THOUGHT SALAD PART I

-My overhead press got better when I did less pressing and more bodybuilding shoulder work.  My shoulders also started feeling healthier too.

-Goo Gone takes off tacky way better than baby oil and WD40.  It comes in a spray now too.  Get it.

-If you want to get people to move out of your way at a strongman comp, just yell “I am covered in tacky!”

-My ghetto log did a great job prepping me for a 12” log in a comp.  It was a bitch to clean and absorbed leg drive on the press, so in a comp the real log felt like nothing.

-You don’t get extra points for not using straps in a contest.

-Instead of wearing stringer tank tops and having purple mohawks, maybe people could draw attention to themselves at a competition by actually being big and strong?  Food for thought.

IS ANYONE PAYING ATTENTION TO ME YET?!

-I notice a lot of people foam rolling are hurt.  I wonder which came first.

-I sometimes feel bad for how uncomplicated my training is when I see/hear what other people are doing.  Am I missing out?

-It’s funny how, the more successful you are, the less effect “appeal to authority” has on you.

-I will always cheer louder for the guy zeroing in the open class than the guy winning the novice class.

-Front squats are a great movement for strongman…so I’ve been told…I guess.  I don’t do them.  Should I be squatting to depth too?...shit.

 
If this was a front squat, this guy would be DESTROYING competitions

-My squat took off when I stopped treating it like a primary lift and started training it like assistance work.

-I train my deadlifts touch and go and my squats dead stop (off chains).  What is wrong with me?

-I find that a key variable for success is being unaware of what you “can’t” do.

True Story: Once this movie came out, I could no longer play basketball

-Quest protein bars are the only kind I can eat that don’t trigger some sort of allergic reaction.  If you have a similar affliction, give them a try.

-I haven’t performed an overhead press with a barbell since I started training for strongman.

-I slap my forehead every time someone equates more time under tension with lifting slower.  Think outside the box for just a second.

-Speaking of “the box”, box squats seem like they would be great for strongman.  Curious why we don’t see it more often.

 
Oh yeah....that...

-I’m honestly pretty let down by fat gripz.  A sound idea, but they never really worked like I hoped they would.  I find that they rotate around the bar too much to get a solid grip.

-The notion of “beginner, intermediate, and advanced” is FAR more destructive than it is beneficial.

-Once a trainee cites another author in a discussion on training, I realize that they have no faith or pride in their own results.  Consequently, I stop listening to them.

-It’s amazing how, when I was young and “didn’t know anything”, I made significant changes to size and strength.  Meanwhile, I spun my wheels for years training “the right way”.  Enthusiasm and intensity go far…but so does being 17 I guess.

-It’s weird how the only people concerned about “recovery” are the people who have read that it’s super important.

-It’s funny how people see the presence of so many conflicting opinions on training as LIMITING.  This is liberating.  It means there are tons of ways to succeed.

QUIT LIMITING ME!

-Training by myself in my garage has been a boon mainly because my sense of normalcy is totally shot.  I have no idea what good numbers are to lift, nor do I really know what movements are supposed to look like or how most other people train.  Considering the majority of the people in gyms are actively failing at meeting their goals, this is a good thing.

-Whenever someone asks how much weight you get out of a belt/sleeves, I look at them like they’re from another planet.  I can’t even understand what that question is trying to ask.

-I got into a discussion online wherein someone asserted that we should always presume a person desires to keep their health intact while training and I asserted that we should never assume health is a goal unless overtly stated.  I have to laugh at how crazy we each thought the other person was.

-One of the most damaging things I ever did in my training was worry about if my assistance lifts were increasing.  So much time and energy wasted, didn’t have my eyes on the prize.  However, part of the issue here was that I wasn’t competing, so really, what WAS the prize?

-I genuinely miss the days where I thought I could eat myself bigger.  Seeing the scale number go up was awesome.  However, I realized that all I was doing was just making myself fatter.  It’s not even the junkfood I miss, it’s more just the IDEA that I could do something to make myself even stronger aside from just all the heavy lifting I do.  “I just gotta finish this gallon of milk and then I’m sure to have another deadlift PR.”  Eating reasonably is so boring.

Pictured: Anabolism

-It’s funny how the internet has made me so vocally anti-abbreviated training when it’s something I used to promote so heavily.  The pendulum swung too far.

-Oh my god I can’t stand how many people are putting “farmer’s walks” into their routines now.  Was there a Men’s Health article about them recently or something?  I already wrote about how people are ruining this exercise, but it’s still ridiculous.

-I want to create a method that is so complicated that even I don’t understand how it works.  Then I can constantly berate everyone who claims to be using it that they’re not using the REAL method.

-Everyone thinks it’s pithy to comment on the fact that weightlifting should be called powerlifting because it’s all about power.  They fail to take this to its logical conclusion, realizing that ALL the strength sports got it wrong.  Weightlifting should be called powerlifting, because it’s all about power.  Strongman should be called weightlifting, because you lift a variety of weights in it.  Powerlifting should be called strongman, because it’s a sport that’s all about strength.

-T-nation had a thread once called “Squat Rack Curls”.  In it, successful lifters mocked unsuccessful lifters for doing stupid things in the weightroom.  Elitism?  Sure.  However, as the thread went through multiple iterations, it ended up becoming unsuccessful lifters mocking successful lifters for doing effective (though unconventional) things in the weightroom.  Oddly enough, I feel like this is an accurate reflection for what has happened in lifting in general.

-If you are an atheist who buys testosterone boosters at GNC, I question the strength of your convictions.

"Trust?  No....CONVICTION!?...No....gotta have something....?"

-It’s weird how heated the debate on deloading can get. 

-I stopped going to elitefts once they changed their website layout.  It’s weird, because I used to start everyday at that site.  I must be getting old.

-Terms we need to retire: bulk, cut, skinnyfat, buttwink, gains, optimal, endomorph, ectomorph, powerbuilding, non-competitive bodybuilder, IIFYM, GOMAD, mobility.

-A co-worker of mine asked me what my diet was like.  I told him I don’t do anything special, and eat fairly normal.  He then asked if I ate bread and I looked at him like he was from another planet.  It made me realize that maybe my idea of “normal” is probably radically warped.

"Yeah, you know, just like 72oz of steak and some veggies, normal stuff"

-Fitness products I regret buying: an agility ladder, a foam roller, animal pak vitamins, jump ropes.

-I can’t help but notice that it’s usually people that sell equipment who tell me “buy nice, don’t buy twice”.  I subscribed to the philosophy of “buy twice as much stuff with the money you would’ve spent on the nice stuff”.

-I made everyone jealous of me at my last contest by having a little pop-up tent.  Canopies are cool, but they’re bulky and have a huge footprint, whereas the tent was big enough to fit 2 adults and chairs in while providing shade and covering the ground but still space economic.  It only cost like $40 at Costco too.  Get one.

-I was joking with a buddy of mine at my last contest about how vendors take themselves too seriously.  So many t-shirts saying crap like “Pain is weakness leaving the body” with pictures of Vikings and cliché’ garbage.  If someone was selling shirts that said “Bill’s House of Waffles” with a little smiley pancake on them, I’d buy it in a second.

-MAS wrestling is poking its head into strongman. Most folks don’t like it.  Promoters are fond of saying “real men don’t cherry pick contests, and do the events they are given”.  Bullshit, real men are too busy raising a family as a single parent while balancing 2 jobs to go hang out for 9 hours on a Saturday and lift heavy things.  Let’s not get confused here people: this is a game, playing it doesn’t make you a man.

-On the above, let us also remember that just because something is tough doesn’t mean it’s worth doing.  I won’t do MAS wrestling as an event at a strongman competition for the same reason I won’t drive a nail into my foot as an event at a strongman competition.  Both require an incredible degree of fortitude, and both are a really bad idea.