True story, maybe four years ago I got into the Silent Hill series – by “got into the Silent Hill series” I mean I wikipedia’d all of the games and read the plots and character bios, watched the complete YouTube playthroughs of the first and second games and some of the third and ended up buying Silent Hill 3 from GameStop. Usually whenever I get the urge to play a game I just watch the YouTube playthroughs and end-game cinematics and I’m good.
“Oooh, Silent Hill 3,” the girl behind the counter said, “One of my favorites. I liked the second one better but three’s pretty good too.”
Girl with common interest making conversation with me? 21 year old me says, “Kseeyabye.”
Anyways I play Silent Hill 3 and I’m freaking the fuck out at everything, I get to the part where you’re in the subway and the ghost pushes you into the subway, shortly after that obese creature comes after you and you have to light his shit up with a shotgun, and I was done. Just done. Heart rate 110 to 200bpm instantly? No thanks, I’ll just watch a YuYu Hakusho marathon for the rest of the night.
I get legit creeped out pretty easily. Watched the Blair Witch Project. Almost finished the movie, but just fucking lost it at the end when the dude is just standing there in the corner of the cabin. Just too much shit for me. Watched The Ring, the American version, to completion. Had trouble sleeping for like two weeks (as in, I had to open my eyes every few seconds in the dark to make sure something wasn’t in the room with me, about to freak the fucking shit out of me). “Oh those movies weren’t even scary Brent you’re a fucking beta jelly-dicked virgin” k get an over-active imagination then go fuck yourself thanks.
My cousin got Silent Hill 1 and 2 remastered on the PS3 and we played through some of the second game – graphics still look like they’re from the PS2 engine. Game is pretty pointless problem-solving with limited action, cut scenes weren’t even really re-worked. I still squeal in terror when those straight-jacket bad guys come after you. I’m not even playing the game, my cousin’s got the controller and when the radio starts to crackle with white noise, I become frantic, sputtering “THERE’SAMONSTERTHERE’SAMONSTERTHERE’SAMONSTER” over and over until she kills it with the lead pipe.
“You want to know why Brent works out?” my uncle says. “It’s because he’s afraid of things. He wants to be prepared for them.”
If that were true, I’m woefully unprepared for the challenges I’d face in the Silent Hill universe, the past couple training days have still kinda sucked,
– snatched 225lbs
– c+jed 275lbs
– benched 250lbs for 2, 3, 3, 2
– pulled 430lbs for 4 singles
So I’m in a rut, fucking sue me. This is the main reason I haven’t been blogging as much, my training has fucking blown recently, though I’m progressing from where I was. I wish I was joking but I’ve actually PRed my cheat curls, getting up to 135lbs x 5 for a few sets, and honestly? Honestly? Honestly? This makes everything else not feel as bad. My squats are slowly getting back to the level they used to be (405lbs x 5 is the bench mark I need to surpass), in three weeks I should be PRing my deads for singles across, and my pressing has been the easiest to improve since my deload.
The deads at 430lbs weren’t PRs and were pretty difficult, but I feel like my hamstrings have benefited a lot from the weighted GHRs and natural GHRs that I alternate throughout the week. I feel like I’m more capable of grinding through the sticking point and that I’m able to continue squeezing off the floor and past the knees even when the lift feels like 99% max effort, which wasn’t typically how my pulls worked before. Before, if the pull felt heavy off the floor and budged very slowly, it wouldn’t go at all.
MOBTALK, the most I’ve ever done for my gastrocs is tack-and-stretch with the lacrosse ball on some points. The first couple times I did this, there were some pretty painful points along my gastrocs, that, when worked on, would produce some better squatting mechanics. It’s become harder and harder to find painful things with this method, and I’ve finally tried the PVC pipe approach. Promptly found my new pain cave. Rolling my gastrocs over the pipe, planting my calves on it and tack-and-stretching, doesn’t matter, both legs have a lateral banded mass that just fucking blows to work on.
– 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.
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.
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.
When Justin wrote that post about antagonistic motivation, I thought of how much I hate you Brent.
It’s funny that you’d say that because when he wrote that post I thought of how much I fucking hated myself, too.
When I first moved to Plano I was training at a globo gym called Express Fitness. It would have been a decent place to train if the bars weren’t 31-32mm in diameter. It was like 17.99 a month which I think was pretty good. I stopped training there because I was doing oly stuff at CF Dallas Central for a little bit and thought LA Fitness was a better globo for the PL-oriented stuff. On a related tangent, the Gold’s here is also not a bad globo, lots of room around the squat racks so you can dead and power clean + press, the bench racks are not terribly well made and the top rack is 1-2 inches too tall to bench out of. For me at least, I’m 5’5″, normal sized humans might fit it better. Otherwise, I wouldn’t mind catching a pump there doing things not needing a good bench.
Anyways when I first signed up at the Express Fitness the head trainer was this jock kines major dude who was fairly jacked and shredded. Real stereotypical dude with one of those stock jacked guy accents. He was pretty nice to me, wasn’t a dickhead about stuff, asked me about my goals and what I trained for, if I was interested in a trainer.
“Nah,” I said, sitting there weighing a chubby 178lbs with 15″ arms and a 34″ waist, “I kinda compete in powerlifting, I handle my own programming.” Whenever people ask me if I compete, I never say Olympic weightlifting, because I’m fucking tired of having to explain the fucking difference, and I’m fucking tired of having to demonstrate what the snatch and clean-and-jerk are. I just don’t fucking care anymore. I just want to get done with all that shit so I can do my curls and db lat delt raises. Sometimes I even omit that I’m competing, because I’m sick of people saying it doesn’t look like I lift, or that I’m not that big. I’m just fucking done with it. All right, whatever, I don’t look like I fucking lift, the only reason you can tell is because all of my t-shirts are related to lifting or mobbing (or suicide), I get it, go fuck yourself.
“Cool brah,” he said – that is to say, I’m not surprised that this chubby fucking Asian dude thinks he is hot shit because he benches 225lbs for reps. High school called, they want you to know it’s OK to be a late bloomer.
Anyways, at the end of me signing up, he did the typical selling memberships thing – “So hey man, you got any friends around here? You get one to sign up, you get ten dollars off your monthly dues, pay 7.99 a month. You know anybody?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t have any friends around here right now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah uh I mean I just moved here and I don’t really go out much.”
He makes a face. “Well all right man whatever. Anyways yeah, you make a friend or something, make him your workout buddy, bring him here, save some money off your dues.”
“All right.” Then I proceeded to not make any friends for the next six or seven months I trained there. In fact, I fucking made enemies. I asked this older dude grumpy looking dude – who was probably just pissed that he wasn’t on HRT – for a spot, and he proceeded to give me the most begrudging spot in the history of spotted benching. The guy acted like I pissed in his fucking corn flakes. Not only was he pissed at me for asking for a spot, he went on to critique my form on the bench – “Most of the reps were good, but you bounced the last one off your chest a little.” Hey man thanks, I’ll run that by R&D and see what they can do with it.
[spoiler show=”I could have written less.”]On Friday I pulled 440lbs for three singles and they weren’t that hard. I haven’t pulled 440lbs this easily since, like, more than two years ago. I could have pulled it for like a double maybe. Hook-grip held on fine. Best deadlift ever is 440lbs x 3 with a mixed grip at 180lbs bw.
Saul had me try the poor man GHRs that you do off a lat pulldown … essentially a bodyweight hamstring curl. Some pretty gnarly, peak hamstring contraction. The regular GHR at the gym is not built that great and I haven’t figured out how to set my hips and feet correctly (the foot pads are adjusted in an arc, as opposed to being able to move them separately in two planes) so the GHRs off the lat pulldown are honestly better as far as the hamstring curl element. I’ve done them two or three times so far. Is it unfeasible that these helped hit my distal hamstrings and made my pulls feel a substantial bit easier off the floor?
If it wasn’t the GHRs and subsequent development of the distal hams, then it was me hitting the piriformis and tack-and-stretching my high hamstrings and glutes with hip flexion as opposed to knee articulation. I def think the GHRs have helped.
I sucked at benching though. Took my last warm-up at 275lbs and thought I could put away 290lbs for a single and ended up getting stapled by it twice. Good.
If you guys are in the market for another catch phrase to use, start saying “Good.” Say it whenever something the opposite of good happens, or to voice approval for things that you don’t approve of.
On Sunday I did a bunch of shit that mostly sucked, I pressed 175lbs for 3, 2, 3, 1, 1, power cleaned + hang cleaned up to 245lbs, cleaned 265lbs, front squat 355lbs for two singles (back may have been tired from deads?), and did some barbell rowing, curls, and lat delt db raises.
enlightenedsnipe writes:
Hey Brent, at least you aren’t pressing jelly weight for mediocre PRs, then missing bench singles at 225 three times in one week. It’s fine…
I’ll just go back to mobbing my scaps, traps, and tris. At least the pain there means something is getting better.
The pain is the only thing that’s real.
Hey man – I am definitely pressing jelly-dicked weight for mediocre PRs. Trust me. I do it every press workout.
Welp, see ya later! writes:
Justin, thanks for the link. I guess a big part of my question is what is the potential of this mobbing stuff to remedy real chronic stuff like what I’m dealing with that has been present for literally years? I mean I know it’s good for me, and it helps me move better in the here and now, and it can prevent more damage…but is there other stuff I need to do to make the longstanding damage that has already been done go away? Because it’s pretty well-established now, you know? These are just general thinking-out-loud questions, so don’t feel compelled to respond.
Pretty high potential. PT is meant for this kind of shit. A lot of people are under the assumption that “mobility” is just about ROM and flexibility – but when we talk about mobility we’re also talking about starting positions, bottom positions, we’re talking about efficient joint articulation (i.e. do I have enough glenohumeral internal rotation to snap the bar overhead in the snatch while keeping my shoulders back? Do I have the capacity to keep the knees out with my toes forward? Am I silk over steel springs, or do I have soft-tissue or postural limitations that are causing me to leak force out of my movement?), we’re talking about moving in a way that protects our tissues. One of the biggest reasons we got chronically inflamed tissue is because of poor movement. Mobility is about restoring the ability to move correctly and with good mechanics in addition to treating soft tissue or joint articulation problems.
So stop being a fucking dickhead and holding yourself back.
karibot writes:
Okay, I’m super feminist, but that shit is cray cray. The friendzone knows no gender. The friendzone does not discriminate. The friendzone is equally cruel to all.
brb, scrolling through texts and listening to this:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfJsrJ-lKGc]
immediately followed by this:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0cC-7J_wi8]
BRB knowthatfeelbro.jpg too much.
Chris writes:
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/35o2pi/ I accomplished this. Haven’t talked to her since September 24, 2010. http://i41.tinypic.com/3313jh0.jpg
The meme really does inspire being an adult about your feelings. That and this flowchart have been my emotional guide for the past few months. They help a lot.
Mark writes:
How many blogs are you reading? All I read is this, 70′s big Mainsite, then Stroup’s, Vale’s Tyspkin’s, etc, one or twice a week.
I read all my friend’s blogs because I like reading what they think about. I don’t read any fitness or strength blogs other than Justin’s. I can’t handle most other blogs because most of the people writing about lifting fucking blow at writing. Glenn Pendlay’s is all right, he has a personality and has good stories to tell because he trains legit athletes.
Josh writes:
Im at work right now. sitting in a room with a guy who unsuccessfully tried to blow his head off, (im a nurse) is it wierd that it reminded me of you, except that I thought that you would be much more successful. I was thinking about how unhappy this guy was and how much more shitty his life is going to be now that half of his face is missing and he is still alive. IMO we could all learn alot from this guy. GUN TO THE TEMPLE NOT UNDER THE CHIN! BTW you should go after white chicks. They have much lower standards than asian chicks.
If I were going to kill myself I’d park my car in a garage and close the door behind me and leave the engine running. Then I’d play this song:
and wait to die when Thom sings
I’ll take a quiet life,
a handshake of carbon monoxide,
with no alarms and no surprises,
no alarms and no surprises,
no alarms and no surprises,
Silent silence.[/spoiler]
brent: i’m so disillusioned with fitness and strength blogs these days
i’m just so burnt out
Justin: I got that way, but I’m making an effort to follow yours and MWOD
I love mwod and kelly so much
me: agree
fuck
the guy is just
Justin: he is the shining beacon of hope
me: a fucking beacon of hope
ROFL
ASD;LFJASDF
AS;DFKJA
SDF;LASJDF
ASDF;L
LOL
Justin: hsadl;fjsad;kljsad
Also this is good:
shawn: brent
I’m in class
we’re doing “roleplaying exercises”
if you need me, I’ll be the guy trying to pinch my way to the artery in my fucking thigh to bleed out and die in this fucking waste of god damn time class.
if i could have a seizure – I would.
I would have a seizure solely to get out of this waste of my fucking time class.
my teacher is a fuckign fat woman
and she’s a fucking teacher
so, that means – she wasn’t successful doing the fuckign thing that she fucking went to school for
and this is her paycheck
fucking chubby cunt
nasty fat bitch
i hate it here.
fuckign shsi ghtias
asos upset i could squat a car.
GERATEA
this fucking bitch just mentioned she’s a non litigating attorney
meaning she flat out refuses to go to court
meaning she’s NOT A FUCKING GOOD ATTORNEY
OH HEY I”M A COP – BUT I JUST DO PAPER WORK!
should of been a fucking bartendeer
fuckign cant’ even type
should have been a fucking dancer
I would have beena god damn glorious dancer
dammit that would make for some top shelf 70sbig posts
hey here’s my buddy shawn’s regime since he’s a fucking NATIONAL DANCING CHAMP
SHAWN’S BEEN IN THE TODAY SHOW – DANCING
this is his squat program
my fucking legs would be jacked
no
I fucking sit at a desk
occassionalyl rubbing my fun stick through my pants wishing i was anywhere i could get the fuck off.
Tiny writes:
Will you describe in 27 words your average day? Then sum that up in two more words.
Wake up, I could have slept more. Hydrate, eat, mob, like a robot. Train, this is pointless. Go to work now. I should just fucking end it.
Fuck everything.
Snatched up to 230lbs x 1 on Monday, C+Jed up to 265lbs, missed 285lbs and cleaned 295lbs. Front squat 375lbs x 1, 355lbs for two doubles. Did some poor man GHRs with bodyweight, mainly trying to slow down the negative and using push up assistance off the floor to come back up.
Tuesday I pressed 175lbs for 3, 3, 2, 1. Did my first handstand push up on rings on Saturday? Did like 10 more on Tuesday, one double and a bunch of singles. Ring dipped +100lbs x 2. Did some light oly work.
On Wednesday I did weighted pull ups, +100lbs x 3, 2, 2, some curls, and db delt work.
Today (Thursday) I snatched pretty terribly and high-bar squat up to 450lbs x 1 without too much trouble, followed up with 415lbs x 3. I guess at the meet my squat will go 192.5 –> 202.5 –> see what happens. I’d like to leave the opportunity to PR (by 2.5kg) open.
[spoiler effect=”simple” show=”Long Q&A is long.”]
Welp, see ya later! writes:
Have you thought about pursuing a DPT program? If not, why the FUCK not? You obviously love this stuff. What if your JOB were to help people move better? I’m sure Starrett would hook you with internship and research opportunities. I want this for you. It would be so lame of you to ignore this question.
Talk is real fucking cheap so I don’t bother mentioning “I’m gonnas.” I’m gonna submit my applications to UTD and UNT Dallas once I have my transcripts (forgot how many credit hours I have) and finish my bachelor’s in bio (I need to complete two higher-level courses). I’m going to need to collect some hours at PT clinics. I’m going to apply to a bunch of DPT programs and hope they don’t friendzone (which is a euphemism for “reject”) me.
“I’m going” to bench 350lbs. “I’m going” to stop losing bw and get up to a thick, solid, tight 170lbs. I can say “I’m gonna” do anything and it doesn’t make a fuck until it happens.
If I get accepted into a program you’ll hear about it sometime. If I suddenly stop updating this blog and Justin posts something on the mainsite about losing a friend – you’ll know I just wasn’t fucking good enough. Who didn’t see this coming a fucking mile away.
Hamburger fan writes:
I don’t know if you’re trying to troll me, but I’m sure you’ll be glad to know it’s working.
It shouldn’t be trolling. It’s not uncommon for people at PL meets to not use belts. Hook-gripping deads is a little rarer, but definitely has been done before, and isn’t a big fucking deal if your dead is <500lbs anyways. I legit have not used a belt for anything save for a few cam shows since September of 2011. I've always been enamored with the idea of the no-no-no squat so …
Beonick writes:
Any links to the MWods that helped your bench? Or should i go through past entries or just search on MWod? Or should i just stay safe?
Tack-and-stretched distal tris, lacrosse ball to medial border of scapula with arm behind back, best shoulder mob ever, tack-and-stretch on pecs. When my anterior capsule was inflamed I did this one and it helped.
Welp, see ya later! writes:
Fucking persistent anterior hip tendinitis. The kind you get when your knees slide forward at the bottom of the low bar squat. It is a bitch to get rid of once you’ve got it. I’ve been stalling and resetting my squat and pounding form for like two years because of it. Frustrating as shit. Just recently said screw it I’m switching to high bar. I can still feel it some though. Can mobbing help me finally resolve this?
“Can mobbing help me finally resolve this” dude fuck you seriously what the fuck, try it??????????? It won’t hurt???????????? Get some joint approximation to the back of the socket, hit your anterior capsule, open that shit up, improve your squat bottom position by with hip flexion + external rotation bias and unglue your posterior chain. Take a look at your ankle ROM and see if you have tight gastrocs that are holding you back. Seriously? You’ve been lurking how long and you haven’t even fucking given it a shot? If your shit is legit inflamed and hot, ice it down at minimum 3x a day (after your workout) for 10mins on/20 off. Go Paleo and/or start supplementing with EPA/DHA. What are you, new?
Dude – you’re a classic case of someone who would benefit from this shit. “I’m still functional, I’ve got this great capacity to produce force, but it hurts to do some things and I’m playing gasso-brako.” It kills me to see guys like you. Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy male, regular guy lifting weights, does some things OK but could be so much better. See what helps. Keep doing those things. Become a better athlete. Things don’t have to – and shouldn’t – hurt when you squat, press, or dead. Normalize your fucking tissues man. Eliminate one more obstacle in hitting your PRs.
Eli writes:
I was curious about doing oly lifts with steel plates though. I’m at a PL gym currently where there are no rubber plates so I’m forced to learn the lifts with steel ones. I was just curious what your path was when you were learning the lifts this way compared to using rubber weights. Oh and have you ever received any coaching besides Justin’s on the Oly lifts? Thanks brah, mirin’ always. Stay Safe.
You’re gonna get real good at lowering the weights under control. You will miss when you push the envelope. Hope your gym doesn’t care. Power snatches/power cleans may be more feasible most days. Have fun. I sure as fuck didn’t.
lambchop writes:
PS have you read Dan John’s book? It’s like a ray of sunshine to me for some reason and makes me feel less inclined to fly an airplane straight into the ocean.
Dan John’s a minister, I’m not terribly inclined to hear what he has to say. I used to read his articles on T-nation. They were useful. When I was 18 and benching 135lbs. He has good ideas that people figure out on their own in a few years. I’m not saying he’s bad. I’m just saying I don’t care. [/spoiler]
PVC pipe to the IT bands, it could have hurt more. Did about 20 passes per leg. Some residual soreness, external rotation with toes forward in the bottom position squat feels a bit better.
Training has kinda sucked, I benched 285lbs x 1 and could not grind the second rep out. I squat 415lbs x 3, 2, 2 and DLed 430lbs for three singles, did some weighted GHRs which seemed to have made my hamstrings sore. The only cool thing I did this week was power clean 265lbs for a +5lbs PR.
lampchop writes:
man talk more about lifting
[spoiler effect=”simple” show=”Shit no one cares about because I total less than 1500lbs.”]I’ve got a PL meet in less than two weeks and then another oly meet exactly one week after that. My PL total could have increased by more since I last competed. Assuming I take conservative attempts, which I’ll prob end up having to do, I’ll PR by like 15-20lbs and most of that is gonna come from the bench. I don’t expect to PR my dead or even match my best, I think I have a reasonable chance to match my PR squat except this time it’ll be high-bar. I should total just over 1200lbs. My best total is 1194lbs @ 180lbs bw. I went 462/275/457. I’ll be a little sad if I don’t beat that at 158lbs.
I guess I shouldn’t expect anything terribly cool. I would like to make some significant PRs at raw nationals this year, and more importantly get my fucking DL closer to 500lbs.
If I had to say what’s helped my bench the most (which is currently the lift I’ve improved the most with), it’d be mobbing. Not having to deal with my fucking shoulders or elbows hurting makes grinding out reps a lot fucking easier, and it’s given me a lot more force off the chest since I’m not creeping into position with inflamed shoulders. I feel real solid taking the bar out of the rack, and me starting from a solid position makes the rest of the lift feel a lot better. Check the comments on the 365/365 episode of mobilitywod. It’s a bunch of people thanking Kelly for changing their fucking lives. I’ve plugged mwod a bajillion times but I can’t plug it enough. Do you think you could be a better athlete? Mwod is a good place to start.
One of the things that’s always made my DL suck are my hamstrings. For a long while they’ve felt uncomfortably tight off the floor and to the knees, and it was making me skittish when I started pulling heavy again a few weeks ago – the sensation reminded me of when I strained my hamstring in August. Tacked-and-stretched whatever hurt in the hamstrings and a bunch of things got better, it was easier to squeeze into position and that scary “your hamstring is about to fucking pop bro” sensation isn’t a factor anymore, meaning I can psychologically say, all right fuck it, pull on this motherfucker until it goes.
As far as programming, I’m gonna start thinking about focusing on singles for the deadlift on a weekly basis. I’ve typically preferred 5rms and 3rms for the deadlift, which seems to have resulted in me having a 5rm that’s like 15-20lbs off from my best single (in addition to my deadlift not moving for a real long time). My 1rm doesn’t appear to increase when my 5rm or more goes up.
There was a thread a while back on the mainsite where Nolan and some other guys were talking about singles being the most productive thing for the deads, and Saul’s been pushing this training philosophy for a while as well. I’ll prob rotate heavy singles with RDLs and good mornings and try to get in some GHR shit 1-2x a week.
My squat protocol isn’t gonna change, i.e. high-bar for motherfucking life. I could start doing some more volume though. [/spoiler]
Some fucking guy writes:
You didn’t tell us the story where you crashed and burned while hitting on chicks in your gym.
There’s only one chick that I hit on at the gym (that I can remember in recent memory) but there are two stories I want to tell you guys.
I was squatting sets of 10 last spring with my roommate and they were pretty taxing, I worked up to 375lbs x 10 low-bar and my glutes could not have hurt more post-set. Anyways on this particular night I was lifting with my roommate so I was being sociable with him (nowadays when I’m training on my own I just twiddle my thumbs and listen to Radiohead’s Creep off my phone and when Thom Yorke starts screaming
SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE’S
RUNNING OUT
THE DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR
SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE’S
RUNNING OUT,
SHE RUNS,
RUNS,
RUNS,
RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNS
RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNS
I sink to unfathomable fucking depths and go take my workset) but anyways I was there with my roommate, I finish up a set of 10 with probably 355lbs and I rack the bar and turn out of the rack to make an exaggerated, high-pitched moan, the kind of moan you would probably make after having someone’s hand shoved into your anal cavity without lube. I happened to do this in some Asian chick’s face as she was walking past the squat rack and she like flinched away and made a disgusted face but didn’t stop walking to the dumbbell rack. I never said, “Hey man, I didn’t mean to moan in your face and I’m not really weird like that I was just being funny for my friend,” and she never joked about it with me, “That’s a funny noise to make,” so we can only assume she thought I was being a real fucking dickhead.
The chick I was hitting on at the gym was this hispanic chick with a little muscularity, she had broad shoulders with good thoracic extension. She did stuff like RDLs, squats, benched, push ups, pull ups, so I was all like hey this chick seems to lift kinda serious maybe I should talk to her. So I walk up to her, she’s got her earphones in so I tap her on the shoulder (I didn’t really tap her on the shoulder but if I were to film a re-enactment I would depict myself tapping this very disinterested girl on the shoulder) and I ask her if she’s training for something.
Let me just say that she couldn’t have been less interested in talking to me. If I could go back in time I’d take note of her body language, which quite frankly screamed I COULD NOT BE LESS IMPRESSED WITH WHAT I SEE and just stop mid-sentence and say “oohKAY” and turn around to go back to doing oly lifts on iron fucking plates. But she gives a bunch of three-word (or less) answers to my questions and I say “well I guess I’ll let you get back to your workout.”
So I bug her AGAIN after I’m finished with my squats or my bench or whatever, I try talking to her about what she’s doing, is she in school, what does she do for work, I mean this is all cold approach, guys, and I’ve done this like, less than three times in my entire life. I’m desperately fumbling for conversation. I’m sweating, but it’s not from the workout. She tells me she’s GOING TO SCHOOL FOR X-RAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHICH I DO SO I AM LIKE HEY MAN I AM DOING X-RAY RIGHT NOW, I TAKE X-RAYS, WHAT DO YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT?????????????? She was ex-military which prob contributed to her distant demeanor.
So I talk with her a little bit about that and I go back to my workout. She finishes hers. Leaves without saying bye (I was going to ask if she wanted to hang out sometime before she left). Next time I see her she’s with two other friends, a guy and a girl, and she ignores me.
Will you please talk about American Idol Kelly Clarkson….
How do you feel about this…
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn676-fLq7I]
Describe the music video in nine words, followed by 7 more words about the singer.
Thank you for your contribution.
I could train to this, seems good for pressing.
I don’t know much about Kelly Clarkson.
Joe writes:
Bront,
Please keep the jams coming.
Thanks
I don’t think my taste in music is terribly interesting, but this one makes me want to be in a video montage of some difficult c+js:
The beginning would be some tough cleans and missing the jerks. I’d be wearing soffes, a headband, and long socks. Either topless or a real small tank top. Then I’d be the only one sitting in like a row of chairs at the gym. Justin would be standing in front of these chairs with a chalk board, lecturing me with diagrams about the jerk and the split and the dip and drive and shit. You couldn’t hear what he was saying, the audio would be muted out, then he’d stress something important and throw the chalk against the board and you could see his lips say something like, “Let’s get to work.” Let me add that throughout this montage, there’d be clips of me doing dance movements that typically would be expected from chicks. Like whipping my head back and forth, possibly in slow motion. See the video that dave linked in the comments for some idea of what I’m talking about. Then I would do some more tough cleans, make some better attempt at jerks, drill the jerk a little more, and start making successful attempts that progressively looked better and better and got heavier and heavier until I PRed with a legit split jerk.
Curt1s writes:
Hi Brent,
I like this group alot, seems like you might dig them too. It’s called Mux Mool. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTEgI-virsY]
GOod for warmups.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NALoXmPL7kU]
Those are some legit fucking beats my friend. Thanks for sharing.
Welp, see ya later! writes:
Brent when you squat (meaning high bar) do you try to stay real tight on the descent and rebound back up from just below parallel or do you just dive bomb into it and sort of bounce off of your calves out of the bottom? The low bar cues about rebounding up off of tightened hamstrings don’t seem to work so well for high bar. I find that cutting it off anywhere above ATG feels arbitrary and unnatural please respond. Also depression, unrequited love, etc.
I go to what feels like end-range, though my back squat bottom position doesn’t seem to be as low as my front squat’s. I use some kind of bounce out of the bottom, I’m pretty sure I’m not bouncing off my calves though.
Pressed 175lbs x 4, 3, 2 and front squat 355lbs x 4 on Monday. I feel like if I wasn’t super-setting my front squat warm-ups with my pressing work sets I could have taken 355lbs x 5 for a pretty substantial PR, my downfall on this was my right bicep cramping up in the front rack. I could have done more ring dips. I could have done more front squats.
On Tuesday I just did good mornings, didn’t have time for anything else, I could have done more oly lifts.
You guys ever taken a dump at work and gotten walked-in on? It’s happened twice to me. By the same doctor. I go into the single-person bathroom, think I’ve locked the door, sit down and start checking out facebook and whatnot on my phone, I see the door handle turn and the door open and the doc barges in, sees me with my scrub pants down to my fucking ankles taking a fucking shit, then turns around very quickly and closes the door behind him without a word. This happened tonight, and before that it was a few months ago. At this point, the doctor probably thinks I want this to happen. Who lets this happen TWICE? Oh the first time didn’t bother me enough, let me leave the opportunity for someone to witness this fucking disaster more than once.
This last time his face showed more irritation and disgust than surprise and apology. I was thinking – is he sickened by my exhibitionist behavior? By my desperate thirst for attention which is so great I bait people into coming to watch me defecate? Hey man you wanna see me stick my thumb in my butt hole while you’re at it? I got it all, baby. Please respond.
George writes:
You know what, Brent? You know fucking what? I don’t really believe in much anymore. I used to have hopes and dreams and ideals, but one by one they went away as I realized that I am a piece of shit garbage athlete aspie beta fuck so I just wrote them off as being silly and pretended to move on it’s fine have you ever read The Stranger by Camus?
Speaking of Asian movies (can’t say films or cinema because I might come off as a hipster even though I’m wearing large glasses and own a lot of flannel) Have you seen What Time is it There? Might be up your alley.
My dog shit in the kitchen while I was writing this.
I loled. Haven’t seen the movie or read the book.
Hey man – I believe in you. I believe in you and I hope you decide to do what you have to do. Keep your passion alive.
cmoney writes:
Your philosophy prof lifts jellydick weights, and so do you.
Next you’re going to on about how the high bar back squat is some Kantian metaphor for man’s place in this world.
This isn’t fucking livejournal. This isn’t some lib arts college coffee shop where the betas all wax intellectual in vain attempts at pathetic intercourse.
This is brent fucking kim’s blog and he’s pretty fucking strong and he’s getting stronger. Lost in humorous emo musings is the fact that he’s approaching a 2xBW c+j.
The only prof that matters is Professor Pump. Now kindly stfu.
I actually like to think of my blog comments as a pretty chill coffee shop. Maybe the room in the gym just before the weight room, that room that’s got a lot of open space and some kind of turf or firm carpeting and a few pull up bars and various rigs where everyone can mob. But in this room anyone can talk about whatever they want, and actually from what it sounds like, The Myth of Sisyphus, like the tagline for Old Boy, fits the subject matter of this blog to a fucking T. I like that the people in my comments have personality, in addition to the guys who spam copypastas.
“He’s pretty fucking strong,” nah. “Approaching a 2x bw c+j.” At 156lbs bw, no one cares. But hey man, thanks for the support, I appreciate your enthusiasm and I’m happy you think I matter. It almost makes ME think I matter.
karibot writes:
That’s a good name for a workout log.
The beginning: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
The end: “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
It’s perfect in every way.
Yeah when I read this I was like, this is my life. This is my future. Let my heart fill.
Steven writes:
I appreciate you writing this blog. It gives me not only a good read between classes, but because of my schedule I always have to train alone so I feel like we’re training partners. Even though we’ve never met and I’m basically a voyeur to your life. Thanks.
Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy.
Matt writes:
I was talking with a scientist and he told me that ~40% of the chinese population and take test and it will not show up in there piss for some scientfic reason he explained. You should research and see if this could benefit you since you are asian.
If you were on a deserted island and had a barbell but the weight had to be a fixed amount(welded or old school globe style), what weight amount would you choose and why?
First part sounds made up.
I’d prob do like a 100lbs barbell and just do lots of curls and front raises every day with it. Why? Because I can’t think of much else to do. I could say “275lbs” and then just proceed to do max-rep c+js with it, that’s assuming I wouldn’t do something dumb attempting 91% of my best c+j without any other warm-up. I could say “400lbs” and do the same thing with deads, or maybe 185lbs and do max-rep clean and presses but these all seem pointless because of my current woefully inadequate strength.
Tiny writes:
How do you feel about this:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md0hNcvwMds]
or do you not like to trip while you hop?
If you don’t like its fine, I’ll get you something else….
Please respond.
Not really my thing. Music has to either make me want to fucking kill myself (see: Radiohead – Bulletproof) or make me want to either dance or bang out some fucking presses:
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