MORE TROUBLE THAN YOU’RE WORTH

My regular readers are probably aware of those, but for those that aren’t, lifting wasn’t actually my first passion.  Sure, I wanted to be big and strong ever since I can remember, but competing in powerlifting or strongman wasn’t what I envisioned: I wanted to fight.  I started in martial arts at the age of 6, doing YMCA Karate (pronounced “krotty”) before enrolling in Tae Kwon Do from age 8-17 and earning my First Degree Black Belt (which, if you know anything about TKD, you know it doesn’t mean much).  I started wrestling in High School my sophomore year and did it through senior year.  MMA was getting big when I graduated and I decided I wanted to learn how to really fight, so I took up boxing, Muay Thai and BJJ/submission grappling.  I did this all through college, then I got married right out of college and was forced to make a decision.  If you’ve ever trained to fight, you know it’s a big time commitment.  2-3 hours of training about 4-5 times a week is about standard if you want to be any good at it.  That was cool when I was single, but having a wife that wanted to spend time with me, I realized it was too big of a time sink, ESPECIALLY since I was trying to lift on top of all that.  I loved fighting, and I loved the confidence it gave me, knowing I could defend myself and my family, but I had to think about what the tradeoff was.  When forced to pick between lifting and fighting, I settled on lifting, because I realized it could still provide me some of that self-defense benefit I wanted, but in a different way.  Instead of being a guy that knew how to fight and could fight if a fight happened, I figured I’d turn myself into a guy who quite simply looked like he was more trouble than he was worth. 

It most likely surprises no one that I bought this at Hot Topic

Whew, long intro on that one, but let me continue to explain.  Lifting and fighting are two different activities, and though my lifting was helping to augment my fighting (as I had started lifting at 14), I was reaching a point where getting better at one was taking away from the other.  Whenever I got super into my fight training, I’d start dropping weight fast, and with that I’d lose some muscle.  When I got super into my lifting, I’d put the muscle back on, but my fighting skills would drop off since I wasn’t giving as much attention to them in order to allow for recovery.  Now, I realize that everyone on the internet apparently knows that size doesn’t mean anything in a fight, but for some reason, out in reality, people still think that a big strong dude can do some damage in a scrap.  Weird.  Anyway, being fully aware of this, it dawned on me that, if my concern is really about being able to defend myself and my family, being big enough that people simply don’t want to attack me is a far better defense than being really good at fighting so that, when I DO get attacked, I can defend myself.

But being “more trouble than you are worth” speaks to something even more significant than this notion; it’s the idea that, even in failure, you’re still a threat.  People like soft, easy targets.  They like a sure victory.  They like to go into a battle knowing they’re going to come out clean and unharmed.  What they DON’T want is to end up getting locked into some brutal war of attrition with some psychopath who isn’t there to win; he just wants to make you hurt.  And this was my goal in lifting as a means of self-defense; to appear strong enough that, even if I’m outnumbered, outmatched, unarmed, etc, whoever is looking to make me a victim has to REALLY consider if it’s worth it.  Is it really worth a broken nose or ribs, losing teeth or an eye, a concussion, etc etc, or should they maybe just move on to an easier, sure victory?  This is being “more trouble than you are worth.”

...yup

And you can be “more trouble than you are worth” outside of being attacked; you can simply BE “more trouble than you are worth”.  You might not be the best competitor overall the day you show up, but you can still be the guy that shows up so well conditioned that people just give up rather than try to beat your time in a medley.  You can have a deadlift that is so nuts that it’s simply a race for second place amongst the other competitors.  You can have a will that is so strong that all attempts to break it leave others broken.  Even when outmatched, outclassed, outmuscled and outskilled, you can STILL be more trouble than you are worth.  You can make it that beating you just isn’t worth the reward.

What is the value here?  It’s accepting that there are going to be risks, and you can’t be prepared to defeat them all, but by playing to your strengths you can turn yourself into something so fearsome that you won’t have to.  You can find what you have that makes you “dangerous” and ride it out as far and as hard as you can to the point that, even if you can be beat, people won’t want to beat you.  Though you can be overcome, no one wants to take the risks and suffer the consequences of doing so.  You can simply be more trouble than you are worth.

This guy gets it

Make no mistake; this isn’t about “winning fights.”  This is a strategy for winning them before they begin, but when that fails, you’re at the mercy of the fight.  Sometimes your strengths will carry you through and you’ll be victorious, and sometimes your lack of skill will show and you’ll take a loss.  But take heart in knowing that whoever beat you suffered in doing so.  They limp away the winner, nursing their wounds and examining their new scars and wondering if it was really worth it.  Thinking to themselves “I am NOT doing that again.”  You become so strong in WHATEVER your strength is that even winning against you means taking a loss in some way.

Endeavor to be more trouble than you are worth, whatever it means to you.  Endeavor to be the strongest, or the fastest, or the most skilled, or the strongest willed.  Hope to one day be the best in everything, sure, but en route to that path, endeavor to make it so that, even if you aren’t, no one wants to risk finding out for sure.           

SIZE, NOT BODYBUILDING. STRENGTH, NOT POWERLIFTING

This is going to be a little rudimentary for my regular readers, but it’s something I’ve been observing a lot of recently and it needs to be addressed.  We once again witness the human folly of attempting to rapidly classify a complex idea into a bite size digestible chunk as it relates to training, and specifically training for the goals of being bigger and stronger.  People take too quick a shortcut here and think “I want to get big, bodybuilders are big, so I want to train bodybuilding” or “I want to be strong, powerlifters are strong, so I want to train powerlifting”, and it ends up going in such weird directions that a trainee who is all full of energy and enthusiasm just ends up spinning their wheels and achieving zero goals.  Once again, I offer you a plea to not make this so complicated. The only reason you should be training like a bodybuilder or a powerlifter is if you are competing in bodybuilding or powerlifting.

Let's go with "nay", unless you have a powerbuilding meet coming up

Let’s clear this up right now; bodybuilding is not the sport of getting big, and powerlifting is not the sport of getting strong.  I know I just blew some minds with that, so allow me to clarify.  Yes, you need to get big to successfully compete in bodybuilding, but there is MORE to the sport than that, and, in turn, MORE to the training than that.  Specifically, in bodybuilding, you have to get big in the right spots in order to create an illusion of being even BIGGER than you actually are.  This is why a tapered waist is so valuable; it makes shoulders look even broader.  A quad sweep makes the quads look larger.  These are all very fascinating things to consider when you are going to step on a stage and do your best to make yourself look as big as possible to win against your peers…but do you need to care about it if you want to get big?

Hell no!  Getting big is super simple; people have been doing it for centuries.  You just need to lift weights, eat food and sleep.  That’s it.  Someone, everyone who HASN’T read an internet article of book knows this.  My dad never read anything about training, but he knew that lifting weights got you big because he watched Pumping Iron and had a buddy in basic training that lifted weights.  My grandpa never lifted a weight, but he knew lifting weights got you big because it was a thing you just knew.  But somehow, with all of our education, people have deluded themselves into believing that there is some sort of secret combination of reps and sets out there that you have to pair together JUST right with the exact perfect amount of volume and bodyparts split or else, no matter how hard you try, you won’t get big.  Jesus man, look at all the programs John McCullum wrote about in his “Complete Keys to Progress” series, or the Perry Radar routines, or Stuart McRobert’s stuff, or all the crazy things guys like Sandow or the Saxon trio were doing.  It ain’t that hard; lift weights, eat and sleep and you’ll get big.

I'm just saying; compare his strength score to his intelligence

Do you need to be strong to compete in powerlifting?  It certainly helps, yeah.  A strong powerlifter is going to have a solid shot at winning...but that’s not the only thing a powerlifter needs.  A powerlifter needs to also be SKILLED, both at the execution of a lift (to include all the various powerlifting tricks regarding reducing ROM as much as possible while aligning oneself into the best position to maximize leverages) and at the ability to handle maximal poundages.  In addition, a powerlifter needs to know how to peak for a meet, such that they properly manage fatigue in their training that they are able to keep maximizing their ability to lift maximal loads while still being able to show up on meet day not excessively fatigued to the point that it interferes with training.  Do you, as a trainee, need to care about all that if your goal is to get strong?

Hell no again!  Wanna know how to get stronger?  The answer may shock you.  Lift weights!  Once again, everyone ELSE seems to understand this, and these people don’t even lift!  It’s a cliché’ at this point.  “Man I’m weak; I need to go lift weights.”  Why can’t our super educated masses on the internet seem to grasp this?  You don’t need a peaking phase, you don’t NEED idealized frequency, you don’t need to monitor volume, you don’t need to hit some sort of golden ratio between big 3, you don’t even NEED to do the big 3 itself; you just need to go lift some weights!

It doesn't even need to be a barbell

I’ve beaten this drum so much, but its truth; getting big and strong is NOT that complicated.  In fact, it’s the exact opposite.  The “dumb jock” stereotype is a stereotype for a reason.  You REALLY don’t have to be smart to get big and strong; you just have to work harder than everyone else.  Hard work takes no talent, it takes no intelligence, and it takes no skill; it just takes drive.  It takes a willingness to say to the world “f**k you; I CAN” when others say you can’t.  So many great athletes got there simply because they were willing to do what others weren’t, and for many, it means simply showing up, working hard, and repeating for years on end.

People make up rules because they don’t want the answer to be effort.  They come up with the craziest ideas.  “I know my program has me lifting 3 days a week, but I’m still sore from yesterday.  I heard from somewhere you shouldn’t train when you’re so, so I’m going to rest until it goes away.”  Are you insane?!  Keep training!  Where did you get this rule from?!  “I heard you have to train the same bodypart 2x a week for optimal growth, so I can’t follow this program that works for everyone.”  Are you nuts!?  Quit making up rules and go train!

I seem to be going heavier into DnD than I anticipated for this post

And this is why people can’t wrap their brains around effective programs designed for getting bigger and stronger; they try to evaluate them like they’re bodybuilding or powerlifting program.  It’s no secret I’m a fan of 5/3/1, and that’s because it’s exactly what it is supposed to be; a simple program for getting bigger and stronger.  And then people evaluate it like a powerlifting program and say “it can’t work; you only bench once a week”.  Hey chief, that’s cool if your goal is to set a PR on a max bench single, but if you want to get strong, benching once a week is dandy, because it means you can spend the rest of the week getting stronger.  “5/3/1 can’t get you big because it doesn’t have the right amount of volume.”  Jesus man; how did you calculate the volume on the conditioning work?  How did you calculate it on the jumps and throws?  It’s not a bodybuilding routine; you’re doing more than lifting weights.  And the same is true for other established “get big and strong” programs, like Juggernaut Method, Westside Barbell for Skinny Bastards, Super Squats, etc etc.  You can’t evaluate these as bodybuilding or powerlifting programs because that’s not what they are, but at the same time, you most likely ALSO aren’t a bodybuilder or powerlifter, so why do you care?

You don’t need to train like a bodybuilder or a powerlifter; you just need to go lift.

And your conditioning sucks.

2018 EMPIRE CLASSIC STRONGMAN COMPETITION WRITE UP

Time for another write-up.  Bottom line is that I took second overall, and my training cycle worked out well.  Hit some goals on the circus dumbbell, had a blast on some natural stones, and got to do a coin box deadlift, which was on my strongman bucket list.  Oh yeah, also, I got to meet Bill Kazmaier and he gave me a trophy, so that’s pretty awesome.

He is STILL huge

Showed up to the competition feeling strong.  Didn’t deload the week of, did no weight cutting, and just treated it like an events day.  Really trying to avoid peaking at this point.  Without further ado, the video and description.

Event 1: 450lb Coin Box Deadlift (axle, no straps)

As per usual with deadlift events, I did absolutely zero specific training for this event.  I’m a solid deadlifter, I train ROM progression so I’m good at a variety of heights, and I have to spend so much time getting better at other things in strongman that, when I can find something to relax on, I take it.

This was a lot different than I expected it to be.  The “axle” was really just a pipe fitting that went inside the coin box sleeve, and as a result it was incredibly whippy and rotated in your hands.  Pretty much the opposite of an axle.  In turn, the difficulty wasn’t going to be the grip, or the stiffness of the bar, but more that the coin boxes were going to sway with every rep and try to knock you on your ass.  This happened to me around rep 3, and I found myself falling forward with the rep.

Beyond that though, I was able to execute my gameplan of “go deadlift”.  The judge was getting on me to lock my shoulders back, and I made sure to exaggerate it a ton to avoid missing reps.  Jacked up my left shoulder a touch, but it healed before the next event.  I needed to beat 22 reps, I was trying to keep count, lost it, yelled “REP” and then “HOW MANY REPS?!” and still got nothing, so I just kept pulling until I ended up with 25 or 26.  Good enough for first in the event.

Event 2: 175lb Keg/200lb keg/200lb sandbag carry and over bar medley

I have 2 kegs and 1 sandbag at home, but the weights are 100, 182 and 250+ respectively, so I got creative training for this event.  I have a 45lb weight vest, so first I got good with running the 100lb keg, then I got good with the 182lb keg, and then I focused on doing runs with the 182lb keg while wearing the vest. All my sandbag training was built around just working on the pick up of my heavy sandbag, and that was honestly to get me better at stones.

This strategy DID work, and I was very fast with the kegs, but in retrospect I shoulda practice my loading more, because that is where I ended up being weak.  I manhandled the kegs, but I had a poor starting grip on the sandbag, and trying to muscle it over the bar was no go.  Had to reset and re-attempt.  Slight consolidation is that I missed first place by 9 seconds, so I still wouldn’t have made it even without the fumble, but I know how to do it better.

For one of those “game day” factors you never consider; while training picking up the sandbag, I always did it on a level floor.  At the show, they had stacked the sandbag all the way on the end of a horse stall mat, which made it so that the sandbag was on one level while my feet were on another.   Just something I never thought to worry about.  I’ll probably practice some “poor placement picks” in the future.

Event 3: 225lb Log clean and press once, 125lb Circus Dumbbell clean and press each rep

This is the event I had the most anxiety over, because I’m awful with the circus dumbbell.  I spent a lot of time drilling the technique with it to get better, and got as many tips as I could from Brian Alsruhe’s video.  For the log, my secret strategy was to get strong/good enough to viper press the log, so that I’d have more time to work on the dumbbell.

My log strategy sorta worked.  The log at this competition was a BEAST.  Lots of folks failed to press it, and when I tried to viper a weight I had hit for multiple reps in training first thing in the morning, it was ugly.  Couldn’t tell you what made this log suck so much; must be some sort of balance issue.

That said, I still got the fastest rep on the log in my weight class, and so I took my time when I approached the circus dumbbell.  I was the only one to press the log at this point, so I was already ahead in my field, but I also knew that the guy currently in first place was a monster at the circus dumbbell, so I had to get set up well but also move quickly enough to get in some reps.  The first rep I was set up very solid and it moved smoothly.   Set it down, went for a second, not as good a set-up but still got it down.  It hit the floor, I heard “10 seconds left” and figured “f**k it”, grabbed it, got an awful set-up and just brute forced it up into lockout.  It was like a combination dumbbell and side press, but right before time ran out I got the rep.  I still got beat in the end, but I was super amped about this performance.  Last year, I only managed 1, and it was by pure luck.  With more time, I coulda gotten even more reps today.  The training cycle paid off.

Event 4: Natural stone medley (215, 225, 265, 285)

Here was another even I was amped about.  I don’t have natural stones to train on, so I spent all my time picking up my sandbag and training my stone of steel, figuring that the two of those would combine into something worthwhile.

I had no strategy with these particular stones, and just sorta figured it out as I went.  The weights weren’t bad, but you had to figure out where they were heavy and how they wanted to get picked up.  Each time I’d grab the stone, I’d have to take a few seconds to sorta “learn” it and then try to set it up.  The third stone was a mankiller among the field, as it was very long and flat compared to the others.  The final stone did NOT want to get picked up, and you had to sorta roll it into your lap, turn it around, sweep in from the stop and lay it on the platform.  I did well for myself with only one fumble, and missed first place by 3 seconds, which was painful.  I DID take pride in the fact that I didn’t need wide receiver gloves to pull this off, nor did I need to complain to the promoter when he said “no wide receiver gloves” until he eventually reversed his decision.  Come on folks; gloves on a natural stone?  What the hell is the point?

Event 5: Power Stairs 300lbs/350lbs/375lbs

I trained for this one a little bit with my swing handle, but eventually I just got fed up with it and figured what would happen would happen.  This really wasn’t a technical show, and I figured being strong would get me pretty far.

I handled this better than last year, and did a solid job of letting my quads push the implement forward.  I had a stumble at the end that sucked, bruised up my thumb and opened up a callous in my hand, but otherwise I did about as well as I expected.  Something in the realm of 22 seconds, which was good enough for second.

---

CLOSING THOUGHTS

This went well.  The guy who took first is a solid dude, trained by his pro-strongman dad and part of a group of awesome strongman competitors.  Being able to beat him in 1 event was awesome, and coming close on a few others was solid.  I overcame the circus dumbbell, and plan to never do it again until they next time I have to.  The time on the log paid off.  I need to work on my loading, but lapping is solid.  With a new competition coming up in July, I'm going to keep up the momentum I have established.

Shout out to Will Ruth and Graham Langley from r/strongman.  Got to hang out with you both, having met Will in person for the first time.  This, of course, meant needing to do the predator handshake.

Will gave up some weight to compete up at 200lbs and gave his all on every event.  I loved watching the spirit.

HELD TOGETHER BY WILLPOWER

I’ve been running into a rash of people calling me “gifted” these past few days and it’s been making me chuckle.  I apparently have those super special genetic gifts that simply require 18 years of continuous training to unlock.  And when I rebut with this, they STILL maintain that I’m gifted, but now it’s different; it’s because I’ve been able to train for 18 years that I’m gifted compared to the average person.  Specifically, they point out how gifted I must be to have been able to train for 18 years without any serious injury that prevented my training.  At this point, I can no longer continue the dialogue, because I have inevitably collapsed a lung from laughing too hard, which ironically enough contributes to my growing list of injuries.  There is this myth that success training is injury free training, and that the way to the top is to never stop because of an injury.  It’s not that you never stop from injury; it’s that you never let an injury LET you stop.  No matter what breaks, you just keep on pushing through, because you are held together by something stronger than muscle, bone, tendon or sinew; you are held together by willpower.

I suppose hate is a good second choice

Yes, it’s true, and it can be done.  The secret is: it sucks!  And that’s why no one does it.  But it’s completely FREE for the taking.  It’s all up to you, and it’s a choice YOU get to make.  Isn’t freedom awesome?  When you get hurt, YOU get to choose if you are done or not.  YOU get to choose if you will heal or not.  YOU get to choose how the recovery will be.  People tend to choose the easy way BECAUSE it’s easy, yeah, but should you decide to take the hard way and be held together by your willpower alone, you will grow greater and stronger than ever.  THIS is the secret to those “gifts”; it’s the gift of accepting accountability for your fate.

Yeah, that above paragraph is a little cosmic, so let me wind it back a bit to reality.  Here’s the first thing: most people don’t even know the difference between pain and injury.  They consider them to be the same thing.  Look, I get it: people don’t like pain.  Hell, I’m mostly a person and I don’t like pain, primarily because I’m not a masochist.  Humans, in turn, are instinctively conditioned to avoid pain when possible.  But that’s the great thing about being a human: you are not a slave to your instincts.  Quite the opposite: you have WILLPOWER, and in turn you can override your instincts.  Your mind tells you to take your hand off the candle flame because it’s hot and will burn you, but ask Gordon Liddy about that.  The trick is not minding.  Knowing this, the pain vs injury thing becomes a little more clear, because pain is something you CAN work through, which in turn makes it NOT an injury.  This is why, when people ask me a question about training through injuries and then they bring up something like tendinitis I look at them like a dog looking at a wristwatch.  That’s not an injury.

See this guy gets it

So what is an injury?  And injury implies dysfunction.  It means that even with all your willpower, you cannot make your body work the way it normally does.  You can’t just pain tolerance your way through it.  When a bone breaks, you are injured: unless you are Wolverine, you’re not going to will it back together quickly.  Same with ligament ruptures, muscle tears, tendons fraying apart, etc.  But here once again we still witness the opportunity to be held together by willpower.  For one, training need not cease simply because injury occurred: it simply needs to be altered.  Far too many trainees are willing to just stop training the entire body for simply an appendage injury, ignoring the fact that they still have 3 good limbs, along with an entire upper and lower torso and neck intact.  “But what about IMBALANCES?” the weak masses cry.  Hey guy, would you rather have 4 weak limbs or 3 strong ones?  Seems like a pretty easy choice for someone who actually cares about being strong, no?   

And it’s the same for recovery too.  Immediately post injury you get to make the decision of how you’re going to react.  The day after I blew out my left knee, I spent 4 hours walking around an aquarium with my family because I make a promise to do so, I did squats 6 days later, and I trained 2 days post-surgery.  I did my physical therapy religiously, trained what could be trained, got strong, and got recovered.  And do I have pain?  Hell yeah I do, and I will myself through it, because I’m not dead yet.  Meanwhile, the entire time I was at physical therapy, I witnessed a ton of people who had just quit.  They complained and lamented their condition and cursed the doctors for “torturing them”, whereas I begged for more resistance, more aggressive therapy, faster recovery.  My mind was simply unready to let my body die. 

No joke, I was ready to do this if it was going to get me results

You have the complete and total control to decide WHEN you are going to quit moving forward.  You are an agent of pure willpower manifested into human form.  You can decide to stop moving as soon as you meet any resistance, or you can carry on through everything.  You can run forward until you have to walk, walk until you have to limp, limp until you have to crawl, and crawl on your belly until it’s just your fingers dragging your body across the ground.  Your will can carry you much further than your body wants, you simply have to be willing to let it happen.  Let yourself be bound together by willpower and you will never truly fall apart.