Hey guys. Brent here.

In the past week I’ve –

– snatched up to 230lbs
– c+jed 285lbs
– cleaned 295lbs
– back squat 385lbs x 5, 405lbs x 2
– pressed 180lbs x 1

Training could have been better. It should start going better since I’m making use of a Costco card for groceries.

“What have you been up to Brent?”

Honestly? Honestly? Honestly?

Watching movies on Netflix. That’s about it. I watched Outrage and 13 Assassins, was a big fan of both. Watching Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance now, it’s pretty good. Broseph, I would have to say that Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is my favorite one out of the Vengeance Trilogy.

Those of you who have seen or met me IRL know that I can tend to have some pretty stupid looking, unkempt, and poorly-maintained hair. I got it cut for work last week. I don’t particularly give a shit about it, I just get around to cutting it every few months when I’m done with brushing it out of my glasses (I’m talking about the stuff from the side of my head getting into my eye).

You know what I can’t do? Make small-talk. At least socially acceptable small-talk. I could probably make decent conversation with most of you guys for at least half an hour. For someone who’s logged more hours of StarCraft: Brood War than he has making eye contact with girls – that’s not bad. I would say – hey man, if you were Japanese, would you rather jerk off to soiled panties, tentacle porn, or some chick pooping out leeches in a continuous particulate stream of slick black annelids? And we would have a pretty good time. We would talk about favorite mobs, favorite isolation exercise, and the last time we cried about something (for me it would be the last time I listened to Radiohead – Fake Plastic Trees, the part where he says “if I could be who you wanted, if I could be who you wanted”).

Can’t talk about those things with haircut lady. Haircut lady’s like 40, doesn’t watch anime, and doesn’t misc. Do you even lift? Haircut lady asks me, “What do you do for work? …. You have family here? … You’ve got a lot of hair. … This weather’s so nice.” <– notice that she gradually gives up saying things that would require a response from me.

Oh and can't forget this one –

Haircut lady: "So do you have a girlfriend?"
Brent: "Yeah."
Haircut lady: /doesn't believe me

BRB giving one word answers BRB can't think of appropriate questions BRB more comfortable typing misc memes than I am talking to a person IRL.

You know what else I can't do? Job interviews. The lady who did my job interview for my current one remembers it:

"You were very nervous.”

How do people like me make it past the interview? I could have stuttered less.

“What skills would you say make you a good employee?”

“Oh uh well that is I’m uh TIME MANAGEMENT! I have great time managing uh MANAGEMENT I have good time management.”

“Ooh KAY.”

I look like a real piece of shit when I try to look professional, too. BRB could look like less of a spiky-haired Asian douche with gel in my hair (the problem, actually, isn’t that I look like a spiky-haired Asian douche – it looks like I’m TRYING to look like a spiky-haired Asian douche) BRB doesn’t look like I lift in this dress shirt BRB where did you learn to tie your neck tie ROTC it’s fine.

mattciupak writes:

Diesel_Weasel lifts at my gym now (srs). Max Misch.

Do you talk to him? Is he going to come back to the powerlifting section of bodybuilding.com?

Alphanitis writes:

You should write a dark comedy entitled “Brent Kim” in it you would be diagnosed with a debilitating muscle disease that makes it next to impossible to gain strength or muscle. Your dream in the movie is to compete in weightlifting, so this news makes you very depressed and belligerent. You try to persevere and train any way. You make good results for someone with your condition and ur able to place 12th out of 16 lifters in a local meet! People are proud of you because you were supposed to not even be able to lift at all and here u are beating four people who had no disease. So you feel better about itself and realize there may be hope in this world. Then u go for another check up at the doctor and they realize they had the wrong paper work and tell u the great news that ur perfectly healthy. U then realize ur a pece of shit with no excuse and become stoner to keep from ending it all. The end

/dies (from killing myself)

Here’s the song I’d use for it:

Tom writes:

Oh lawd Brent, please tell me you still follow the articles on T-Nation, especially the semi-recent one of the dude extolling the virtues of training with his sandbag (at his website for the low low price of $150) over conventional barbell training. Comments welcome on that, please respond.

I’ve basically never followed the articles on T-Nation, I can only deal with the DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE YOUR DELTS IN A SMOLDERING RUIN OF LACTIC ACID WELL I’VE GOT JUST THE WORKOUT FOR YOU. GERMAN VOLUME TRAINING, IT’S NOT JUST A MYTH. SOME NO-NAME FUCKHEAD LETS YOU IN ON THE SECRETS OF THE GREATEST HYPERTROPHY PROGRAMMING THAT EVERYONE SEEMS TO HAVE FORGOTTEN for so many articles before I’m done. The forums fucking blow too, at least bodybuilding.com has memes.

old man writes:

so what became of the bro who reads ur blog? That sounds like an interesting story. Do you both avoid eye contact now? More so than before? Is it “d-bol shuffle?”

D-bol Shuffle hates my fucking guts because I’m 154lbs and oly lift and don’t deadlift 500lbs. The guy that found my blog is a much friendlier guy who acknowledges my existence when I say hello. D-bol Shuffle was at the Arnold and probably thought it was real fucking funny that I was even there – he was wearing sunglasses but his expression said very plainly, Do you even lift? I don’t really have an answer to that, BRB missing 300lbs bench BRB still curling less than 135lbs BRB a guy at the gym watched me struggle to complete my 4th rep with a 245lbs bench and after I racked it said, “Why is the weight so light?”

(my response was to say “guess I’ll fucking pick up sudoku or stamp collecting, fuck lifting”)

Any former lurkers of t-nation here? I was a lurker of t-nation.com before it became t-muscle.com (and then back to t-nation). I discovered Diesel_Weasel (who’s deadlift I have yet to surpass, fuck this earth), through t-nation. My first exposure to Frank Yang was through t-nation – he had a fan club even back then. I incorporated some of the things I learned from t-nation into my training – I used to give a shit about what Dan John said because of t-nation (I don’t anymore). Many of my early years as an internet troll suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect were formed through the mindset of the powerlifting/strength athlete section of the t-nation forums.

There was one particular instant that I can remember when some fucking thread was going on about some powerlifter who was probably associated with Westside who deadlifted a lot and everyone was sucking his dick for box squatting 60% of his 1rm with 300lbs of band resistance or some fucking bullshit, and there was one dude who was like – “yea he’s strong and all that but his rear delt development is laughable.”

And of course 95% of the posters on any “strength athlete” board are wannabe blowhards who squat 315lbs or less at a bodyweight of 220lbs and pretend to not care about aesthetics because they aren’t aesthetic and they call this guy an idiot and they have a valid point, the dude didn’t care about his rear delts because he was too busy deadlifting 700lbs and having an elite Wilks. But at the time, in 2006 or 2007, I was in agreement with the strength athlete guys – who gives a fucking shit about rear delts if you have a fucking legit set of erectors, which you’d presumably have from deadlifting 700lbs?

Well I got out of the shower a few days ago and hit a back double bi and was, as usual, sorely disappointed, but I couldn’t help but notice – holy fucking shit, my rear delts fucking BLOW.

And that is why I did rear delt dumbbell flyes today for the second time in my life (the first time being with Saul and Becky).

Can I be real for a second? I probably enjoy the isolation work as much as or possibly even more than any competition lift. I’ve been mixing up concentration curls with barbell curls and if I’m going to be completely honest, there’s something unreasonably satisfying from the pump I get from curling a 30lbs dumbbell with a lot of concentration that surpasses the feeling of barbell curling a PR set of 10.

I did a lot of fucking bullshit, the Arnold wasn’t the best for my bodyweight (I was 152.2lbs a few days ago) or protein intake and I struggled to squat 365lbs for 5 on Thursday, benched 245lbs for 5, 4, 4. My snatch and c+j have remained fairly constant, I worked up to 235lbs and 285lbs. I pulled 445lbs x 1 with a hook grip and held onto it on Friday, after power cleaning 245lbs for a double, adding a squat clean, and then jerked it (finished with some GHRs off the GHR bench, will do GHRs 2x a week and alternate natural GHRs with using the bench). Did some shitty pressing today and a lot of delt isolation.

Broseph writes:

You clearly aren’t thinking about your future if you’re posting your fucking name all over a blog with content like this.
C’mon, man. The HR people at just about every company on Earth start their background checks by Googling the applicant’s name.
Have fun working the job of a twenty-something for eternity.

“Content like this,” bro give me a fucking break, let me tell you how it’s gonna go down –

HR Rep: I see you have a blog, Mr. Kim.
Brent: You could call it that.
HR Rep: I tried reading it but I don’t give a fucking shit about lifting. Quite frankly it was a waste of my fucking time and I got bored after the first paragraph, the one where you talked about some garbage fucking website called t-nation, I’ve heard of that place, it’s essentially a front for BioTest products right? I mean lifting weights isn’t even a sport. I run half-marathons. Come the fuck at me and my gatorade gels, chump. But you seem beta and non-threatening and well-behaved so consider yourself hired. Cut your fucking hair though you look like a fucking joke.
Brent: OohKAY.
/Brent gets hired to write Harry Potter erotica full-time

karibot writes:

How did you not just fucking end it after that hamstring injury? I’m out for a few weeks. No squat, dl, sn, c+j. Nothing that requires two functioning ankles. I’m doing lots of curls. I PR’d on anterior delt raises yesterday. Are there other single-joint exercises I should be focusing on? Ones that will make it all seem less hopeless?

What happened to you?

I was actually in pretty good spirits after the hamstring injury. I missed raw nationals but I met some real cute chick there (who didn’t care about me) and I took it as time to do a lot more upper body training. Which is unusual – I have mild anxiety when I can’t train the lifts as often as I want to and the idea of not doing them for even a week makes me unhappier than it should, but it was just an OK time in my life, not because of any particular event, I just didn’t feel like fucking ending it.

mooseknuckles writes:

I am deployed in Afghanistan, and hate my life. You’re stories with frequent references of killing yourself are a ray of sunshine in my otherwise entirely depressing existence.

The primary reason I haven’t killed myself is because I understand that all my problems are first-world problems that don’t matter. Boo fucking hoo I’m a deadbeat piece of shit who sucks at lifting and nobody believes in me, it could be worse. I could be a citizen of some shitty fundamentalist Islamic country. At least I have reddit.

mike writes:

cleaned 295 fairly easily yesterday bro. i’m coming at you. gonna hit 305 tomorrow or kill myself.

Already got you beat (at killing myself, I do that slowly every day).

I missed all my 3rd attempts at on my PL meet on Feb 18, ended up with 200k/127.5k/200k for a sub 1200lbs total weighing 70.8k. Good. I pulled 210k double overhand hook on my 3rd attempt DL and took it to lockout but missed the “down” command due to failing grip. Taking 462lbs/210k to lock out is progress though, that’s a 5k PR all-time dead weighing 25lbs less than when I pulled 205k. If you suck off the floor, do some GHRs, focus on the hamstring curl element, and tack-and-stretch your hammies and glutes. This has been pretty good for my deads.

Dunno what happened with the bench and squat. 200k was smooth for the squat, I took 210k into the hole and ran out of gas on the way up. Wanted to finish with a conservative 132.5k bench after taking 127.5 but just wasn’t strong enough that day.

In my oly meet the week after I went 102 –> 107 –> x112, shooting for a 2k PR. Felt strong enough but 112k was out in front. Proceeded to bomb out in my c+js, though I cleaned all the way up to 138kg for a 1kg PR. I benched the day before this meet so maybe I could have prepared better for it /hand motions.

I’m not terribly upset about these, I qualified for the American Open when I totaled 247 at my meet in January and I’ll just total 1200+ at Raw Nationals and qualify for the Arnold when my 70.8kg bw nets me a 400+ Wilks.

Training has sucked since then, my first semi-decent training day was today. I power snatched + snatched 195lbs for two sets and then took 205lbs with a low power snatch. Did power clean + front squat + jerk with 115kg, had to re-calibrate my jerk after missing it a few times, then clean pull + 2 squat cleans + jerk at the same weight. Felt all right and was moderate effort.

So a couple notes:

Some dude at the gym Saul and I train at, who deadlifts like 600lbs+, was googling mobility and happened to find my blog. This guy would later tell me about this and say “I stumbled across your blog.”

“How do you know it’s my blog?”

“Because it has your picture on it.”

“I’ll talk to you here in a little bit.”

So there is one more person IRL who knows that I’m prone to suicidal ideation over things that don’t necessarily warrant killing yourself over.

Hey guys. Let me tell you what it’s like to write a blog. Things start innocently enough. You just wanna talk about lifting, and how much you want to fucking kill yourself sometimes. Like sharks in the water, people on the internet can detect your misery and they circle you, waiting for you to die, or at least become too weak to defend yourself so they can feast on your innards while you’re still alive. Then you have, just once, a good fucking time, and everyone’s up in arms about it. Oh Brent you’ve changed, uh oh Brent’s life is taking a new turn, oh Brent your blog fucking sucks now.

Hey guys. Honestly? Honestly? Honestly?

I got nothing. Hope you enjoy the ride. Not that anything exciting’s ever happened here. Best said it best: Hi I’m 24 and just got high. Go back to high school and fuck up properly. Fucking gromit. I’ll be training to not fucking blow at the American Open and to qualify for the Arnold Raw Challenge next year. I’d like to qualify for both the Arnold Classic for OL AND the Raw Challenge, and if my weight classes in those meets compete on different days I’ll probably do both meets, I don’t give a fucking shit.

This will be the first time in my life that I’m actually good enough to participate in national-level meets. USAPL Raw Nationals doesn’t count since you just have to post a total, neither does Collegiate Nationals since the q. totals are a fucking joke, but going to the American Open and hopefully the raw challenge next year will be significant milestones in my career.

I met cmoney at the Arnold. Cmoney, I’m sorry I didn’t hug you and get a picture. That’s about it. Had fun with the rest of you guys. I’m saying that sarcastically, since I didn’t fucking meet any of you.

Blackhawk287 writes:

Obviously he’s planning on releasing his own line of supplements and using this hiatus to build suspense. I’m assuming they’ll be called beta male.

Guess I’ll go ahead and announce it.

Will be released in addition to multiple t-shirts as part of the Mope-ility WOD project.

Got back from the Arnold today, was a lot of fun. I’ll talk to you guys here in a little bit.

My company volunteered me to take what was essentially a personality test a while ago. The supposed purpose of the survey was to determine what personality traits the company should select for when hiring future employees. The questions dealt a lot with what action or emotion I identified most with. Basically I spent the entire survey saying, think before you speak. Think before you act. Think before you feel. Which works out great in work environments. People who are proficient at monitoring and managing their emotions typically work well in most environments. I am a product of a well-indoctrinated adolescence. Works diligently. Plays well with others. Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy.

When I am done with the survey I am offered donuts and orange juice. Working in a medical clinic means constant bombardment with processed and refined carbs. When an orthopedist’s office provides your clinic with “breakfast,” they mean bagels and cream cheese. A drug rep who brings you “lunch” is talking about pasta and salad from Olive Garden. I decline, not interested in the lack of protein.

People like me spend most of our time in school looking for things we don’t find. Eventually we give up and settle for something that works. It’s fine.

* * *

THC does not act directly on the dopaminergic pathway. Not all users feel pleasure in response to consuming THC. This is my first time, and the mild euphoria I feel is probably a result of a combination of several factors. Warm lighting, some relaxing music, a relatively quiet restaurant crowd, and her smile. I’ve been feeling strange up to this point, and it’s not until I realize I can’t make sense of words on a menu that I realize that yes, I am officially high. I look up to tell her, and when I find her eyes it is almost like the first time we make eye contact, a few long seconds during which I think of several things to say and end up with an awkward “hi.”

She is always pretty. Every time I look at her and my eyes find hers, without fail, I feel admiration. Cannabis alters sensory perception, so when I look at her now, I recognize her, but she is different. What am I seeing? Dark brown eyes, soft lips, mahogany hair that flows around her face and drapes across her shoulders. I have seen these before, but not like this. There’s more to the things I see than how they look – everything I perceive has an emotional component. So when I look at her, there is warmth, happiness, limerence. I feel a need for closeness.

Distance means more when THC is binding to my cannabinoid receptors. Later, when we will walk to the movie theater nearby to eat peanut m&ms and try to make something coherent out of the images on the screen, I will be daunted by the journey on never-ending gray pavement underneath a black sky. I will also be perplexed by the queue to the ticket booth, where the neon lighting turns my weaving path through the queue into me walking through the Starship Enterprise. And walking up the infinite steps to our seats in the theater will challenge both my depth perception and motor coordination, which could be better to begin with.

“I meant distance from you,” I clarify with her. “Distance feels more significant.”

She moves closer to me. Holds my hand.

* * *

I spend a disconcerting amount of time trying to cut through a band of fat in my steak. Before that, I’d become very intimate with the process of mashing butter and sour cream into a baked potato.

“Do you want me to cut your steak?” she asks.

“I’ve got it,” I say, and continue to fail.

She takes the plate away from me, and cuts my steak for me. The mild disassociative effects of being high don’t prevent my heart from swelling. The waitress and other patrons of the restaurant are probably a little perplexed but I’m too baked and too happy to care. The steak tastes fine, and it’s temperature is pleasant. The potatoes impress me more.

A concept in injury recovery is healing in the context of movement. Resting is a necessary component of tissue repair, but remodeling begins quickly after the inflammatory phase. Sit around on a couch eating oreos all day waiting for your hamstring to get better means your damaged hamstring fibers remodel in the context of acute and non-mobile hip and knee flexion. Scar tissue is non-contractile, does not contribute to movement, but the orientation in which it develops can be influenced to some degree. You can choose between something that makes moving hard or something that doesn’t help. When the scars have settled, can you trust your legs to remember to run?

I can’t remember the first time I got burned, but I can remember how I reacted. Pretend it doesn’t mean anything. Let non-contractile tissue accumulate.

She runs her fingers through my hair. “You look a lot more relaxed.”

“About what?”

“About everything.”

I try to talk to her about my experience. Connotation is suddenly very important to me and I keep saying sentences, then replacing words with other words that I feel are more appropriate. My words fail me, so we go to her car to hold each other. There are things the heart doesn’t forget. Take away my barriers and pretenses and I am sixteen again, when a hug means everything and holding hands makes the difference between a good time and the best fucking night of my life. Let me feel close to her. Let me be at peace with needing this closeness.

When we make the journey into the labyrinth of the theater we maintain our embrace into our seats. Her head on my shoulder makes more sense than the movie we watch, and I think about that more than I do about the scenes which seem to mean things on their own but not as a whole. If I am physically uncomfortable leaning together like that, I’m not aware.

I don’t know how long we’ve been watching the movie, but I begin to realize that what I’m seeing is becoming more and more coherent. I hope for a few more hours before I come down, because I feel like I’m losing something.

* * *

One of the first things I do afterward, of course, is to tell everyone in my life about the best day of my life. I talk about how peanut m&ms, fried oreos, and cherry pie with whipped cream tasted, how their texture blew me the fuck away. I express sadness at the fact that these things are not as enjoyable while sober. I now have a reddit account, “EverythingSoProfound,” subscribed to /r/trees, in commemoration of how my world was forever changed by pot. Do I remember my heart before its scars?

“I just want to get that first time back,” I say to a friend, “though from what I understand it’s never the same.”

“Not sure if serious.”

“I’m serious.”

“That’s the basis for addiction.”

“It’ll be fine, I’ll probably just try a few more times and give up and forget it happened.”

Back at work in my scrubs, I eat a chocolate cupcake and am not surprised to find it underwhelming.