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).