was about to quit but both misses were close, bar was overhead and arms locked out, I was just being a real virgin about staying tight and just standing the fuck up. I was considering being conservative and moving on to c+js but I thought it’d be real fucking dumb to not make a weight that I was very clearly good for so took a third attempt and made it and probably prevented my almost assured suicide. I would like to make it a habit of hitting 100k+ as I have mentioned before.

C+jed up to 265lbs and made an attempt at 280lbs but wasn’t too strong with the jerk there. The clean also felt heavy in the pull, and I doubted I could take it again for a second attempt, though standing with the weight wasn’t difficult. My posterior chain has felt stronger.

Clean-and-pressed 160lbs x 5, 160lbs x 3, 150lbs x 5, 160lbs x 4, and 160lbs x 3. I think I may have rushed my second set, as in rested maybe 3 mins and could have used another 2. These are much better clean-and-presses than I have been posting in the past. I’m not sure what made me suck so fucking bad for the past couple weeks but it feels like I’ll be ready to start making some progress here.

Snatch pulled and did some snatch-grip DLs, hit 330lbs x 7. I forgot how fun these were to do, and I enjoyed an overall back pump after doing them, which would be compounded by rounded-back back extensions.

I finished up with a lot of curls and some ring dips, hitting two triples at +55lbs.

There is an indoor soccer league which shares a building with the gym, and I may have mentioned it before but it sounds like really authentic soccer when the some of the players/coaches shout in Spanish. Saul and Becky love it when the players shout in English though, because apparently one night they were training and one of the guys on the sidelines was screaming frantically,

“PUT IT IN MIKE PUT IT INNNNN!!!!!!!!”

and also

“TAKE IT OUT TAKE IT OUT!!!!!!!”

so they thought that was real funny. So funny, in fact, that whenever there’s an eruption of noise after a goal or whatnot, Saul will join in the shouting with “PUT IT IN MIKE!!!!!!!”

Also, Becky says some fucking guy was judging me as we walked out, I’m assuming because of the soffes, so I said, “Why? Because I have better quads than him?”

I think it’s OK if the soccer folks don’t like us since they’re a bunch of slow-twitch pieces of shit anyway. BRB not training legs because they get strong from running.

biggy writes:

hey brent u should slam the weight fucking hard on the ground in the commercial gym and scream fuck yea usa so all the chicks would look at you. it would also help with your anger issues.

I am not an angry person. The last post demonstrated misery as the pre-dominant emotion. One of the primary themes of this blog isn’t rage at the world, it’s acquiescence to things that can’t be changed – i.e. “I’ve gone beyond the event horizon of the friend zone BRB there is no escape” – and the lowering of standards – “BRB quitting competition just gonna flex in the mirror to slay mildly attractive pussy.” The art is in the ability that I can take something that should make you want to kill yourself, and produce a low-grade lol when you read it. There are other ideas that I try to communicate as well but it’d be pretentious to talk about them here.

/kills self

Matt writes:

Once you go Black/Matt you never go back… Find another girl to get rejected by. Bullets are on sale I will email you the link. Could you throw a ninja star at yourself hard enough to kill? Try it out.

Rejection is a primary motivation for me to train. I would argue that the vast majority – if not all – of the PRs I’ve made in my lifetime have been fueled by asking myself “how do you feel about the fact that this girl is making out with a guy who is NOT you” or “I wonder what this fucking other guy benches? Is it more than me? Fucking goddamn it his arms were like 18″ he prob benches like 285lbs for reps. That’s not fucking typical, ‘oh I’ve got a tribal tattoo around my arm and I benched a lot on the high school football team’ give me a fucking break.” So 1.) yes, I will be seeking another female to tell me I’m a nice guy, and 2.) I would rather continue working towards curling 135lbs x 10 than kill myself at the moment.

freak writes:

Have you considered killing OTHER people? I think it would help.

The only reason I’d kill someone is if I were in 2/75th Rangers and was assigned to jump off the back of a helicopter and smoke the fuck out of some religious extremist pieces of shit who cut people’s heads and genitals off for no reason.

Mark writes:

He’s too much of a limp wristed pussy to kill someone.

and also writes:

Brent how is your shuffling going?
I bet you gave up on it like a fucking pussy.

Can’t hear you over LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem.

Friend at work wants to go out to a real good Salvadorian/Mexican restaurant. I have been wanting to eat there for a while – I had some steak with churrasca sauce or something when I went and it fucking rocked my world – but nobody wants to go with me. Plans have been made multiple times – not plans that I organize, in case you were fucking wondering – but typically everyone bails and I end up eating ground beef alone at home while watching anime in front of my laptop. It’s not that bad now since I’m eating grass-fed ground beef. Anyways she says “we should invite VPVG.”

I say, “Can we invite Girl With Very Pretty Smile?”

She responds, “Why do you always like girls who don’t fit you?”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re not your type.”

“In what way are they not my type?”

“You’re not theirs.”

“Well what is her type?”

“Black. Or maybe white. But definitely not Asian.”

So if you need me, I’ll be in the bathroom – I’ll be the guy painting the shower with his fucking brains.

Training has sucked lately. I did manage to hit a 275lbs c+j which matches a personal best, and that is about the only productive thing I’ve done in the past couple days. Benched 255lbs x 4, which couldn’t frustrate me more. I’ll prob do legit 4×5 volume days starting now and start at something manageable like 240lbs or 245lbs and come back up as I was having some good success with that. That same day (Friday) I attempted to squat 355lbs for max reps which at the time was 4. I had to get to work and obv I felt like shit so I terminated that workout immediately after.

Wanted to train Sat but ended up spending most of the day at work.

Tonight (Sunday) I snatched up to 215lbs with difficulty (took quite a few attempts, even with Saul slapping my traps for one attempt at 220lbs which was the most disappointing miss of the the night), c+jed 255lbs and couldn’t clean 265lbs, and squat 355lbs for 7, 6, 4, and 4. Which is better than squatting 355lbs for 4 on the first set. Didn’t sleep much and trained late. Squats weren’t very great but I will take 20 total reps and putting what was essentially 9.5 RPE for the day. I have tomorrow off and will hopefully be more than 70% awake for training, so as long as I’m not fatigued (legs and posterior chain have felt tired for a week or two) I may post some better results.

I have also been mildly anxious because I set a goal to curl AT LEAST 2x a week and do 5 sets each time I curl and I only hit 1x a week last week due to waking up late Friday and not training Saturday. So I am pretty happy about curling tomorrow.

Stroup writes:

Nutmeg, do you do any band mob work at home? Where the hell do attach the band for such stuff? Also I got mad lame internal rotation issues with my right shoulder from sitting at a desk clicking on a mouse all day for work. Any suggestions to help me not have a tvale/gordonfuck right shoulder?

For you other guys, Stroup is referencing the vid of the corgi skateboarding I linked a while ago. The corgi’s name is Nutmeg. Stroup thinks the name works for me as well. My response to that was the first response in this thread, although you should read the whole thread as it is pretty good (I don’t give a fuck about blacking out names since you all post on the blog anyway):

Anyways, Patrick, I have a door from pull-up bar that I use for my mobbing. I just set it outside my door so the handles immobilize it from moving in and use the band to pull into the bedroom for the best shoulder mob ever. I then mount it on the top of the door frame for shoulder IR stretching.

Also from the comments, most of you will probably enjoy reading this thread if you haven’t already. I definitely did. But I enjoyed fucking killing myself after reading it more.

Also, Patrick, you probably want to know this – the hot hispanic milf you keep telling me to bang was talking to me about sex with her boyfriend today.

Well hey guys I think that’s about all I can take, I’ll talk to you here in a little bit.

After I’ve put a bullet through my fucking forehead.