BULLET POINTS

-It’s cliché, but I am digging “reverse dieting” as a superior paradigm to “bulking”, as long as training employees the same approach with volume and conditioning.

-I haven’t used a barbell, outside of car deadlift simulators, since Oct of 2015.  If I had to do it all over again, I’d have bought the Ironmind Apollon’s axle first and never got the Texas Power Bar.  Anything the TPB can do, the Axle does better.

-That said, the Texas Deadlift Bar is still legit…but I also haven’t used it since Oct of 2015.

-I have no idea what my 1 rep maxes are.  Why do so many people care about their own?

-I wish my strict press carried over better to my push press.  In truth, I need to learn how to be athletic.  At least, if I want to win.

 
Well...maybe not

-I can’t push press while facing the power rack.  I have to press facing away from it.  Weird psychological hurdle, I know, but acknowledging it is half the battle.  I could spend months fixing the issue, or seconds turning and facing the way that works.

-Why train in the morning?  Because you look awesome with a pump when you aren’t bloating with a full day’s worth of food.

-The internet is starting to embrace 5/3/1…which makes me wonder if it’s a bad program. Of course, seeing how badly people butcher the program gives me hope.

-Whenever someone complains about “swole shaming”, “fit shaming”, etc, I assume these people bring it upon themselves by being attention seeking martyrs.  If you just live your life and mind your business, people tend to leave you alone.  If you want to be acknowledged, go win something.

 
No, this doesn't count

-I love all my toys, but sometimes I find myself craving an opportunity that forces me back to basics.  Limitations breed creativity.  Reference: training while injured.

-For mobility work, I have a reverse hyper against a wall and I have to duck under the front handles to put dumbbells on the feet to weigh it down.  Talk about functional!

-Let’s come together as a community and ensure that, when we see someone doing “farmer’s walks” with dumbbells, we call it “stealing dumbbells”.  Don’t get me wrong; more people need to do conditioning, but that doesn’t count.  Your grip shouldn’t limit your conditioning.

-Putting Ironmind bars in my New York Barbell’s power rack makes me giggle.

-When someone brings up drugs in a discussion on strength, I imagine that person isn’t very strong.

-When I see people complain about the cost of a gallon of milk a day or the diet in “Building the Monolith”, I just wonder how these people eat.  This is a diet for ONE person; how do you think people feeding families manage?  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs folks.  Get your finances in order, THEN lift.  Also, how much are they spending on Starbucks, pre-workouts, video games, etc?

 
Full disclosure: I've never had Starbucks before, but I'm fairly certain you could buy a week's worth of ground beef for the cost of this

-Let’s all appreciate the humor that, there is one camp arguing that natural trainees need to train more frequently than drug users to create more protein synthesis while there is ANOTHER group saying natural lifters need to train LESS frequently because they can’t recover as quickly as drug users.  Let’s also appreciate how both methods work, and for both natural and assisted lifters.  Those on drugs simply get better results faster; it’s not magic.

-I miss 2008 era Elitefts.

-I own so many jump ropes.  I buy them thinking I will use them.  Never happens.

-Muscle is not built from food alone.  Stimulus must be present.  The bulkers miss this.  If the only thing you change is food, you just get fat.

-Go get injured and learn something.

-Once I stopped considering certain things inherently bad (injuries, muscle imbalances, back rounding, inflexibility, etc) my training took off.  Somethings simply “are”, not necessarily good or bad.

-It’s weird how small guys wear clothes that are too tight while big guys wear clothes that are too big.

Wait: a tanktop OVER your t-shirt?  But how will people know that you are big?!

-Beginners need less plans.  Go out, have fun, push yourself, try a whole bunch of things.  Overspecializing early leads to stagnation.

-I think a lot of people want to read about lifting so they can find more excuses.  How else will they learn that their genetics, anterior pelvic tilt, low testosterone, high myostatin, etc etc are all holding them back?

-In case you missed it, Chris Duffin recently accomplished one of the most impressive deadlifting feats I’ve ever witnessed.  20x675 sumo, followed by 10x675 conventional.  I know it’s trendy to hate on the guy right now, but seriously, that’s gotta be in the top 5 deadlifts, and pulling with both stances is just nuts.

-I must have gone crazy, because I am front squatting, barbell (axle technically) rowing and pressing twice a week; all things I have sworn never to do again.  Maybe I’m operating under the premise that, if I do everything wrong, it will all work out.

-On the topic of front squatting, I picked up a cheap(ish) front squat harness off of amazon recently.  I might be using it wrong, but it’s not exactly like front squatting.  Clint Darden calls it “Viking squats”, and I can appreciate that.  The weight is a little further out in front of you compared to when the bar is resting on your clavicle, so it’s like combining the front squat and the safety squat bar.  Also makes it hell to breathe.  This, of course, means I’m a big fan of the movement, and I’m using it a lot more in my training.

Besides, vikings will never NOT be awesome

-You know what you can control?  How crazy you are.  People will be bigger, stronger, better, faster, and younger than you, but YOU have the power to be crazier than everyone else.  It’s not even a quality you need to develop; it’s a decision you need to make.  In many cases, crazy beats good.  However, in many cases, crazy also dies in a spectacular fashion, so be aware.

-My approach to training has pretty much boiled down to “why not?”  It’s gotten me pretty far.

-Once I started lifting weights less, I started getting much stronger.  Everyone wants to lift weights, no one wants to do bodyweight work or conditioning.

-Even I don't know what to think about the fact that I tell everyone that training method doesn't really matter but then wonder why people train so stupidly.

-Pavel Tsastouline's "Beyond Bodybuilding" was both the best and the worst thing to happen to my training.  Same with Westside Barbell.  I bet 5/3/1 will be the same too.

-Perception of time scales with age.  When you are 5, a year takes forever, because it's a 5th of your life.  When you are 80, a year is a blip.  It's the same with training.  New trainees want to change programs every 2 weeks, because it feels like they have been doing the same thing FOREVER.  I'll realize I have been training the same way for years every once in a while.

-People up in arms about amino spiking should eat more steak.

Hard to mess up the amminos on this

-Training isn't a competition.  Rarely is this understood by non-competitors.

-I have had people tell me that I am hardcore/they admire my training/etc, and all it does is puzzle me.  How are these people training?

-People that are smaller and weaker than me have a tendency to tell me how I should train so that I can avoid injury.  They seem to be under the impression that I haven't been injured yet.  They never realize that I have been injured multiple times, and I am STILL more successful than they are.

-It gets hard and harder for me to understand strength progress.  Everyone just wants to compare numbers against time and go "look; strength!" but that tells me nothing.  Was this a skill increase?  Did the person peak?  Was there any hypertrophy?  Etc etc.  I am at the point where numbers matter less; it's a question of how much effort was applied over how much time.