WHEN I CAN'T THINK OF WHAT ELSE TO WRITE, THERE'S ALWAYS BULLET POINTS

-Everyone is so quick to say “pull deadlifts from a dead stop: it’s how you’ll do it in a competition”, but I RARELY see this same thing said about the bench press.  For some reason, a touch and go bench press gets far more forgiveness than a touch and go deadlift, despite the fact that, in competition, a pause is required when benching.  What’s more, a touch and go deadlift will always have at least ONE deadstop rep (the first one), so the guy doing a set of touch and go deads is STILL getting in some “competition practice” (especially when one considers that it’s typically powerlifters [or should I say “powerlifters] making this claim, where one only NEEDS to do 1 rep in competition), whereas the trainee that does a set of touch and go bench press NEVER gets in that critical paused rep ala competition.  How interesting the lines we decide to draw in the sand.

Wouldn't it suck to bench and deadlift touch and go and all you ever do is get as big and strong as this guy?

-The best conditioning exercise is the one that you’ll do.  I got an airdyne bike off the facebook yardsale site because everyone swore to me it was the bee’s pajamas and would change my life.  I used it 3 or 4 times and then sold it again.  It took up too much space and I just plain didn’t care to use it, primarily because I didn’t care about riding a bike.  Meanwhile, these days I’m jumping rope in my basement and have a Bas Rutten “Body Action System” on order, because I still miss my fighting days and will retap into that era to get in some extra exercise.  It won’t have 100% carryover to lifting, but it’s far better than NOT doing conditioning.

-I was on r/strongman on reddit and told a dude that I thought strongman records were silly.  He asked why I even bothered to post there if I felt that way, since strongman records were “half the sport”.  I replied that I was on the subreddit because I competed in strongman, and then I asked him if he did as well.  He got VERY defensive at that question.  There’s nothing wrong with being a fan of a sport, there’s nothing wrong with being a passionate fan of a sport, but when you start deciding that what you as a fan enjoy matters more than the people actually doing the sport think, you’re being a goober.  This is why most legitimate sports have players unions.

-The pandemic has been an illuminating experience to find out who REALLY “lived training” vs who just wanted to be seen going to the gym.  There are dudes getting after it with a big rock and some resistance bands, and there are dudes sitting on their thumb in a home with a doorframe pull up bar, adjustable dumbbells, cardio equipment, a bowflex, etc etc, absolutely NOT training because “I don’t have a rack or barbell”.  Winners find a way.

Please kindly stop whining

-Speaking of “winners find a way”, shout out to Flappinit over at t-nation, who starting 5/3/1 Building the Monolith about 2 weeks before the world shut down and has continued to run the program without interruption, to include the 1.5lbs of ground beef and dozen eggs a day, by jerry rigging a rack together and hustling to get a bar and plates together.  Read his log over on the site if you get a chance.

-No: I don’t care what Eddie Hall has to say about Thor.  Folks: this is kayfabe, plain and simple.  Perhaps I take it for granted, since I was born in the mid 80s and professional wrestling was huge when I was a kid, but I can spot manufactured drama to sell a storyline pretty easily.  I feel like a lot of folks that grew up in the absence of that influence are now having their innocence played against them in their adulthood.  But suffice it to say, you look pretty silly when you’re thinking it’s real.  Appreciate the show for the show that it is.

-I put some fat gripz on my ab wheel and my persistent elbow pain has vanished.  About the only good thing I ever found to do with them.

-Hey, speaking of fat, could people PLEASE quit memeing their nutrition when it comes to strongman?  If you can’t push press 200lbs, you don’t need to eat 8000 calories a day.  And maybe we could try to put on just a LITTLE bit of muscle with all that bodyweight?

-Someone on the starting strongman facebook page just asked me if Ironmind was a “reliable source” to buy equipment from.  Learn your history folks.

Ironmind AND MHP: some REAL history there

-I got my bodyweight up to what was most likely one of my highest points in prep to compete at 220 before my comp got canceled.  I’ve been losing weight now, and once again marvel at how simple it is: eat less food.  I also find it easy, as much as that chaps people when I say it, because all you have to do is…nothing.  Its inaction: how easy is that?  You have to put in effort to eat.  If you wanna make losing weight easier, do ALL the cooking and cleaning in your house, and suddenly meals will be sparse.

-One of my more recent posts “Maybe you should just quit” gained a lot of attention, with MANY folks upset with the message.  Some of those folks even called for me to stop writing, as apparently I’m quite bad at it.  How these people didn’t choke on their own irony boggles my mind.

-Ok, seriously, say it with me now: axle and log.  Not “axle bar and log bar”.  Why would you say the latter?  Do you say “barbell bar”?  “Weight plate disk”?  “Katana sword”?  “Boot shoe”? 

-Hey, you got some downtime right now?  Why not read “Powerlifting Basics Texas Style”?  And if you’re a diligent follower of the blog, I mean, why not read it again.

-I am teaching my kid Tae Kwon Do during this downtime, so I’ve taken to stretching again after a 20 year hiatus so I can kick above my waist.  I’m honestly excited about the first injury I get in this post-stretching era just so I can go “see: stretching doesn’t prevent injury”.

Hell, stretching can even hurt OTHER people

-People tell me “fitness is for everyone” and that I’m myopic for feeling otherwise, but really reflect on that.  It’s VERY short-sighted to say something is for everyone, because this is assuming that ALL people have the same end goal.  Specifically, in this case: longevity.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live as long as possible and to do so as pain free as possible, but to assume it’s everyone’s goal is ridiculous.  To assume it SHOULD be everyone’s goal is egocentric and mothering.  Some folks aspire for hedonism, some sacrifice the end for the beginning or the middle, and some folks are willing to take risks.  For some folks, there’s no room for fitness if they want to accomplish the OTHER things they want.  To assume only your goals are the ones everyone else should have is silly.    

-The pandemic has also illustrated another pandemic in thinking, or, specifically, an inability to think.  Trainees have been so used to always having a rigid structure and plan that, when removed of the ability to comply with it, they literally have NO idea what to do.  Back before everything was mapped out and there was an app for everything, people would just throw stuff against the wall and see what stuck.  Creativity was our ONLY tool in the weight room, and we came up with some wild stuff.  Now is the time to start doing that again, but the fear of doing anything “sub-optimally” has reduced many trainees to a state of refusing to do anything.  What could be more sub-optimal than no training?  Now is the time to do all that stuff that “doesn’t work”.  Stupid high volume bodyweight work, HIT (that’s how you make light weight heavy), pre-exhaust, isolations before compounds, mega high rep sets, etc etc.