EVEN MORE RANDOM THOUGHTS

-Concern over 1rm inhibits the growth of strength for many.  The 1rm itself is a skill, and some are better at it than others, but adding 30lbs to your 8rm is still growth in strength even if your 1rm doesn’t move.

-Initially, when I was injured, everyone assured me that the recovery process was long.  After my surgery, everyone then assumed I was recovered well before I was.  First, they wanted me to heal slowly, then they assumed I had healed quickly.  Interesting.

-I notice that, often I write about an idea in close proximity to another author (eg: Greg Nuckols just wrote on the topic of unrealistic expectations).  Rather than assume spontaneous shared inspiration, I imagine we observe the same trends at the same times and have the same reactions.  At least it assures me that I am not crazy…ish.

-Fat lifters think cardio and nutrition are stupid.  Small lifters think anything other than WILKS is stupid.  I try to assume that, in most cases, I am stupid, and I try to fix that.

-Do people even want the benefits of sponsorship, or is it just the “prestige” of being a sponsored lifter?  30% protein powder doesn’t seem worth it to me.

"Hey guys, follow me on instagram and use code IHAVENOPRIDE for 10% off your condom needs #FINALLYSPONSORED!"

-The above having been said, if I got sponsored by Gorilla Tape, that would be alright.

-They make sugar free ketchup now, and I am unreasonably excited about that.

-I get nothing out of incline benching and barbell rows.  I am curious if arm length relative to torso is a factor.

-Everyone wants an antagonistic relationship between movements.  Squats vs Front Squats, etc.  You can train for 50+ years folks; use every movement, just not all at once.

-I know it’s cliché, but most folks need to get in shape to train, rather than train to get in shape.

 
I mean, not Glenn Ross, but a lot of people still

-All of this is ridiculous; don’t take it so seriously.  But, you can still do your best while laughing at yourself.

-I was more amazed at the reactions people had to Hafþór diet than the diet itself.  What were people expecting?

-My heart goes out to surgeons and physical therapists, because I know I’m a terrible patient.

-Why was it that, in the 80s, when action heroes had crazy physiques, no one was upset, but as the standards have slid people cry “unrealistic” louder and louder?

 
Reminder; this was fine, Chris Evans is setting an impossible standard

-No matter how many hashtags you use, it won’t add weight to the bar or take away bodyfat.

-If I look in the mirror, I am meeting my goals.  In photos, I am either too small or too fat.

-I shaved over a minute off my 1.5 mile time.  My ACL was weighing me down.

-If you feel the need to reference studies/authors vs your own success, stop arguing.

-Heavy vertical pulls are a surefire recipe for elbow tendonitis.  I should stop re-learning that.

-Jim Wendler has the patience of a saint.

He must keep his patience in his traps

-If you interpret all questions as attacks, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

-My dietary weakness isn’t food choice but portion size.  I am sure I’m not alone on that one.

-5 months and 22 days post ACL reconstruction to get cleared from physical therapy.  Considering I started a month late, I will take it.  And considering I trained the whole time and didn’t re-injure myself, it’s a real victory.

-Something I have observed; weak skinny lifters tend to think they are training harder than they really are, while fat lifters tend to think they are eating better than they are.  However, the former tend to overcomplicate training AND diet, while the latter approach both with simplicity.

-It’s ridiculous that people want proof that conditioning benefits lifting; we use to just call that “being in shape”.

"Psh, how could that possibly get you any stronger?"

-I observe a correlation between concern with injury prevention and lack of results.

-I’ll take 100lbs on my total over 10,000 youtube followers.  It’s alarming how many “lifters” wouldn’t.

-“I train like a ____ (strongman, powerlifter, bodybuilder, etc)” is a statement made by those with no real understanding of how these folks train.  All it takes to be one of these things is competition.  A successful athlete is simply one who strengthen’s their weaknesses.

-What is with the paradox of mocking crossfitters for thinking that they are hardcore while at the same time mocking them for stupidly dangerous workouts?  Either they AREN’T hardcore, and the workouts are easy, or the workouts are stupidly dangerous and they’re hardcore for managing to get through them.

-Hell, Mark Felix isn’t above doing a crossfit workout.

He makes it look good

-Just because a guy can design an app doesn’t mean you should listen to them on training advice.  I’m looking at you Mehdi.

-Don’t justify why you do something; justify why you DON’T do something.

-People view lack of mobility as some sort of sin.  If you “need” weightlifting shoes to squat, you have a mobility issue to address.  Or, hey, maybe you just found a solution and can just keep lifting weights.  If you spend all of your time fixing all of your problems, you won’t have any time to actually train.

-I mean, seriously, when is the last time you saw women drooling over how mobile a man was?

-Don’t do what weak people do to get stronger; how would they know what to do?  Do what strong people do to get stronger.

-Marketing being fat as “hardcore” has been terribly destructive.  We’re still undoing the damage.

 
This looks like the scene from a different sort of "hardcore" movie

-You can win a lot of medleys by being the best at picking up an object and the fastest to run back to the start line.  Most people ignore these variables.

-I wonder how much Eddie Hall could deadlift if he would quit deadlifting wrong.

-No one has money for books or lifting equipment, but everyone has money for supplements, shoes, and knee sleeves.

RANT VIDEO: LOVE VS FEAR

I went vlog on you this week.  There's been a demand for more of these videos, so here you go

For my readers out there, if you would prefer that I transcribe this so that you don't have to watch the video, let me know in the comments section and I will see what I can do.

DO NOT MISTAKE SIMPLE FOR EASY

One of my pet peeves is the phrase “easier said than done”, mainly because it’s horrifically obvious to the point of uselessness.  In life, the majority of all things are easier said than done.  Speaking, once mastered, becomes a trivial task (as evidence by how effortlessly many people spew nonsense nonstop), whereas action, in most cases, tends to require more effort.  This is why, whenever a training recommendation is offered and the response is “easier said than done”, it blows my mind.  Just because something is simple doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy, and in fact, in most cases, it is the OPPOSITE that is true.

That said, sometimes things come easy to simple people

I have spoken many times to the reality of just how simple it is to get bigger and stronger.  The “dumb jock” stereotype exists because it did not require great brainpower for one to become bigger and stronger.  What gets missed in the translation is that, what was lacking in brainpower was compensated for with skull splitting intensity and effort.  When you lack intelligence, you have to compensate with brutality.  This is how the animal kingdom works, and it’s why man had to be smart; because he couldn’t hope to match the sheer force of will of nature.

However, because we try to minimize language to make our understanding easier, we have falsely equated the simplicity of an action to the ease of it.  A trainee asks what the secret is to getting bigger and stronger, they are told to eat well and lift hard, and they walk away unsatisfied; surely it can’t be that easy.  But it’s NOT easy; it is merely simple.  In reality, it’s going to be incredibly hard to accomplish, with many moments of agony and misery resulting in one questioning why they ever wanted to pursue this goal in the first place, yet the entire time, the solution will be amazingly simple.  Simple, yes, but not easy.

It's simple; just eat the whole thing

But the unsatisfied trainee will not accept simplicity as an answer; if it was that easy, everyone would be big and strong, right?  Therefore, the solution must be more complex, because that will mean that we have found the hard way to do it, no?  And thus begins the search for magic bullet solutions; mysterious supplements, exotic programs with crazy rep and set schemes, Russian training manuals, secrets passed down from locker room to locker room, the perfect steroid cycle, etc etc.  To appease our need for the path to be difficult, the trainee attempts to replace hard work with complexity, equating both to be the same.

And in reality, the complexity is taking the easy way out.  One can argue and bemoan ad infinitum the amount of “effort” they have put into getting bigger and stronger in terms of how much research they have performed in their quest to “find the secrets”…but that’s easy.  Yeah, sure, it sucks that you sat at your computer chair for hours scouring torrented training books, watching every youtube channel, arguing with like-minded deviants on social media, etc etc…but how is that hard?  That’s the life of a World of Warcraft champion, not an Olympian.  For every hour you spent in an air conditioned house sitting in an ergonomically designed comfort lounger munching on Cheetos, someone was stupidly sweating in agony while a weight attempted to crush their spine out their rectum.  While you “toiled”, someone else gave themselves rhabdomyolysis from 1 too many squats.  While you were too busy being complicated and easy, someone else was being simple and hard.

Currently in the process of getting jacked

It’s so catchy now to say “just because someone is a great lifter doesn’t mean they’re a great coach”, but instead of being a rallying cry for the weak to use to explain why their advice is valuable even though they are unsuccessful, let’s really look at what this is getting at.  How can someone be a great lifter and a bad coach?  It’s because you don’t NEED to be smart to be big and strong.  A great coach NEEDS to be smart, because they need to be able to convey what they know to someone else, but a great athlete simply needs to be able to push and grind further and harder than anyone else.  A great athlete has to be able to endure the suck more than anyone else.  They have to be able to not quit, work hard, and shut up.  In short, it’s very simple, and incredibly difficult, and that is why there are so few great athletes.

Getting bigger and stronger is easier said than done; now go do it.




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As an update for my readers, slightly less than 6 months post-op I have been given the clear to train by my physical therapist.  I am still told to go light and watch for pain, but nothing is restricted.  I was told to start out at 60-70% of my previous weights, but I imagine my doctor didn't realize I was lifting over 600lbs, so I am going slightly lighter.  Still technically 6 months out from competing again, but we will see how that goes.



Already getting my squat on.

And, now that I am healed enough, here is the injury as it initially happened