STUPID WORDS AND PHRASES

Yup: gonna be one of these...

Alright, I’ve played the language game enough in my posts.  It’s time for me to just come out, embrace my grumpy old man side and ridicule the stupid things we say and show how it’s impacting us.

- “Unofficial World Record”.  What the Hell is that?  Who is keeping an unofficial record book?  How do you have a world record if it’s not official?  “Dude, it means that they didn’t set it under world record conditions, but it’s still the most anyone has ever lifted.”  How do we KNOW that’s true if it’s UNOFFICIAL dingus?!  Isn’t that the point of it being unofficial?  What proof do we have that someone ELSE hasn’t ALSO lifted that much, if not more, and just simply hasn’t’ recorded it?  That’s the stupidity we get into when we start keeping two separate sets of records.  The word you’re looking for is “personal record”, and hey, if your personal record is greater than the current world record, that’s awesome: now you just need to make it official.

Because let's not pretend there aren't a million more special people just like this who may have even BIGGER arms...

- “Lean muscle mass”.  What, as opposed to the other kind?  Like, fat, sloppy muscle mass?  No you idiot: the only kind of muscle mass IS lean mass.  If you put on non-lean mass, that’s not muscle: it’s fat.  What you’ve done is combined “lean mass” with “muscle mass” and made a stupidly redundant phrase.  What you’ve ALSO done is now confused the piss out of a bunch of inexperienced readers who CAN’T see through your buffoonery, and now they’re going to hear about people adding 30lbs of lean mass in X amount of time, think that means an absurd 30lbs of MUSCLE mass in that amount of time, and immediately jump to the conclusion of steroids.  People want to rally against “fake-nattys” creating false hope among natural trainees, but that stupidity is FAR less damaging than what you do when you convince people that water weight is the same thing as muscle weight.

I think I FINALLY found that second kind of muscle mass

- “Functional strength”.  I’ve done a whole post on this one, but to summarize: as opposed to that other kind of strength?  ALL strength is functional: it’s merely a question of if you’re using it for the correct function.  Being able to bench 700lbs isn’t very functional if you’re a marathon runner, but it sure as hell is functional if you’re a powerlifter.  What’s more, people inevitably confuse “strength” with muscle when they discuss this, because they’ll go “well huge biceps don’t matter in fighting”.  No, you’re right: but strong arms are certainly useful AND functional.

Mariusz, seen here, being totally unfunctional.  Rolles, seen here, having his memory wiped.

-“Newbie gains”.  Just stop.  Your body does NOT possess a countdown doom’s day timer that starts the instant you pick up a weight and rapidly expires.  You cannot “waste” your newbie gains, nor do you need to “milk” them.  That just sounds gross.  All this refers to is your ability to rapidly adapt to new stress, which is something you’ve been experiencing ALL your life and just never took the time to notice.  When you learned a new sport, how to play an instrument, how to play a goddamn video game, etc etc, you adapted RAPIDLY when you started because you started at such a poor untrained state that ALL progress was exponential.  It was after that initial wave of exponential growth that things slowed down.  That’s all a newbie gain is.

-“Train like a BLANK”.  Fill in strongman, powerlifter, bodybuilder, etc etc.  There are thousands, if not MILLIONS of these athletes out there, and they all train differently.  Yeah, there are TRENDS in the training (like powerlifters will TRADITIONALLY employ the Big 3, strongmen train events, etc), but unique competitors train in unique ways to better suit them.  The only thing that makes a powerlifter a powerlifter is that they compete IN powerlifting.  When I competed in my first powerlifting meet, I was running DoggCrapp up to it: was I training like a bodybuilder or a powerlifter?  Neither: I was simply training.  It’s only the people that DON’T compete in these things that say “I train like an X”. 

One of the world's greatest powerlifters and strongmen AND a pro-wrestler, seen here, training like a bodybuilder...

 -“Permabulk.”  Specifically, when employed in the past tense.  “Back when I was a permabulker…”.  Do you and I have different understandings of what the word “permanent” means?  Really, let me just strike out on all stupid portmanteau at this point.  “Powerbuilding”?  Boy, I can’t wait to hear about your powerbuilding meet!  Do you mean “getting bigger and stronger”?  Like what ALL good training does?  “Strongfat”.  For Christ sakes, if “and” is too hard for you to write, try an ampersand. 

-“Dirty/clean bulking”.  In its current form at least.  This USED to make sense.  If you were bulking while eating dirty food, you were dirty bulking.  If you were bulking while you were eating clean food, you were clean bulking.  And this is primarily because we used to be ADULTS and knew that Frootie Pebbles weren’t clean food and chicken breast was.  But somewhere along the line we decided to go full on “If It Fits Your Macros” stupid and say all calories were the same and that there was no such thing as “dirty” food, and this meant that ALL bulking was good.  So then we decided to say that a dirty bulk meant you got fat and a clean bulk meant you stayed lean.  No: know what we called it when you stayed lean when you bulked?  LEAN bulking.  Shocking idea, I know.  People got fat when they dirty bulked BECAUSE dirty food tends to not have a lot of protein associated with it, so you’d way overshoot your calories trying to get in the appropriate amount of protein to grow.  It was a side effect of the approach: not the approach itself.  Consequently, “clean” food tends to be clean because it is purely its source of macronutrients.  By that I mean a chicken breast is clean because it’s pretty much pure protein: very trace amounts of fat and carbs.  Rice is clean because it’s almost pure carbs.  Coconut oil is clean because it’s almost pure fat.  When using these food sources with a macronutrient based approach, it’s incredibly easy to hit your goals without exceeding macros or calories: you just dial in the dosage of the food.  When you try accomplishing this with a plate of nachos, things can get…dirty.

The IIFYM crowd going "It's got Salsa, that's vegetables.  And guacamole comes from avocados.  That's clean!"

-“Going to war”.  Let’s be real: it’s just lifting weights.

ON SNOWFLAKES

(Apologies for the late post: I am in the middle of moving and internet sucks)

I’m a big fan of language, which, as a statement, I realize is like saying “I’m a big fan of air”, but continue to humor me.  Specifically, I like observing the shifts and changes in language, along with the weaponization of it.  Terms that were once completely acceptable and positive can, in the course of simply a few years, turn derisive and unwelcome.  “Snowflake” is such a term now, as it was once used as a positive way of expressing the uniqueness and individuality of a person and is now mired in sardonic rhetoric and used to demean the recipient of it.  And I just have to say: that is REALLY stupid.  Why would you deride someone for being unique?  Why would someone chastise someone for NOT falling in with the majority?  What is up with people that take pride in being exactly like everyone else?  Snowflake is DEFINITELY a compliment, and if you receive it derisively, wear it with pride, because having a stupid person consider you to not be their peer is a high accolade.

In fairness, in a passing glance, I thought this was Nietzsche...

But where am I going with this as it relates to training?  Once again, “snowflake” is used to demean people who won’t train and eat like everyone else.  “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake”, as people love to quote Tyler Durden from Fight Club, completely missing the mark of the message in the first place, but still, the popular reply whenever someone wants a critique on their own training or nutritional approach.  “Just do what everyone else is doing”, “You don’t need to make your own training plan”, etc etc.  We’ve all seen the canned responses and replies, we’ve seen people get verbally eviscerated, we’ve seen the hopeful bright-eyed trainee’s light go out as they decide to just do what everyone else is doing.

But that is the problem with such an approach: if you ask the majority what you should do, you’ll get the reply to do what the majority does.  AND, if you’re inclined to ask the majority what to do, you’re denying your “snowflake-ness”.  If you truly, honestly, in your heart-of-hearts believe that you really are a unique snowflake, you do NOT need anyone’s advice, permission, consent or guidance.  If you ARE unique, then you will simply do what you do AND  you will succeed BECAUSE you are unique.  That is the whole point of being that snowflake: you’re different.  The rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to you.

Maybe...maybe some rules should still apply

And yes, not everyone is going to be a unique snowflake, but hell, SOMEONE will be, so why not let it be you?  The odds dictate that, at some point, it’s got to be someone.  It’s no different than winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning or your other low-odds situations: it’s not likely, but it’s possible.  And with the power of positive thinking, you may just well make it a self-fulfilling prophecy that it IS you.  Or hell, maybe it is the case that ALL snowflakes simply ARE those people that will themselves into being exactly what it is that they want to be, irrespective of how everyone else is succeeding.  Or maybe it’s even the case that what makes someone a snowflake IS that they possess the ability TO will themselves into what it is that they want to be.  But in all of those situations, it stands to reason that, if you decide it will be you, you have a chance that it WILL be you: all you simply need to do is make that decision.

In turn, upon making this decision, you need no other approval but your own.  In fact, approval would be antithesis to the whole endeavor.  If the majority of other people agree with what you’re doing, it’s not going to be what works for you.  You ARE that snowflake: you are different.  Your needs aren’t the same, nor do you respond the same, nor do you get the same results.  You must be different, you must train different, you must act different, and, in turn, you will get the results other people won’t get when they try to do what you do.  And that’s ok.  They’re normal: you aren’t.

And doubly in turn, when you find those training methods that appeal to you and everyone else says they’re bunk, that’s a great sign that you should try them.  There have been fellow snowflakes and lunatics in training: feel free to learn from them and ape their style.  What you’ll most likely find is that all they had in common was the right mindset.  They decided, before they even tried it, that how they were going to train was GOING to work, and then they executed it and made it happen.  You see this with the lunatics that did HIT, Heavy Duty, Deep Water, Super Squats, Dogg Crapp, Blood and Guts, and all the other hardcore sounding names that everyone likes to chide and say they’re scientifically impossible and unsound and yet they just keep working on the people that do them.  And whenever some normal person pays them lip service and sleepwalks through a program and then goes on to show how they don’t work, this just further reinforces the point: it doesn’t work for normal people.  But I’m sure it works for a snowflake like you.

You can’t have it halfway though.  If you truly think that you are a snowflake with special needs, this means you can’t go seeking out the approval of other people.  It’s not going to work.  They’re going to direct you toward what works for everyone, because that makes sense, because the odds are you’re just like everyone else.  But if you’re playing the odds here and deciding that you AREN’T, you get to make your own decisions, make your own mistakes, learn your own lessons and achieve your own victories.  If you want to take lessons from others, only take the ones you want and decide that they are the ones that are going to work for YOU, and then disregard the ones you don’t want.  Decide to mold and shape your reality the way you want it to be.  That is the luxury you get for being unique.

RANT WEDNESDAY VS VICTORY SUNDAY

The idea for this post comes by way of “bird_dream” on reddit, and their observation is so profound that I’m upset I didn’t notice it.  It’s no secret that I’m a denizen of reddit, and that they’ve once again sucked me in after I swore of forums (again), but for those of you not privy to that scene, there is a popular subreddit r/fitness wherein, once a week, members of the reddit are given 2 distinct opportunities.  On Wednesdays, denizens of r/fitness may engage in “Rant Wednesday”, wherein they are free to air any grievances they have as it regards to training.  Frustrated with their gym?  Frustrated with their own failures?  Frustrated with other people?  Just let it out.  On Sundays, they can engage in “Victory Sunday”, wherein they are free to share any victories they had in that week.  Maintained dietary compliance?  Hit a PR?  STARTED going to the gym?  Go celebrate.  Knowing that, the observation worth having is that, on any given week, Rant Wednesday gets up to 2000 replies.  Victory Sunday?  MAYBE 200.  What the Hell?  Where did everyone go between Wednesday and Sunday?  Why are people spending so much time ranting and so little time succeeding?

At least try to do both

Before I go any further, to save you all the trouble, I KNOW my blog is “Rants, raves and ideas about getting bigger and stronger”; the irony is not lost on me.  I have so many rants in me that I started my own blog and write 1000 words a week to get it out, and I’ve been doing it for nearly 7 years now.  However, let’s observe the fact that I made a blog so that I could contain my rant in one place, rather than having to spread it to multiple locations and force others to hear it.  That’s honestly the advice I give other people whenever they just “have to” get something off their chest.  It’s cathartic.  But I’m also not shy about celebrating my victories.  I share my competition results, I’ll plaster my PR videos wherever I can see fit to do so, and ultimately I’m not going to apologize for succeeding.  So where is this balance elsewhere?

What can we observe in the great abundance of rant posts and absence of victory posts?  Pretty much exactly what we expect: there are far more people that are too busy complaining vs succeeding.  They focus ALL of their energy on what is wrong that they never realize what is right, and instead of working hard to succeed, they work hard to justify why they fail.  These “rants” are so many excuses.  “Ugh, I went to the gym today and SOMEONE was on the squat rack for THIRTY minutes.  Guess I don’t get to squat today!”  No: guess you have to go ask to work in, like a human.  “My gym doesn’t have a dip belt!”  Cool: go buy one.  “I’m going on vacation and I HAVE to eat horrible the WHOLE time.”  Come on: no one buys that.  There are rants about EVERYTHING on rant Wednesday, and so many times its things that are entirely inconsequential or WELL within the control of the ranter if they simply exercised some self-control, discipline, or VERY basic social skills.  These people are “problem admirers”, NOT problem solvers.

And hey: maybe that person is curling in the power rack because they deserve it

And, in turn, we observe an absence of things to celebrate, because success is NOT happening when one is conditioned to simply sit and stew.  Once one dives in to the rant echo-chamber, there’s no incentive to escape and evolve.  Why fix these problems when you can just find a group of like-minded individuals that will commiserate with you?  It’s not YOUR fault: no no.  You’ve got the odds stacked against you.  These issues are insurmountable.  Why, overcoming these issues would be…well crap: it’d be a victory, wouldn’t it?  YES!  That’s the thing: the act of engaging in these rants is the direct opposition of success.  Once you determine that you’re going to go home and complain, you’ve made the active decision that you are NOT going to succeed today.  Instead of eyeing this adversity and overcoming it, you took one look and decided “today I will fail.”

SCREW THAT.  Quit trying to find things to write about on Wednesday and turn them into things you’re going to write about on Sunday.  It’s about adding more words to your rant.  “Someone was on the squat rack for 30 minutes…until I asked to work in.”  BOOM!  Rant turned to Victory.  “I blew out my knee on a set of squats…now my press is at an all-time high since I can train my upper body so much”.  Rant turned into Victory.  It’s about understanding that all challenges are simply opportunities.  Any challenge that is NOT an opportunity is literally certain death, at which point the whole “Rant Wednesday vs Victory Sunday” thing becomes inconsequential, as you won’t be around for either.

Jury is still out on if this challenge WAS certain death

And another part of that is that we really need to shed this modesty crap.  You SHOULD be proud of your accomplishments.  If you’re NOT, then they AREN’T accomplishments.  No, someone shouldn’t be proud of being a “nice guy” who isn’t a jerk to people: that’s called being a default human.  That’s not an accomplishment.  But if you hit a PR set of 24 push-ups after being stuck at 20 for months, OWN IT.  “But someone else is stronger than me?”  Yeah: who cares?  They’re not you: they don’t have your circumstances or situation.  YOU succeeded: you get to celebrate the success.  If you’re not content with it, don’t rant about how upset you are that you’re not further along: GET FURTHER ALONG.  If all you do is acknowledge the dissatisfaction, you have wasted it.  If you decide to use it as a catalyst to achieve something great, you have MAXIMIZED the benefit of that stimulus.  All these situations can serve as something to overcome and, in turn, grow stronger from.  OR, they can simply stop you in your path as you sit, wallow and complain about your inadequacies.  And guess what?  There will be PLENTY of people that will agree with you that you are inadequate, but you may be the only celebrator of your own victories on the onset.  Learn to be proud of YOURSELF such that, even IF you get the accolades of others, it’s immaterial. 

Let the people who need to rant have it.  It keeps their disease contained, and prevents you from getting contaminated.  Go out and celebrate your victories instead.     

A CELEBRATION OF PSYCHOSIS AND SINGLE-MINDEDNESS: THE TALE OF “UNSUALLY RUTHLESS REUBAN”

Readers, it appears that I once again need to dive into my nerdy side, and this most likely coincides with the summer sales that occur on Grand Old Games, because if it’s not at all obvious, I am apparently a total hipster curmudgeon and refuse to play any video game that isn’t 20 years old.  And on that note, allow me to tell you about the hero of the game “Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games”; “Unusually Ruthless Reuban”   

Not to be confused with Walter White in the last season of Breaking Bad

So anyone that has played the game before is already questioning my judgement, but for those of you less cultured readers, let me give you the briefest of crash courses.  In this game, you hire a team of mercenaries to perform various missions of varying degrees of scruples (from some to none).  You hire from an organization known as the Association of International Mercenaries (A.I.M), which, in turn, recruits from all ranks of life: from military trained professionals to lunatic ex-post office workers (no hyperbole: “Postie” remains one of my favorite characters).  Mercs are rated in a variety of skills, from marksmanship to medical to explosives handling, on a scale of 1-10.  For example, take Mike, the best in the game.

He commands an outrageous salary of $10000 a mission.  Compare this with a more middle of the road mercenary, like Wolf

Modest salary, modest stats. 

And then, there is Reuban

That is not a doctored image: his stats are awful.  He could very well be a joke character in the game.  He is rarely able to contribute to your success in the mission, because his marksmanship is so poor he can’t hit most targets (the only person with worse marksmanship in the game is literally blind in one eye) and his physical stats are so poor he can’t get close enough to the enemy to improve his odds of hitting them OR use his hedge trimmer on them.

But the end of the sentence spells out what makes him the hero: he showed up to war armed with a hedge trimmer.  Why?  Because some mercs signed on for money, some signed on for fame, some signed on for career advancement, some even signed up for adventure, or simply out of boredom.  But not Reuban: he signed on to kill people.  And he makes no attempt to hide that.  In broken English he tells you “I like kill people: good prices!” when you interview him for hire.  Not only that, but he’ll leave your employ if he doesn’t kill enough people after a few missions, stating “I go now.  I no kill much here.”  And if you attempt to RE-hire him after that, he rebukes you saying “I go there.  I no kill NOBODY.  Ok ok.  Maybe one.  Maaaybe two.  But still: no much.  No enough.”…and this is why he’s the hero.

 
I may not have the best heroes...

The other mercenaries are just that: mercenaries.  This means, quite frankly, they possess incredibly questionable loyalty.  Remember how Machiavelli cautioned his prince on the hiring of mercenaries, as their loyalty is only to money, not to the country.  Well this is entirely magnified under the motley crew of A.I.M.  Mercenaries will quit your employ if too many people die on your team, if you fire too many people, if you fail too many missions, if you fire one of their friends…but they can all be bribed to come back.  Not Reuban.  There is literally no script in the game for that to happen.  They recorded no dialogue for that to occur.  Reuban will ONLY leave your employ if he does not kill enough people, and once that happens, there is no coming back. 

This means Reuban has some goddamn integrity!  He is EXACTLY what he says he is: a remorseless, sociopathic killer.  He offers you a $40 pricetag so that he has a chance of joining you and getting an opportunity to kill people.  These other mercenaries, quite frankly, are whores, and will compromise any and all of their values for the right price, but Reuban’s motives are clear, they are obvious, they are uncompromising, and they are consistent.  He is the hero of the game.  HE is the one true role model.

Trust me: it could be worse

We could all stand to be “unusually ruthless”.  When we are truly dedicated and focused to our goal and unwilling to compromise, we accomplish the things that others can’t.  And this means an unreasonable dedication towards this end.  This single-mindedness IS the psychosis we are celebrating.  It’s the insanity of pursuing things that make sense ONLY to us, things that a reasonable person does not understand.  It means NOT being able to be bought off with the trinkets and rewards that others seek.  No fame, no fortune, no acclaim, no joy or fun or adventure of alleviation of boredom: just purely the goal for the sake of the goal.

Those that are motivated by the external rewards become the whores and mercenaries aforementioned.  THESE are the people who start to change the way they train to appeal to the masses.  They abandon effective training methodology for the party approved garbage, they alter their technique to meet the approval of the formcheck brigade, they take the supplements they are told to take, etc etc.  Or, on the other side of the equation, the people “in the industry” start producing content purely because it will be well received and rewarded: NOT because it is the content they want to produce.  They pursue clicks and hashtags and retweets and sponsorships.  They are not here to kill people: they just want to make money.

Or whatever it is that this accomplishes...

And if you’re not here to kill people, then be honest with yourself about that fact.  Quit telling the world that you’re “all about that life” when you’re really just all about TELLING the world you’re all about that life.  There’s nothing wrong with you seeking accolades and rewards: that makes you normal.  And normal is just that: it’s normal.  All in all, you probably stand a good chance of surviving: perhaps even THRIVING in society.  You may get to be the mercenary with the $10k pricetag and all the skills maxed out.  But your loyalty will always be questionable, because anyone with offering the right price can get you to jump, while I know that, as long as Reuban keeps killing, he will stay on my team.  And quite frankly, I’d rather have a whole team of those psychopaths, because at least I know EXACTLY what I am getting into.

Grab your hedgetrimmer and head out for battle.  Decide now what is your “kill people.”  What are you actually here to do?  Be single-minded in that focus and let nothing else take you off that path.